Violence Escalates at Elite Fundamentalist B’nai Torah Academy

The Jerusalem Post reports,

Three students were lightly injured when a stun grenade was thrown at the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak Sunday evening.

Magen David Adom medics transported the three to the Tel Hashomer Medical Center, Army Radio reported. They were reportedly suffering from smoke inhalation.

The incident is believed to be the latest flare-up between warring rabbis and their followers in an ongoing power struggle for control of Ponevezh, a training ground for the intellectual elite of the Lithuanian yeshiva world.

Since 2001, when Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach, the legendary and unchallenged head of Ponevezh Yeshiva, passed away, a power struggle has ensued between Markovitz, son- in-law of Rabbi Avraham Kahneman, Ponevezh’s founder, and Eliezer ‘Lazer’ Kahneman, Avraham’s son.

We know that the B’nai Torah are fundamentalists. But still, this is shocking and terribly disappointing. The B’nai Torah have long been the favorite fundamentalists of the moderate secular Jewish left. These were the quiescent Jewish fundamentalists, renowned intellectual Talmudic scholars, known for their distaste of spirituality and mysticism, and dry sense of humor, and not like the Chassidim, whose communities seemed all too tolerant to employing violence in their infighting. Even the elite secular newspapers like the Forward and Haaretz are known to sing the B’nai Torah’s praises, and a respect and preference for their smarts specifically and their brand of Jewish fundamentalism generally is not so infrequently discernable.

What a tragedy that Lithuanian Jewish fundamentalism has become violent at its most prestigious academy. Surely some in the secular far-Left, the religious Left, and the Chassidic world are pointing at you and laughing. They are downing vodka shots at 770. Not only would past Litvish religious leaders mourn this occurrence, but so would even important secular Jewish leaders, like Abe Cahan and Ben Gurion. In our own way, many of us held you in high esteem. You have not just betrayed your principals and your community. You have betrayed the Jewish people in our entirety.

Hat tip: Failed Messiah