On The Quality of Leadership... Or Lack Thereof

You know you've hit a sore point when you make a perfectly reasonable comment on Matzav.com and they don't put it up. :)

Shmuel Miskin put up a "rant" complaining about two things:

1. How the media portray chareidim as "hooligans" because of the hafganot (disturbances/rioting) in Israel. He makes the case that the people doing this are doing it against the wishes of the gedolim and hence, are not chareidi.

I'm not sure I agree with this point, but it's fine... I can understand what he's saying and it's not totally unreasonable. It's the second point he made that I commented on. Here's Rabbi Miskin's comment verbatim:

I’ve read numerous comments made by people online publically questioning why “gedolim haven’t condemned the violence.”

Firstly, the statement is not true. As mentioned, Rav Shternbuch has repeatedly condemned violence. Secondly, as I saw reported here on Matzav.com, the Mirrer rosh yeshiva, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, clearly told his talmidim to stay far away from the hafganos.

But putting that aside, who are we to publically call out gedolei Torah? Who are we to tell the gedolim what they should or shouldn’t publically protest? Such statements are a bizayon haTorah. Our gedolim, our einei ha’eidah, have special yiras Shomayim and special siyata diShmaya. They know when and how to protest or condemn something when the time is right. It takes outright chutzpah for online chareidi writers to question our gedolim and rabbonim, criticizing them, as if the writers are even in the same spiritual stratosphere as these leaders. What a bizayon.

Here's my comment that was not approved by Matzav.com.

Rabbi Miskin,

Leadership is a very funny quality. I can be great at math regardless of how anyone else feels about it. I can be great at learning Gemara regardless of anyone else’s opinion on it. And so on.

Leadership, on the other hand, depends in large part on the opinion and feelings of the people being led. If they feed feel that their leadership is not providing direction and, well… leading, then it could reasonably be argued that the leadership being provided is lacking.

When people “call out” their leaders (be they religious leaders, political leaders, etc.) it is because they feel that their leaders are not providing leadership. That, in and of itself, lends questions to the quality of the leadership.

The Wolf