Mayor Bans Public Menorah Lightings
Only a week has passed since the last time I wrote this column, but I have much to write about today.
First of all, when you read these lines, the eight days of Chanukah will be drawing to a close. We will have enjoyed eight days of elevation, of family time, of gratitude for the miracles of the past and tefillos for the future. Chanukah is a time when we witness the religious devotion of ordinary Israelis. Even in the most secularized areas, flickering flames of menorahs dance in the windows of many homes. There were many events held in honor of Chanukah in yeshivos and chassidish courts.
But there is still a certain element in Israeli society like the erev rav of old. These are people who cannot tolerate the slightest trace of kedusha. I find it hard to understand those who are opposed to public menorah lightings; the depth of their antipathy bewilders me. What could possibly bother a person about seeing a lit menorah in the public sphere? But there is no denying the existence of this phenomenon.
At the beginning of Chanukah, the media reported that the mayor of the city of Kochav Yair decided not to permit a menorah to be set up in a public space—as if we have no greater problems to worry about, and as if the roiling controversy during the days before Simchas Torah 5784 over holding a Kol Nidrei service in public had been forgotten. Michoel Malchieli responded fittingly: “This attempt to extinguish the light will not be successful. Many before her [the mayor] have tried and failed to do so. The holiday of Chanukah is stronger than this mayor and her wretched decision.”
To be honest, the mayor’s decision is ludicrous. Does she really think that she will manage to dampen the Chanukah atmosphere? The holiday’s effects are pervasive and will surely remain that way. Even the Knesset announced that sessions would end no later than 3:00 throughout the week of Chanukah, so that the Knesset members would be able to light the candles in their homes. Does that mean that all of them lit menorahs? One can certainly assume that the practice isn’t universal, but the Knesset, as an institution, shut down early to accommodate those who observe it.
Rav Uri Zohar once made the following comment in a shmuess in his home on Chanukah: From a physical standpoint, the Chanukah candles are merely small flames in a window, but the light of the menorah is much more than that. The menorah represents the Torah, whose light cannot be extinguished. Many have tried, but no one has succeeded. Even before Antiochus, countless enemies tried to stamp out our Torah but never succeeded, and that pattern has continued throughout the centuries since that time. Am Yisroel has survived for 3000 years, which is a greater miracle than all the supernatural events that occurred in Mitzrayim and throughout history. We have been scattered throughout the nations but remain united by our Torah. the Jews in Yemen wore jalabiyas and ate jachnun, and the Jews in Poland wore the Cossacks’ streimels and ate gefilte fish with sugar, but we are still a single nation. We have the same Shema Yisroel, the same Shabbos, the same lulav, and the same Pesach. We are all one, and as the posuk states, ‘Who is like Your nation Israel?’”
Candle Lighting with the Hostages’ Families
This year, there were many Chanukah events held with the families of hostages in Gaza. As I’ve mentioned in the past, many of those families have become more religious over the past year. There were events held in the Gaza envelope communities, there were hachnossas sefer Torah processions, and, of course, there were menorah lighting events. One such event was held at the Kosel, as part of the annual tradition of public menorah lightings there.
A few years ago, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation came up with an idea that has attracted a good deal of attention and accolades: On every day of Chanukah, a major menorah lighting ceremony is held in the Kosel plaza. There is a very large menorah there, and the appropriate number of candles is lit each night. Each ceremony is attended by the chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Fund, Rav Shmuel Rabinovich, who is also the rov of the Kosel, as well as the fund’s director, Solly Eliav. Each day’s ceremony is dedicated to a different entity, whether it is the IDF, the police force, the Yerushalayim municipality, or some other official body, and the honor of lighting the candles is given to someone representing that entity. This year, two of the nights were designated for the hostages in Gaza and the wounded soldiers, respectively.
The menorah lighting on the first night of Chanukah was dedicated to the hostages, and their families arrived with pictures of their loved ones. The candles were lit by the Rishon Letzion, Rav Dovid Yosef. The event was also attended by the religious affairs minister, Michoel Malchieli, and other guests in addition to the hostages’ families. It was an emotional event, as were the following nights’ ceremonies, especially the one dedicated to the soldiers wounded in the war. The menorah used for the ceremony was made of bronze and was over two meters tall and about two meters wide, with its weight estimated at about one ton. The production of this menorah took about seven months. At the same time, another menorah was placed above the Heritage House and was lit by the minister of religious affairs.
Lookouts’ Parents Fight for Justice
The parents of the IDF lookouts who were murdered at the Nachal Oz base on October 7 seemed to score a victory over the IDF this week, but they are still not content. Fifteen female soldiers were killed on the base by Hamas terrorists, and another soldier was killed in Gaza after she was abducted. Five more young women are still being held in captivity in Gaza. The parents of these soldiers blame the IDF for their deaths. The soldiers on that base were assigned to conduct constant surveillance on the Gaza border and to raise the alarm if they saw anything suspicious. Based on evidence and eyewitness accounts that they have collected, the lookouts’ parents insist that their daughters warned the army in advance that something was brewing on the border, but the army did nothing about it. The parents believe that their daughters were simply abandoned by their superiors to die horrible deaths. They were literally slaughtered.
The parents were sure that their daughters had warned their superiors, begging and screaming for them to listen, but their warnings fell on deaf ears. Since all IDF communications are recorded, they demanded copies of the recordings. The army tried to reject their requests on various pretexts; many believed that the top IDF officials feared that if the recordings were publicized, the scope of their failure on October 7 would become clear and the parents (and the public) would demand that they take action to remedy their failings. The army seemed to be afraid that high-ranking officers might be dismissed from their positions, possibly including the leading generals and even the chief of staff himself. The conflict reached the Supreme Court, and the new minister of defense, Yisroel Katz, intervened as well. Last week, after a protracted struggle, the army finally handed over the recordings to the families.
The army constantly came up with new excuses for the delay in responding to the parents’ demands. First they claimed that they weren’t finished handling the recordings, then they claimed that they needed to ensure that no classified information would be leaked, and then they said that they needed the consent of all the families, not only those who had petitioned for the recordings to be released. The army also claimed that they had recordings from October 7 and afterward, including the hours of the terrorist invasion on the morning of Simchas Torah, but not from the day before. The lookouts’ parents, on the other hand, insisted that the recordings from the day prior to October 7 would prove that their daughters had sounded the warning a full day in advance, and that they were silenced by the army and the intelligence division and were even accused of panicking for no good reason.
If anyone thought that the recordings would soothe the bereaved parents, they were in for a rude awakening. When the families heard the recordings that were given to them, they were utterly appalled. They were deeply offended by the IDF’s attitude toward them, especially the way that the material was delivered to them, and they also discovered how desperate the situation had been, and how easily their daughters could have been saved if they had received effective help in time. Of course, it was not easy for the parents to hear the sounds of their daughters screaming until they fell silent, indicating that they had been murdered. They feel that the army is hiding a good deal of information about its failures. And the truth is that the rest of the public shares that sentiment.
Rising Tensions Between Defense Minister and Army
The new minister of defense was responsible for tilting the scales and putting an end to the ongoing struggle of the lookouts’ parents. Unlike most previous ministers of defense, Yisroel Katz is not a former army officer, nor was he a general in the reserves, and he does not feel a close connection to the IDF. His predecessor, Yoav Gallant, who was a general in the reserves and was once nearly appointed to the position of chief of general staff, gave his backing to the army on this issue, as could only be expected. Gallant thinks like an army officer, but Yisroel Katz has no such sentiments. In addition to ordering the army to release the recordings to the lookouts’ families, he ordered the chief of staff to finish all the inquiries into the events of October 7 within one month.
Yisroel Katz has brought a new spirit into the Defense Ministry. The minister of defense is required to sign off on every appointment made by the IDF chief of staff. The minister usually serves as a rubber stamp, blindly giving his okay to any decision that is made. But Katz recently blocked two appointments at the rank of major general, claiming that he needed to investigate the officers’ involvement in the events of Simchas Torah 5784. And, of course, he also ordered the chief of staff to complete his inquiries into the army’s missteps at that time before the end of January. Katz also warned that he would not sign on any appointments until the inquiries are completed. This is a major problem for the chief of staff, who is about to reach the end of his term and wants to designate the members of the IDF’s top brass following his departure.
Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi is feeling pressure. He certainly senses a noose tightening around his neck. It is widely estimated that he is facing imminent dismissal, which he might preempt by resigning before he can be fired. There is hardly any doubt that he bears the most responsibility for the great failure that took place before October 7, 2023. Last week, the media quoted unnamed senior figures in the IDF (which is generally an oblique reference to the chief of staff himself) who claimed that the army might not be capable of completing the October 7 inquiries in the time frame ordered by the minister of defense. The unnamed source labeled the demand “not serious.” Yisroel Katz wrote in response, “I view with great severity the possibility that there might be no investigative conclusions a full 16 months after the war began…. Let’s see if the army really doesn’t follow my orders to submit the results of their investigation to me.”
Blistering Criticism for the Air Force Commander
Since we are discussing the general lack of confidence in Israel’s much-touted army, which tends to be plagued by conceit, I cannot fail to mention a comment last week by Shimon Elkabetz. I wrote about Elkabetz not long ago, and I included a picture in which he appears with Rav Uri Zohar. Shimon Elkabetz is a prominent media personality and former commander of Galei Tzahal, who also served as the chief editor of the Radio Darom and Radio Yerushalayim local news stations for a while. As the editor and a representative of the stations’ owners, Elkabetz agreed to broadcast a weekly program featuring Rav Uri Zohar, in which the rov exhorted his listeners to send their children to religious schools. (Some versions of the story have it that the program was actually Elkabetz’s initiative.) The program was a major success.
Shimon Elkabetz had a daughter who lived in Kfar Azza. Elkabetz himself was saved from the terrorists on October 7, but his daughter was murdered. The bereaved father recently published a blistering critique of the commander of the air force. “The fighter pilots, the pilots of our air force, which is considered one of the best in the world, were all in sheltered rooms while we were being slaughtered,” he wrote. “Yes, [air force commander] Tomer Bar, you weren’t guilty of laxity. There is another word for what you did on October 7: It was a crime. You were not prepared. You weren’t fully ready, and you were not in control of the situation…. The days of whitewashing things in reports are over. There is no covering up the terrible black stain of October 7…. Don’t tell us that the refusal to serve [of leftists protesting the judicial reform] didn’t harm the air force’s readiness; it certainly caused harm. You weren’t there for us. You were conceited and arrogant. You should bear the mark of this failure on yourselves for eternal shame. Everyone will remember what you failed to do. We can only hope that you will learn the right lessons.”
Tomer Bar is a general and the commander of the air force. Other bereaved parents directed similar sentiments at another general: Aharon Chaliva, the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate. If I may be allowed to make a prediction, I would say that we are entering a new era with regard to the IDF.
Yair Golan’s Egregious Error
Whenever the Knesset approves the state budget, the public’s attention turns to the economy. These days are no exception to that rule. The problem is that the chareidim are always attacked for the funding they receive in the budget. And the corollary to that problem is that a large part of the funding provided for the average chareidi schoolchild must be won in budget negotiations, while a child in the secular school system receives the same funding and services as a matter of course. Only the chareidi children need politicians to advocate for them in direct negotiations with the Treasury. The Chinuch Atzmai system is also in the midst of a conflict with the Treasury at this time, and we are all hoping that its budget will not be adversely impacted.
The Treasury itself has found its way into the news lately, since the Treasury director, Shlomi Heisler, announced that he intends to step down from his position just two years after he was appointed. When he announced his resignation, Heisler listed the state’s accomplishments, including the passage of the budget: “After two years, and after the intensive stage of the war is over, the residents can return to their homes in the north and the south. When the budget is passed, including the trapped profits reform, I have asked the minister of finance to terminate my position, for personal reasons.”
Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich praised the outgoing Treasury director: “Shlomi Heisler is a top-notch professional who managed the Treasury during one of the most challenging periods that the State of Israel has ever known. Heisler passed five budgets and skillfully oversaw the ministry, with all of its departments.”
This episode has a postscript that is at once amusing and saddening. Yair Golan, a former army general who is currently heading the Democrats party (an amalgamation of two left-wing parties, Meretz and Labor), quickly attacked the minister of finance over Heisler’s departure. “The director of the Treasury, who was appointed by Smotrich, is resigning because of the passage of the budget,” Golan wrote. “The message is clear: Even he wasn’t able to stand behind this budget of abandonment. There has never been a finance minister who was as great a failure as Smotrich. You failed on defense, and you failed on the economy.”
It soon became clear that Heisler’s departure was for personal (i.e., medical) reasons rather than his opposition to the budget, and Golan’s reaction backfired on him. In truth, Yair Golan has recently been speaking out in a horrific fashion against chareidim and the religious sector. And this is part of a longstanding pattern of behavior; many remember that Golan was a general in the IDF during the Disengagement, when he took an extremely harsh stance against the religious settlers.
Claims and Counterclaims
If you are aware that the trial of Prime Minister Netanyahu is being held on a daily basis in Israel, you may be wondering why I haven’t been writing about it. In fact, you would be right to ask that question, especially since the trial gives rise to plenty of personal and legal drama on every day of testimony. It is dramatic enough that the prime minister of Israel is being forced to come to Tel Aviv every day and to sit in a courtroom for eight hours at a time while the country is at war. The stubborn insistence of the prosecution and the court for Netanyahu to be present at every hearing is likewise fairly dramatic, since it seems downright abusive. Netanyahu has been permitted to skip two days. The first time came after the judges agreed to cancel one day’s testimony, and it was later revealed that Netanyahu had spent the day visiting the IDF in the area of the Chermon that was recently reconquered from the Syrians. On the second occasion, the court remained in session but the judges permitted him to skip the hearing. Of course due to his surgery on Sunday he was granted a week’s break from appearing in court.
One of the criminal cases facing Netanyahu, known as Case 4000, deals with the allegations of bribery, which are the most severe of the criminal charges being heard in his trial. Bribery is an extremely serious offense for a high-ranking government official. In this case, the alleged bribery consists of benefits that were supposedly given to Shaul Elovich, who controlled the Bezeq telecommunications company, in exchange for favorable coverage on Walla, Elovitch’s news site. Netanyahu has several significant arguments against the charges. First of all, he maintains that there is no basis for assuming that positive news coverage is considered a bribe. Second, the regulatory decisions that affected Bezeq were made by professionals in the government, and his job was only to sign off on their decisions, which was merely a formality. Netanyahu has been making this argument for a long time, but a video was released this week that showed his office staff securing his signature on documents that he did not even read before confirming them. But Netanyahu’s most interesting argument is that he did not really receive favorable news coverage on Walla at all. If anything, he maintains, the newspaper was actually critical of him.
Netanyahu’s arguments have been backed by many jurists, including those who do not identify with his positions and even some who are his ardent opponents. The media, which is generally hostile to him, also has a hard time accepting the charges, since the news business is built on relationships between journalists and politicians. The prosecution seems to be losing this case. When the judges hinted at the outset of the trial that the prosecution should consider dropping the bribery charge, it came as a significant blow to them.
At this point, we have reached the ninth day of Netanyahu’s testimony, which is currently at the stage of answering questions from the defense team, and there are new dramas every day. The reason I haven’t reported on it yet is that I planned to write a separate article on it, and I still have every intention of doing so.
Defense Debunks Prosecution’s Claims
The indictment in this case was first submitted five years ago. At first, many people were not concerned with the details; the fact that Netanyahu had been accused of bribery was enough for them to believe that the end of his political career was approaching. Five years later, the case against him has been steadily shrinking. This begs the question of why the prosecution bothered pressing charges in the first place. Were they really foolish enough to prosecute the prime minister on paper-thin charges? The answer to this mystery was recently revealed: The police and officials in the Justice Ministry were certain that Netanyahu would sign a plea agreement. They believed that he would simply resign from his position and the case would be closed. That way, they would be rid of Netanyahu without having to see if their case against him actually held up in court. After all, they are all leftists, and their true goal was obviously to remove Netanyahu from power. But to their surprise, the prime minister decided to fight back. They are now in shock, but as usual, they are continuing to climb ever higher on their tree.
The defense has a very simple argument to make. The prosecution named 315 instances of positive coverage of Netanyahu and his family on Walla, which they are holding up as evidence of bribery. The prosecutors claim that each of these instances came at the request of Netanyahu, who asked for the coverage either through Walla’s editors or in a direct request to Elovich. Netanyahu’s attorneys have been going through each case and trying to prove either that the coverage wasn’t favorable or that Netanyahu wasn’t even aware of the news report in question, and certainly that he didn’t ask for it. They have already managed to embarrass the prosecution several times, as it has become evident that the prosecutors didn’t bother fully examining each case and simply shoved hundreds of news reports into their charges. The absurdity of this case has reached the point that the judges advised the prosecution to review the 315 news items cited in their case and to consider removing some of them from the criminal charges.
Nevertheless, the lead prosecutor is still digging in her heels. She informed the court that the state is standing behind its case. The defense attorneys responded that they will simply continue reviewing the news items on the prosecution’s list one at a time. The judges raised their eyebrows at that assertion. “What if it takes five years?” they asked.
“That is not our fault,” the defense team replied.
There are several points in dispute between the defense and the prosecution, but the most prominent issue might be the circumstances of many of the news reports cited in the charges. In 59 of those cases, the prosecution identified a demand made to Shaul Elovich, the owner of the Walla web site, to adjust the coverage, but those demands did not come from Netanyahu himself or his family members. Instead, they came from someone in Netanyahu’s orbit, either Zev Rubinstein or Nir Chefetz. This begs the basic question of whether Netanyahu is responsible for his advisors’ actions. According to the prosecution, the prime minister should be held accountable even in cases when they admit that he was completely unaware of his advisors’ actions. In another 82 of the instances, Netanyahu’s lawyers insist that Netanyahu should not be held accountable since there was no recorded request to Elovich for the reports to favor the prime minister at all. This might have been positive coverage undertaken without any prompting from anyone. In the remaining 156 instances, the defense does not deny that Netanyahu or one of his family members was involved in requesting the positive coverage; however, there is still an open question as to whether Netanyahu can be faulted for something that his wife or son requested. Moreover, every politician asks for negative news items concerning him to be erased; why would that be considered a crime?
The prosecution, for their part, insists that the charge of bribery doesn’t require the defendant to be aware of the requests made by his family members. They maintain that as long as it is known that the family members made a request, Netanyahu himself can be held accountable.
Liberals in the Justice Ministry
The real problem is the fact that the state prosecution is controlled by the left. There is a good reason that most of the ministers of the government want the attorney general to be dismissed: She is blatantly liberal and hostile to the government. And she is not the only staunch leftist in a position of influence in the judicial system.
I believe that I have written in the past about Moshe Lador, a former state prosecutor. Last week, this man spoke out against the government, Netanyahu, and the Rabbinate. This leaves no question that the State of Israel once had a state prosecutor who was a radical leftist. And during the years from 2007 through 2013, Moshe Lador was responsible for indictments submitted against right-wing government ministers. He fought a fierce battle against Yaakov Neeman and ultimately filed an indictment against him, from which Neeman was exonerated. Even now, under a fully right-wing government, the left still has firm control of the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice.
One of the most blatant examples of this phenomenon is Mrs. Talia Sasson, who worked for the state prosecution for 25 years. She, together with Moshe Lador, made the atrocious decision to charge Netanyahu, Tzachi Hanegbi, and Aryeh Deri in the Braun-Chevron affair. Elyakim Rubinstein rejected her recommendation regarding the former two men, and the country was in an uproar. Everyone spoke out strongly against the unmistakable bias. Sasson worked tirelessly to fight the right wing and was behind the Sasson Report that slandered the Jews of Yesha in the year 2005. Her left-wing allegiances were revealed only after she stepped down from her position, when she became a member of militant leftist organizations. At a Peace Now conference, Sasson claimed that Israeli settlements are the “essence of evil” in the State of Israel. On another occasion, she labeled them a “cancer.” In the election for the 18th Knesset, Sasson was placed in the seventh slot on the Meretz party list and claimed that she was determined to combat the “occupation.” Amos Schocken, who recently made waves with a highly dubious statement of his own, asked many years ago, “Is Israel an evil country, or is it just engaging in routine ethnic cleansing?” Sasson responded, “It is both.” Over the past year, she has repeatedly attacked Yariv Levin’s initiatives. And this dangerous woman served for 25 years in the state prosecution and made numerous decisions that affected the fates of a large number of people. Now that her true colors have been exposed, no one can possibly believe that her decisions were balanced or objective. And she is just one example of this phenomenon.
No one should be surprised, then, that much of the country is convinced that the cases against Netanyahu are completely politicized. In fact, no one should doubt that the real goal is to oust the prime minister. The witnesses were threatened and intimidated by their interrogators, who urged them to “give us Netanyahu’s head, and you’ll be able to go home.” The revelation that the prosecutors were certain that Netanyahu would accept a plea deal has only served to cement this supposition.
I Said Tehillim and Was Saved
I often come across advertisements or notices from people who claim that they promised to publicize their personal salvations due to the use of a particular segulah. Well, I recently had an experience in which I recited Tehillim and was immediately spared from an unpleasant situation. Here is my story.
I was davening Mincha and Maariv in a shul when a man whom I know very well entered the room. I have conversed with him on occasion, and he is the type of person who is capable of carrying on a discussion at unbelievable length. He has valuable things to say, but the length of his conversations and the way he conveys information can sometimes be unbearable. The last time we had spoken, we began after Shacharis. Midday came and went, and he was still speaking passionately about an issue that he seemed to feel was critical.
“Why do people pay the radio fee when they don’t have radios in their cars?” he demanded.
“Do they even have cars?” I asked.
He did not laugh. “It doesn’t matter how small the sum is,” he insisted. “This is part of the bureaucratic machine that wears a person down relentlessly.”
His argument was correct, but the time and place simply weren’t correct for this conversation, at least from my standpoint. This fellow is a serious man who is dedicated to his goals and focused on his targets. The problem, in that case, was that I was the target. So when I saw him entering the shul that evening, I knew exactly what lay in store for me.
As soon as he laid eyes on me, he made a gesture of greeting. I pointed to my siddur, indicating that I was davening. I had no doubt that he would wait until after davening to corner me, so I did what every good Jew does at a time of distress. When Aleinu was over, I opened my sefer Tehillim and began reciting the words with fervor.
Sure enough, he strode over to me and said, “I must speak to you.”
I began reading the words aloud: “Now I have known that Hashem saved His anointed one….” I was in the middle of kapitl 20, having randomly opened to that page. The man waited for me to finish the perek, but I moved on to the next one. That was when he realized that I would not interrupt the Tehillim for a conversation, even between perokim.
Pardon me for digressing, but this actually reminds me of a pithy comment I once heard. Rav Avrohom Mordechai Abish Halevi Eisen once quipped, “Chazal tell us that Sarah Imeinu was bas kuf k’bas kaf: When she was 100 years old, she was like a 20-year-old. But there is another message: We should aspire to recite kapitl kuf of Tehillim, the passage of Mizmor L’sodah, with the same tearful passion with which we recite kapital kaf, where we declare that Hashem will save us from all our troubles.” In other words, we should give thanks to Hashem for our salvation with the same degree of emotion with which we cry to Him at a time of trouble.
When Rav Abish made that comment, I replied, “I would also say that we should recite the passage in Avinu Malkeinu asking Hashem to guide us to complete teshuvah with the same passion with which we beg Him to heal the sick.”
In any event, the man who approached me in shul was beginning to grow impatient. “When are you going to finish?” he asked.
I shrugged in response. Of course, I couldn’t know how long I would be reciting Tehillim, since I didn’t know how long he would be standing next to me. I moved on to kapitl 22, which is relatively long, and enunciated every word with great intensity. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the man seemingly struggling with an internal debate. At some point, he gave up and made his way out of the shul. I was certain that I had escaped from danger, but just to be on the safe side, I moved on to the following kapitl as well. As I recited the words “only goodness and kindness will pursue me all the days of my life,” I caught a glimpse of his receding back as he disappeared into the distance.
As I told you, I recited Tehillim and I was saved….
