Jan 4, 2012
Regards From Bet Shemesh
Bet Shemesh City Councilman (and director of the planning and building committee) Moshe Montag (UTJ) wrote an op-ed in the Maariv newspaper (I do not yet see it on the Maariv website, but it was copied to the haredi sites and referenced Maariv).
I am translating it here:
Regards From Bet Shemeshby Moshe Montag
Thank you Gideon SaarFor your dedication to the security and well-being of Israeli children, for which you abandoned all your dealings and escorted little Naama to her school this morning, and you personally took care that she should not God forbid be harmed from any spitting.
I bless you for your courage, and I assume you will continue to follow this path you have forged, and that starting tomorrow you personally escort daily the tens of thousands of children from all over the country who are deathly afraid to go to their schools, and that you will protect them from their classmates who are armed with knives, fists and other vegetables.
Thank you Tzippi HotovelyFor your true and touching concern for the women of Bet Shemesh, for the poor haredi women who ride the 418 bus from bet Shemesh to Jerusalem and are forced to sit in the back section, with their head bowed, their hands tied and their faces buried in their book of Tehillim.
The residents of Bet Shemesh will be very happy if you continue to be concerned for them and talk to egged about sending newer buses, buses that don't break down at Castel and sometimes even catch fire. And maybe, if it is possible, to bring the ticket price down.
Of course, don't forget to bring along photographers to record your sincere concern for the people of Bet Shemesh.
Thank You Shai GalFor saving the kosher women of Israel from the black hooves, and you have exposed the small nuclear reactor hiding on Hazon Ish Street in Bet Shemesh in the form of a rusty aluminum sign.
Due to your great discovery, the Kirya Haredit in Bet Shemesh has merited being exposed in an historic and unprecedented manner, and maybe ow, because of you, the residents who have been discriminated against all these years will now merit a small garden that hasn't existed, a children's park that has been missing from the horizon and was never installed by the Iryah, to cleaner streets and organized removal of trash.
The one who began the work, we tell him to finish it. So, I request of you to be concerned for the women of the Kirya, and a bit for their kids as well, and continue your fight until they merit reasonable living conditions just like their secular brethren in the nearby neighborhoods.
You have proven you know how to make the entire country jump, so quickly get to work. The residents are already preparing for you an honorary resident award for your courageous work on their behalf.
Thank you Benjamin NetanyahuFor your brilliant suggestion to divide Bet Shemesh into 2 cities. A brilliant proposal. It is also not difficult to understand what inspired you. After dividing Bet Shemesh, the new map will look like one of your better known features - a zigzag.
I want to tell you something, Mr. Prime Minister, that maybe you do not already know. The many apartments that have been built in the haredi parts of the city bring much money into the coffers of the city, along with the budgets of "Old vs New" which are completely directed, with no exceptions, to the secular half of the city.
With these monies is already being built a city cultural center, community centers, and in the last term alone more than ten secular and traditional neighborhoods alone have been renovated in which not a single haredi lives. The entire old city has undergone a comprehensive upgrade - and all from the money of the haredim buying new apartments.
Believe me, the residents of the haredi neighborhoods and Ramat Bet Shemesh will be happy to hear that these great sums of money will now be invested in their own neighborhoods.
Divide the city, and be flooded with thousands of thank you letters in the color black.
Thank You To Yair LapidFor your great actions there is no need to elaborate. You have proven to everybody with a brilliant article in which you showed the biggest fool in the city that our great city has turned black. You have dragged with you the entire media , half of those sitting in Knesset and almost the entire government, that they all have stated that bet Shemesh is a haredi city.
Thank you for saving the city of Bet Shemesh a lot of money, as they were planning to begin a secular rebranding campaign, that was supposed to start very soon, that would have cost hundreds of thousands of shekels in order to attract secular and Dati Leumi communities to Bet Shemesh. because of your exposure, we can bury the campaign. No secular person will now come to Bet Shemesh. The city treasurer will surely send you a letter of gratitude.
I am confident that also the Tzemach Hammerman company that is now building 350 apartments for the secular in the city, and also those behind the "Pinui Binui" project that includes 1600 apartments for the secular alone in the heart of Bet Shemesh - will thank you greatly for your great assistance in their marketing.
You should be proud of your achievement.
And, by the way, I have a word of advice for the next round. On the back of an 8 year old girl you brought yourself 15 seats in the polls. On the back of a 12 year old girl you would get at least 24.
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Wow, that is really lame. If you're going to post a sarcastic op-ed, at least make it witty.
ReplyDeleteGotta love his "smile".
ReplyDeleteWhat a creep.
If whining were an Olympic sport, these guys would be a lock for the gold medal.
ReplyDeleteI think that way to answer this issue is to encourage hundreds and hundreds of Masorati, DL, Chiloni and tolerant charedim to move to Bet Shemesh.
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, this is exactly the kind of response that the world does not need to see from a prominent Charedi representative: bitter whining and playing the victim, while not mentioning a word about the actual issues. Which leads the outside world to believe that he either supports or doesn't care about grown men using physical and verbal violence against women and children.
ReplyDeleteWhat on earth were you trying to achieve, Moshe? Were you trying to make friends? Earn sympathy? Seriously? It seems more that the target audience of this sanctimonious diatribe was your own constituency, so that you can touch the hurt in your voters, be their champion, and hopefully get yourself elected for another 5 years next time around.
Gotta agree with you , Shaul.
ReplyDeleteYou know, it occurs to me that of all the nasty anti-charedi propaganda that's been flooding the press (I'm taking Yaakov Menkin's word on this, haven't read it myself), Maariv's act of printing this article by Montag may be the worst of all.
if he has so many complaints about how the haredim dont have parks and gardens and garbage isnt collected, why dont he and his peers solve those issues - build a park or two or three, arrange proper garbage collection, and do whatever else is necessary. they deserve proper services like everybody else in the city.
ReplyDeleteMontag has been in the city council for nearly 10 years now and others have been there longer. there is even a haredi mayor. Why can't they get these things done? Are they going to continue blaming previous mayors for not doing it when they havent done it either?
This guy is a loser.
ReplyDeleteThe secular may have it in for the charedim, but the charedim have given them convenient material to work with.
I live in RBS. I think we as a community do deserve this terrible punishment of chillul Hashem. We have tolerated and encouraged terrible hatred between religious Jews, and the extremists have carried it, to, well, the extreme. Some examples:
1. In Bnei Brak and Boro Park, in Lakewood and Lawrence, in Har Nof and Houston, in Dallas and Denver, in London and Los Angeles, the women in the community can go to a local mikva that the local rabbis have deemed kosher, and prepare the way their Bubies did. In RBS-A, women have "my mikva" and "your mikva" and the invented "mehadrin checking." Some of this is based on documented sinas chinam - a sign was posted on a plaque, not paper, declaring that women "from all communities" are forbidden from dipping ben hashmashos on Friday nights (the custom of sefardim). This is unheard of and has NOT been protested - most people have stayed out of it, preferring not to fight - even though this is a fight l'shem shamayim. Women, under a pretense of "tznius" have not talked openly about the disgraceful mikva situation. We women, not just rabbis, are guilty too!
2. There is much hatred between neighbors. The local Shabbes afternoon "Bnos group" doesn't allow girls from the "lesser" neighborhood Beis Yaakov to attend, lest the little girls be contaminated.
3. Neighborhood schools kick out kids whose siblings attend the "wrong" schools, even if that sibling needs a more open environment or is at risk for failure at a more right-wing school. Rabbis have not banned this practice.
4. Women in the neighborhood snitch on their daughters' classmates who are breaking rules. Since the local girls' high school has a rule against - I promise - not wearing your ponytail too high up on your head, you can imagine how many girls run afoul of "the rules." Then the principal calls the girl and her mother in and often threatens expulsion. The told-on girl now sees other women in the neighborhood as spies. How does this promote love between Jews?
5. When a local boys' high school opened up with black-hat boys, full time learning, and some basic math and English, the neighborhood was plastered with pashkevilim against it. The community did not rally to help the school with donations, protests, or any form of support.
Anon 7:02, sounds like a lovely place to live!! (I'm not being serious).
ReplyDeleteActually, I think it's a wonderful place to live. Once my kids starting attending schools outside of Beit Shemesh, and my family moved to a block where, believe it or not, people of all kipa types and no kippas, get along well, go to each others shuls, give each other aliyot in each other's shuls, etc., I decided that Ramat Beit Shemesh is one of the best places on earth to live. And there are a lot of very wonderful people in some of the haredi areas as well. As long as you don't have to deal with the local education system, and the "my kid is frumer than your kid" situations, it really is. And I'd say that most people, at least in the dati community, do not engage in that kind of stupidity. I don't know what the story is in the various charedi communities.
ReplyDeleteThank you Moshe Montag for helping to turn Bet Shemesh into the most divisive city in Israel. Thank you for lying about your plan to Chareidize Bet Shemesh every chance you get. Thank you and your weasel of a mayor for completely ignoring hundreds of school children as they were being terrorized by monsters you let loose on us. Most of all, thank for penning this article and showing us just what a loser you are.
ReplyDeleteRob - I think that way to answer this issue is to encourage hundreds and hundreds of Masorati, DL, Chiloni and tolerant charedim to move to Bet Shemesh.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by "encourage"? That's one way the Charedim have a great advantage - when their Rebbe says move, they move. And with enough Rebbes, you can fill up entire neighborhoods rather quickly.
But seriously, after all the recent publicity, I would bet that few non-Charedim will even consider moving to Bet Shemesh. After all, why take the risk of being stuck with an apartment surrounded by people hostile to you? This appears to have already occurred in Ramat Bet Shemesh - I think there are zero (or very close to zero) secular families moving in to RBS, and even very few Dati Leumi families moving in.
Now that Bet Shemesh and Ramat Bet Shemesh have been almost totally conflated (both by media reports, by city political structure, and by geography/construction), it is likely that people will treat Bet Shemesh similarly.
Moshe Montag did not write this.
ReplyDeleteThose who hate Torah did it, to make religious people look bad.
How could anyone imagine that such dripping sarcasm, nastiness, and insensitivity could come from a Frumme Yid?
No way.
Just look at his picture and you can see what a pleasant person he must certainly be, the embodiment of hava mekabel es kol ha'adam b'sever panim yafos!
the picture was not part of the article. I picked it out of google images and added it to my post. there are also nastier looking pictures out there..
ReplyDeleteWell you must have photo shopped the picture.
ReplyDeleteA frumme Yid looking so nasty and condescending?
Nah.
Can't be.
Love the bit about the parks. Anyone in regular Bet Shemesh will tell you that there are no parks for anyone. Here in Givat Savion I have to walk 10min uphill to get to the nearest park. Sheinfeld has 1 park, Nofei Aviv has 1 park, the Kiryah HaHaredit also has 1 park, and it's way bigger and nicer than the rest of the parks in Bet Shemesh. I don't see the discrimination here...
ReplyDeleteThe story we hear from the defensive frum media is that some infinitesimal minority causes all the trouble in this city. Politicians know who the majority is; those are the people who put them in office. Politicians cater to the majority. So, if this councilman's diatribe is for real, he's showing us that the many people he expects to re-elect him need a major attitude adjustment.
ReplyDeleteThis Op-Ed speaks a lot more to the problems inherent in Socialism than anything the Hiloni sector is doing wrong. The obvious retort to this Op-Ed is, of course, "well you guys don't contribute financially in any way whatsoever, so forgive us if we don't lavish upon you the most stellar public services known to Israeli society". But in reality according to the rules of the Socialist game, they have every right to expect them. And so we see how Socialism reduces every politician to spend most of their time playing identity politics and whining about how their ever-so-virtuous identity-group is marginalized. It's quite pathetic to watch, and yet another reason why I'm not moving to Israel any time soon - how can you stand such a toxic culture??
ReplyDeleteI've been called a "kof" by secular Jews because of my beard and a sheygetz by Chareidim because of my secular clothes. Is there any neighborhood I could live live after making aliyah where Jews can respect each other????
ReplyDeleteYes, Anonymous, most of them.
ReplyDelete