Three years ago there was published in one of the weeklies what appeared to be an interview with HaRav Yisroel Elya Weintraub zt"l. Immediately following the publication HaRav Weintraub published a clarifying letter explaining that two avreichim came to him to talk about issues of mussar and Elul, "and I did not know what was hiding behind their `rabbinical cloak.' ... Publishing my remarks in their tumah served them as a seal of approval indicating the importance and value of their publication. The swine thrust his hoofs out and declared himself to be kosher, while it is clear that anyone who reads these publications puts at risk all his Olam Haba..."
A few weeks later HaRav Weintraub published an additional letter:
"The most serious plague of our generation is the low level of the outside society and the desire to follow them that is within our society have the same motif. That is the desire to undermine the image of the ben Torah with the goal of there being no recognition of the true and pure image of which it can be said, `This is what you should do.'
"... All these weeklies have a common theme. And that is, to lower the value of a ben Torah so that his uniqueness should not be evident and to imply that he is the same as everyone else. Their rish'us has effects and they have caused tremendous damage as we well know. And their sophistication is to include spiritual articles and to thereby draw in others to their foul mouths..."
In the past few weeks we have seen a similar outbreak, with a slightly different effect, in collecting and disseminating various phony accusations and complaints about the letter from HaRav Nissim Karelitz that was published in Yated Ne'eman, all of which were refuted by HaRav Yosef Chaim Kopshitz.
These people are so far from Torah values that they protest that the cannot understand why the gedolei Torah are against them. Don't we, they say, write nice things about them as well? We put in striking pictures of them, and write about how hard they work in Torah (together with articles about 30 successful businessmen... and the like). After all the resources we invest in writing about the Torah world it is ungrateful of them to attack us. So they say.
This degree of self-delusion is a symptom of the influence upon them of a conceit shared by many in the secular media who view themselves cultural and social leaders who can influence and even set priorities and opinions by virtue of their control of their media platform.
