Opinion: Disappointment over Bachurim Celebrating

The WhatsApp groups were silent last night. Even the streets of Bnei Brak were very empty. At first I would have thought it was the morning of Chol Hamoed Pesach.

As a consumer of news who is used to following groups, I found things to be unnaturally quiet last night. I realized that there were no posts for a matter of hours.

I met a friend who told me that he went out for a stroll with his wife in the city of Modiin, and was very disturbed to see Yeshiva Bachurim celebrating. He opened my eyes to the possibility that that's where everyone had disappeared to. "What are you talking about…you have gotta see the pictures they are posting on Facebook, full of charedim barbecuing.

At 2:00 a.m. we received videos of charedim celebrating at Kikar Tzion. Shomu Shamayim!


What can I say? Is this the derech of a bachur yeshiva- to celebrate the Yom Ha'atzmaut events in a mixed crowd?


Unfortunately I have witnessed this trend from up close when a good friend of mine, and alumis of a well-known yeshiva put an Israeli flag on his car and celebrated claiming, "It's accepted today."

And perhaps I am the only one who didn't know about this until now. Maybe charedim have always had these celebrations, and it is only do to the advance of technology that I am now being exposed to these goings on in charedi society.

Either way it's terrible.
I will end with an interesting anecdote: Once the Belzer Rebbe went to Tel Aviv to be menachem avel just before Yom Ha'atzmaut. The Rebbe went out and saw the streets as deserted as if it was Erev Yom Kippur and asked, "Where are the Tel Aviver yidden? They must have gone to the mikvah in advance of the upcoming holiday!"

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!