Jerusalem – President Shimon Peres called on Thursday to distinguish between the extreme hareidi-religious Jews who exclude women and those who hareidim who do not do so.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Peres made the comments during a visit to the home of Tel Aviv’s Chief Rabbi, Rav Yisrael Meir Lau, who is sitting shiva following the death of his brother, Rabbi Yehoshua Hager-Lau, who passed away last week in Jerusalem.
“We have to condemn those responsible for excluding women, but for the sake of justice we must at the same time also distinguish between those who are guilty and those who are not,” Peres said.
“Whoever is at fault should be convicted, but we should not generalize to include those who are not guilty,” he added. “It is insulting and offensive to generalize an entire population.”
Rabbi Lau responded to the president by assuring him that the individuals who exclude women “are not individuals who are following the advice of any rabbi. Whoever spits in the face of a seven-year-old girl is not obeying the orders of a rabbi.”
He’s right on this one, no one condones spitting on anybody, especially a small girl. All of charedim are against such stupid acts allegedly done by an individual.
This shows the decency of President Shimon Peres. He is right. Just because there are a few empty heads who are not interested in working for a living, or learning Torah and are constantly stirring up trouble, you can not demonize an entire segment of the population. Unfortunately, the media blow every incident out of proportion and instead of dealing with any problems on a local level, as a criminal matter, they make it a national issue and are fanning the flames of hate towards the Chareidim.
Do we know for a fact that a unorthodox woman or girl was spat at ? Maybe its all one big fabricated lie by whoever ??? We know of several incidents where a religous young girl was spat at by a media reporter. We know of a similar incident on a bus. However, we don’t know for sure that the claim against the religous zealots ever took place.
Unfortunately, in modern days jews are working very hard not to be too jewish. Anything that symbolizes old naive and traditional jewish heritage is not accepted any more. We will rush to judge the frum yid and will try to stay on the same side of the modern or unobservent as we are not fully comfortable with hashems torah which sounds a bit naive or radical according to modern days,
Wrong whom does he fool ? He encouraged the Protest against the Chareidim because and only because they are Chareidim ,Millions of people spat already on another and no one made a protest or an arrest of it ,They all claim it was one Chareidi wwh spar
Decency of peres?
2 days after his inciteful words against charedim were printed across the globe?
He’s absolutely 100% correct, that nobody should be taking the actions of a few zealots, and blaming the entire Charedi community for their crimes.
Having said that however, if you yourself are complaining & whining that this whole thing has been “blown out of purportion” & that it’s not really a “big deal”…. that WILL signify to others that you are defending these attacks & that you think the media made the story up & etc!
The BEST thing that can happen, is for these zealots **fellow Charedim** to come together, protesting what they’ve done! That is the BEST way to send the message that it’s not ALL Charedim who are doing these things!
Not just ignore them, and pray they’ll go away! Because they won’t! They feel they have a reason enough to fight til just about the death over this stuff & they already aren’t listening to anyone!
So to figure the media is probably just blowing it out of purportion & to give up, would be a MAJOR set-back for women everywhere, not to mention the community on the whole. The issue really does need to be addressed, before it turns even more violent & uncivilized, and continues to further embarrass the religion of G-d!
Harryw- yes, we know for sure. How? I live down the block from the school! My husband had to fight off an attacker in charedi garb who jumped a neighbor, lest his ribs get broken. I witnessed tomatoes being thrown at Jewish kids, boys and girls, who attend the two separate Orot schools, from a rooftop by “chareidim.” I’ve witnessed children and women being called whores, shiksas, and told to GO AWAY. I was told to move to the back of the bus by “frum” Jews. I agree with ya’ Harry- let’s not judge frum Jews. The upshot? These guys are NOT frum and they act in no way, shape, or form, like Jews. It’s real, the media has NOT made this up, and it’s as bad as all the videos, all the news reports, and all the internet articles portray. I want to desperately co-exist with Jews of every shape, race, color, religious bend, style of dress, etc. The folks hurling assaults and rocks, setting fire to dumpsters as they did last night in RBS Bet- they must be stopped. They must be arrested, and they MUST be judged. Not only by G-D, but by a judge of the earthly court who can promptly throw them in jail and lose the key.
Good Shabbos- and I mean that with every fabric of my soul.