Senior Agudah Apikorsim

Dovid Eidensohn

Why I Don’t Recognize Agudas Israel of America

In a previous article on my blog torahhalacha.blogspot.com and elsewhere, I strongly attacked Agudas Israel for two reasons. One, in 1996 two senior rabbis of the Kasho Jewish community commanded me to run for Country Executive, not to win which they did not want, but to fight gays. I received a blessing to succeed in my task from a senior rabbi who just passed away, and entered the fray against a Republican and Democratic candidate. On June 26, 1996 the Journal News newspaper of Lohud, prominent throughout New York, wrote me up on page one with large letters and my picture: Rabbi attacks gay lobby calls it an army of hate. From then on for months I was called for my comments on various matters, including how to fix up a traffic problem. I then called up two major Rosh Yeshivas of Agudas Israel and asked them to help with the war against gays. They both replied with the following words: “You may not fight gays.  To fight gays is an act of hate.” What do they do with the pesukim in Vayikro 18:22 and 20:13 that sodomy is a capital crime? They don’t believe in it. They prefer money from the politicians who back gays. From this I realized that the Chofetz Chaim was no longer in charge of Agudas Israel. These believers that to fight gays is hate and against the Torah are apikorsim.

Recently we had a reply of this even worse. A prominent rabbi who did much to spread Torah and achieved high positions in Agudas Israel of America, was given the choice of succeeding a retiring Assemblyman in the state of Illinois. Yechiel Kalish accepted on the condition that he back gays and other positions of the ultra-liberal retiring Assemblyman. This was backed and not criticized by anyone in the Agudah. I made increasing phone calls for days to the top people of the Agudah including the one who wrote warmly about Kalish, and left emails and phone messages why I was calling, to find out if the Agudah has officially turned away from the Torah to violate passages that Jews recite from the Torah on Yom Kippur. Nobody answered the phone, despite that many people assured me they would return my phone call.

Finally, I called again and got one person very high up in the Agudah and a warm friend of mine in previous years. I explained about Kalish and he said that he spoke to him but that Kalish told him that he had made a mistake and indicated that the Agudah should accept this. I asked the prominent person if he would publicize what he heard from Kalish and he said no because that would make a Chilul HaShem. In other words, if the Agudah ever makes a mistake and the whole world knows about it because it is all of the newspapers, the Agudah must pretend that it never happened.

My response to this and my experience with the Agudah as mentioned before going back many years to 1996 was that not publicizing people who lie about violating the Torah is itself the worst Chilul HaShem. Even though everybody knows that Kalish took the job as Assemblyman only because he had to vote for gays and other anti-Torah things. He had to commit to follow in the path of the Assemblyman who just resigned and had the legal right to appoint the successor.

I myself got a phone call from Kalish and he spoke very nicely to me, not knowing why I asked his office to have him call me. When he began to realize that I was not in his district he began to speak differently especially when I broached the question about backing gays. I understood from him that he does back gays. And if he knows, as I know, that the Agudah has refused to confront him on this other than the one person who asked him and got a lie about his changing his promise, we have no choice but to fault the entire Agudah of the Chofetz Chaim for its silence on Kalish. Of course, the senior Rosh Yeshivas from 1996 who disagreed with two pesukim in Vayikro that sodomo was a capital crime are apikorsim.

Where is the Chofetz Chaim? And why do we fling our criticism at the Agudah alone, when so many people who are Torah Jews refuse to publicly protest the New York State GET Law which allows a forced GET that produces many mamzerim? And why do so very few people protest when  Moshe Heinemann who studied under Reb Aharon Kotler, announceson the Internet that everyone should give money to the organization ORA which has already freed 140 women with forced Gittin from their husband. That produces mamzerim when the woman remarries. And why when Cuomo’s new Democratic government passes new laws on abortion and fetuses that remove the crime of poisoning a woman who wants her baby by poisoning her so that he child dies are so many Torah Jews silent? New York State no longer thinks that a crime of murdering a fetus just about to be born is wrong.

The gemora in Shabbos says that anyone who knows about sins that othera do and is silent, is punished for those peoples’ sins. What hope is there for everybody today?

I know a few people, some of them without money, some of them with health and other problems, who are battling Cuomo tooth and nail. What about the rest of us?