On video: Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef: If they force us to go to the army, we will all go abroad/use according to Section 27 A of the Copyright Law
"He who withdraws from public ways, even though he has not committed any transgressions, but differs from the community of Israel and does not perform mitzvahs in general (along with the general - K.L.) and does not enter into their hardships and does not suffer in their fasting, but walks his way as one of the Gentiles of the land and as if he is not one of them, he has no part in the world The next" (Rambam, Halchot Tshuva).
On September 15, three weeks before the outbreak of the war, I published a column here that dealt with the recruitment of the ultra-Orthodox to the IDF.
"Why is the religious Zionist leadership disappearing and disappearing in the face of the ultra-Orthodox view?", asked the title of that column, and continued: "Religious Zionism must lead the fight against the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox from military and national service, and make it clear that anyone who chooses not to participate in the mitzvah is a Jew with something incomplete in him."
Since then, at least according to the feeling, a hundred years have passed.
The terrible massacre, the great shock, the shocking images, the shocking testimonies, the difficult war, the many kidnapped and fallen, all these left few of us on the same square where we stood before October 7th.
And in an unimaginable way, and contrary to what it seemed for a few moments, the words of the Shishin Lezion Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef last Shabbat taught us that there are those among us who even the wake-up call that screamed in all of our ears, failed to wake up.
Sahadi in the heights, nothing that will be written here comes from a place of anti-Orthodox sect.
I have great admiration for this community.
The pictures of his young people crowding the midrash houses move me every time.
The place occupied by education in general, and Torah education in particular, in the life of ultra-Orthodox society is, in my eyes, a model to follow.
But even after having said all this, there is an ideological chasm gaping between the ultra-orthodox world and the religious Zionism from which I come.
An abyss that cannot be ignored and that cannot be dismissed as if it were another one of a thousand arguments that occupy us in the routine of our lives here, that can be skipped over as if they were not there.
It is possible to debate the question of how many percent of the members of the national religious public see the religious Zionist party as the representative party of their sector.
It is impossible to argue with the fact that, as of now, she is the only one on the political map that claims this.
Hence, her position on this issue - which deals with a large group, a political partner, that does not see itself as part of the Israel Defense Forces, and uses the Torah of Israel as an excuse for this - is very important.
Yitzhak Yosef/Flash 90, David Cohen, Flash 90
To the credit of the religious Zionist party, it can be said that recently it has been making voices of those who are beginning to understand the depth of the problem.
To her condemnation, it will be said that these voices do not reach the required intensity.
A party that seeks to represent the national religious sector should lead the claim that those who chose not to serve the kingdom cannot be its face anywhere.
Not as a public service official and not as a lawyer, not as a neighborhood rabbi and not as the chief rabbi of Israel.
Because those who serve the state and those who do not serve the state are not on the same level.
with an exclusive discount
The Israeli company that invented hair removers does it again
In collaboration with Epilady
Intermediate: Did they die in vain?
I hear statements from various parts of religious Zionism, as Minister Bezalel Smutritz also expressed himself not long ago, according to which "there is no debate that those who study Torah should continue to study Torah."
Well, there is an argument about that.
And how there is an argument.
After all, if this is the case, how do we treat the students of the Hesder yeshiva?
As someone who doesn't study Torah?
A statement according to which those who study Torah should be exempt from conscription, originates from the thought that studying Torah without an act, in this case an act of saving the people of Israel, is the ideal, and only those who do not live up to this ideal, should enlist.
And he is not.
Our ideal is Safra and Saifa.
Our ideal is the combination of Torah study and practical life.
Our ideal is the picture that you can't stop looking at, of Major General Elisha Levinstern, the 14th, sitting at home in the Gaza Strip, surrounded by the storm, and he, as usual every evening, studies the Rambam daily. How much power there is in pictures of this type that flowed from the war To the social networks. The picture of two fighters, wearing helmets, full-body vests, a Gazan neighborhood under attack in the background, and they are sitting and studying a week's parshah. Or the picture of Miloymanik sitting in one of the destroyed neighborhoods, a Gemara in his hand, busy with the issue on the daily page as if there is no war around. These pictures They are the image of victory. The victory of the spirit. The victory of the deep and ancient Jewish heritage, of those who are not required to decide between the Torah and the sword, but understand that at this time both are needed. I
interviewed Levinstern's widow, I eagerly read the inspiring stories about him , and wonders what the first of Zion, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, imagines for himself, that happened in Beit Din of Ma'ale when this tzaddik arrived there, who left a wife and six children at home, who volunteered for reserve service that he was not obligated to, who between one study and another gave his life for the people of Israel. In my imagination I I see the Almighty arrange the ministering angels in threes, and instruct them to stand in tense silence and receive him, this man whose creation cannot stand between him, in a salute.
And I wonder, as mentioned, what the first of Zion imagines for himself?
Was Levinstern reprimanded there for closing the Gemara and leaving for Gaza?
Didn't he threaten to leave the country if he was called to the reserves?
"Most of the time I am grateful that I was privileged to live with a man who is a true tzaddik," Hadas, the widow, told the journalist who interviewed her, "but do you know what brings me down? Do you know when I start to cry? When I think how much the world has lost the sweet Torah study of Elisha. I'm crying for that."
Do you understand what giants we are talking about?
She loses her husband, the father of her children, and thinks about his Torah study that the world has lost.
Are there temples of Hashem bigger than these?
"Every free minute, even in Gaza," she continued, "he opened a book and studied. His whole essence is Torah. Do you know what I thought a few moments after I was informed? You won't believe it, but I hoped for his sake that he at least managed to finish the daily Rambam .
There was not a single day that he missed the daily Rambam. One day. And now so much will be missing in the world of his Rambam." "We, in the Yeshiva of Meta, did not think that we were supposed to open a branch in the Yeshiva of Ma'ale," Rabbi Haim Wolfson said painfully , the head of the Hesder yeshiva in Yeruham, nine of whose graduates fell in battle, "And here we have a yeshiva of a high standard, and the best of our sons sit in it."
Send the students of the yeshiva to the military funerals, Honorable Chief Rabbi, nowhere else will they receive such lessons in faith, reverence for God, devotion In Netza Israel, how much sanctification God has spread over the heads of all of us in the last months.
How much you loved the people of Israel.
How much you love Torah.
Major Elisha Levinstern was killed in a battle in southern Gaza. December 14, 2023/IDF Spokesman
Rabbi Yosef read Rabbi Dani Isaac's eulogy for his student, Major Maor Lavi, who "with him the Torah was absorbed in his bones, in his soul, and later manifested in life in everything he did." Listen to stories about Major Yedidia Eliyahu, who studied at the yeshiva The Hesder in Safed, about which they said "A man who has a spirit in him, loves Torah and loves work."
On Major General Amichai Oster, who was "an exemplary personality for the values of the Torah, work and love of the people and the country." On Captain Eitan Fish, who was "a leader, with an inner truth, with an identification with the Torah and with the people of Israel, and with a desire to contribute and belong to broad circles that are outside to Beit Midrash." About Sergeant Yekidiya Shinkolevsky, who "loved the connection to the Torah, and loved the connection between manual labor and the spiritual world."
About Sergeant Naran Ashhar, Rabbi of the Seder yeshiva, who insisted on passing a test of lifting shells, in order to to prove that he can enlist even after the recent kidney donation surgery. About Major Ziv Chen, also a graduate of the Seder yeshiva, who left behind a pregnant wife, and whose rabbi said of him that he "adheres to the Torah in all its layers, in study, in prayer, in the worship of God , and in the Gemara".
Go to the words of Rabbi David Turgeman, head of the Hesder yeshiva in Dimona, who himself served already in the First Lebanon War and today sends students and sons to the battlefield, and his son was even wounded in it.
"It is not possible to separate service in the army from studying in yeshiva, because they complement each other."
That's what he said.
A few days ago, Rabbi Tamir Garnot, a bereaved priest, head of the Hesder yeshiva "Orot Shaul", responded to the words of Rabbi Yosef.
"I decided to speak out of respect for the Torah and because of my wife's tears," he began.
"Your honor Rabbi, your words about the recruitment of yeshiva members made my wife cry for 24 hours. And I want to start with the tears of my wife, the mother of Captain Amitai Garnot, who fell in battle against Hezbollah five months ago. Amitai was a 24-year-old yeshiva student. He studied for three years in the yeshiva He enlisted. He was an officer. He very, very much wanted to go back to study in the yeshiva. He really wanted to. He loved the Torah Ehavat Nefesh. No one, Your Honor, forced Amitai to enlist. No decree was passed on him. He went to the army. To be busy In the mitzvot of saving souls. And for the very same reasons, 18 young men from the Ali yeshiva who were killed for the sanctification of Hashem went to enlist in the army, and nine men from the Hesder yeshiva will mourn, and the students of many yeshivas, high and high and preparatory
. Because they really want to keep the Torah.
Because they want a Torah that brings action.
Because they want a Torah that has responsibility and not a Torah that has lawlessness.
And now to the tears of my wife, Avivit, Amitai's mother.
I ask you, Your Honor, in the name of her tears: Amitai was wrong?
Is it in vain that he is now lying under the soil on Mount Herzl?
Should he and all his friends who are lying there with him stay in the yeshiva and leave the dedication of the soul only to the secular?
Or maybe go abroad to study Torah and not enlist? Honorable Rabbi, you should ask for forgiveness from my wife, from my wife's tears, and go up to Mount Herzl and ask for forgiveness from my true self, a yeshiva fellow and a fighter, and from all the righteous and the pure and the saints, the Torah learners who chose to fight, and also from those who don't Torah. Who gave their lives. To leave abroad so as not to fight a mitzvah war?
National mental health supervision?
Your Honor, are we in Russia?
Is the army the tsar's army?
You are the first to Zion, not the first to Brooklyn and not the first to Baghdad, you have responsibility for the people of Israel."
An ultra-Orthodox person in the recruitment/image processing office, Niv Aharonson
On Sunday, I interviewed the CEO of the Ministry of Religion, Yehuda Avidan. "Let's say you're sitting in the Beit Midrash and studying Torah," I asked him, "and suddenly you see from the window a terrorist running and hurting people, what do you do?
Do you continue your studies, or close the Gemara and run to save them?" The blood that was spilled, and to say I'm not moving from here."
And that's exactly the point. No society can tolerate within it a group that for a long time turns a blind eye to the difficulties, to the pains and to the needs of the general, as if none of these concern them. The State of Israel is in one of its difficult times, "L is stretched to the limit, masses of soldiers fall in battle, hundreds of thousands of reservists leave home and work for long months to protect us all, including the ultra-orthodox public, and the fact that none of this makes this group want to lend a hand - is mind-boggling.
the recruitment price
We have all witnessed since the beginning of the week the countless voices of Israelis who heard Rabbi Yosef threaten that his sector will be removed from the country, and respond with "excellent, let them go, goodbye".
And I wonder if Rabbi Yosef and the political leadership of the ultra-Orthodox sector understand how great the tragedy is that they are degenerating us into.
A tragedy where one brother is ready to send another brother away with such joy.
And I'll emphasize, I'm not there.
absolutely not.
I don't want to see the ultra-Orthodox leave here.
they are my brothers
I want them here.
Itai.
Us.
In a place where every Jew should be.
In the land of Israel.
But they need to understand that the rope is stretched to the limit, and it is close to breaking.
And the last thing they should do in this condition of the rope is to pull it further.
And there is something else that needs to be said honestly.
Israeli society as a whole, including the secular, must know that the call to the ultra-Orthodox to mobilize has a price.
That it will be impossible to tell someone who is strict about minor to serious, to be less strict.
We cannot demand from a security service candidate to eat food in the IDF that is less kosher than what he eats at home, and we cannot demand that he deviate in any way from his halachic strictness in yeshiva. Not in joint service with women, and not in anything else. And Israeli society that wants the ultra-orthodox in the army, She needs to understand that this is a price she must pay.
Because this must also be said: the experience of parts of the national religious sector, in these contexts, is a bad experience. The IDF, with the encouragement of politicians and quite a few journalists, made sure to flex their muscles more than once in the face of halachic requirements of national religious soldiers.
More than once we have seen the news broadcasts mocking them when they asked not to listen to women's singing, or when they claimed that their fitness training would not be conducted by a medical school in immodest clothing. In religious Zionism, they often wiped the saliva, and moved on. But whoever wants the ultra-Orthodox in the IDF, let them know that it could not last.
that the ambition must be to get good soldiers and get them out of the army as ultra-Orthodox as they entered, loyal to their customs and strictness.
Otherwise it won't work.
Two important notes before finishing:
1.
We have dealt here exclusively with IDF soldiers who come from the ranks of Torah students, because this issue was addressed by Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. There is no intention here to diminish in any way the contribution of the soldiers who do not frequent the Yeshiva benches or who do not study Torah at all. of mitzvot, none of us have any idea whether a yeshiva student who chose to stay in the beit midrash and studied Torah all his life but chose not to reach out to the people of Israel in their need, is in a higher place than a strictly secular warrior who did not open five days of his life, but left his family and his livelihood and was right to take risks to protect For the lives of all of us here. And this is important to remember.
2.
Many politicians - both for business considerations, and for less business considerations - make sure to repeat that the recruitment of the ultra-Orthodox will come only through dialogue and dialogue and not by coercion. I wish. Nothing will happen. And from this place a decision must be made about what to do. If the ultra-Orthodox leadership wants to be a partner in a move that will move the cart forward, that's good. If not, it is appropriate to think about making decisions without it. One thing is clear. What was, cannot continue to be.
More on the same topic:
Gaza war
War of Iron Swords
recruitment