In a new post today, Rabbi Natan Slifkin tries to explain why he deleted posts about Rabbi Nissan Kaplan, a haredi rabbi from the largest haredi yeshiva in the world, Mir in Jerusalem, who said that haredi leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman said that government leaders should really be killed. "We" [haredim] would take up knives to do so except, Steinman allegedly said, I don't know who the haredi "general" in this war against the modern day "Syrain-Greeks" [Zionists like Finance Minister Yair Lapid] would be. If I knew who that general was, Steinman allegedly said, we'd go out and murder them right now.
Above: Rabbi Natan Slifkin
In a new post today, Rabbi Natan Slifkin tries to explain why he deleted posts about Rabbi Nissan Kaplan, a haredi rabbi from the largest haredi yeshiva in the world, Mir in Jerusalem, who said that haredi leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman said that government leaders should really be killed. "We" [haredim] would take up knives to do so except, Steinman allegedly said, I don't know who the haredi "general" in this war against the modern day "Syrain-Greeks" [Zionists like Finance Minister Yair Lapid] would be. If I knew who that general was, Steinman allegedly said, we'd go out and murder them right now.
The audio recording of Kaplan saying this to a class at the Mir where he teaches was removed from a haredi Torah website archiving Kaplan's talks and classes after the story broke.
The link to it originally provided by Slifkin goes to a post on TorahMusings/Hirhurim, controlled by Rabbi Gil Student, who once was Slifkin's publisher and later worked as the head of the Orthodox Union's book publishing division.
That link has been dead for days, and Joel Rich, the blogger who posted it in his weekly audio Torah lectures post did not update to provide a working link – even though I told him days ago that he could use the audio file of Kaplan's talk that I posted.
At the roughly same time that discussion was happening, Slifkin deleted his posts, claiming the reason he did so was not "nefarious" and promising an explanation in the future. That promised explanation was eventually posted by Slifkin today and is also published below in this post.
As should be clear, Slifkin is being disingenuous.
He clearly took down the post primarily because he was threatened and worried about threats, and because the story of what Kaplan said was apparently having an immediate negative impact on Mir's fundraising.
Mir has a ton of clout in the haredi community and even in the Centrist Orthodox community, and two of its leaders – including Kaplan himself – are now on an official US speaking/fundraising tour. (Please see the poster posted below.)
Immediately censoring the story was necessary to save that tour, and Slifkin did it – probably after being coerced a bit by both haredi and Centrist Orthodox sources, including, I think, some linked to the OU.
Also, that Student's blog and Joel Rich failed to restore the audio of Kaplan making these hateful remarks is is indictive of where the pressure against Slifkin probably came from.
As for Slifkin, his claim that Kaplan did not actually call for the murder of Israeli government leaders is only half true.
He clearly says that Steinman wants and desires to kill them but doesn't order the murders because he lacks a person, a "general" to oversee them and/or carry them out.
This can easily be understood as a clear invitation to zealotry, a call to zealots who imagine themselves to be akin to the biblical Pinchas to murder Israeli leaders.
That "we" haradim don't do this because "we" lack a "general"?
A clear implication of Kaplan's recounting of Steinman's words is that others who don't have that problem – the hard Zionist Orthodox right wing of the West bank Jewish settler movement, as one example example – can murder Lapid (or Justice Minister Tzipi Livni or Education Minister Rabbi Shai Piron, etc.) and be doing God's will.
At any rate, Slifkin has again showed himself to be cowardly and self-serving under any type of fire, even admitting that he held the story and did not publish it, hoping others would do so first so he would not face haredi criticism.
Because of the haredi ban on his books and the horrible way that ban was put in place, Slifkin is a hero to many Modern Orthodox Jews. But he shouldn't be. One thing Natan Slifkin is not is courageous. Another thing he is not is a hero.
That said, here is Slifkin's explanation for removing what was then a link to live audio of Kaplan's remarks:
It's Time To Erase Amalek - From Daily Discourse
After I removed the two posts about the Kaplan Affair, I was inundated by emails asking/demanding clarification. Here is the explanation.
First of all, I want to give some background to how this story developed. Last Wednesday, I was sent the audio file by a friend who learned in top charedi yeshivos for many years. He described it as “absolutely terrifying” and said that “The only way to stop these sort of things is if the Mir get enough bad publicity that it’s not worth their while to allow them to continue.” I discussed it with a Rav who is in the charedi world, very politically savvy and sensitive, and he said that it has to get out.
Before going any further, I discussed it with two other friends who learned in the Mir for many years and who know R. Kaplan well (and they like him). They were also horrified by it and felt it was very important for it to be publicized. They were, however, concerned that I would be (non-physically) attacked for doing so, and warned that I should not be the one who blows the whistle, so I decided to hold off.
However, then I discovered that the story had already gotten out, in a review of shiurim by Joel Rich on Torahmusings.com, and in turn in a Facebook post by Rabbi Dr. Jeffrey Woolf. Both of them strongly condemned it. Since the story had already been broken by others, I posted about it. In my post I said very little, other than to transcribe the relevant parts of the audio, to briefly and accurately summarize it, and to express horror.
As the story started getting picked up by others, however, three things bothered me intensely. First was that while I felt very strongly that Rav Kaplan should be condemned for what he said, I also felt that he should not be condemned for what he didn’t say. There's plenty to condemn. There's the basic disgusting anti-Torah attitude, common to almost the entire charedi community in Israel and many in the US, that charedim have a right to be supported by the rest of Israel and not share in the burden of military service, and that anyone who feels otherwise can only be motivated by hatred of Torah. There's the shocking claim that Rav Steinman said that government ministers are classified as Amalek and deserve to be killed. There's Rav Kaplan's frightening and clear message that it is absolutely forbidden to doubt this. There's the appalling pride that he displays with his five-year-old, who is creatively looking for ways in which government ministers can be killed.
But Rav Kaplan did NOT say that, practically speaking, people should actually go ahead and kill them. On the contrary; from the outset, he said that people should not actually go ahead and do it. (According to his words, this is due to his simultaneously subscribing to the charedi approach of leadership paralysis.) Yes, what he said could lead to that, and the lesson that Rav Kaplan is imparting to his students and children is loathsome and dangerous. But that is not the same as telling people to actually go ahead and kill them, and nobody should claim that he said that.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what some people claimed. One blog commentator described him as a "murderer." No, he's not! His words might - unintentionally - lead someone to murder, which is (one of the many reasons) why they must be condemned; but he is not a murderer. Another blogger described him as “a rodef al pi Halacha.” No, he’s not!
As it reached the media, such distortions continued. The Israeli newspapers and the Jerusalem Post reported the story correctly, but the London Jewish Chronicle did not. Their article reported, without qualification, that Rabbi Kaplan “advocates killing ministers.” No, he didn’t!
Let Rav Kaplan face the music for things that he did say, not for things that he didn’t say. And a further problem with distorting what he said is that it allowed him and his defenders to respond that he never advocated actually killing ministers and that people are distorting his words. Which is true (contrary to some people's claim that he was lying) – but it enabled him to avoid taking responsibility for what he actually said. He did not say that people should actually kill them – he was clear from the outset that they shouldn’t. But he DID say that they are Haman and Amalek, and that they are therefore in principle worthy of being killed.
The second thing that bothered me was that this was being made into a story about Rav Nissan Kaplan. This is not to minimize what he did, but he is hardly the biggest problem in this area (especially as he since retracted and is grovelling with apologies). There is rhetoric about Amalek and suchlike coming from much bigger players than someone regarded as a young entertainer of harmless Americans. While Rav Steinman's spokesman denied that he said what Rav Kaplan attributed to him, there are other reports of Rav Steinman describing Lapid as Amalek and saying that the government should suffer in hell and have their names erased. It is true that Rav Steinman has explicitly qualified such statements by noting that the way to battle Amalek is by learning more Torah, but it is still a wrong and dangerous way to talk. And remember that Rav Steinman is a moderate compared to the likes of the Eidah Charedis, Satmar and Rav Shmuel Auerbach! (They have described Rav Steinman himself as Amalek due to his being too moderate, and one deranged follower attacked and nearly killed Rav Steinman)! Then there's Rabbi Shalom Cohen, the new rabbinic leader of Shas, saying that Jews who wear knitted kipot are Amalek - which he later clarified as "only" referring to the leaders of Bayit Yehudi and their supporters. Unlike with Rav Kaplan, these statements have not been retracted.
The third thing that bothered me, and the final straw, was how some people were presenting the way that the story played out. Although I did not post Rav Kaplan’s lecture on the internet (it was posted on his own website!), and although I was not the first or even the second to report what he had said, I was being portrayed as the person who was responsible for it getting out. Along with all this came accusations that I was causing irrevocable harm to Rav Kaplan, to the Mir, fanning the flames of hatred and causing discord in Israeli society with vast repercussions, etc. Put together with the first distortion, this meant that I was being accused of spreading a story that Rav Kaplan was telling people to actively go out and kill government ministers. Frankly, I didn’t have the stomach to deal with this. Since this is not my personal fight (except insofar as I detest the way that it has become acceptable to call one’s ideological opponents “Amalek,” as people have referred to me many times), I decided that I did not want to be personally involved any more. Besides, there were already enough people who had picked up on the story that it wasn’t necessary for me to be involved. So I took down my posts. IMPORTANT UPDATE: I just discovered that the story had in any case been sent to the press even before I wrote about it, so it was getting out regardless of anything I wrote.
Meanwhile, as reported in various media outlets, Rav Kaplan is frantically trying to save himself (or Rav Steinman?), expressing total remorse and claiming that he never heard anything from Rav Steinman about this, that he never had any conversation with his son about killing ministers with a hammer, and that he freely makes up false stories and incorrect views about very serious matters. Hopefully he has learned his lesson, but what about everyone else? What is really needed is a clear statement by the Mir, and even more so by the Israeli Charedi establishment, about whether they consider it acceptable to describe their opponents as “Amalek.” In my view, this is a word that should be erased from daily discourse. In light of the obligation to kill Amalek, it is simply far too offensive, loaded and dangerous a term to be used about anyone today.
Yes, it is good Slifkin discusses the problem with calling political or religious enemies Amalek, and yes, it is good that he wants haredi leaders to go on the record that this type of speech is both wrong and dangerous.
But that in no way makes up for his removal of those two posts, his failure to post the Kaplan audio file originally, his failure to post it after the haredi Torah site removed it, and his failure to post his original story because he was afraid of haredi criticism.
What Kaplan actually said:
"…On Shabbos I spoke to my kids, and I said that Rav Steinman spoke that lemayseh [in actuality], we have today Haman and Amalek, all this [Israeli] government, and really the way is to take knives and to kill them, just as with the Yevanim [Greeks at the time of Hanukkah more than 2,000 years ago]. This is what Rav Steinman said. You have to take a sword and to kill them. So why are we not doing it? Because, he said, I don't know yet who is the [suitable replacement] general who could run the war. But if I would know who's the general, we'd go out with knives. This is what Rav Steinman said. There's a war against religion... I explained this to my kids... then, in the middle of the meal, my kid, five years old, says, "Aba, we don't have a sword in the house, I'm looking... maybe a hammer is also good?" I was very happy, I gave him a kiss... I was so proud of my son, he's looking for a sword to kill all these government ministers..."
Audio of Kaplan saying it (starts at 36:50; right click to open a new window or tab to get better control over fast forwarding the audio file, etc.):
Audio of Kaplan's very brief actual 'apology' to one of his classes for saying it. Note that what Kaplan actually does is blame listeners for hearing what they wanted to hear, not what he actually said:
The Mir Yeshiva's Baltimore, Maryland program to be held this Shabbat. Please click to enlarge:
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Haredi Leader Curses Finance Minister Yair Lapid, Marks Him For Violence – Again.