Why Don’t Charedi Rabbanim Come Out Publicly Against Extremists?

(NOTE: THIS IS A GENERAL ARTICLE NOT ABOUT ANY SPECIFIC NEWS STORY)

The Torah Already Spoke — and the Demand for Press-Conference Condemnations Reveals a Misunderstanding of How Torah Leadership Works, Rests on a Double Standard Applied to No Other Community, and Assumes That Headlines Influence People Who by Definition Reject Rabbinic Authority

Every so often, when a fringe individual in Charedi dress acts outrageously — screaming at someone, burning a flag, vandalizing property — a familiar cry arises: "Where are the Charedi Rabbanim? Why aren't they condemning this publicly? Their silence is complicity."

The demand sounds reasonable to those unfamiliar with how the Torah world functions. It is, on examination, built on a series of mistaken assumptions — about how Torah leadership operates, about who actually represents the Charedi community, about whether public condemnations accomplish anything, and about why this standard is applied to the Charedi world and to virtually no other group.

This article addresses the specific question of public condemnation — a different question from the underlying question of the Charedi attitude toward extremism itself, which we have addressed in a separate dedicated article ("What Is the Charedi View on Extremism?"). Here, the question is narrower: given that the Charedi world rejects extremism, why don't the Gedolim hold the press conferences and issue the public condemnations that the media and the secular establishment demand?

We work through the answer below.

I. The Torah Already Condemned It

The first and most fundamental point: the conduct in question is already condemned, eternally and categorically, by the Torah itself.

If a person throws stones, abuses a fellow Jew, vandalizes property, or desecrates Hashem's Name, the Torah has already ruled on the matter — across the prohibitions of bal tashchis, gezel, ona'as devarim, halbanas panim, and chillul Hashem that we have documented in detail across this series. Mishlei 3:17 — "Deracheha darchei noam v'chol nesivoseha shalom" — has stood for three thousand years. The Rabbanim teach Torah; Torah already answered.

The demand for a fresh public condemnation each time a fringe individual misbehaves implicitly assumes that without a specific press release, the matter is somehow unsettled — as if the Charedi community's position on vandalism or verbal abuse were ambiguous until a Gadol clarified it in a particular news cycle. It is not ambiguous. The position is established, eternal, and known to every member of the community from childhood. The conduct is forbidden. No press conference is required to establish what the Torah established at Sinai.

II. The Double Standard

The demand reveals a double standard applied to the Charedi world and to virtually no other community.

When a secular Jew commits fraud, no one demands that "the secular community" issue a collective condemnation. When a soldier commits a documented abuse, no one demands that the entire IDF command issue a national apology on behalf of all soldiers. When a Religious Zionist "hilltop youth" radical is arrested for violence against Palestinians or against IDF soldiers, no one demands that the Religious Zionist Chief Rabbis hold a press conference disavowing him. When a member of any other religious or ethnic community behaves badly, the broader community is not held collectively responsible and is not required to perform public self-flagellation.

But when a single fringe individual in a black hat behaves disgracefully, the entire Charedi world — two million people — is suddenly expected to grovel, to condemn, to prove that it does not endorse conduct it never endorsed.

Why the double standard? Because the demand is not actually about justice. It is about narrative. The framing assumes Charedi collective guilt as the default — that the community is presumed to support extremism unless it continuously proves otherwise. No other community is treated this way. The Charedi community is not obligated to accept a framework of collective guilt that is applied to no one else.

III. We Are Not Responsible for Those Who Reject Daas Torah

The deepest flaw in the demand is its assumption that the fringe individuals are under the authority of the Gedolim in the first place.

They are not. The defining characteristic of the fringe extremist groups — the Iran-visiting Neturei Karta, the Sikrikim, the disaffected street radicals — is precisely that they reject the authority of the mainstream Gedolei Torah. They do not follow daas Torah. They do not accept the rulings of the Lithuanian or Chassidic or Sephardic mainstream rabbinic leadership. They operate as self-appointed actors outside the framework of rabbinic authority entirely.

This produces a logical absurdity in the demand. The Gedolim are being asked to publicly condemn the conduct of people who already reject the Gedolim's authority. A condemnation from Rabbi Dov Landau or Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch carries no weight with a Sikrik who already considers the mainstream Lithuanian leadership illegitimate. You cannot exercise authority over people who have rejected your authority by issuing statements they have already announced they will ignore.

The mainstream Gedolim exercise real authority over the mainstream Charedi community — which is exactly why that community does not engage in the extremist conduct in the first place. The community that listens to the Gedolim is not the community producing the footage. The community producing the footage is, by definition, the community that does not listen. A public condemnation directed at people who don't recognize the authority of the person condemning them is theater, not leadership.

IV. How Torah Leadership Actually Communicates

The demand for press conferences misunderstands the medium through which Torah leadership operates.

Charedi Gedolim do not lead through Twitter, press releases, viral clips, or televised statements. They lead through the traditional channels of Torah authority: sichos (formal talks), letters (michtavim), halachic rulings (teshuvos), private guidance to individuals and communities, and the direction of the yeshivos and Chassidic courts that shape the community. This is not a failure to communicate. It is a different — and far older — model of communication than the one the media expects.

When the mainstream Gedolim need to communicate a position to the Charedi community, they do so through these channels, and the community receives the message with full clarity. The November 2024 emergency gathering of the Lithuanian Roshei Yeshiva, the published letters of the rabbinic leadership, the documented sichos and rulings — these reach the community far more effectively than any press conference would. The community knows where its leadership stands on extremism, on violence, on chillul Hashem, because the leadership has communicated it through the channels the community actually attends to.

The problem is not that the Gedolim are silent. The problem is that the outside world is not listening to the channels through which they actually speak — and then interprets its own failure to listen as the Gedolim's failure to speak.

When the Gedolim do address these matters — and they do, repeatedly, in their own framework — the documented record is clear. Rav Shach zt"l, in Michtavim u'Maamarim, addressed the danger of fanaticism explicitly and repeatedly, warning that conduct producing revulsion creates a terrible chillul Hashem regardless of what it claims to protest. Rav Shteinman zt"l's entire leadership was, in significant part, a sustained argument for moderation against the extremist tendency — to the point that the Peleg Yerushalmi split from him in 2012 precisely over his moderate posture. The mainstream leadership has spoken on extremism, clearly and consistently, in its own framework. The demand for a different framework — the press conference, the viral condemnation — is a demand that the Gedolim abandon their model of leadership for the media's model.

V. Silence Is Sometimes the Wiser Response

There is a deeper principle at work, rooted in Torah wisdom about when speech helps and when it harms.

Koheles 3:7 teaches: "Eis lachashos v'eis l'daber" — "A time to be silent and a time to speak." The Torah does not treat speech as an unconditional good. There are times when speech clarifies and times when it merely inflames. There are times when a public response accomplishes something and times when it simply feeds a cycle of noise that serves no constructive purpose.

The Gedolim understand that most public "condemnations" do not heal — they inflame. They do not clarify — they generate more controversy. A public condemnation of a fringe extremist accomplishes several counterproductive things simultaneously: it elevates the fringe individual's significance by treating him as worthy of the Gadol's public attention; it accepts the framing that the community bears collective responsibility for him; it generates a new news cycle that keeps the original disgraceful conduct in the public eye longer; and it implicitly concedes the premise that the community's position was unclear until the condemnation was issued.

Dignified silence, in many cases, is the wiser and stronger response. It refuses to elevate the fringe. It refuses the premise of collective guilt. It declines to feed the cycle of noise. It allows the eternal Torah position — already known, already established — to stand on its own without the implication that it needed reaffirmation.

This is not apathy. It is a considered judgment about what actually serves Klal Yisrael and the honor of Torah — the same consequence-weighing framework that Rav Shach articulated regarding all public Charedi conduct: will this action bring Jews closer to Torah or push them away? Will it clarify or inflame? Will it heal or wound?

VI. Would a Headline Change a Fanatic?

There is, finally, a simple practical reality that the demand for condemnations ignores entirely.

If a person is radical enough to scream at a police officer, burn a dumpster, or embrace the enemies of the Jewish people, does anyone seriously believe that a public letter from a Gadol would stop him?

He was not listening to the Gedolim before he acted. He will not listen to them after. Extremists, by definition, operate outside the framework of rabbinic authority — that is part of what makes them extremists. The public condemnation that the media demands would have zero effect on the actual behavior of the actual extremists, because the actual extremists have already rejected the authority of the people issuing the condemnation.

The demand, therefore, is revealed as serving no practical purpose with respect to the extremists themselves. Its only function is performative — to satisfy outside observers who want to see the Charedi community publicly humbled, not to actually change the conduct of anyone. The Gedolim, focused on the actual work of leading the community that does listen to them, decline to perform a ritual that would change nothing while conceding much.

VII. What the Charedi World Actually Does About Extremism

The implication that Charedi silence on press conferences means Charedi inaction on extremism is false. The Charedi world has its own internal mechanisms for addressing radicalism — they simply do not take the form of media events.

Rabbanim give direct guidance to their communities through the channels that community attends to. Yeshivos and Chassidic courts establish clear behavioral norms and discipline those who violate them. Families and educators transmit derech eretz, patience, self-control, and responsibility as the foundational character traits of a ben Torah. The communal infrastructure — the schools, the shuls, the kehillah structures — reinforces the standards of dignified Torah conduct continuously, generation after generation.

The result is empirically visible. The overwhelming majority of the Charedi community does not engage in extremism — not because of any particular press conference, but because the internal formation of the community produces Jews who conduct themselves with the dignity that Torah requires. The mechanism works. The fringe that escapes it is a small minority, and it is a minority precisely because the mainstream formation is so effective.

The demand to see this work performed in public — in press conferences and viral condemnations — misunderstands that the actual work happens in the beis medrash, the Chassidic court, the cheder, the home, and the kehillah, continuously and quietly, in the formation of generations of Jews who simply do not behave the way the fringe behaves. That work does not generate headlines. It generates a community.

VIII. The Closing Position

So why don't Charedi Rabbanim come out publicly against extremists?

Because the Torah already condemned the conduct, eternally and categorically, and no press conference is needed to establish what Sinai established. Because the demand rests on a double standard applied to the Charedi world and to no other community. Because the extremists already reject the authority of the Gedolim, making public condemnation directed at them logically futile. Because Torah leadership communicates through its own channels — sichos, letters, rulings, guidance — not through the media's preferred formats. Because silence is often the wiser and stronger response, refusing to elevate the fringe or concede the premise of collective guilt. Because a headline would not change a fanatic who was not listening to begin with. And because the Charedi world addresses extremism through its actual internal mechanisms — the formation of generations of dignified bnei Torah — rather than through performative public events.

This is not weakness. It is confidence. The Charedi community does not need the approval of the New York Times or the validation of Twitter to know what is right. It has Torah. It has a mesorah. It has Gedolim who lead through the channels Torah leadership has always used. And it has the empirical result of all of this: a community of two million Torah-observant Jews who, in overwhelming majority, conduct themselves with exactly the dignity the Torah requires — whatever the fringe minority does, and whatever the media chooses to broadcast.

"Eis lachashos v'eis l'daber" — "a time to be silent and a time to speak." The Gedolim know the difference. They speak when speech serves Klal Yisrael and the honor of Torah, through the channels that reach the community that listens. And they decline to perform, for the benefit of those who want the spectacle, the press-conference condemnations that would change nothing while conceding the false premise that the Charedi world is presumed guilty until it continuously proves otherwise.

The Torah already spoke. We don't need a press conference to repeat what Sinai made eternal.

Sources

The Torah's eternal condemnation of the conduct in question

• Mishlei 3:17 — "Deracheha darchei noam v'chol nesivoseha shalom"
• Devarim 20:19 and Rambam Hilchos Melachim 6:10 — the prohibition of bal tashchis (see "What Is the Charedi View on Damaging Public Property")
• Vayikra 19:11, 25:17 and Bava Metzia 58b–59a — theft, ona'as devarim, and halbanas panim (see "What Is the Charedi View on Calling Israeli Police Officers Nazis")
• Yoma 86a and Rambam Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 5 — the framework of chillul Hashem

The framework of silence and speech

• Koheles 3:7 — "Eis lachashos v'eis l'daber" — a time to be silent and a time to speak
• Talmud Bavli, Megillah 18a — "milah b'sela, mishtuka bi'trein" — "a word is worth a sela, silence is worth two"
• Pirkei Avos 1:17 — Shimon ben Gamliel: "kol yamai gadalti bein hachachamim v'lo matzasi la'guf tov mishtikah" — "all my days I grew up among the Sages, and I found nothing better for the body than silence"
• Talmud Bavli, Pesachim 99a and related sources on the value of measured silence

The documented mainstream leadership framework

• Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach zt"l — Michtavim u'Maamarim — the consequence-weighing framework; warnings against conduct producing chillul Hashem
• Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman zt"l — the documented moderate leadership; the 2012 Peleg Yerushalmi split over his moderate posture
• The November 2024 emergency gathering of the Lithuanian Roshei Yeshiva (Israel National News) — an example of how the leadership actually communicates major positions
• The traditional channels of Torah leadership: sichos, michtavim, teshuvos, private guidance

The fringe groups that reject Daas Torah

• The Iran-visiting Neturei Karta faction (see "What Is the Charedi View on Neturei Karta and Iran")
• The Sikrikim and street radicals (see "What Is the Charedi View on Damaging Public Property")
• The 2012 Peleg Yerushalmi split from mainstream Lithuanian leadership
• The defining characteristic: rejection of mainstream Gedolei Torah authority

The structural relationship to other articles in this series

• "What Is the Charedi View on Extremism?" — the umbrella treatment of the Charedi rejection of extremism
• "What Is the Charedi View on Damaging Public Property" — the detailed halachic treatment of vandalism
• "What Is the Charedi View on Calling Israeli Police Officers or Soldiers Nazis" — the detailed treatment of verbal extremism
• "What Is the Charedi View on Neturei Karta and Iran" — the most extreme fringe
• "Here's a Thought. Maybe Stop Kidnapping Our Children" — the framework of legitimate response to State injustice