At the end of tractate Sotah, the Mishnah (9, 15) says that in the days of the Messiah, 'the face of the generation will be like that of the dog' (פני הדור כפני הכלב). Well, if that's a criterion...Consider this.
The present occupant of the position of Ashkenazic chief rabbi, Rabbi Yonah Metzger, will not be indicted for bribery and improper conduct (Whew!). Haaretz reports:
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz decided Monday to close a criminal investigation into Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yoni Metzger but will ask him to resign from his position.Mazuz will not seek an indictment against Metzger for fraud and breach of trust related to a stay in a Jerusalem hotel. Nevertheless, due to findings that emerged during the criminal probe into the affair, Mazuz called on Metzger - who lied to investigators - to resign from his position as chief rabbi....
"Given his flawed conduct, it is only right for Rabbi Metzger to take personal responsibility and decide - on his own accord - to step from his position as rabbinical judge and chief rabbi," Mazuz said. "The continuation of his tenure is liable to seriously hamper the public standing of the chief rabbinate and the main rabbinical court."
Now everybody knows that Metzger should never have been elected in the first place. He was only placed there in order to further humiliate the rabbinate. However, פני הדור כפני הכלב.
Of course, one could argue that the people get what they deserve. Consider this. The former Miss Israel, Linor Abergil is engaged to marry a Christian Basketball player, Sarunas Jasikevicius, who now plays for the Indiana Pacers of the NBA. The papers, the reporters (and the talkback participants) are all agog with joy for Ms Abergil's happiness. Wonderful. The Israeli branja is now totally up to date with American Jewry. They are now applauding, celebrating, swooning over intermarriage and national suicide. Amor gratia amoris.
Truly, a Rahmanus on the Dog...
4 comments:
The continuation of his tenure is liable to seriously hamper the public standing of the chief rabbinate and the main rabbinical court.
What public standing?
"He was only placed there to further humiliate the rabbinate."
This may be possible, and I know there is no love lost between the "establishment" and the Orthodox, but to assume that "they" actually expended so much effort just to humiliate the rabbinate seems a bith farfetched.
Support or evidence?
The papers quote R. Elyashiv as saying that he put Metzger in, knowing that he was woefully unqualified for the job. He did it so that no Zionist Talmid Hakham (like R. Ariel)would get the job and not toe the Haredi line (which now includes forbidding little girls from saying the Mah Nishtanah at the Seder).
R. Bakshi-Doron (and alot of Zionist Rashe Yeshiva) accuse R. Elyashiv of planning to abuse and humiliate the Chief Rabbinate.
Whether that was his original intent, or an unexpected benefit, it was the result.
Metzger is an embaressing, though well coiffed (at best).
I don't disgree with your assessment of the current Chief Rabbi, but I want to note that your description of "embarrasing though well coifed (at best)" could be utilizd to describe a great many members of the Modern Orthodox rabbinate (both within YU circles and without) that are meant to become the corpus with which the state will be "re-judaized".
The fact is that it is the people that need "re-judaizing" that are the ones that liked Metzger. They loved him as Rabbi of North Tel Aviv; they loved it when he showed up on his motorcyle to do their weddings and it didn't really bother them that he did 8 of them in an evening, as long as he showed up at some point in time. A mass re-judaization (i.e. mass kiruv work handled by the modern orthodox) will result in producing even more Metzgers.
I have no idea why the "establishment" went after him. Perhaps after he OK'd the destruction of the Batei Knesset in Gush Katif he's outlived his usefullness (the fact that the rest of the rabbinate went against him on this issue in open rebellion may have had something to do with this) and now having him on the Rabbanut appelate court is more of an embarrassment.
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