** This article was written right after the events it discusses, and its translation to English was only published three weeks later. In the interim, it is important to highlight those brave yet very few Rabbinic leaders who did condemn the violence, and in particular the Viznitz & Stoliner Rebbes.
The violence that broke on Charedi streets three weeks ago Shabbos terrified everyone. How, then, can we explain the deafening public silence that followed? The lies not in indifference and nihilism, but in our neglect of the public square.
Friday night. Hundreds of rioters gathered outside the doors, their cries clearly heard inside the Shul. Children clung to their parents, seeking shelter. Helpless adults recited Tehillim in helpless panic. One door is torn down, then another. Rioters unleash their fury, smashing furniture and hurling holy books to the floor, tearing them to shreds. An eight-year-old child looks up at his father and sees his head covered in blood. Nobody knows how the terror will end. After minutes that seem like an eternity, the prayers are answered and baton-carrying officers show up. Ranks of helmet-bearers divide between persecutor and persecuted.
This is not a quote from the annals of a Jewish community sometime in the distant past. The events described, without any exaggeration, happened in our own times. Moreover, they did not occur in some distant land but here, in the heart of Jerusalem. The events noted above are a very partial description of the pogroms of Bechukosai 5782.
On the nineteenth of Iyyar, the night before we read the Admonition of the “vengeful sword,” three years of wild incitement, separations between families, harassment of children, tire slashing, and myriad other methods of oppression reached their climax. The time to reap the fruits of hatred had arrived. Thousands of Gerrer Chassidim in several concentrations across Israel hit the streets on a mission: to beat, smash, and shatter the bodies and property of members of the seceding community, those who dared to follow the leadership of Rav Shaul Alter. The attack was not sporadic or coincidental; the incited masses were acting on the explicit instruction of Ger leadership.
Young men alongside venerable rabbis were beaten and wounded. Under the cover of an ostensible “peaceful protest,” rioters ran into the Shuls of the Pnei Menachem community, ransacking, beating, and wrecking all they saw in a violent rampage. From there, the campaign of destruction continued to private homes, where it was the women’s turn to suffer the wrath of the assailants. Fearing for their very lives, mothers called the police in the middle of Shabbos to save them. All this took place in the view of the public eye—in Jerusalem and in Bnei Brak, in Ashdod and in Beit Shemesh. Kollel students were ambushed, some suffering grievous injury; Rabbis were struck by naked fists. Ultimately, thousands of young men and Kollel students ran rampant for close to forty-eight hours, their eyes burning with hatred, letting their violent urges loose on their victims.
A Chilling Silence
