Yated Ne'eman (Israel)
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Founded | 1985 |
| Political alignment | Haredi |
Yated Ne'eman (Hebrew: יתד נאמן) is an Israeli daily Hebrew language newspaper based in Bnei Brak. The Hebrew edition is published daily except on the Jewish Sabbath. A weekly English language edition was published in Israel and distributed in Israel, South Africa and England until December 2006.
An English language newspaper by the same name is published in New York. It was formerly affiliated with the Israeli newspaper but is currently independent. This article concentrates on the Israeli Yated Ne'eman.
Background
The paper was founded in 1985 by Rabbis Elazar Shach (1898–2001) and Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky (1899–1985). In 1988 Rabbi Shach went on to found the Degel HaTorah political party that later joined forces with Agudath Israel and is called United Torah Judaism. The paper was founded as part of a broad initiative to have a full range of social and communal organizations that specifically serve the Lithuanian Torah community, after it was felt that Agudat Israel, its institutions, and their paper Hamodia no longer represented their point of view.
Yated Ne'eman is controlled by its rabbinic board which defers to Rabbi Nissim Karelitz and Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman on all matters pertaining to the content of the newspaper.
In the spirit of Rabbi Shach, its ideology is anti-Zionist, with strong opposition to both religious Zionism as well as secular Zionism. In practice these particular views are reflected in only a handful of articles each year. Most of the content reports news related to the religious community and articles supporting their ideology which is based on Torah study and mitzvah observance and does not define its basic identity in political terms.
Since December 2006, the Dei'ah Vedibur website has continued offering only limited news coverage and occasional religious content in English. The website is edited by Mordecai Plaut.
The Yated Neeman newspaper published in New York was originally affiliated with the Jerusalem paper of the same name, but is no longer affiliated due to a schism.
Anti-Zionism
- "pure viewpoints ... particularly his censure of Zionism ... the honest view of Torah even when he knew that it would invite attacks and condemnation. He was outspoken against evolution, Zionism, ... He demonstrated the dark side and intellectual paucity of the eastern religions, psychology, Islam, Catholic and Protestant Christianity, Zionism, and Communism. ... He was a master at finding the appropriate way to dismiss those who possessed wrong views and show through the veneer of respectability from them. Evolutionists were "theorists"; inventors of other religions, Bible critics, Reform, Maskilim, and Zionists were "falsifiers" "substituters" "imitators" "idolaters" and "usurpers." He explained simply and easily the falseness underlying all these ideologies."
- "Boruch Hashem, there is virtually no heresy nowadays. Before the Second World War, thousands of Yidden veered off the Torah path because of Zionism, Communism and other – "isms." Today Communism and Socialism are no longer thought compelling, while Zionism has become emptied of all content and we hope will disappear completely, be'ezras Hashem."
- "The youth that we encounter on the streets are empty of any spiritual content. They pursue drugs and robbery. They lack any shred of Jewish identity and are targets for missionaries who stalk them. This is what the Zionists have wrought with their decrees against the numerous holy communities, who returned from their countries of exile, where even the simplest among them had been separated from the surrounding gentiles by the Torah's hedge of roses. Let us heed this lesson and reckon what the dangers to ourselves would be, to our spirits and to our educational institutions, Hashem yeracheim, were we to find the State pleasant. We must be on our guard against any new suspicion that this might become the case."
- "HaRav Hakodosh R' Elchonon Wasserman ztvk'l, Hy'd wrote in 5682 (1922), that is, eighty-two years ago, "An Open Letter to the Rabbis of Mizrachi" (published in Der Yid, Warsaw, and reprinted in Kovetz Maamorim veIgoros, p. 210). In it he presents some acute questions: "It is known and clear to us all that the heads and leaders of Zionism are apostates to the hilt and, according to daas Torah, it is forbidden to join them even for holy purposes. If so, explain to me, my worthy friends, where have you found within the Torah any heter to openly, brazenly join forces with them?" .... the core and beginning of their sin lies in the fact that the founders of Zionism "established as their goal to eradicate Hashem's Torah from Jewry." This is the fulcrum of the corruption and damage and distortion. .... The Mizrachi people have become trapped, despite all the warnings, in the terrible error that Zionism is the beginning of a New Judaism. They failed to understand that Zionism is the end of the ancient Judaism, a dead end, as the Zionist writer, Haim Hazaz, himself wrote: "Where Judaism ends – that's where Zionism begins."
- "Any Torah-true Jew who believes in our still being in golus knows that Chazal forbid us to incite other nations. This particular point divides those fearful of Hashem from the heretical movements – the Reform, "Enlightened," and Zionism – that have gained control over the Jewish Nation in current history."
The name
The Hebrew phrase "yated ne'eman" literally refers to a peg strongly anchored in the ground, and is used figuratively to describe a secure connection or something which can be relied upon. The name was supposedly given by Rabbi Kanievsky and comes from Isaiah 22 verse 23, "ותקעתיו יתד, במקום נאמן", translated as "And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place", or as "I will drive him like a peg in a firm place".
References
See also
- List of Israeli newspapers
- Lithuanian Judaism
External links
- Dei'ah veDibur: Yated Ne'eman Bnei Brak online Selected the articles of the Hebrew Israeli edition are published online weekly in translation, refreshed every Wednesday night.
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