Almost two weeks ago, two newspaper executives filed complaints at an Israeli police station. Each accused the other of assault. One is Rabbi Yaakov Labin, the outgoing director of the non-hasidic Ashkenazi haredi newspaper Yated Ne’eman. The other is Yated Ne’eman’s new director, Shimon Glick. The two allegedly fought over control of the haredi mouthpiece at its offices in Bnei Brak.
Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, left, and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, right
The Struggle For Control Of The Haredi Mouthpiece Yated Ne’eman
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Almost two weeks ago, two newspaper executives filed complaints at an Israeli police station. Each accused the other of assault. One is Rabbi Yaakov Labin, the outgoing director of the non-hasidic Ashkenazi haredi newspaper Yated Ne’eman. The other is Yated Ne’eman’s new director, Shimon Glick. The two allegedly fought over control of the haredi mouthpiece at its offices in Bnei Brak.
The fight for control of Yated Ne’eman was settled shortly before the two pillars of the haredi community duked it out, when leadership of the non-hasidic Ashkenazi haredim (the Lithuanian yeshiva world) went to 99-year-old Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, a Bnei Brak moderate (in haredi rabbinic terms). Steinman got the nod after it could no longer be concealed that the condition of 102-year-old Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, lying for months in an intensive care unit in a Jerusalem hospital with multiple organ failure, would not improve enough for him to continue to lead.
Jerusalem-based Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, the 86-year-old son of former haredi leader Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach – a noted moderate who detested haredi politics – was backed in his losing leadership bid by the more extreme faction within the haredi yeshiva world. That’s because Auerbach, who saw his father suffer years of attacks for being too moderate, had become more extreme than many of those attackers.
Under Elyashiv’s control, Yated Ne’eman was often hostile to Steinman, and its management – originally put in place decades ago by Yated founder and the haredi leader before Elyashiv, Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach – backed Auerbach for haredi leadership. When Auerbach lost they got booted, and Steinman’s followers took over.
Last week, the new management published a letter written by Rabbi Elyashiv’s son-in-law Rabbi Haim Kanievsky, himself in the top tier of haredi rabbinic leadership. Kanievsky declared that Shteinman was the new leader of the haredi yeshiva world.
“The leadership of the generation is passed on today to our master the revered Rabbi Aharon Yehudah Leib Shteinman, whose every deed is for the sake of heaven, and we have now merited to put upon him the leadership of the Yated Ne’eman newspaper,” Kanievsky wrote.
Auerbach’s close followers reportedly called on haredim to cancel their Yated subscriptions, but few did. That left Steinman firmly in control.
Over its existence, Yated Ne’eman gained a reputation similar to Pravda’s in the old Soviet Union – a mouthpiece for the ruling party that shamelessly attacked opponents and covered up for the party’s leaders. What was true in Pravda’s reporting was what was missing from it, not what was printed on its pages.
And just like Russians did with Pravda, a favorite sport among haredim was reading between Yated’s printed lines to try to discern the facts Yated was trying to conceal.
It is unlikely that Yated’s leadership change will also change that longstanding tradition.