"Close down your party, or your blood will be on your head," it the threatening note read, a harsh biblical phrase of condemnation meaning that any harm that befalls a wrongdoer is the fault of the wrongdoer because he has incurred the punishment it brings by his bad actions.
Ashkenazi Haredi Rebel Leader Receives Death Threat
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
And now it has come down to a death threat.
The elections for mayors and city council members across Israel are tomorrow, and the fight between the mainstream Ashkenazic haredi faction and a much smaller and more conservative and reactionary rebel Ashkenazi haredi faction led by Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach has heated up, Arutz Sheva reported.
Last week, mainstream leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman reportedly said that it is “a Torah-based obligation to vote for [the mainstream faction’s] Degel Hatorah, which is the [political] party that received the approval of the rabbis and the Torah sages.” He accused Auerbach's supporters and his Bnei Torah Party of undermining "the age-old authority of Judaism's sages" to lead.
Rabbi Haim Kanievsky, who is widely viewed as the mainstream faction’s number two rabbi, fully backs Shteinman. Speaking a day before Shteinman, Kanievsky said that any Ashkenazi haredi who voted against Degel Hatorah should be stoned to death.
Shteinman did not issue a statement condemning that assertion or distancing himself from it, although it is not clear he knows Kanievsky said it.
Now a death threat has reportedly been left on Auerbach’s car.
"Close down your party, or your blood will be on your head," it the threatening note read, a harsh biblical phrase of condemnation meaning that any harm that befalls a wrongdoer is the fault of the wrongdoer because he has incurred the punishment it brings by his bad actions.