Rats, Rabbis and Racists

When is criticism of charedi society racism?

In the previous post I discussed Bnei Brak’s rat plague. I observed that there are reasonable rationalist reasons for it, with no need to posit either supernatural causes or segulah solutions, as many charedim are usually wont to do. The plague is presumably due to a combination of Bnei Brak being extremely poor, along with having a clean environment being less of a priority for charedim.

This earned me some harsh responses. One person was furious with my allegation that any significant charedim believe in such segulos, saying “there is no limit as to the amount of stuff you will make up to justify your pathetic life.” Another accused me of being “exactly like Jesus.” Another claimed that associating ultra-Orthodox Jews with rats is outright antisemitic. Yet another compared me to David Duke in trying to legitimize the racist slur “Dirty Jew.”

Such criticism of charedim could potentially soon indeed be legally classified as a racist hate crime. Yesterday, United Torah Judaism introduced a bill expanding the definition of racism to include a specific reference to charedim, which passed its preliminary reading in the Knesset. This would presumably be applied to people such as TV host Galit Gutman, who was condemned (and subsequently apologized) after a panel discussion about the government’s upcoming budget in which she said, “How much burden can be placed on a third of this country in order to support all of these Haredi bloodsuckers, all these people who suck our blood?”

But what happens if charedim say such things? And what if it’s actually true?

The fact that Bnei Brak is suffering from a rat plague is indisputable. The claim that “Bnei Brak is one of the dirtiest and most neglected cities in Israel” was stated by a charedi City Councillor and acknowledged by Bnei Brak’s mayor, who wants to double the sanitation budget to solve the problem. And the claim that there is a charedi phenomenon of caring less about sanitation and believing in the power of segulos to keep rodents away was stated by none other than Rav Yitzchak Zilberstein, son-in-law of Rav Elyashiv and prominent halachic authority in the charedi world.

Kollel Zichron David published a letter that one of its avreichim wrote to Rav Zilberstein and his response. The questioner asked which segulah to use in order to solve the terrible rat plague. Rav Zilberstein replied that there are indeed segulos for getting rid of rats, but that before using them, the root cause of the problem should be addressed - namely, improving the city’s poor sanitation.

Note that here we see that, contrary to the accusation that I made it up to justify my pathetic life as a writer and museum director, there is indeed a significant phenomenon of charedim believing in rat segulos. And that just as I said, the belief in the power of mystical forces is an insincere belief, which is jettisoned when the problem is serious and a solution is needed which is actually effective.

Rav Zilberstein proceeds to counter, at great length, a claim that he strongly opposes - that unlike cities of secular people, who care only about superficial things such as cleanliness, the Bnei Torah of Bnei Brak should care primarily about spirituality and less about how the neighborhood looks.

He doesn’t describe specific people who make such a claim. But you don’t spend time countering a claim that nobody would dream of making. And I don’t even think that it’s a particularly horrific claim. I’m often asked why Orthodox Jews (not just charedim) tend to be less concerned about the environment, and I think that the answer - that they have other priorities to focus on - is not a terrible thing.

To be sure, not all charedi municipalities are the same. The charedi town of Beitar is exceptionally clean. Nevertheless, the fact that Bnei Brak is exceptionally dirty, and the existence of a mentality that sanitation is less important for charedim than non-charedim, is not something that I made up.

A similar thing is true for Galit Gutman’s statement. She was wrong and idiotic for calling charedim “bloodsuckers.” Such exaggerated metaphor is vile. And it detracts from the core of what she said, which is absolutely true. The charedi community - enormously underemployed, against professional careers for men, against careers in science, against secular education for children - is a financial burden on the country, and a growing threat to the entire economy and ultimately to the country’s security. None other than Jonathan Rosenblum wrote exactly this in the pages of Mishpacha magazine!

If Bibi and his partners, desparate for charedi support to prop up the coalition, make it a hate crime to “incite” against the charedi community, what will this include? Just horrible metaphors like “bloodsuckers”? Or also legitimate criticism of the sort that I present here, which is denounced as hateful antisemitism by several readers, but which is actually identical to that voiced by card-carrying respected members of the charedi community?

When such legitimate and important criticism is condemned as hateful bashing, and ignored or stifled, everyone loses - including the subjects of the criticism.