Shloimy Werdiger, the “Shaven Bekishe” Gerer who styles himself as Chairman of the Agudah board of trustees, decided it was a bright idea to haul three Roshei Yeshiva — Rav Elya Brudny (Mir), Rav Aharon Feldman (the anti-Israel spokesman from Ner Yisroel), and Rav Malkiel Kotler (Lakewood) — down to Washington, D.C. for a meeting with Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter.
The goal? Convince the Ambassador that yeshiva bochurim shouldn’t be drafted because their Torah learning is supposedly more important than saving lives. Jewish lives. In Israel.
The result? An embarrassing fiasco.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, everything.
Turns out Shloimy forgot to do the most basic homework. Like, say, Googling the Ambassador. Because Yechiel Leiter isn’t just an Israeli diplomat — he’s the grieving father of Moshe Yedidya hy”d, an IDF soldier murdered at the very start of the war in Gaza. A fact known to literally every cab driver in Jerusalem and every falafel vendor in Tel Aviv. Everyone, that is, except the Agudah delegation.
So there they were, waltzing in with their “don’t-draft-the-bochurim” pitch — only to learn mid-meeting that the man across the table had buried his son in uniform.
Ami Magazine breathlessly reported that Rav Feldman “shed tears.” Yes, tears!
Yes he shed tears but only when he was suddenly confronted face-to-face with a grieving father. A reality so foreign to him, because despite spending six months a year in Israel, he has never once engaged with those families, never once attended a shiva, never once acknowledged their pain.
And then comes the punchline:
Shloimy Werdiger tells Ami, the meeting was a “chizzuk for Eretz Yisrael.”
Excuse me while I choke on my kugel. Chizzuk? For whom exactly? The widows? The orphans? The five frum families in Ramat Beit Shemesh who lost sons in Gaza? The thousands of IDF soldiers fighting right now? Please.
The only chizzuk was for Shloimy’s ego when Hamodia, Yated, and HaMevaser printed his photo.
Even the Israeli Embassy didn’t bother writing it up. Agudah didn’t either. Why? Because it was a trainwreck.
The Ambassador, a gentleman, smiled politely, made small talk, and silently prayed for them to leave his office. After Moshe Yedidya’s name came up, the room collapsed faster than a bad cholent pot. What can you possibly say to a bereaved father — that your children deserve protection while his gave his life?
This is the disconnect. This is the contempt. A leadership class that weeps for well-fed bochurim who spent three nights in jail, but has no tears for those who fall al kiddush Hashem in defense of the Jewish people.
And what does Werdiger do? Leak to the frum press that the meeting was “tight-lipped.” In reality, it was just humiliating.
And then — the pièce de résistance — Shloimy blusters:
“We’re not going to sit idly by while they persecute bnei yeshiva!”
Really?
Persecute?!
The government hasn’t stopped anyone from learning. Even Rav Zilberstein admits it. All they’re asking is that those eligible serve. But no, in Shloimy’s world, filling out an army form is the new Spanish Inquisition.
What is being asked is simple: again.... that those eligible, serve.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government continues to pour hundreds of millions into Torah institutions —(to the tune of 800,000 shekels) more in a single year than Werdiger has or will ever raise in his entire life.
But the “Bekishe Chairman” still thinks Netanyahu is trembling at his threats. Word has it (rumor, of course) that when Bibi read in the Yated that Shloimy wouldn’t “sit idly by,” he grabbed Sarah, screaming and kicking, by the collar and bolted to a bunker in Tel Aviv.
The truth is obvious:
The Washington trip wasn’t chizzuk. It was contempt.
It wasn’t leadership. It was a disgrace.
And above all, it revealed how utterly disconnected this Agudah leadership is from the real struggles of Am Yisrael in its hour of war.
