Adar: It is time to stop this madness

Two female IDF officers, simply doing their job and visiting a soldier under their care, were attacked by a mob of thousands — not enemies, not extremists from afar, but fellow Jews. The absurdity of it could be mistaken for a Purim skit, but the reality is sickening.

According to Yeshiva World News:

The usually quiet Chagai Street in Bnei Brak turned into a mob scene on Sunday after two female military police officers arrived in the area and rumors spread that they were distributing draft orders.

A crowd of over a thousand people quickly gathered. Police arrived to rescue the soldiers as the crowd grew. A police vehicle was overturned on HaRav Shach Street, and a police motorbike was set on fire. A burned siddur and tefillin were later found in the storage compartment of the bike, belonging to a frum officer.

Community leaders did condemn the violence. As YWN reported:

Former Chief Rabbi HaRav Yosef Yitzchak responded by saying: ‘One must strongly condemn the handful of rioters who make a Chilul Hashem… There is no place for their behavior among us. They must be denounced and expelled from the camp.’

These condemnations are necessary — but they are not enough.

I write this with a heavy and personal heart. I grew up in a mixed Modern Orthodox and Haredi community in the UK. I am self declared 100% believing Orthodox Jew, and my own son is religious and served in a special forces unit. He was in the Be’eri and Nahal Oz communities on the Gaza border on October 7th. He worked with ZAKA to locate and identify bodies in the agonizing days that followed.

I understand both the sensitivities within the Haredi world and the profound responsibility of defending our people.

I fully support finding a thoughtful, respectful way to engage Haredi youth in national service — a way that recognizes their concerns and their values, but which means that the community actively engages in the defence and wellness of the nation of which it is a significant part. But what happened in Bnei Brak cannot be excused or minimized. A community that votes as a bloc, whose leadership is deeply respected and influential, cannot shrug off responsibility when its members nearly lynch two Jewish women in uniform. That is a Chilul Hashem — a desecration of G-d’s name — of the highest order.

Throughout Jewish history, especially in Eastern Europe, great rabbinic leaders lived with the terror of conscription into foreign armies. Artscroll biographies are full of stories about desperate attempts to evade the Russian or Polish draft. I understand that inherited fear. But today, we are blessed — blessed beyond imagination — to live in a Jewish state with a Jewish army, defending Jewish lives. The threat we face now is not the Czar’s army. It is Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, enemies who, like Haman, seek the destruction of every Jew, regardless of sect, background, or ideology.

Why then should hatred arise from within?

If Adar teaches us anything, it is that internal unity is not optional; it is existential. Amalek attacked us when we were divided. Haman targeted us long before we knew how to stand together. Nazis and terrorists do not differentiate between a Haredi Jew, a secular Jew, or a soldier.

We dare not differentiate either.

We are far too close to disaster. I beg all leaders — rabbinic, communal, and political — to extinguish the flames of anger, distrust, and misinformation before they ignite something irreversible.

This madness must stop.

I write these words with limited strength. I am fighting a terminal illness and cannot be part of these debates in the way I once could. But I ask those who can — those who have energy, influence, and voice — to safeguard the future of our children.
To choose unity over rage.
To choose responsibility over silence.
To choose peace over hatred.

We are better than this.
We must be.

Enough.