Rav Gershon Edelstein's legacy of chareidi political caution
IN January, two weeks after Israel’s current government was formed, and a week after new justice minister Yariv Levin announced his judicial reform package at a press conference that sparked a major protest movement, Rav Gershon Edelstein ztz”l asked Degel HaTorah’s MKs to meet with him at his home on Raavad Street in Bnei Brak.
In those heady days after the government’s formation, the Israeli right was still intoxicated at its crushing election victory. The masses had yet to take to the streets, high-tech workers had yet to strike, and right-wing MKs jostled to declare allegiance to the Levin-Rothman clique, in the face of a defeated and disorganized left.
Rav Gershon Edelstein, who was first and foremost a rosh yeshivah and educator for eight decades, would cross-check information with different sources, like every veteran mechanech. And what worked well within the walls of the beis medrash would also work well in the political field, as it had for Rav Shach, who sat on the same hill — the Ponevezh yeshivah in Bnei Brak.
During a conversation with a bochur, Rav Edelstein learned that some Degel HaTorah MKs were giving triumphant interviews in which they declared their allegiance to the Levin-Rothman agenda, while harshly critiquing the High Court.
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