"Bnei Brak is Protected"

Until it isn't.

There is no room for schadenfreude. There is no pleasure, no “I told you so.” But there is frustration that an entirely avoidable tragedy was not avoided, due to people ignoring that which I have warned about for years.

Last night, Israel was hit once again with ballistic missiles from Iran. Unfortunately, an elderly man in Bnei Brak was killed by a ballistic missile and dozens of others were injured. Why? Because they were not in a protected room or shelter.

Protected rooms and shelters do not provide guaranteed protection in the rare case of a direct hit (which is what happened in Bat Yam), but they do protect from impact blasts, shrapnel, and structural collapse. All newer buildings in Israel are constructed with safe rooms, but for those living in neighborhoods with older buildings, there are public shelters.

Why were the people in Bnei Brak not in shelters? I don’t know with certainty, but there are at least two possible reasons.

One is that they simply couldn’t get to a shelter. The Bnei Brak municipality doesn’t have them available for public use, because they requisitioned them for various organizations, shuls and so on, and they are locked at night. According to one report, this was the case with the shelter for the building where the elderly man was killed.

But why would they do something so grossly negligent? It may be part of a general trend of negligence, which can afflict any human society, but which appears particularly prevalent in Israel - yihiye beseder! - and all the more prevalent in charedi society. There’s an attitude carried forward from Europe that laws and rules are for goyim. The ultimate expression of this was, of course, in Israel’s greatest civilian tragedy, at Meron, where a site that was known for years to be unsafe was used, with protexia implemented to override every ordinary safety protocol that the law requires.

But the second possibility as to why the deaths and injuries happened in Bnei Brak relates specifically to the charedi world and all the more specifically to Bnei Brak. Perhaps they simply didn’t consider it necessary to seek shelter, because they were in Bnei Brak, the City of Torah.

It is endlessly repeated that during the Gulf War, Rav Chaim Kanievsky stated that rockets would not fall in Bnei Brak, based on a promise by the Chazon Ish that a city of Torah cannot be harmed. And during the Gulf War, many charedim in Bnei Brak acted accordingly, not running to shelter or putting on masks during sirens.

Then in 2014, when sirens sounded in Bnei Brak due to rockets from Gaza, Rav Chaim reiterated that the Chazon Ish’s promise applies and Bnei Brak is safe, though he added that people should go to shelters anyway out of solidarity with the rest of the country. He also extended the Chazon Ish’s guarantee to Kiryat Sefer, another “City of Torah.”

So, while not knowing the specifics of the tragedy in Bnei Brak last night, there is certainly a possibility that people continue to rely on the promise of the Chazon Ish and Rav Chaim Kanievsky. (Rav Chaim’s idea about showing solidarity with the rest of the country would not be considered remotely meaningful by charedi society today.) And the rabbinic leaders of Bnei Brak also think that people believe this, which is why they had an emergency meeting today and announced that nobody should rely on the promise of the Chazon Ish, which was “inaccurately reported” (by Rav Chaim Kanievsky?!).

You know the saying, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”? Well, I’d like to coin a variation on that: Every charedi believes in the protection of Torah until their city gets hit by a ballistic missile.

According to the rabbis of Bnei Brak in their statement, “it is forbidden to rely upon miracles” and “the Torah requires us to take all protective measures.” Exactly. We have to do ordinary hishtadlus, the same effort that we do for everything, and we do not ever rely on Torah being a substitute for that.

Which is exactly why charedim should be serving in the IDF like everyone else.