Communists News And Haredi News

The haredi news site, Ladaat.net, is reporting that Rav Lau's bestseller book of how he survived Buchenwald and made it home, originally printed in Hebrew under the name "Al Tishlach Yadcha El Hanaar" and recently translated to many languages, including English under the title "Out of the Depths", has also been printed in Chinese and is a bestseller there as well.

Ladaat also adds that China, being a Communist country, tends to intervene and alter content that is made accessible to its citizens. Rabbi Lau's book has been censored just like most content in China is censored. It seems that all the pictures of rabbis were removed from the book. Only two pictures were left in, according to the report.

What is interesting, to me, is how the report explains the censorship as being obvious due to their Communist framework. Why is this interesting? Because the frum press in Judaism, Israel and the USA and maybe other places as well, also applies heavy censorship in what is allowed to be printed, and also removes or alters pictures in books in order to convey only approved appearances and images.

A prominent censorship of this kind was when a book on Rav Kotler removed Rav Soloveitchik from a picture showing them together. Recently Hillary Clinton was removed form pictures in haredi papers. Women in general are removed regularly from images.

Interesting that the haredi news has a problem with Communists removing pictures, when that is done similarly, albeit using different criteria, in the haredi press and media.