In an earlier post I speculated that the NY Times article on the Slifkin Book Ban was nothing more than a Agudah spin. Low and behold, Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein – heavily featured in the Times article – has admitted as much on his blog:
Suffice it for the moment that many colleagues agree that it is always best to have an “insider” speak about a potentially damning issue, because unfriendly “outsiders” will certainly do far more damage. Those of us – and there were more who did not appear in the article – who spoke to the Times all agreed that our goal would be to try to minimize the chilul Hashem. It doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out how much more damaging the piece could have been had the interviewees not tried as hard as I can testify they did to defend the other side as vigorously as they did, while not selling short emes as they and their rabbeim see it.)
Apparently haredi wannabee Rabbi Gil Student, Agudahnik R. Adlerstein and other like-minded spinmeisters sold the Times a bill of goods, minimizing the strength of the gedolim who issued the ban and complete cowardice of the gedolim who – we have it on 'good authority' – opposed the ban but chose to remain silent for pragmatic or 'lofty' reasons.
Rabbis Adlerstein, Student and their cronies may have been true to the "emes" as their rabbis see it. What they were not true to, however, was the truth of the ban and the ugly but truthful window it opened to the haredi world.
The seal of God is allegedly Truth. Not spin. Not public relations. Not cover-up. Truth.
The sad thing is that rabbis who, like it or not, represent God, have all but forgotten this. Their seal is Spin.