To introduce this I will say that I had heard RBS D was a super Haredi neighborhood, relatively extreme (with some more extreme elements), and that has been my preconceived impression of RBS D, until I actually went there several times and even more so until more recently as I started to hear about some of the communities out there. Sure enough, there are definitely some more mainstream Haredi communities and some extremists elements, but there are also some (and I dont know how many or how much of a percentage they are) of Haredim who call themselves "Modern Haredim" or "Young Haredim" - these are Haredim who seem to not feel bound by the old Haredi style and are somewhat forging their own paths and styles within the Haredi community.
That being said...
An incident recently happened at a shul in RBS D that extended what would likely have been the normal reach of that shul. They had to have known it would.
Briefly, what happened is that a sefer torah was donated to the shul. When they first used it, I think it was at the hachnasat sefer torah near the end of the ceremony, they allowed a woman, someone seemingly connected to the donation of the Torah (I dont know if she was the donor herself or some sort of representative of the donor), to do the glila of the torah - the rolling and tying it closed.
They claimed to have support of one of the local rabbonim, Rav Elimelech Kornfeld, who is also the rav of the shul in some capacity. I have heard that when the criticism started coming in he denied it he had given permission.
So the reason I have not posted about this until now is because until the other day I had not found the actual video of the incident. I had only seen people reference it. I didnt know what actually happened. It was weird, it was unusual and I didnt know what people were exaggerating or being accurate about or whatnot. But I found the original clip the other day and it was posted by the leadership of the shul it happened in on the X (formerly known as Twitter) platform. Here it is:
זאת בית שמש!❣️ pic.twitter.com/ISdL1xkYf9
— יוסי ריינר | Yossi rainer (@yossi_rainer) August 28, 2023
now, I am totally not familiar with this. To me it seemed strange. After I first heard about I tried to find out what happened and I found bits of commentary about it and it seems that halachically there is actually basis for it with some old sources permitting it. That being said I have never seen this happen (in an Orthodox shul) and I would put money down that until now almost none of you reading this will have ever seen this happen until now. So even knowing it is theoretically possible and maybe was occasionally allowed hundreds of years ago, though I have not heard of records of it actually being a regular thing, it still seems strange. That being said, I am all for change that is acceptable within the halachic parameters.
I should note that Rav Moshe Shternbuch, one of the heads of the Eida Hachareidis and a rosh yeshiva in Bet Shemesh and also rav of a community in RBS D, came out, I guess unsurprisingly, against this incident and criticized them strongly, calling them a community that had roots in the Haredi community (ie they are no longer Haredi).
I don't know exactly what is what but I am think my original impression was way off base and RBS D isnt quite as mainstream or extreme as I thought...
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