I haven’t even scratched the surface of this man’s plaintive cry. A cry from the depths of his heart. He ended by saying the what Charedi leadership ought to be doing instead is following a Mesorah of Chesed – in the tradition of people like R’ Aryeh Levine and Rav Gustman. That is sorely missing form the Charedi narrative.
Unfortunately the only reaction I saw to this was from Rabbi Aryeh Z. Ginzberg. The title of his response should tell you all you need to know. “Misguided Mesorah”. It was more of the same. “He feels Mr. Jacobson’s pain” and calls him a friend. Then he goes about trashing him for daring to speak from the heart about what he sees from Gedolei Yisroel. He explains away all their negative rhetoric by listing all the same old canards about how evil they really are bringing ‘proof upon proof’ from anecdotal sources. Thus concluding that they deserve no better than what they are getting from the Charedi side.
I am frankly sick of the big lie filled with half truths being repeated over and over again. Rabbi Ginsberg has no credibility with me. Hopefully the truth will continue to spread in the Charedi world and the Rabbi Ginsbergs of the world will finally lose all their credibility – even among their own people. If there are more Charedim like Barry Jacobson, that will surely happen
I don’t know how all of this will end. I suspect that at the end of the day there will be some sort of compromise that all will be forced to live with. If one wants to see a decent projection of the future – and an overview of who believes what… and why, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein has done a pretty good job of sizing things up over at Cross Currents.
The problem is that even if things settle down, I do not see the enmity changing. It will continue to fester beneath the surface only to rear its ugly head the next time a crisis comes up in the Charedi world. Unless more ‘Barry Jacobsons’ speak up… and realize how badly the Charedi Leadership is failing its own people.
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