Communications Minister Disparages Leading Rabbanim at Meeting

A group of leading Rebbes and Rabbanim met Monday with Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel in his office in Yerushalayim to plead with him not to advance reforms he is initiating that would severely damage the kosher telephone system of the Rabbinical Committee for Communication.

Attending the meeting were the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, Harav Yisrael Hager; the Strikover Rebbe; Harav Moshe Tzadkah, Rosh Yeshivat Porat Yosef; Harav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, Rosh Yeshivas Mir; and Harav Reuven Elbaz, Rosh Yeshivat Ohr HaChaim.

The Rabbanim explained the importance of the kosher telephone and the importance of the Rabbinical Committee for Communications. “The reform you want to implement will cause many people from the chareidi sector to possess non-kosher devices and be exposed to the internet and its dangers.”

But Hendel, who didn’t even bother to wear a kippah for the meeting, treated the Gedolim with disrespect. He boasted that he was “the full cart,” and they were burying their “head in the sand.”

“It was obvious that the minister came to disparage the Rabbanim and speak to them as if they were just common people. It is a shame and a disgrace, a bizayon of kavod haTorah,” one of the meeting’s organizers said.

At the end of the meeting, Hendel said that he thinks he is doing “a good deed” by dismantling the Rabbinical Committee for Communications, as well as the reform according to which it will be possible to move a kosher number to a non-kosher number.