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Kol Chai Radio held a special interview recently with HaGaon Rav Shlomo Machpud, Zakein Rabbanei Teiman and member of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, who compared today’s religious persecution in Eretz Yisrael to the persecution of Yemenite immigrants in 1949–1950.
Rav Machpud reflected on his youth and spoke painfully about the persecution he personally experienced at Kibbutz Beit HaShita, where he said systematic spiritual persecution took place, including tempting children to be mechallel Shabbos with trips to Haifa in exchange for shoes, and counselors who forced them to hold lit cigarettes on Shabbos. The Rav revealed that his payos, known among Yemenite Jews as “simanim,” were cut off three times.
“In those days, they stole our children, they stole our daughters, and nobody said a word,” HaRav Machpud said, emphasizing that, unlike in the past, today the Chareidi public can defend itself. “Back then, we had no protector. Today, Baruch Hashem, we have a nation of Torah, so it can defend itself.”
HaRav Machpud described the judicial persecution of Lomdei Torah as a comprehensive campaign against the very existence of religion and Torah, aimed at transforming Am Yisrael into a nation like all other nations. HaRav Machpud spoke harshly about Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, saying, “That wicked woman, the attorney general, her decree is worse than Pharaoh’s. Worse than Haman’s.”
HaRav Machupud also spoke harshly about secular culture, comparing people’s behavior to that of animals due to a lack of derech eretz, bar culture, eating without brachos, and excessive involvement in soccer, which he defined as a goyish practice that was forbidden to Jews in Yemen.
The Rav said that he made an official visit last week to Prison 10 to provide chizzuk to the imprisoned bochurim and avreichim there. He described the conditions of the detainees, saying that some are particularly difficult, “especially those who were placed in solitary confinement—they have only a chair and the four walls of a small room.”
The Rav called on the public to sacrifice themselves for Torah and sent a reassuring message to Chareidi mothers worried about their sons being arrested: “No, no. On the contrary. They should be happy that they are being arrested for this. They have sacrificed themselves on behalf of their parents. There is no one like them.”
HaRav Machpud concluded the interview on an optimistic note regarding the future of the Torah world, expressing confidence that Am Yisrael would overcome the current trials just as they had been saved throughout the generations. He called to be mechazeik those who toil in Torah in accordance with the words of the Gemara that four things require chizzuk: Torah, mitzvos, good deeds, and derech eretz.
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
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