In this fight it is difficult to know who is doing what. The Yated puts out announcements against whomever they feel like attacking, then anonymous people put out booklets or announcements against the Yated. We don't really know who is behind them, and the Yated does stuff anonymously as well, under the guise of "supporters of" or "friends of" the Yated..
So here is the latest pashkevil against the Yated:
The pashkevil calls out the Yated management for driving fancy new cars while preaching to everyone else about living a life of poverty, Torah and separation from materialism. It shows pictures of the brand new million shekel Mercedes of the CEO Yaakov Levin, and it shows pictures of the brand new Cadillac of the sales manager of the newspaper Tzippi Rotlevi.
On the one hand I have no problem with them driving whatever car they can afford to buy, and attacking them on this point seems wrong and inappropriate. They work hard, they have earned their money fair and square, and they can spend it however they like, buying whatever they want to buy, driving whatever kind of luxury car they want to.
On the other hand, they regularly preach about living a life of prishus and tzimtzum, calling for bnei torah to not desire luxury and money. They preach about the ideal of not working and earning a decent living, but giving it all up for a life of poverty to learn torah. The whole fight they are running against the weekly newspapers is based on the fact that the weeklies have printed articles supporting bnei torah and avreichim learning professions to be able to join the workforce and support themselves.
The Yated definitely at least gives over the image that such a lifestyle, the one their own managers are living, is not acceptable for bnei torah. For it to turn out that that is the lifestyle they themselves are living while they preach against it to others is disgraceful.
I attend a shiur of yeshivishe Israeli bnei Torah and they have been regularly laughing at the Yated for over 15 years. It holds no respect in the yeshivah world, as far as I can see.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the Rav of this shiur did say that since Rav Elyashiv, Rav Chaim, and Rav Nissim have signed to ban Mishpacha and the other weeklies, then one should stay away from them. Even though he admits it was initiated by the Yated for commercial reasons. His remarks went unchallenged. Go figure...
Personally, I haven't cancelled my subscription, because my children like it very much. What else do they have to read? The Yated is horribly political, and Hamodia is full of all this fine print chassidishe stuff that they're not interested in. They can't read the English Hamodia, which has some value, in my opinion.
My wife and I rarely bother to read Mishpacha, because it takes a lot of time for us to read in Hebrew and it's mostly just fluff to fill pages in between the glossy advertisements, anyways.
What's so bad about advertisements for Touro or whatever? The rabbis can say, don't got there, and the newspaper can take the ad revenue. The Yated is full of ads for new cars and the like, although the rabbis effectively discourage buying a car, since the overwhelming majority can't learn in Kollel full time and afford a new car!
On what basis is there to assume these anonymous accusations that these are in fact the cars of the Yated management has any basis in fact?
ReplyDeleteIt could well be a figment of the imagination. The pashkevil offers no evidence that the photographed cards belong to anyone at Yated.