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Over the past month or so, we’ve seen a series of tragedies in the Charedi world, most painfully the babies dying in the playcare and the teenagers being run over in the street. Running people over is obviously wrong, but reckless behavior in public spaces (standing in the street?) points to something deeper:
a collapse of basic civic and moral sensibility.
I think the explanation is uncomfortable but unavoidable:
cultural Yiddishkeit has won. The Jewish ethical-culturalists won their battle, decades after seemingly going extinct.
DIN: I really hope I'm wrong but this is the first domino to fall!
This Kollel culture is not sustainable and the system is collapsing! In Israel I know of at least 8 yeshivas ready to close and they get government funds!
Tuition should come before supporting Kollilim!
Bnos Penina Girls School, a well-known girls’ school in Lakewood, announced that it has suspended all classes indefinitely due to a severe shortfall in tuition payments.
The school informed parents and families that the decision was made only after exhausting all available options to cover expenses, including reaching out for community support and financial assistance. Administrators said the gap between operating costs and collected tuition has reached a point where the school can no longer maintain normal educational operations.
School administrators did not specify the exact dollar amount of the deficit, but described it as “significant” and beyond what the school’s budget can absorb. They said that late and missing payments from a large number of families over recent months created a financial strain that ultimately forced the decision to halt classes. They added that the Rabbonim in Lakewood were consulted, and ultimately this was the decision of Daas Torah.
The suspension of classes affects students of all grades, and parents have expressed concern and frustration over the sudden disruption to their daughters’ education. Some families posted on community forums asking for updates and urging positive solutions, while others emphasized the need for broader community support to help stabilize the school’s finances.
School administrators said they are actively exploring ways to resume classes, including reaching out to donors, community organizations, and supporters in and beyond Lakewood. They stressed that decisions about reopening and next steps will be based on securing enough funding to ensure the school can operate responsibly and meet its obligations to staff and families.
Frida Vizel is a former Satmar Chasid who left the community, yet she remains deeply connected to it. She has even built a business guiding non‑Jews and non‑affiliated Jews through Williamsburg so they can see firsthand how Chasidim live. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself. But when she receives antisemitic comments on a nonbinary video—(see below)—she seems genuinely shocked, unable to understand why it happened.
This confusion stems from her Satmar upbringing, which instills the belief that they are the “authentic” Jews, while Zionists are somehow outside the Jewish people. When Satmar Hasidim speak to non‑Jews, they often try to convey this distinction. But the reality is that non‑Jews do not see these internal divisions. To them, Jews are Jews. Antisemites throughout history—including the Nazis—never differentiated between Satmar Hasidim and Zionists. Hitler didn't bother to kosher the ovens between burning Satmar Chassidim and burning Zionists!
Even though Frida left the community, she still carries many of its assumptions. As the saying goes: you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Back on October 15, 2024,I wrote about another video of hers in which she tried to explain to non‑Jews the difference between Zionist and anti‑Zionist Jews. She could not understand why some viewers expressed hatred toward her and her Satmar family despite their anti‑Zionist stance.
I wrote then:
I truly believe Frida is a kind and gentle person with good intentions. But that is precisely what makes her influence so concerning. She has thousands of non‑Jewish followers who respect her deeply, and she now wants to use that platform to teach them about internal Jewish divisions.
In her videos, she tends to group all “victims” together. She avoids acknowledging Jewish victims specifically, instead equating Israeli women who were raped and murdered with Arab civilians in Gaza—many of whom supported a terrorist regime that launched tens of thousands of rockets at Israel long after Israel withdrew from Gaza. She insists on feeling equally for all “victims,” which ignores the moral and historical context.
She now wants to explain to her followers that not all Jews support Israel, and that some religious Jews believe Zionism caused the Holocaust and that the State of Israel should not exist. She hopes that by doing so, non‑Jews will understand that her community “has nothing to do with Israel.” She genuinely believes this distinction will matter to them.
But she fails to grasp a simple truth: antisemites do not care about these nuances.
In her recent video about her trip to Poland, she once again expresses genuine bewilderment at the antisemitic comments she received. She even says she would like to “have a dialogue” with the commenters. She wants to open a conversation with people whose hostility toward Jews is so deeply rooted that they themselves could never articulate its origins.
Frieda seems to childishly believe that if she just engages them kindly enough, she can change their minds. For hundreds of years, the Pols murdered and pillaged their Jewish neighbors and were mostly Hitler's willing executioners, but she wants to understand them and perhaps change their minds.
It’s a level of naïveté that reflects her upbringing: the belief that dialogue alone can dissolve centuries‑old hatred. She truly thinks that by talking, she can persuade committed antisemites whose parents assisted the Nazis, to rethink their views. It’s a mindset that only someone shaped by her Satmar background could sincerely hold.
This kind of naïveté is dangerous.
We have seen similar tragedies in Israel. Some of the most left‑leaning Israelis—people who truly believed in coexistence and built friendships with Gazans—were brutally murdered by those very same people on October 7. Their goodwill and their "dialogs" did not protect them, on the contrary it was their death trap, as they had a false sense of security thinking that the Gazans would never commit these atrocities!
Frieda has not internalized this lesson. She does not understand—and perhaps never will—that her son, who may not look visibly Jewish, is still viewed by antisemites the same way as a Jew wearing a kippah and tzitzit. To them, a secular Israeli at a music festival and a Chariedi Jew in Williamsburg are the same.
Another important point that you will only see on DIN
When Satmar or Neturei Karta tell Goyim that they believe that the Torah doesn't allow a State until Moshiach comes, they don't tell them what they truly believe will happen AFTER Moshiach comes!
Both Satmar and Neturei Karta believe that when Moshiach comes all the Arabs will be driven out of Eretz Yisrael to make room for the Jews!!
Deep down they have absolutely no respect for Goyim and lie to them about Zionists! If they had any respect for them they would tell them their true beliefs, the fact that they themselves are Zionists as well!
Satmar won't tell Goyim that they yearn for a time when ALL Jews will return to Eretz Yisrael! That they have Eretz Yisrael in ALL their prayers! And that they shout at their Seder Table "Next Year in Yerushlayim"
They don't tell them that there is basically only one difference between them and Zionists....... and that it is ........"timing!"
Zionists believe that we have to do hishtadlis and live there in the here and now, and Satmar prays and yearns to live in Eretz Yisrael ASAP as soon as Moshiach comes, which can even happen today!
In what is becoming a regular occurrence, someone trans-identifying is accused of committing a mass murder, this time during a high school hockey game, in suburban Rhode Island.
In 2020, Dorgan had told police that he was being kicked out of his home, by his father-in-law, after Dorgan had undergone “gender-reassignment surgery.”
I can’t help it. I should be used to the myopic, self-centered attitude of Charedi leadership and their Askanim (Charedi Knesset members). But I’m not. Whenever I read an op-ed by one of them on the subject of drafting Charedim into the IDF or their insistence on no secular education, I nearly recoil with disgust.
It happened again over Shabbos as I read a guest op-ed in Mishpacha by UTJ’s Rabbi Yitzchak Pindrus.
The scary thing is that he probably believes every word he says. In this case, that amounts to a conspiracy theory: a coalition of Israeli institutions whose goal is to destroy the Torah world. Only now, with unprecedented zeal and determination. As though the State of Israel is more anti-Torah than at any other time in its history.
When in fact, it is more than obvious that the opposite is true. There is more Torah study now in Israel than at any other time in Jewish history!
The Jerusalem District Court convicted Shmuel Bezalel, the Rosh kollel in the city, of serious sexual offenses against his stepdaughter.
According to the verdict, Bezalel was convicted of all the counts attributed to him, including many offenses of rape and indecent acts committed over a period of about a year and a half, while the minor was under the age of 12 and came to visit his home on Shabbos and Chagim.
Bezalel denied the acts during the trial and claimed that nothing had ever happened: however, the court ruled that full trust should be given to the complainant and rejected the claim that it was a repressed false memory. The court also recognized that what was important to T., the victim, was the recognition and assumption of responsibility on the part of the defendant and her appeal to the police was a last resort.
The panel of judges ruled that the defendant's confession to the police in two incidents of harm was a true confession and should be preferred to his denial later in his interrogations and in court.
Following the conviction, T. said that she felt that justice had been done: "I feel that from all my hard work – standing in front of judges, proving and telling every detail – it turned out well in the end. The journey I've gone through in recent years is very shaky, the whole family cut off contact, no one believed it, everyone said: 'You're imagining and you'll see that he won't be convicted.'"
"I fought for justice and I'm glad I did it. Every woman who has gone through something like this and asks herself, 'Who will listen to me?' It is important that you know that there are people who will stand by you, there are people who will see the truth and justice will always come to light," she added.
"סוף סוף יכולה לנשום לרווחה"
בית המשפט המחוזי בירושלים הרשיע את שמואל בצלאל, בעל כולל בעיר, בעבירות מין קשות בנכדתו החורגת. לפי הכרעת הדין, בצלאל הורשע בכל הסעיפים שיוחסו לו, בהם עבירות רבות של אונס ומעשים מגונים שבוצעו במשך כשנה וחצי, בזמן שהקטינה הייתה מתחת לגיל 12 והגיעה לבקר בביתו בשבתות ובחגים.
בצלאל הכחיש את המעשים במהלך המשפט וטען כי לא היו דברים מעולם: עם זאת, בית המשפט קבע כי יש לתת אמון מלא במתלוננת ודחה את הטענה כי מדובר בזיכרון כוזב מודחק. בית המשפט אף הכיר בכך שמה שהיה חשוב לת', הנפגעת, הוא ההכרה ונטילת האחריות מצד הנאשם ופנייתה למשטרה הייתה מוצא אחרון.
הרכב השופטים קבע כי הודאת הנאשם במשטרה בשני אירועים של פגיעה הייתה הודאת אמת ויש להעדיפה על פני הכחשתו בהמשך בחקירותיו ובבית המשפט.
בעקבות ההרשעה סיפרה ת' כי היא מרגישה שנעשה צדק: "אני מרגישה שמכל העבודה הקשה שלי - לעמוד מול שופטים, להוכיח ולספר כל פרט ופרט - יצא טוב בסוף. המסע שעברתי בשנים האחרונות מאוד מטלטל, כל המשפחה ניתקה קשר, אף אחד לא האמין, כולם אמרו: 'את מדמיינת ואת תראי שהוא לא יורשע'".
"נלחמתי על הצדק ואני שמחה שעשיתי את זה. כל אישה שעברה דבר כזה ושואלת את עצמה, 'מי יקשיב לי?', חשוב שתדעי שיש אנשים שיעמדו לצידך, יש אנשים שיראו את האמת והצדק תמיד ייצא לאור", הוסיפה.
Following a violent protest in Bnei Brak where a police motorcycle was torched, Police Commissioner Danny Levy and Tel Aviv District Commander Chaim Sargrof ordered the immediate replacement of the officer's destroyed Tefillin, Siddur, and personal gear.
The fire, set by a small group of protesters two days ago, consumed the officer’s motorcycle along with his Tefillin, Siddur, and personal cell phone.
In a ceremony today, Dan District Commander Elad Klein presented the officer with a new pair of Tefillin and a replacement phone.
Additionally, the Commissioner directed that a replacement vehicle be issued to the officer to replace the destroyed motorcycle.
Israel Police emphasized that they view the arson with extreme severity and are continuing investigations to bring the perpetrators to justice.
