More Ponevezh Yeshiva Violence

The fight for control of the haredi world's premier yeshiva has intensified, Ynet reports:

In recent years, the renowned Lithuanian Ponevezh yeshiva in Beni Brak has been engulfed in a violent struggle between two rival factions over who will control the institution. The conflict began after the yeshiva’s legendary head, Rabbi Elazar Shach, became ill in the late 1990s and had to be replaced.

Two camps immediately emerged as contenders for the throne: The first led by Rabbi Beryl Poversky and Rabbi Gershon Edelshtein (the heir-to-be of 95-year-old Rabbi Elyashiv), and the second headed by Rabbi Shmuel Markovich.

In the most recent incident related to the power struggle, the yeshiva’s administrative director, Aharon Gertner, was arrested Wednesday after police claimed he attempted to assualt menbers of Rabbi Markovich’s faction with an ax.…

Two years ago, after several years of truce, the status quo between the rivals was violated after the Edelshtein-Povarsky camp appointed Rabbi Haim Peretz Berman as the new yeshiva head. Immediately following the appointment, the rabbi was assaulted with sticks and hospitalized. Berman was replaced by Rabbi Haim Shlomo Lebovic, whose first lecture was held under heavy security of dozens of policemen. Upon returning home that day, he found an explosive device waiting for him at his doorstep.

The police believe that the war is far from over, as its resolution depends on one of the sides finally withdrawing from the contest over control. Meanwhile, the district police chief summons the yeshiva’s leaders to his office once every few weeks for a talk, which is usually followed by a short-lived truce that ends whenever a new conflict – over the distribution of food or rooms in the yeshiva for instance – emerges.

Many of the top Jewish criminals of the last century – Arnold Rothstein, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, many Murder Inc. hitmen, etc. – came from very "frum" families. (Guzik himself used to put on tefillin every day.)

I used to think their criminal behavior was caused in large part by poverty and dislocation, the refugee-immigrant experience gone bad. Yet, as I've learned more about historical haredi mob violence, my view has changed.

There were murders over succession in hasidic courts and mob violence used to for rabbis to rule stringently. (My favorite story in this regard is the attack on the av bet din of Brody and his family over a disagreement regarding the use of machine-ground flour for Passover matza. Haredi thugs threw bricks through the [closed] windows of his home while he and his entire family, including young children, were asleep inside. This happened in the 1870s. The mob was upset by the rabbi's halakhic leniency.)

I think haredi society itself is at fault. The proof is the rampant welfare fraud, tax fraud, white collar crime, and mob violence in haredi communities. Power struggles are not settled in bet din – they are settled on the streets, with clubs and pipe bombs or by secular courts and law enforcement.

Murder Inc. came from somewhere, and that place is just as much Ponevezh, Brody, Lubavitch and Kapust as it is the old Lower East Side.

I'm sure many of you will disagree. Feel free to say so below.

[Hat Tip: Michelle.]

Comments

[Yochanan Lavie]

If God lived on earth, people would break His windows.

[Anon]

sad, really sad for a yeshivah with its history.

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

The Israeli authorities need to bulldoze this "yeshiva." Problem solved.

"Guzik himself used to put on tefillin every day"

Cite?

[Ariel Sokolovsky]

B"H
Violence is used by everyone even recently by budhist who preach non violence.
To say that violence as a way to resolve communal disputes is a product of chareidi ideology is dishonest.
For example it says in Kitzur Shulchan Aruch that a rabbi of the community may order to beat up a Jewish merchant who constantly cheats customers (assuming there is no other way to fix the problem thus it's doubtfull that this applies in our time.)
Still it says nowhere that it is ppermited to use violence to assert control over the inheritance or in this case a Yeshivah. It is clear that that the Torah obligates them to chose a neutral Beis Din to resolve the problem or to use a Zabla arbitration not to beat people up and throw bombs.
It is hard to understand how can one blame Chareidim as a group made up of many diverse factions for actions of some vandals in one Yeshivah.

[Paul Freedman]

don't blame parents for their children's actions, adults are adults--these particular religious guys aren't exactly going to the matresses; sounds like they're only giving each other klumpfs--and yeah, buddhist monks in monasteries have been known in similar circumstances to enage in mob violence: factions storming each other's redoubts, hurling whatever it is buddhist monks would hurl at each other (furniture? footstools? mandalas? incense burners?)

Males are territorial

[I-Gor]

Part of the problem with all the various succession battles is that the charedi and chassidic communities have not evolved beyond medieval leaderhip and organizational structures. It's a problem that goes from the large sects all the way down to the little yeshivas. Simply put, there's no lay leadership involved in running these operations. When you have a Rebbe who controls the purse, it's a recipe for disaster.

A yeshiva, synagogue or any other organization without an independant lay board of directors is simply non-transparent. If no one knows where the money is coming from or going to, then the leaders can easily become corrupt. In addition, if control means absolute power, then there's more incentive to behave like a feudal lord.

[eddie]

The violence in yeshivot should come as no surprise - it si sthe culmination of vioelnt rhetoric of the rosh yeshiva, who created a climate of hatred for everyone left of his dass torah, and these are the natural consequences.

[Paul Freedman]

I-Gor: I think this is a very good point--the Rebbe's institutions survived his death in part because he had in some sense limited his own power and devolved authority in the various institutes to subordinates to whom he granted a good degree of freedom--but then eventually you end up with the local unit that is the petty fiefdom of its particular rosh. Non-Orthodox rabbi's have been known to embezzle temple funds, for example, but independent lay boards serve as an independent check and balance. They just don't place the rabbi "above" them. But communities that have an authoritorian commitment to "daas Torah" won't permit themselves this freedom of criticism.