Thanks for your honest moment of cynical indifference, Yitzchok Goldknopf

We can all expect self-suspended Housing Minister Yitzchok Goldknopf to come barreling back to his ministry, along with his fellow haredi cabinet ministers, now that the final barrier to a blanket military exemption for draft-age haredim has been eliminated.

Just in the nick of time, Yuli Edelstein, the last Likud MK with a functioning spine, has been neutered by Bibi. Our peerless and seemingly permanent PM can now reinstate the reliable cast of incompetents, saboteurs and rogues who will prop him up until the next scheduled election in 2026.

Bibi’s phalanx of political bodyguards comes at a price, of course; specifically, a free pass for tens of thousands of indolent haredim, plus a few billion shekels of pocket money to help cover their cigarettes, coffee and vacations in Uman and Keresztur.

It’s a pretty sordid picture, yet we are all to blame. Why? Because we remain wilfully ignorant of what haredi political parties are all about, and how they are not, in any way, part of a democratic process let alone part of Israeli society.

Au contraire.

Haredi parties are essentially block votes that march to the orders of their respective supreme leaders. One of these is the hereditary Gerer Rebbe, one Yaakov Aryeh Alter, a tycoon who makes his billions playing a no-holds-barred role in Israel’s real estate industry. In his other career, as the rebbe and spiritual leader of the aggressive and massive Gur hasidic sect – and behind the scenes leader of the Agudath Israel party – Mr. Alter has at his disposal an organized squad of goons who ruthlessly enforce his diktats in order to maintain absolute fealty among his devotees.

This goon squad brooks no opposition to the rebbe’s authority. Last year, when a group lead by the sect’s rosh yeshiva attempted to offers a more benign pathway, the goon squad attacked them during Kabbalat Shabbat services, breaking furniture and brutally assaulting the congregants.

Fealty to the Gerer Rebbe ranges from conforming to a draconian – and ever-increasing – code of sexual repression, to never second-guessing his appointment of questionable henchmen to key positions, including government ministers.  Three years ago the rebbe banned the practice of fathers dancing with their 2-3 year sons on their shoulders on Simhat Torah, lest this lead to prurient thoughts.

A direct appointee of the Gerer Rebbe is Yitchok Goldknopf, a man who padded his bank account by exploiting  – no doubt with the rebbe’s approval – the weakest members of his own sect.

Goldknopf is the overlord of the vast network of Gerer preschools, all staffed by young hasidic women who are trained from the cradle to be submissive to the point of utter self-abnegation. The key administrative positions in this industry of exploitation are filled by Goldknopf’s offspring, while the funding for these institutions comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets.  Needless to say, there are precious few Gerer Hasidim who fall into this category.

What Goldiknopf engineered, among other things, is the termination of his staff of teachers at the end of each school year, and then re-hiring them afresh at the start of the new school year. In this way, none of the teachers would acquire any kind of permanence, seniority or salary increase. The money saved through such exploitation would then go for fattened paychecks to the members of the Goldknopf clan.

In addition, Goldknopf had a parallel career as a broker of government grants to the Gerer educational system of which he was an employee. From every grant he hornswoggled for the Gerer school system he took a hefty commission. Conflict of interest? You be the judge.

Not bad for a Hasidic homeboy, as evidenced by his substantial girth and meaty grin.

What Yitzchok Goldknopf snarfs up from his own people should disgust us. But what should really raise our hackles is his successful effort to thwart any meaningful draft of haredi men at a time when our armed forces are woefully understaffed.

We all know that the burden of service is literally crushing tens of thousands of family men who are doing double duty to make up for the absence of their haredi compatriots, if we can even use the term compatriots.

Several days ago, Goldknopf was asked how he can live with the reality that normative Israelis are paying such a steep price while haredim contribute nothing to the effort. His response was “You have your problems, we have ours.”

I think we all owe Mr. Goldknopf a thank you for this moment of  honesty. He finally said, in no uncertain terms, what those of us who are familiar with haredi society have known all along.

He made it very clear that haredim are not a part of Israel, and that they have zero concern for our problems.  He truly spoke like the wicked son of the Passover Haggadah; “to you but not to me … had you been there (at the Exodus) you would not have been redeemed.”

Goldknopf, on behalf of the entire Agudat Israel political entity, declared openly that they are disconnected from the State of Israel; that they want no part in serving the greater society, and consider our problems to be of no concern to them.

Of course, none of this interferes with their “right” to take whatever they can from the society from which they are disconnected. Moreover, they feel morally justified in exploiting the society’s political process for self-serving ends. For make no mistake, haredi participation in government has only one purpose, to protect themselves from having to perform any military service while helping themselves to a generous portion of public resources. In exchange, they provide a rubber stamp (i.e. Knesset votes) for any legislation and policy issues issue that are of no relevance to the haredi community and its lifestyle.

Hence to declare, as Bibi does, that haredi parties are natural partners to a rightwing government is errant nonsense. Haredim would gladly join an Arab government if it were the highest bidder. Indeed, just recently, Rabbi Dov Lando, the supreme leader of a rival haredi political gang, Degel HaTorah, declared that he would PREFER an Arab government.

As a child, during the 1950s, I was raised in the Agudath Israel of America. I attended its synagogues, participated in its youth programs, and spent my summers in its camp.

I recall vividly how an earlier version of Yitzchok Goldknopf – the equally well-fed and well-heeled MK Menachem Porush – would make his annual visit to the States. I remember his relentless exhortations regarding the evil that was the Medinat Israel. How the Zionists were forcibly converting religious children. How the State gave no money for the support of Torah institutions, specifically the Chincuh Atzmai schools of Agudat Israel.

Indeed Porush, almost singlehandedly, poisoned the attitude of rigorously Orthodox American Jewry.

No further proof is needed than  the yeshiva I attended, Torah Vodaath, which was founded in 1908 as a Zionist school. In its earliest years, classes would end on Fridays with the singing of Hatikvah. Its first principal, Rabbi Wolf Gold, would go on to be one of the signatories of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

In 1951, the cover of the Torah Vodaath High School yearbook featured a rendering of Mount Sinal surrounded by an Israeli flag.  Yet, by 1959 the dean of the school demonstratively ripped up a photo of Ben Gurion greeting the Klausenburger Rebbe upon his aliyah to Israel. In the short span of a decade, the Agudath Israel had  succeeded in poisoning and entire community of religious American Jews into haters of Israel.

Then, as now, the Agudah leadership in Israel played a smooth political game, smiling at fellow MKs whom they utterly detested, inviting them to their family celebrations, acting as if they actually cared about the nascent State of Israel even as they shamelessly stabbed it in the back.

We are all programmed to detest the Neturei Karta because of its declared hatred of the Medina. Yet, in truth, Neturei Karta is much better than the Agudah which shares their loathing for the State. However, unlike the Neturei Karta, Agudath Israel has no compunctions about fleecing the State and its citizens. Neturei Karta, at least, has the integrity to refuse any funds or services from the Zionist state. Not so the Agudah which is an enemy of the state but knows how to put on a false façade of friendship. Or at least they did, until Yitzchok Goldknopf finally made it clear: “You have your problems, we have ours.”