Till death do them part: After top rabbi dies, power struggle blazes at elite Haredi yeshiva
The split at Ponevezh Yeshiva runs so deep that it delayed the head rabbi’s funeral last month, but when it comes to the army, the question is not ‘if’ but ‘how’ to evade the draft
Deutsch’s supporters, led by 77-year-old Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz, who is married to Kahaneman’s sister, insisted that Deutsch’s body be buried in the section of Ponevezh Cemetery reserved for the yeshiva’s most illustrious rabbis.
A secular former judge was called in to mediate.
Retired Jerusalem District Court judge David Cheshin, who was born into a well-connected Haredi family and speaks Yiddish but left religious observance after IDF service, has been serving as mediator in a myriad of conflicts between the two brothers-in-law for three years.
As the recitation of Psalms by tens of thousands of Deutsch’s students, followers and admirers through a vast PA system dragged on, Cheshin called an impromptu Zoom meeting that brought together representatives of the Deutsch family and representatives of Kahaneman and Markovitz in an attempt to reach a compromise that would enable Deutsch’s body to be laid to rest in a dignified manner.
The hatchet was not buried
After over two hours of back-and-forth, Cheshin finally got the sides to agree that Deutsch would be buried in Ponevezh Cemetery, but not in the coveted “Tet” section, but rather in the neighboring “Yud” section.
But even after Cheshin’s ruling and Deutsch’s subsequent burial, the sides remained split over whether or not Deutsch ended up buried in the plot agreed upon in Cheshin’s arbitration decision.
Kahaneman’s camp said in an affidavit written on December 25 that Deutsch’s followers buried him in the Tet section in a stolen plot in direct violation of the agreement.
Markovitz’s camp responded in an affidavit on January 2 that it was Kahaneman who attempted to renege on the arbitration agreement and that Deutsch was buried as stipulated in Cheshin’s ruling.
The bickering escalated during Deutsch’s shiva — the seven days of ritual mourning following burial.
Yeshiva students from Markovitz’s camp hurled metal lecterns at Kahaneman, his son Yosef and members of the Kahaneman camp and used a fire hose to disrupt a Torah lesson, according to Kahaneman’s affidavit, which said that rabbis and students needed medical treatment.
Both sides accused the other of brandishing pepper spray and tear gas during the altercations.
An aide to Markovitz who asked to remain anonymous blamed Yosef Kahaneman for provoking the violence by bragging that Deutsch would soon be disinterred from the “stolen” grave.
The aide condemned the violence, which he said hurt Markovitz’s cause, adding those responsible, if found, would be expelled from Ponevezh.
A former Ponevezh student aligned with Kahaneman who is familiar with the recent turmoil and asked to remain anonymous, denied that Yosef Kahaneman threatened to disinter Deutsch.
Brothers in (not bearing) arms
The newest ignominious chapter in Ponevezh’s long-running power struggle takes place against the backdrop of an unprecedented public outcry over sweeping exemptions from mandatory military service for some 66,000 military-age yeshiva men — some 4,000 of whom at Ponevezh — as the manpower-strapped IDF fights a multi-front war that is the longest in Israel’s history.
Both sides of Ponevezh’s conflict are aware of how media coverage hurts their public image and are particularly concerned about the negative impact on their fundraising efforts, which is a major source of the yeshiva’s budget.
But spokesmen from both sides, convinced of the rightness of their respectful causes, talked not of contrition, but of the proper framing of the conflict so that the worthiest side — their own — is given fair media coverage.
“It’s really bad timing for Rabbi Deutsch to pass away and have this ugly fight come to the public’s attention now,” admitted a spokesman for Kahaneman’s camp. “But what choice did Rabbi Kahaneman have? Should he have given in and let Rabbi Deutsch be buried next to the Rabbi of Ponevezh [Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman] or next to Rabbi David Povarsky in the place reserved for his son, the present dean, Rabbi Baruch Dov Povarsky?”
“It wouldn’t have ended at that. We have 30 years of experience with them. They [Markovitz’s camp] are a problematic bunch who seek out conflict and strife and violence. We can’t give in to them every time,” he said. “Rabbi Kahaneman tried to prevent them from setting precedents in the cemetery so there won’t be fights all the time there too.”
Meanwhile, a Markovitz spokesman said that his camp was battling for the integrity of the yeshiva.
“We are fighting to protect the continuity of Ponevezh Yeshiva as envisioned by its founder [Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman],” said the Markovitz spokesman. “Rabbi Markovitz was the faithful servant of Ponevezh’s former deans Rabbi Elazar Shach, and Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky and its spiritual advisors. He is the torchbearer of their legacy and he is the worthiest to lead Ponevezh.”
A separate peace?
A tense truce now reigns at “Yeshiva Hill,” the name used for the complex of offices, study halls and dormitories where 2,500 unmarried young men aged 18 and up and another 1,500 married men spend as many as 18 hours a day learning Talmud.
During a recent visit to Ponevezh, The Times of Israel saw hundreds of young men enthusiastically debating the intricacies of ancient rabbinic arguments and the myriad commentaries on these debates in Ponevezh’s main study hall, which is adorned by a large and ancient gilded Ark inscribed with the verse from the book of Ezra “To exalt the house of God.”
The hall is split down the middle by an imaginary boundary. Markvotiz’s faithful, known in the Haredi world as “m’chablim,” or terrorists, sit to the left of the Ark, Kahaneman’s followers, called “sonim,” or haters, sit to the right.
M’chablim and sonim also have separate dormitories.
There is little if any day-to-day interaction between the m’chablim and the sonim. Ponevezh has effectively split into two distinct institutes of learning under the same roof using the same buildings.
M’chablim and sonim said they were educated from a young age to identify with their respective camps. Over the course of more than two generations of conflict, the warring sides have set up separate elementary schools, as well as yeshivas for those not accepted to the flagship Ponevezh. There are also separate educational institutions for the females of the respective camps.
Today, said the students, who asked to remain anonymous, there is little if any intermarriage between the sides in order to avoid unnecessary family conflicts — except for “30-year-old bachelors that are desperate to marry.”
Asked to describe their ideological differences, a group of sonim said they had a more tolerant attitude to secular Israeli society while the m’chablim were more extreme.
“They don’t even show up at the IDF induction office to ask for a deferral, while we do,” said one of the students. “They take part in demonstrations against the draft, while we don’t demonstrate, and when secular female tourists visit Ponevezh, the m’chablim scream at them ‘shiksa’ [a pejorative for a non-Jewish woman]. They are more aggressive, but except for a few guys on the fringe they are not violent.”
Meanwhile, members of the m’chablim took pride in the fact that they had no political representation in the Knesset. They said that members of the group did not vote in recent elections.
In the eyes of the m’chablim, Degel HaTorah, a party with seats in the Knesset that represents non-Hassidic, Lithuanian ultra-Orthodoxy, is not zealous enough in its defense of yeshiva students’ right to exemption from military service.
“The Degel representatives that were sent to the Knesset are under too much pressure to compromise, they can’t really fight for maintaining the status quo providing Haredim with exemption from military service, so it’s better not to be there,” said a member of the m’chablim.
Deutsch was a rare combination of erudite scholar and teacher intimately familiar with the vast corpus of Talmud and a charismatic political leader with the moral authority to mobilize tens of thousands.
As a teacher at Ponevezh, Deutsch was known for his intricate Talmudic lessons geared toward Ponevezh’s advanced students during which he would lose track of time and would have to be reminded by students to conclude.
Deutsch was also a pragmatic political leader who co-founded with the late Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach the Bnei Torah political party, also known as the Jerusalem Faction, which split the non-Hassidic Orthodox community and ran in a number of municipal elections.
Bnei Torah continues to lead an uncompromising battle against the drafting of Haredi men, including those not learning in yeshiva. Bnei Torah also has a daily mouthpiece called Hapeles, or Leveler in English, which advances the party’s political agenda — namely, not serving the country.