The Ultimate Betrayal
Gur Hasidim in Israel are Panicking - Here's Why
Shock in Gur Hasidic community: Secret recording from Rebbe's confidential voicemail line played in court - tens of thousands fear their most intimate confessions are saved and could leak.
During a closed-door hearing in a rabbinical court, a close relative of the Gerrer Rebbe's personal secretary suddenly played a recording of a phone call that clearly came from the community's super-confidential "question line."
That freaked out tens of thousands of Hasidim, because if that call was saved, maybe every single call they've ever left has been recorded too.
For anyone not familiar: Gur Hasidim have this special voicemail line where they can call and leave private voice messages for the Rebbe's trusted secretary, Rabbi Yitzchak Breida. He listens, then passes the questions or issues on to the Rebbe himself. People pour their hearts out on that line, family problems, personal struggles, matchmaking stuff, you name it. It's supposed to be 100% confidential.
So what went down: In a financial dispute being heard at a beit din in Bnei Brak, one side (a relative of Rabbi Breida) was losing the case. They switched lawyers, came back, and then played a recording straight from that secret line to try to turn the ruling around. The judges still ruled against them, but the damage was done.
Word spread like wildfire through the community: if this one call was kept, are all our calls saved somewhere?
Attorney Shlomo Elboim (a former Gur Hasid himself, now on the city council in Bnei Brak) told Haaretz: “I checked with reliable people, this really happened. It’s a massive betrayal of trust. I used that line for personal stuff years ago and now I’m worried my own messages are sitting in some archive waiting to be weaponized against me one day.”
One regular Gur Hasid told the paper: “I feel totally exposed and betrayed. It’s shaken me to the core. We saw Rabbi Breida as the ultimate person we could trust with anything. I really hope this stays an isolated thing.”
Rabbi Breida himself said: “I have no idea if anything is being recorded. I don’t own the phone line, they just gave me the number to use. Nobody talks super-private stuff anyway, just shidduchim and halacha questions… As far as I know, nothing gets saved. This is the first I’m even hearing that recordings might exist.”
The official Gur Hasidic court responded to Haaretz: “We checked: technically it’s impossible to record calls on that line.”Still, the whole community is reeling.