Letter from Litvishe Gedoilim Praising Walder when rumors began six months ago |
Nov. 18, 2021 6:40 PM Israel Time
It will be the most eagerly anticipated edition in the newspaper’s history. As Friday's Yated Ne'eman drops on the doorsteps of the faithful in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, subscribers will scan its pages with the same eagle-eyed vigilance that kremlinologists once read Pravda, for discreet signs of change in the upper Soviet echelons.They are unlikely to find any signs of the storm which for the past week has roiled the mouthpiece of the Haredi-Lithuanian community, and the homes of the senior rabbis who dictate its every word. But there will be one glaring absence:
The weekly column of Yated’s most celebrated writer, Chaim Walder [https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/chaim-walder-acclaimed-israeli-author-accused-of-sexually-abusing-ultra-orthodox-girls-1.10383509], which won't be in its usual space on the editorial page. There will be no official explanation from the paper.
Yated Ne'eman (which translates as 'faithful (or reliable) tent-peg') was founded in 1985 by Rabbi Elazar Shach to express the hashkafa (perspective) – the pure and never-changing ultra-Orthodox [https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-ultra-orthodox-1.5598962] ideology, and it never reports any matter of a sexual nature. Certainly not the allegations of sexual harassment against its columnist who, on Wednesday, announced he was leaving [https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ultra-orthodox-author-haim-walder-quits-public-life-amid-sexual-abuse-allegations-1.10395783 - see below] all his public posts.
Walder was left with very little choice but to jump, at the last moment, before he was pushed. Since the publication in Haaretz last week of Aaron Rabinowitz and Shira Elk’s investigation [https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/chaim-walder-acclaimed-israeli-author-accused-of-sexually-abusing-ultra-orthodox-girls-1.10383509] into the multiple accusations against him, the biggest question looming over his future would be whether he would get to keep his column in Yated.
He assumed that he was too big, too popular and influential to fall. But on Wednesday the paper’s management told him to resign or be fired. He had lost the rabbis’ backing.