Penguins or Charedim?

I'm torn.

I have so many fascinating topics that I want to write about. Another leopard scam but this time specifically with religious Jews as victims, a two-part story involving Perek Shirah and bats and penguins, a halachic controversy about mutant chickens, reviews of some important new books about Torah and science, and so many other things.

But on the other hand, the issues involving charedi society have never been so important. And every day brings new revelations.

Meanwhile, a reader wrote to ask me to stop writing so many negative posts about charedim. Predictably, he lives in the US. (Perhaps even more predictably, he lives in Baltimore.) But here in Israel, it’s literally a matter of life and death.

There are some people who recognize this, and the importance of speaking out on it, even if they live in the US. I just bumped into a well-known figure in the American yeshivish community, with whom I had some fairly hostile interactions many years ago regarding some of my writings. To my surprise, he whispered into my ear that he reads every post on this blog, that everything I write is 100% true and very important, that the charedi world is a terrible problem and danger to Israel - and that he can’t tell anyone.

But even someone like this rabbi is trapped not just in an American yeshivish community, but also in an American yeshivish perception of Israel. He told me how horrified he is to see charedi yeshiva students hanging out while secular young men their age are fighting in Gaza. I pointed out to him that it’s not just secular young men fighting in Gaza, but also many thousands of national-religious young men! The American yeshivish community is often only dimly aware (at best) of the eighty hesder yeshivot.

There is so much going on in Israel of which English-speaking frum Jews are unaware. So unfortunately, I think that the leopards and penguins and mutant chickens are going to have to be pushed off again.

And what’s the latest today in the charedi world? If your Hebrew is up to it, you can read a nasty rambling diatribe by a Rosh Yeshiva in Ponovezh about those of us who want charedim to share the burden of military service, in which he describes us as idiots without brains who are no different from animals. You can read this exposé on X about widespread financial shenanigans in the charedi community to get apartments. There’s the campaign by a charedi anti-draft organization to get charedim with American citizenship who are being “persecuted” by the Israeli authorities for draft evasion to petition for US government involvement:

And then there’s this revealing video of Rav Dov Landau speaking with one of the young men who was arrested for avoiding army service:

Rav Landau unwittingly exposes the utter hypocrisy of the charedi approach. He tells the yeshiva student who was arrested for draft evasion that “We are praying to the Heavens, and we are making every human effort.” Exactly - when you want to get something done, you make every human effort as well as praying. Yet when it comes to defending the country, they claim that learning and praying are a substitute for human effort! It’s all a fraud.