Unfair And Hypocritical Actions Against Haredim

POLICE OPEN CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION AGAINST BELZ

The police and the State Attorney’s Office have opened a criminal investigation into the Belz Hassidim after Wednesday night’s wedding of a grandson of the Belzer Rebbe, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach. It was attended by thousands of people in contravention of guidelines the police had stipulated.

[…] Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch condemned the wedding, calling it a “health terrorist attack.” 

Criticism was voiced from several quarters against the wedding. Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion accused such critics of hypocrisy, saying mass demonstrations outside the Prime Minister’s Residence have not been met with similar condemnation.

Jerusalem Mayor Lion: 

“Every Thursday and Shabbat there are severe violations,” he said regarding the protests staged outside the Prime Minister’s Residence. “Is the entire Balfour Street area totally free from corona?” “When it comes to a haredi area, then immediately there are headlines and footage,” Lion said. 

Will "Arakta D’Masanta" eventually be applied to the current anti-religious government applying hypocritical strictures upon the religious Jews?

 Arakta D’Masanta (ערקתא דמסנתא, “even to change the strap of a sandal.”). 

This is a special Halachic (Torah law) classification referring to times when a government (historically non-Jewish governments that ruled over the Jews in Israel) made decrees prohibiting in part or in entirety Jewish learning and observance. Under normal circumstances and with very few exceptions, Jews are forbidden from endangering themselves to perform mitzvoth (Torah commandments). When the prohibitions against the observance of the mitzvoth is with the intention of causing the Jews to abandon their faith, Jews are required to reject the anti-Torah decrees for even the smallest and most insignificant detail, such as the changing the strap of a sandal, even at the risk of endangering their lives. (Sanhedrin 74b).  

This classification was used in the second century under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire. It was also declared under the Roman occupation of Israel, and during the Crusades of 1096.  “And there is no greater time of danger than what we are facing at the present,” the rabbis wrote. “Woe to us that such a scourge has arisen in our times.”

Governments using the COVID-19 Trojan Horse to apply unnecessary restrictions upon the Haredim.

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 Photo Credits to Shifra G and Micky Rosenfeld/Police, from rjstreets

and Paris Square from DW