Rabbi Ari Fuld wrote to Jewish student press hero Yedidya Gorsetman to say, among other things:
‘I truly believe you are an evil person’ for ‘trying to murder Rav Bina with your pen.’
He also compared Gorsetman to a dead fish and began his missive by saying, “I am not trying to threaten you in any way.” Which is, of course, international code for, “I’m not gonna hurt you, but when Guido shows up, you’ll know who sent him.”
Gorsetman joined Jewish Week Editory Gary Rosenblatt in writing a piece about Rav Aharon Bina, a repugnant fellow who educates abuses young Orthodox American men studying in Israel for a year before college. (Our editorial on the subject, “‘Tough Love’ rabbi or Teflon rabbi?” is over here.)
In today’s edition of Rosenblatt’s weekly Between the Lines column he revealed the letter fatwa from Fuld and also let us know that the comments on the original article are getting rather lengthy:
I urge you to take the time to scroll through and read some of the literally hundreds of comments posted online on our website in response to the Rav Bina article — more than 55 printed pages at last count….”
Anyway, a quick Google search for “Rabbi Ari Fuld” reveals what he teaches at Netiv Aryeh, the yeshiva at the center of this whole fracas: Karate!
By the way, the rest of Fuld’s addled letter, as far as I can piece it together from Rosenblatt’s column:
I don’t know who you are and I am not trying to threaten you in any way…
I see that you are friends on FB with many Netiv guys and hope that they come to their senses and drop you like a dead fish.
Uh, same to you, asshole.
I truly believe you are an evil person [for] trying to murder Rav Bina with you pen.
[Gorsetman, a student at YU and an editor of YU’s newspaper, The Commentator] is not frum [observant]… [and only wrote the article because] you hate the fact that Ravi Bina has such a positive effect on his kids.
You are an evil and immoral individual… [whose intention] wasn’t the safety of the kids but how you can hurt Rav Bina.
Rosenblatt continues to describe the letter:
Rabbi Fuld wrote that he hopes one day Yedidya will have sons who realize how ‘sick and immoral’ their father is and run away to Rav Bina, who will take them in.
So the letter is not only complete repulsive, but completely bizarre as well. Karate chop!
