Shocking
Torah World in Uproar: “Yated Ne'eman Censors the Gadol Hador; It Has Lost Its Right to Exist”
Despite the wide attention garnered by the video of yeshiva leader Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, who called on followers to attend the mass rally, the Lithuanian Haredi newspaper Yated Ne’eman chose to ignore his words. The decision has sparked fury across the yeshiva world. “Cheap politics has won,” say many yeshiva students. “The paper has lost its legitimacy.”
Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, a leading Lithuanian yeshiva head, spoke Wednesday night about the upcoming “million-person rally,” issuing strong instructions and calling for total participation even at great personal cost. Yet Yated Ne’eman, the flagship paper of the Lithuanian Haredi sector, decided not to publish his statements at all.
An emotional and unusually direct video filmed in his home showed Rabbi Hirsch declaring, “The government must understand, it cannot go on like this. Now we pray, but if that does not succeed, there are other ways.”
He emphasized that the rally’s main purpose was twofold: to pray as a united Jewish people and to demonstrate that “we will not allow this situation to continue.”
However, the following morning, readers opening Yated Ne’eman were shocked. Instead of Rabbi Hirsch’s call, only the remarks of Rabbi Dov Landau, his fellow senior leader and often seen as a rival camp within the Lithuanian world, appeared on the front page.
Outrage quickly spread. Dozens of yeshiva heads and thousands of students expressed anger at what they called “a dangerous act of censorship.”
“They’ve crossed a red line,” one senior rabbi told Kikar HaShabbat. “To ignore the words of a Torah giant for political convenience? That’s beyond disgraceful.”
Meanwhile, students loyal to Rabbi Hirsch have launched an organized email campaign against the paper, sending tens of thousands of messages under the slogan “We will not stay silent.”
Behind the scenes, the controversy ties into a wider power struggle over the leadership of the Lithuanian Torah world and the direction of the anti-draft protests. Sources told Kikar HaShabbat that the two rabbinic courts, those of Rabbis Landau and Hirsch, have clashed for months over how to handle demonstrations and the upcoming rally.
Senior insiders revealed that the current rally was delayed for half a year “just to avoid giving credit” to Rabbi Shalom Ber Sorotzkin, another powerful figure involved in organizing it.
As one source put it: “Instead of unity, ego and control have taken over. This isn’t about Torah or values anymore, it’s about who gets the credit.”
A senior Sephardic source connected to Shas added bitterly: “When Sephardi students were arrested, no one cared. Now that an Ashkenazi yeshiva student was detained, suddenly everyone wakes up. Where’s the fairness?”