As a result of the mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat awarding an available school building in Ramot to the Rappaport - Ahavat Yisrael school, a group of rabbonim and rosh yeshivas, led by Rav Shmuel Auerbach, associated with Degel got together to work on planning a strategy to fight the decision.

They decided to go with a two pronged strategy. One being to fight the school itself, against the way they tamper with the pure educational system of the haredi community and mix it with secular studies like shaatnez and kilayim.

The second prong is to attack the mayor. They made statements that Barkat is worse than previous mayor Teddy Kollek, he is destroying in every possible way the holiness of Jerusalem, etc.

Then there were the calls to send Pindros back to Beitar. This is really surprising, because I thought the representatives of Deel in the various municipalities and Knesset are simply carrying out the insrtructions of the rabbonim and gedolim. if none of the rabbonim gave Pindros the go ahead to support Barkat, how does he get away with doing so? If they told him to oppose smoething on a specific vote, how does he support it instead? And if he is doing what he has been told to do, why are these rabbonim upset at him and not just change their own policies?

Here is a clip from the meeting, though it doesn't really say much. I recognize a couple of the people. One of them is my former rosh yeshiva, and it surprises me tremendously that he participated. Not because he doesn't agree, as he very well might and I guess does, with the fight. The reason I am surprised is because he never used to get involved in the fights and politics and externals. he used to be purely torah and wasnt interested in anything else. When I was leaving yeshiva, he was already being influenced that in order to improve the yeshiva he would have to be concerned with externals such as how people in the yeshiva dress and whatnot. The fact that he is now part of a taskforce to fight in the realm of politics is a surprise to me.