No special feature was evident when I arrived this week at the Har Hamor yeshiva in Jerusalem.
The students on the third floor of the large building were busy studying intensively.
A few days after the explosion of the scandal of the sexual offenses of Rabbi Zvi Israel Tau, the president of the yeshiva, and the world in his yeshiva is doing as usual, at least what it looks like from the outside.
Along with the criminal and public questions, the affair flooded one of the most intriguing yeshiva in the religious-nationalist public, which on certain days is perhaps the most significant yeshiva.
A prominent youth movement, pre-military preparatory schools, rabbis and educators who learned from the teachings of the rabbis of the "Mount Mor" teach today in the best institutions of religious Zionism.
This is a secretive, estranged Yeshiva, which until years ago abhorred the media and politics and refused to cooperate of any kind.
The affair floods the depths of religious Zionism, the subtleties, the differences that are hidden within it.
The big question, to which many in the State of Israel do not know the answer, is what is the "Har Hamor" yeshiva?
The dramatic split in the 1990s in the Merkaz Rabbi yeshiva, which tore the ultra-orthodox world in two, the humble beginnings in the Kiryat Menachem neighborhood to the large structure in the Har Homa neighborhood, the attitudes that lead the "Yeshiva HaMoor". The students and graduates of the yeshiva, one of the most famous and magnificent in religious Zionism, filled Their mouths watered when they were asked both about the affair and the school as a whole. In some ways, the yeshiva is even more intriguing than the affair.
"Barizim fell into flames", Rabbi Zvi Tau (archive), photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"The mustard is an attitude of loyalty to the Halacha as it is, without the sophistication," says Yair Shelag, a research associate at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the author of the book "Mustards".
"In the Hordalot style of 'Moor Mountain' one should add an additional shade which is a very strong aspiration for a person to be pure and holy, and his qualities will be above and beyond an ordinary person.
Not to be satisfied with the halakhic layer.
That's why what was revealed about Rabbi Tao is so difficult, because he was always the one who was not content with the standard halachic layer but demanded to be holy."
Although it is a Torah yeshiva, the political aspect of it is prominent and significant.
For many years, the Har Hamor yeshiva advocated secession, but Naftali Bennett's entry into politics and the strengthening of the Jewish Home party at the beginning, along with liberal trends that entered the government at the time, led the yeshiva to come out.
This is how the Noam party was born.
"I have been non-partisan all my life. I have never been dragged, not even in the days of our Rebbe, into anything like that. But something is happening here. A flame has fallen in the cedars. Reality is going crazy and it needs to be brought back to its rightful place," this is how one of the rabbis at the yeshiva explained the current situation.
The full article tomorrow in "Israel this week"
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