Hardly a week goes by that this story doesn't hit me, even though it happened 32 whole years ago. I was then a first-year student at the Great Yeshiva. The days were the long winter days, and one evening, on the <>th of Tevet according to the Hebrew calendar, the night before the tenth fast of Tevet, I left the yeshiva with a friend and we drove into town towards the kosher and fine culinary attraction of those days - the Weissenstern brothers' "Jerusalem Steakhouse" on HaNeviim Street.
It wasn't so acceptable for guys our age, but hunger wasn't acceptable either, and Lent threatened beyond the night of squeezing, and so we went to eat.
From the table next to us in the restaurant, the figure of Rabbi Meir stared out at us. Rabbi Meir was a "small mashgiach" in the yeshiva, and his job was policing and detective tasks after unruly students. As soon as we saw him, everyone involved in Jerusalem got stuck in our throats and we realized that we would be swallowed, and indeed, three days later I was called to report in the morning, after morning prayers, to the home of the Rosh Yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva was a lofty figure who was distant from us. An old man, a great Torah scholar and a member of the Council of Torah Scholars.
First day of Milchan's testimony: Netanyahu enters court // Archive photo: Reuters
I came to him trembling, and when he heard who I was and what I had come for, he began to speak with great emotion and pain, his eyes full of tears: "Like this? Seating guy? On the 10th of Tevet? Restaurant? Like this? Where we got to! Where have we come!" and I stood and heard this lamentation. On the one hand, he touched me with his pain, but on the other hand, I knew the truth, so as soon as he took a breath, I interrupted him and said: "But the Roshiva, it wasn't on 10 Tevet! We did sit in the restaurant, but it wasn't on the 10th of Tevet, it was the evening of 10th of Tevet. We went to eat so we would have the strength to fast."
And the sequel I remember just as if it were today, even though 32 years had passed: "What difference does it make?" he told me. "Yes, ten in Tevet, not ten in Tevet - a yeshiva guy doesn't sit in restaurants."
This beautiful story was my excuse for many bad things I did during those years in the yeshiva, and I also enjoyed telling it with a slight mockery of the rabbi. Later I managed to forgive him, and I realized that there was some kind of overall educational perspective here, and not something specific. Either way, every time there is such an explosion of "let's not let the facts confuse us," I am reminded of the Jerusalem Steakhouse and the Tenth of Tevet.
Nothing
The report published this week on Channel 13 about the court's appeal to the State Prosecutor's Office regarding Prime Minister Netanyahu's Case 4000 should have done something. Not to bring peace to the people and not to end the conflict and not to pass the legal reform by a large majority - but something. Something. A pause in the struggle, the transfer of people and groups from one place to another, some change in the discourse - nothing. Nada. Gornisht. Not a single vote wandered from one group to another.
Not a single article was written under the headline: Recalculating route. Could it be? After all, if it turns out that the right-wing leader is not demonically corrupt, there really is nothing.
After all, even the arguments against the reform are ultimately based on the accusation that someone here is trying to arrange an escape from justice. How come this doesn't happen? That's how it is. Very expected. Facts are for the weak. And a sitting guy doesn't sit in restaurants.
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