ולא תביא תועבה אל ביתך והיית חרם כמהו שקץ תשקצנו ותעב תתעבנו כי חרם הוא ... (ז-כו)
In the summer of 5746 (1986) when the whole of Eretz Yisroel was in an uproar against immodest advertisements of the crudest nature which swept all neighborhoods, the Orthodox camp of G-d-fearing Jews reacted with bitter resentment and protest. They put up a vehement struggle against this ugly phenomenon, to the point of self-sacrifice. One day, a few bachurim from the Chevron Yeshivah went to a nearby bus stop that was plastered with such ads and sprayed them with black paint. The Rosh Yeshivah, R’ Simcha Zissel Broide zt”l, was very upset when he heard about what they had done. Although the bachurim may have believed that they were sanctifying the Name of Heaven by taking this action, R’ Simcha Zissel felt quite the opposite. He held that a ben yeshivah ought to be completely submerged in Torah learning and not become involved in any other concern, however important it might be. Moreover, he said that acts of this nature were harmful to their middos, and that no young man whose mind was really engaged in the Torah could get involved in them.
When the authorities became even more antagonistic, R’ Elazar Menachem Shach zt”l, R’ Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt”l, and R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt”l, wrote an open letter of protest and stated that people were obligated to do their utmost to stop this evil. R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach went out of his way to write a letter, which was published in the newspapers, in which he announced that he was personally going to go out in the streets and remove the shameful pictures with his own hands, even if he was to be arrested and put in jail. So harmful and destructive those ugly ads were!
The authorities, on the other hand, in whose power it was to curb the circulation of those abominable pictures, displayed heartless indifference and, on the contrary, expanded the dispersion of the lewd pictures all over the country, accompanied by powerful propaganda and an unprecedented venomous smear-campaign against what they called “Orthodox violence.” The courts were harsh, meting out steep fines or even prison sentences to anyone brought in on charges of tampering with the ads.
But the more adamant and obstinate the authorities’ attitude became, the more relentless and vehement the public struggle grew. The list of selfless, strong-willed Orthodox activists who took to the streets at the risk of being thrown into prison to remove the lewd ads from the walls and the city buses, was growing longer every day. When the authorities realized they were facing such a strong and angry opposition from the observant public, they retreated. All at once the crude advertisements were removed from the walls of every city and settlement, even the most secular kibbutzim, all over the country.
Seeing that they had lost the battle, the authorities poured out their anger and frustration on two gallant young men who had been the first to step out openly against the nationwide wave of depravity and paved the way for the public struggle that took place afterwards. These two young men had been severely beaten and humiliated by the police, and then they were sentenced to exaggerated prison terms, to be served in horrible conditions. The more the public struggle intensified, the worse their treatment in prison grew. At the peak of the anti-immorality campaign, a large group of Chevron Yeshivah bachurim decided on their own initiative to write an open letter expressing their solidarity and offering moral support to the two young heroes who were rotting away in jail. The letter was signed by three hundred bnei yeshivah on Thursday, the 27th of Iyar and that same evening it was forwarded to the Ramle prison by special messenger.
When R’ Simcha Zissel heard about the letter, his response was different. “With regard to identification with the public struggle, it is incumbent upon every ben Torah, to be personally pained and to lament the degradation of Torah, because it is not any other Jew’s trouble more than his own. A ben Torah who displays an indifferent attitude and is not pained by the humiliation of the Torah shows that he does not fully belong to the holy camp of Israel. A ben Torah must not get actively involved, but at the same time, if he feels totally indifferent and it doesn’t hurt him to see the degradation of Torah, it betrays his own dissociation from it. I was quite pleased when I read that letter - when I saw that in this time of moral degradation and deterioration of values, the bnei yeshivah feel personally involved and pained by it.” (adapted from “Prince of the Kingdom” Feldheim Publishers)