Tension within Israel’s largest hassidic sect reached new heights on Saturday night when clashes broke out between two factions of Gerrer hassidim in Jerusalem for the second night in a row.
Israel Police used various crowd-dispersal methods to break up the crowd. Dozens of riot police were needed to evacuate one of the sect’s leaders from a besieged synagogue.
עימותים אלימים בין חסידי גור לפרושים מהחסידות אירעו גם אתמול בבני ברק ובאשדוד. גורמים בחסידות גור אומרים כי אירועים האחרונים הם תגובה על כך שביום חמישי, אז האדמו"ר מגור ביקר בבית העלמין קרית שאול בקבר חמותו, וחסידים מהקהילה שפרשה קראו קריאות נגדו@AkivaWeisz
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) May 21, 2022
A similar incident occurred on Friday night in Bnei Brak and Ashdod, KAN reported.
העימותים בחסידות גור הלילה באשדוד@pozailov1 צילום: יהודה א' pic.twitter.com/50tNBztrYl
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) May 22, 2022
The Gerrer Hassidic dynasty is Israel’s largest, wealthiest and most influential.
According to the report, the reason for the clashes was a Thursday visit by the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter, to the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv to visit the grave of his mother-in-law, where breakaway sect members clashed with him.
The sect is facing an unprecedented schism that has recently damaged its prestige and power. After several years in which tensions have simmered between Yaakov Alter and his first cousin, Rabbi Shaul Alter, the two have parted ways and now command separate groups of followers.
The rift is a result of a blurring of the line of inheritance within Gur dating back more than half a century. That resulted in Yaakov being appointed grand rabbi in 1996 instead of Shaul, the son of the most recent grand rabbi, Pinchas Menachem.
Although Shaul never disputed his cousin’s leadership of Gur, a concern grew within the court of the current grand rabbi that there could be an inheritance battle when the current 80-year-old grand rabbi dies.
Around a decade ago, the grand rabbi made a dramatic change in the Gerrer educational system. The Talmud in Gerrer yeshivas was to be studied exclusively in a concise fashion, and not in the in-depth style that had been customary until then.
That harmed the stature and prominence of Shaul, who was then dean of the prestigious flagship Gerrer institution, the Sfas Emes Yeshiva in Jerusalem. It eventually led to the closing of the renowned institution in 2016.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.