Religious Zionist students urge their rabbis not to attend rally
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a prominent religious Zionist rabbi, announced on Kol b'Rama radio (a Haredi station) this week that he plans to attend Sunday's mass rally against drafting Haredim.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner told Kol B’Rama radio that he would be
there, saying, “Just like the nation needs an army – that’s obvious –
the nation needs Torah… We can’t hurt one without hurting the other.”
But not everyone in the national religious community agrees.
A group of students wrote a letter urging the rabbis not to attend,
and even warning that they could come to harm due to strong anti-Zionist
sentiment among those present.
The letter, a copy of which reached Arutz Sheva, quoted
several articles from hareidi news sources in which religious-Zionist
rabbis were accused of spreading anti-Torah teachings, of “ruining
everything,” and of being “wicked.”
“Even if the purpose of the prayer rally Sunday were a good one –
please don’t go, because of the danger posed by the herd which is
incited by its leaders,” they wrote.
Similar comments were made by former IDF Chief Rabbi Avichai Ronsky.
“I really find it difficult to understand how there are rabbis, great
Torah scholars, some of them my teachers, who are calling to
participate [in the rally] and even plan to attend,” he said.
“Our moral understanding, our understanding of halakhah [Jewish law],
is that men must enlist in the army. Even Torah scholars – maybe for a
limited period of time, like in the hesder program… That’s our Jewish
and moral understanding,” he declared.
It is clear that the planned hareidi rally will be a protest against
enlisting in the IDF, and not merely a protest against the planned
criminal sanctions, he said. “They call not to enlist in the army, even
for those who aren’t learning [Torah]."
“It’s no secret that many don’t enlist even if they aren’t learning…
The rabbis simply do not want them to enlist, because they want to keep
their community separate from society,” he accused.
He noted that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has promised that no yeshiva students will be sent to jail.
“I call on our entire community not to take part in the protest,
which will call on the hareidi community not to enlist in the army,” he
concluded.
I don't expect to see a lot of knitted kippot (skullcaps) of the national religious community at Sunday's rally. But you never know. When I went to political rallies against Oslo, I always wore my black hat....
Prime Minister Netanyahu has frozen the vote in the Shaked Committee on sanctions against Haredim refusing to join the army, after the Haredim in the committee said that they would vote with the secular parties to 'equalize' army service (by increasing the length of time in the army) for the hesder yeshivas. The hesder yeshivas, which combine army service with Torah study, are a sacred cow of the national religious community.
The drama unfolded during the Committee meeting when MK Eliezer Stern
(HaTnua) requested a revote on whether or not the army service chapter
of the Hesder program, which combines Torah learning with army service,
will be lengthened. Hareidi MKs then stated that they would, indeed,
vote for the service to be lengthened.
One United Torah Judaism MK told Arutz Sheva that the move was in response to Jewish Home, who finally agreed with Yesh Atid Tuesday to allow criminal sanctions to be enacted for hareidi draft-dodgers - albeit with a few caveats. "You push us, we'll push back," the MK fired.
The Prime Minister then allegedly ordered MK Tzahi Hanegbi to leave
the session and not to vote against the Hesder service extension, after
realizing that Yesh Atid and Jewish Home had formed a "deal" to
keep Hesder yeshiva service at the status quo.
At this point, Netanyahu put the vote on hold until internal
conflicts could be worked out within the coalition. It is unclear why
Netanyahu protested the move, as an agreement signed between the Likud
and Jewish Home upon the latter entering the coalition included a clause
ensuring that Hesder army service would remain as it is: at 16 months.
Maybe Netanyahu is still holding out hope that the Haredim will replace Jewish Home in the coalition if the latter leaves over the 'peace process.'
Earlier on Tuesday, in a Facebook post, Jewish Home MK Uri Orbach lashed out at the Haredi parties for 'incitement' against the National Religious community.
"I am surprised to see the gap between Jewish Home's efforts to save
them [the hareidi community] from the 'draft edict,' as they call it,
and the outpouring of hate they respond with in the Knesset and in their
newspapers," Orbach lamented.
...
The MK stressed that Jewish Home "is not looking for gratitude" from
the hareidi sector, per se, "but nearly our entire faction rose up to
try and prevent any single hareidi man from, G-d forbid, being drafted
into the terrible army," he sarcastically noted. "Our faction was
willing to dilute those 'criminal' sanctions until the Messiah comes,
and to take into account the hareidi community's needs as much as
possible."
Orbach lamented that the repayment that the Jewish Home, and the
religious Zionist community, have received for their trouble, has been
to be lumped together with the hareidi community, as the latter are
being sanctioned by the State for refusing to heed the draft order.
"We have paid the price now that the Hesder yeshivas
are facing cuts, because [MK Eliezer] Stern and the secular factions
are apparently despairing on the hareidi draft issue," the MK fired.
"In all our efforts to appease the hareidi community and show that we
care about the Torah learning of the hareidi world (even those who
don't actually sit and learn), we seem to have forgotten that the ideal
is a combination of army learning and Torah study," he added. "That a
man has to provide for his family and also learn Torah. Yes, nonsense
like that."
"They call us the 'Home of Gentiles',
they spit dirt at us about our Rabbis, and we stay silent.,'" the MK
continued, in a Facebook post. "It is difficult for us to fight with
them, they are really unfortunate, and maybe one day they will even
agree with us on the issue of the Land of Israel (ha!)."
"Yes, sometimes politics demands patience and forbearance," he
reflected. "But sometimes we also exaggerate the issues a little."
The Haredim still resent Jewish Home going into the coalition with Yesh Atid under an agreement to keep the Haredim out. Is anyone really surprised at this?
You can study in yeshiva until you're 23... but only if it's a Zionist yeshiva
The Shaked Committee - headed by Ayelet Shaked - passed a law on Tuesday (which still has to pass the full Knesset) that will allow students to remain in yeshiva until age 23... but only if they're in a Zionist yeshiva.
The committee, which is tasked with creating a law on army service
for hareidi men, had decided that hareidi men should be allowed to study
in yeshiva prior to enlisting in the military, but should be required
to enlist by age 21.
Many committee members initially said the age-21 cut-off should apply
universally, meaning that long-term students in Zionist yeshivas would
be required to enlist at the same age. Shaked and others fought that
approach. Nearly all students in Zionist yeshivas do eventually enlist,
they said, and students at pro-enlistment schools should not be punished
for low enlistment rates at other yeshivas.
The students in question are learning about the importance of
enlistment in yeshiva, and therefore do not need the threat of sanctions
to motivate them, they argued.
The committee ultimately voted to accept an alternate proposal
according to which students at Zionist yeshivas will be allowed to delay
enlistment until age 23. A select group of 300 students will be allowed
to postpone enlistment until age 26.
...
A similar arrangement was proposed for hareidi yeshivas as well, despite
the fact that hareidi yeshivas do not encourage students to enlist in
the military. However, hareidi representatives rejected the proposal,
which would have included a commitment for all students to eventually
enlist.
I would tell you that the chances of that standing up to Supreme Court scrutiny are slim to none, but these days, one never knows.
A reminder to all that I am in Boston and therefore posting will go a bit later today (and start again later on Saturday night).
I have often heard that the dispute with the Arabs is the best thing in the world for Israel, because it keeps us from having a civil war with each other.
This is a video of a protester named Moshe (if you can't tell from the accent, he's Russian) at Thursday's Haredi demonstration in Jerusalem against the sudden blocking of yeshiva funding and the arrest of an AWOL yeshiva student.
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.
It's not just the 'Haredi street' that speaks this way. Here's United Torah Judaism MK Yaakov Asher.
Hareidi MK Yaakov Asher (United Torah Judaism) accused Finance Minister Yair Lapid of retroactively canceling the funding for all yeshivas this week to spark protestsbetween
hareidim and police as a political ploy: "he doesn't want us in the
army, he wants hareidi violence on the streets. That gives him
mandates."
...
MK Asher warned of a "long period of pushing the hareidim to the wall that will bring extremism. This is how the 'hilltop youth' phenomenon started when the right-wing felt pushed to the wall."
Unfortunately, Asher is likely correct. More here. Here's the real 'threat' that Yair Lapid is fighting.
The future of the State of Israel lies with those who are committed to
Jewish observance and tradition in some way that can be deemed
significant. This certainly does not mean that all Israelis will be
fully observant, orthodox, or hareidi in the foreseeable future; but
there is no future for those with an exclusively secular ideology.
Nearly one third of all first graders in Israel today are enrolled in Hareidi schools. Close to 60%
of all first graders are enrolled in Hareidi, Hareidi Le’umi
(Nationalist Hareidi), or Dati Le’umi (Religious Zionist) schools. It is
routine for religious/hareidi families to have 6-10 children. It is
rare to find a secular family in Israel with more than one or two.
Sounds like someone is trying to get an early start on a civil war. And for those of you who are dati leumi/Modern Orthodox and think this doesn't affect you (except to the extent that it's about getting the Haredim into the army)... when they're 'done' with the Haredim, you're next.
Rabbi David Lau was elected the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel last Wednesday. Like his Sephardi counterpart, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, Rabbi Lau was tagged as the 'Haredi' candidate for the chief rabbinate, even though he is the son of a former chief rabbi who was known for his inclusiveness both while in the position and since then. The campaign was bitterly fought, with Rabbi David Stav, who is known to be more 'open,' opposing Rabbi Lau. The result left the religious Jewish community in Israel as deeply divided as ever.
Will the divisiveness come to an end over the course of the chief rabbis' ten-year term? Will Rabbi Lau be given a chance to unite despite his black hat and long black coat? In a hopeful sign, Rabbi Lau, who until now was the chief rabbi of Modiin, as mixed a community as exists in Israel, has been invited to address a prominent religious Zionist group. There's just one catch: Those religious Zionists are in America.
But
the RZA chairman said it was time for religious Zionists in Israel and America
to work together with Lau and newly elected Sephardi chief rabbi Yitzhak
Yosef.
“It would have been nice to have Rabbi Stav as chief rabbi, but we
need to embrace Rabbi Lau and move on,” Oliner said.
“Rabbi Lau has not
been welcomed in the Zionist community and it’s a mistake. We will be
welcoming to Rabbi Yosef and Rabbi Lau, who will continue a great
tradition.”
The Rabbinical Council of America, the largest organization
of Orthodox rabbis in North America, issued a statement congratulating Lau and
Yosef on their election, calling them both “accomplished Torah scholars and men
whose ways are those of pleasantness and peace.”
RCA’s president, Rabbi
Leonard Matanky, said his organization “looked forward to working with the new
chief rabbis and welcomed opportunities to learn from them and to share with
them the the RCA’s experiences in engaging Jews, from all backgrounds, in the
eternal conversations of Torah.”
The Orthodox Union wished both chief
rabbis well and expressed the organization’s willingness to cooperate closely
with them as they strive to educate the Jewish people in the values of
Torah.
“We are confident that they will bring their considerable talents
to bear on resolving the pressing problems which confront our people,” the OU
said.
If they did a little checking, Israeli religious Zionists would find that there is much in Rabbi Lau's background to indicate that they will be able to work with him. It's a pity that it's only the Americans who open-minded enough to be willing to take a look. We Israelis have a lot to learn from our American brethren when it comes to working together. Maybe, eventually, the Americans can have some influence on their Israeli counterparts. Ten years is an awfully long time.
Twisting the law of return: Messianic 'rabbi' establishes law firm to help Messianics immigrate to Israel
The former 'spiritual leader' of the largest messianic congregation in the United States has immigrated to Israel and opened a law firm (as a 'foreign lawyer,' which means he doesn't have to be admitted to the bar here) in Petach Tikva to help Messianic 'Jews' to immigrate to Israel under the law of return.
Infamous
U.S. Christian leader "rabbi "Jamie Cowen, who managed to make aliyah
in 2011, has changed his name to Cohen and established the messianic law
firm Cohen, Pex and Brosh, with its main branch in Petach Tikvah.
The Messianic Times reports that the law firm is comprised solely of "dedicated followers of Yeshua the Messiah" but as of this writing, none of that appears on the Cohen, Pex and Brosh website.
Before immigrating to Israel, Jamie Cowen was the charismatic leader of the large Christian messianic congregation, Tikvat Israel, in Richmond Virginia. Dedicated to evangelizing the Jewish people, Cowen served for several years as president of The Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations(UMJC) and is currently listed as a member of the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council.
As mentioned, as of this writing, none of Cowen's "messianic" background information appears on attorney Jamie Cohen's profile, as seen on his firm's website (although there is mention of his studies at a Catholic University and school of theology).
What is featured prominently in the law firm's section under Areas of Practice is "Immigration to Israel":
"All issues of immigration to Israel: Aliyah according to the Law of Return – 1950. Permanent residency. Temporary Residency. Work Visas. Student visas. Tourist visas. Volunteer visas. Clergy visas. International Refugee Law according to the UN convention (Asylum seekers)."
This is of major concern to Jews worldwide but especially in Israel. A number of evangelical/messianic lawyers in Israel have put interpreting the Law of Return to favor messianic Christian aliyah at the top of their agenda, and they are making inroads. In fact, another Israeli messianic law office, the Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ), has recently issued pro-bono advice, which is being widely disseminated online and in email, geared for the throngs of believing Christians who want to make Aliyah. This will be the subject of JewishIsrael’s next report.
A few comments: First, I have nothing against Christians. I have nothing against Christians supporting Israel. I have written dozens of posts defending Christians from persecution. I have a lot against Christians who try to proselytize Jews.
Second, the law of return is meant to facilitate Jewish immigration to Israel - not anyone else's. After all, this is (supposed to be) the only Jewish state in the world. 40 years ago, in what might have been the last chance to enact a specific definition in the law of return of 'Who is a Jew,' the National Religious Party (forerunner of today's 'Jewish Home') asked Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt"l (may the memory of the righteous be a blessing) whether they should insist on adding the word 'k'halacha' to the law of return as a condition to their entering Yitzchak Rabin's first government. He told them that they should not enter the government without that condition. They ignored him (as a teenager growing up in Boston, the story got around quite quickly...). As a result, the law is ambiguous about who is allowed to immigrate to Israel under the law of return, and we are now paying the price (isn't it ironic that even an Orthodox convert to Judaism has to jump through hoops to immigrate here, but Messianic Christians are allowed to immigrate under the law of return?). This is an illustration of why the Haredim argue that you have to listen to your rabbis....
Third, as to my comment about the 'foreign lawyer' designation: For years, lawyers have been pressing the organized bar to allow us to partner with foreign lawyers. Within the last year, the bar, in its infinite wisdom, has allowed foreign lawyers who are not admitted to the bar here to hold themselves out as lawyers. Just like Cowen is doing. Israeli lawyers, on the other hand, are still forbidden to share their fees with 'non-lawyers,' with term lawyer being defined as - you guessed it - anyone who is admitted to the Israeli bar.
Head of National Religious yeshiva decries Justice ministry malice against Haredim
Rabbi Yaakov Medan, one of the Roshei Yeshiva (heads) of the Har Etzion yeshiva, a national religious yeshiva that combines Torah study with army service (hesder) has attacked the Justice ministry for its malice against Haredim. The triggers for the attack are the Attorney General's and the Justice Minister's calls last week for criminalizing discrimination against women. This is from the first link.
Rav Medan explains that the decision to declare these areas of life
illegal is no accident, but “malice”. In his column in the weekly Makor
Rishon the rav states “I posit the attorney general would not take the
same measures against Muslims or Druse which are also careful to
maintain a standard of modesty between men and women. I believe it is
being done against the chareidim davka at this time, because he now
feels the blood of the chareidi tzibur is hefker as a result of
statements from Finance Minister Yair Lapid and his assistant, Mickey
Levi.”
“The attorney general at present permits himself to set guidelines
for people brushing against one another in a line, on a bus or
elsewhere, and this is no mistake – it is malice. Chareidim already view
themselves persecuted for their beliefs vis-à-vis the government, and
they are already entrenched in their homes, and we are now in danger of
losing the achievements, the integration seen to date in the IDF and
society at large.”
Rav Medan adds “We are the ones who should be shouting, not the
chareidim for after they are taken out of the picture we will be next in
line.”
Indeed. Too bad much of the national religious public is so mired in their seats in the government that they cannot recognize what is coming next.
Deja vu all over again: Netanyahu orders 'settlement freeze,' National Religious PartyJewish Home to stay in government
The more things change the more they stay the same. Mr. Flip Flop himself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to a 'settlement freeze.' (His father, who had a highway interchange named after him on Sunday, must be flip-flopping in his grave over his son's fecklessness. Vinegar the son of wine indeed).
And all this just a day after the 'Palestinians' made clear to their fellow Arabs that they aren't budging one inch regardless of what Netanyahu does.
This is from the third link.
The reported freeze came as the country is under international
pressure not to advance West Bank settlement projects, including those
that were direct responses to unilateral Palestinian statehood efforts
at the United Nations, such as the unbuilt area of Ma’aleh Adumim known
as E1.
Army Radio quoted a government clerk as saying "most of the tenders are prepared and ready to be issued at any minute."
While
neither Netanyahu nor Ariel immediately responded to the report, Bayit
Yehudi MK Ayelet Shaked was quoted by Army Radio as saying that "the
Housing and Construction Ministry has prepared tenders that it is
interested in issuing in the West Bank settlement blocs. They require
the prime minister's signature, and for some reason that is not
happening. It's a shame, there are many housing units ready to be
tendered."
Last week, Ariel warned
that Bayit Yehudi would not support the 2013 budget in the Knesset
unless construction projects in West Bank settlements are fully funded.
“I
turned to the prime minister today and warned him that if the 2013
budget doesn’t include full funding for building projects in Judea and
Samaria, including those decided upon in reaction to the Palestinians’
unilateral statehood bid at the United Nations [this past fall] and
additional projects, Bayit Yehudi will consider its coalition agreement
as having been violated, and it won’t support the budget unless a
solution is found for the promised funds,” Ariel said.
International
pressure to freeze settlement building has only grown stronger now that
the Arab League has modified its 2002 peace plan to include minor land
swaps – a move that is seen as a possible prelude to renewed
negotiations.
Palestinians have also told the US that they won’t
attempt to pursue Israel at the International Criminal Court as long as
Israel refrains from moving forward on the E1 project of 3,500 new
Jewish homes.
In other words, the 'Palestinians' are determined to bide their time until some point in the future where they believe that they are strong enough to defeat us, and in the meantime they are attempting the 46-year freeze on the status of the territories liberated from Jordan 46 years ago this week.
So is Netanyahu 'calling their bluff'? How many times does it have to be called before it's enough? What could go wrong?
Here's a letter (link in Hebrew) from the heads of Jerusalem's Yeshivat Har HaMor, a religious Zionist yeshiva, who are very much opposed to the results of the Lapid - Bennett pact for the yeshiva world.
Senior Haredi journalist calls for boycotting the 'territories'
I'm sorry but this goes too far. A senior Haredi journalist who writes for HaModia (the newspaper of Agudath Yisrael, which appears in both Hebrew and English) under a pen name, has suggested that Haredim boycott products of towns in Judea and Samaria.
Gold then moves on to address the economic concerns of the businesses
in yishuvim ['settlements' CiJ], facing a growing boycott of their goods in the
international marketplace, with a growing number of nations unwilling to
purchase goods originating over the Green Line. The continued use of
these products by the chareidim is the “oxygen lifeline” for these
companies, Gold believes, for at home there is no concern regarding the
origin of the product vis-à-vis the Green Line, at least not among the
chareidim. In Tel Aviv for example, the settlers realize they cannot
market their goods. Now if the chareidim decide to launch a boycott
against products from yishuvim or from the dati leumi tzibur [national religious public. CiJ], it will
only be a matter of time until some of these companies fold as a result.
Calling for such a move is not an easy task for much of this
community are persons who are shomer Shabbos and mitzvos [Sabbath observers who keep the commandments. CiJ], and they too
are probably dissatisfied with Bennett, but such a decision should be
made when the serious decisions surrounding the chareidi community are
made.
If such a decision is made, one that has proven itself effective time
after time, even a partial boycott or an unofficial boycott, the impact
would be realized in a very short time period. The organized chareidi
consumer might is known and several large companies can show their scars
from such actions in the past.
Sorry, but this is way overboard. If you want to expose how much it costs the government for keeping each town in place, because the public has a right to know, that might (emphasis might - not would) be justifiable.
If you want to show that the budgets of the national religious yeshivas are no less than those of the Haredi yeshivas that probably would be justifiable.
But to attempt to take economic revenge on an entire public - many of whom probably didn't even vote for Bennett - and to do something that is likely to perpetuate a schism among observant Jews is not something that anyone should take upon themselves lightly, and I believe that 'Gold' has been far too hasty to do so. No Haredi yeshiva has had its budget cut and no Haredi yeshiva boys have been sent to the army against their will. When and if that God forbid happens, we can discuss with the Torah sages how to respond.
I wonder with which rabbi(s) 'Gold' consulted before writing this piece. Since the Haredi world (of which I largely count myself a part) always consults with Daath Torah (Torah authority) before making a significant move (if only...), I think 'Gold' should be asked which rabbi permitted him to suggest such a thing.
Again, on this one, if the comments get out of hand, I will shut them off.
Yair Lapid may have spoken very nicely to that group of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews that I showed you right after the election. But deep down, he's still Tommy's son. And to understand Yair Lapid's real positions, you have to know a little bit about his father, Tommy. This is from a post I did several years ago.
Not everyone has been pleased with the new olim (immigrants). In July
2002, nearly 400 American immigrants arrived in Israel at the height of
the 'Palestinian' war against the Jews. What could be more inspiring to a
country under siege, and in the throes of a long-term recession, than
400 Jews choosing voluntarily to plight their troth to Israel’s future?
These immigrants were not fleeing for their lives, but rather choosing
to enter a war zone. Most of them left behind secure jobs to come to a
country with unemployment at over 10% and rising.
Not
surprisingly, their arrival occasioned a great deal of fanfare. But a
few days before their plane touched down, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
published an article on Beit Shemesh, the planned destination of many
of the immigrants. In that article, then-Shinui leader Tommy Lapid
complained that North American aliyah is overwhelmingly religious. He
added for good measure, "Quite frankly Israel could do without
[religious North American Jews]." (Shinui was an anti-religious Israeli
political party).
Lapid subsequently clarified that he did not
mean to single out religious North American immigrants. In his opinion,
Israel could do without charedi (ultra-Orthodox) immigrants wherever
they come from; indeed it could do without the charedim that were
already here.
Yair seems to feel the same way. He tells Haredim that they've won enough that they can relax their guard and not worry about being assimilated, rails at how much the country spends on religious education, and yet... (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
Lapid declared that his political agenda includes making the Reform and
Conservative movements – both popular in the United States – equal to
orthodox Judaism in terms of state support.
State support? As in money? So that's the agenda - take the money from the Haredi yeshivos and build reform and conservative temples all over the country?
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.
“I want to do everything in my power to ensure the equality between
all movements of Judaism in the state of Israel, Orthodox, Conservative,
or Reform,” he declared. “In conversions, in budgets, in the eyes of
the law. No one can claim ownership over the Jewish God.”
“Small, old, petty politics cannot determine something that is eternal as is the Jewish identity, this is just wrong,” he added.
There are other things that concern Lapid.
He also spoke of his determination to negotiate with the Palestinian
Authority for the creation of an Arab state in Judea and Samaria, a
point that he has previously stated is a key condition to his
partnership in any coalition.
Failure to separate from the Arab population of Judea and Samaria
(Shomron) would mean that Israel ceases to be a Jewish state, he argued.
You will note also that Lapid credits the leaders of organizations who have presided over an intermarriage rate in excess of 50% for 'saving the Jewish identity.' SAVING WHAT????
All of which made me wonder about... Naftali Bennett.
Bennett leads a party that until recently was known as the National Religious Party. That party, now known as Jewish Home, is said to have a pact with Lapid that one will not go into the government without the other. In fact, a short while ago, a free newspaper was delivered to my house in which Shas leader Eli Yishai complains that the pact between Jewish Home and Lapid's Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party is 'stronger than he thought.' Really?
The National Religious Party - the group that sees the State of Israel in religious terms - is going to be a part of overseeing the dismantling of the Chief Rabbinate? The National Religious Party, which for 65 years symbolized the role of Orthodox Judaism in the State is now going to vote for funding for conservative and reform temples? And you wonder why Rabbi Ovadia Yosef had such nasty words for Jewish Home during the election (and yes, I heard people say that they would have voted for Jewish Home but for Rabbi Yosef's command not to)?
And you, Eli Yishai, you didn't understand until now why the non-Haredi public is fed up with paying 70% of its income in taxes to support yeshiva students some of whose heads aren't really so into studying Torah after all? You didn't think that the students who work under the table on the side and who are 'carried on the rolls' of yeshivas without ever being there weren't going to come back to bite us?
I know that's not a fair description of all of the yeshiva students or even a majority of them. Most of them - at least most of the ones with whom I come into contact - are very serious about their studies, but even one who is taking money from the State to support his studies and not studying is one too many and reflects poorly on those who are studying seriously.
And so - Eli Yishai, Naftali Bennett and the MK's of United Torah Judaism (who really do take their orders from their rabbis), can we get together and save our society before we end up with Tommy's plan?
National Religious soldiers demand exemption from events with women singing
They can't say it's just the Haredim who place the Torah above following orders in the IDF (and lest any of you misunderstand I wholly agree with that approach for reasons I will explain at the end of this post). Between 100 and 200 National Religious soldiers, mostly aged between 17 and 20, from a variety of yeshivot have signed a petition saying that they will defer their army enlistment until such time as they are exempted from any ceremonies at which women sing.
A small rebellion broke out in the heart of the national-religious world this week over the issue of women singing in the army. Dozens of pre-army youth from several yeshivot have signed a petition in the past few days vowing not to enlist in the army until religious soldiers are exempted from army ceremonies in which women sing.
The IDF General Staff issued a directive this month obligating all soldiers, religious or otherwise, to be present in all official army ceremonies even if they involve women singing, something generally prohibited by Jewish law.
The petition has been passed between several religious learning institutes. According to Noam, one of the activists behind the petition who spoke with The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, they have gathered between 100-200 signatures thus far, mostly from students currently in yeshivot who have deferred their service, but also from some learning in the hesder program, which combines Torah study with IDF service.
Noam, who was unwilling to give his full name, said most of those who had signed were between the ages of 17 and 20.
“Of late, processes have begun to coercively instruct soldiers to transgress the commandments of the Torah, such as hearing women sing,” the petition says. “We declare that as long as these efforts continue we will not be able to enlist in the army. The commandments of the Creator of the World are more important than the commandments of any man of flesh and blood.”
Jewish law prohibits men from listening to women sing in person, although some religious-Zionist rabbis have ruled recently that it is permissible to attend army ceremonies with women singing since it is done without the intention of enjoying the performance.
Let's stop right there for a minute. I'm going to teach you a little Gemara now, because I believe that some of those rabbis (and when you continue to read the article, every National Religious rabbi quoted seems to disagree with this silent majority) have let the Zionist part get in the way of the religious part.
The Gemara in Tractate Psachim folio 25 talks about someone who must pass by a house of idol worship and smells the incense that the idol worshipers are burning. That smell is what's called issur hana'a - it is forbidden to benefit from it. The Gemara raises four possibilities. If one has a different way of going and nevertheless walks past the house of idol worship with the intent of benefiting from the smell, that is most definitely forbidden. If he has no choice but to walk past the house of idol worship and he has no intention of benefiting from the smell and he does whatever he can to avoid the smell altogether, that is permitted. The question is the two cases in between: If he has no choice but to go past there, but he intends to benefit from the smell, the Gemara says that is forbidden - that's the source for allowing the use of earplugs at the army ceremonies in an attempt to avoid benefiting. And if he has a choice but goes past there anyway without the intention of benefiting, the Chafetz Chaim rules in Klal 6 of his book by the same name that it is forbidden (the Chafetz Chaim discusses this in the context of a rule prohibiting even hearing - let alone accepting or believing - slander, but the rule is the same nonetheless for all things that fall under issur hana'a).
If soldiers in the heat of battle had to walk past women who were singing or who were improperly dressed, and there was no other way to get to the battle, they would be allowed to pass those women so long as they had no intention of benefiting and did all they could in order to avoid benefiting from the singing or improper dress. But if they're not going to a battle and there's no other necessity, it's forbidden to walk past, even without the intention of benefiting from the sounds of the women's voices or from staring at them.
Let's look at this honestly: Is a ceremony with women singing a life or death threat? Is it a military necessity?
Let's go on a little bit more.
Against the background of the petition, the prominent and influential national-religious Dean of the Har Bracha Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, said on the Galei Yisrael radio station Tuesday that religious youth should postpone their enlistment into the IDF until the army finds a way to exempt them from official ceremonies that feature women’s singing.
“It is not possible to reconcile with the decision of the General Staff that obligates soldiers to [listen to] women singing. Therefore [soldiers can] enlist and then refuse orders, or they can stop [their enlistment] as a public protest, until this is fixed.” He said military service is “a religious commandment that cannot be renounced, but that a temporary deferral to fix the current situation is legitimate, since no reconciliation can be made with [religious] coercion.”
The issue exploded within the IDF in September, when nine religious soldiers in the IDF officers training course left an army event in which women were singing due to their religious objections. They refused to return to the performance when instructed to do so by their commanding officer, and four of the cadets were subsequently expelled from the course.
Soldiers from the national-religious sector are heavily over-represented in the IDF ranks, especially in combat units and the officer class, in comparison with the relative size of their total population.
Now I know that there are some of you out there who are saying "this is an army, they're soldiers, they have to follow orders, and you cannot run an army with soldiers who run to their rabbi every time they're given an order to follow to check out whether it's okay by the Torah." And certainly in battle and in many training exercises, there may be occasions when that's true. But even the modern laws of warfare don't absolve a soldier who was 'following orders.' "I was following orders" didn't work at Nuremberg. It didn't work at My-Lai. And to some extent, at least, it's not going to work in front of God after 120 years (the way we refer to death) either (God has a different power of judgment than human beings, and may Choose to Absolve someone who might not deserve it in our judgment). In fact, the IDF itself teaches soldiers to disobey any order that is bilti chuki ba'alil (prima facie illegal). To take an extreme (and thankfully non-existent in the IDF) example, I can guarantee you that no soldier would be let off a court martial because his commander ordered him to gratuitously torture Arab prisoners.
We've talked about the concept of obedience in the army and we've talked about the (lack of) military necessity for ceremonies that include women singing. Those of us who are here are well aware that the political echelon has a history of using the army to meld diverse people into a homogenous group. Inevitably, that has meant a weakening - or abandonment - of religious observance. The first example of this was a meeting between Ben Gurion and the Chazon Ish (which I discussed here) in which - at a time when women did not serve in any Western army - the Chazon Ish offered to send all of the yeshiva boys to the army if the army would be all male. Ben Gurion turned him down. (That meeting is discussed by others here and here).
The army and the government do not have clean hands on anything having to do with religious soldiers in the military. There is a lack of trust - and for good reason. Many religious soldiers will not accept the authority of the army on issues of religion unless they see a clear military necessity. As a result, the army must choose between women singing and satisfying a demographic that is providing a disproportionately high percentage of its officers corps. To me, the choice seems obvious.
Myth: Only National Religious Jews live in Judea and Samaria
If you asked most Israelis, I'll bet they would tell you that most of the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria are National Religious. They'd be wrong.
At the (Hebrew) Eye on Yesha blog, and at the official Yesha Council blog, there's the results of a statistic study on the religious outlook viewpoints of the 340,000 Yesha residents conducted by the Yesha Councill research unit. There are graphs, as well.
For years there were complaints that religious Jewish men avoided serving in the IDF. Now that there are 3,000 Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men in the IDF, that much of the National Religious public is demanding similar religious standards to what the Haredim are demanding, and that an inordinate percentage of the officer corps is religious, secular Israelis - as represented by Haaretz - are reconsidering whether they really want all those religious people in the IDF. I will pass this on with a small excerpt and without further comment.
Orr says he never encountered religious soldiers boycotting events featuring female singers. He certainly never imagined stories such as these, culled randomly from the media this week: about the IDF gradually adopting stricter (kasher lemehadrin ) dietary standards (from the army's weekly Bamahane ); about Rabbi Eli Sadan, head of the pre-military academy in Eli, lecturing about the "dedication and courage" of Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir (Yedioth Ahronoth ); and about the IDF Education Corps' directive that soldiers not attend the annual memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin (Haaretz ).
When it comes to relations between religious and secular soldiers, it seems that indeed, this is no longer the army we used to know. As if we blinked and the army changed.
The IDF's policy with respect to kosher food, drafted by the first IDF rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Goren in the 1950s, was based on the lowest common denominator that could be found between religious and secular soldiers: Each side sacrificed something, but the army's dining halls were open to all. Yet now this situation isn't good enough for the IDF's 3,000 ultra-Orthodox soldiers, and a growing group of Haredi-Zionist soldiers won't accept it either. The army's rabbinate is currently leaning toward accepting these ultra-Orthodox soldiers' demands and toughening kashrut rules, which will require larger budgets.
Of course, the growing number of religious soldiers and officers forces the army to make adjustments; now it has to face an array of issues that did not have to be addressed in the past. Yet some of these changes, particularly those involving women, stem from power struggles between rabbis not affiliated with the army, who compete to make stricter demands of their students in uniform.
November 2011 data from the IDF Manpower Directorate, compiled yesterday, shows that the national-religious school system sends more graduates to combat units than any other educational system. National-religious graduates make up an even larger percentage of combat officers. At time when many secular youths, including those who choose combat units, are content to serve their mandatory three years before returning to civilian life, religious soldiers are being educated to stay in uniform beyond the minimum. Thus, 42 percent of cadets in the most recent infantry officer training course were religious (nine cadets in this course stood trial for boycotting the contentious ceremony with women singers ).
Rabbi Sadan's influence on these soldiers is considerable; some say he has the impact and stature of a major general. In 1988, Sadan established the religious pre-army academy Bnei David in the settlement of Eli - today the country's largest and most important such institution, many of whose graduates go on to command battalions.
IDF commanders not concerned about 'religious radicalism'
We've heard a lot of stories lately about how the IDF is having 'problems' with religious soldiers because of an incident involving women singing. In fact, on Monday, Haaretz (probably the most anti-religious newspaper among the dailies in Israel) reported that 19 commanders had sent a letter to the IDF warning of 'religious radicalism.' But JPost reports that those 19 are unusual and most IDF commanders don't see a problem.
The growing media focus on the story has forced Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz to order the Manpower Directorate to conduct a thorough review of the integration of women in the IDF.
“This is an issue that needs clarification, and until Gantz sets new guidelines the situation will likely get worse,” one officer explained.
The prominence of Orthodox officers in the army has been growing in recent years. In the Golani Brigade, for example, the brigade commander, a colonel, is religious, and out of the seven lieutenant-colonels, all but one are religious.
In the Paratroop Brigade, the situation is vastly different. There, the brigade commander and all but one of the lieutenant-colonels are secular, although all of the deputy battalion commanders – who can be called “battalion commanders to be” – are mostly Orthodox.
Nevertheless, brigade commanders in the IDF are generally dismissive of the claims that the army is undergoing religious radicalization.
Two brigade commanders, in conversations with The Jerusalem Post, said that they believed the phenomenon was marginal and was not indicative of the general religious population in the IDF.
“These appear to be isolated cases,” one brigade commander said last week. “People have to be smart, and that includes rabbis who are educating these soldiers, and commanders who are in charge of them. We have to know what we can do and what we can’t do.”
Another brigade commander said that he did not look under the helmets of his subordinates when considering them for promotions and appointments.
“Soldiers need to be judged according to the way they fight and how they are as leaders,” the brigade commander said.
And the IDF is looking to recruit more ultra-Orthodox soldiers for whom mixing with women is not an issue: There are no women in or near their units.
While the relationship between Orthodox and female soldiers will continue to be examined, the IDF is looking to increase the number of ultra-Orthodox soldiers it recruits. There are currently about 2,000 ultra-Orthodox soldiers in the army, in the Netzah Yehuda Battalion – also known as Nahal Haredi – and in technical positions in the air force, the C4I (command, control, communications, computers, and (military) intelligence) Directorate and Military Intelligence.
That number is expected to grow over the coming year, with plans by Military Intelligence, for example, to reach 1,000 ultra- Orthodox recruits as programmers and computer specialists. The funding for the enlistment of ultra-Orthodox soldiers is provided by the Treasury and is independent of the IDF’s budget.
Shortly after the State was established, its first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, met with Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, popularly known as the Chazon Ish, who was the leader of the ultra-Orthodox community of the time. Karelitz made Ben Gurion a simple offer: If Ben Gurion made the army all male, Rabbi Karelitz would order all the yeshiva boys to serve in the army. Ben Gurion refused, and the rest is history.
Wondering why most Israelis don't think like him anymore, Matt Yglesias claims that Israel is afflicted with 'post-Jewish Zionism' (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The existence of Christian Zionists is, of course, not new. But what is new is that Israeli politics has drifted toward the hawkish right over the past ten years even as Jewish Americans remain on the progressive left. That change in Israeli politics, meanwhile, has been in part driven by a demographic shift away from the kind of secular ashkenazi Jews who predominate in the American population. At the same time, Christian Zionist sentiment has boomed in America and the Palestinian cause has never been less popular among America’s overwhelmingly non-Jewish population.
This is all part of what I’ve called the trend toward post-Jewish Zionism. That’s not to say that there are no Jewish Zionists in the United States (or Canada, etc.) but merely to observe that Jews as such are decreasingly relevant to the politics of Israel. In Europe, too, we’re seeing a boom of far-right parties (True Finns, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, the Danish People’s Party) with strong pro-Israel stands.
But look at whom he is defining as 'post-Jewish.'
Daniel Levy's article on Israeli demographics is also relevant to this. If you're a typical Jewish American, this is quite literally not your father's Israel. The Palestinian, Haredi, "national Orthodox," and Russian immigrant shares of the population have all grown substantially.
While it's true that the Haredi, national Orthodox (by which I assume he means National Religious) and Russian immigrant (by the way, most of whom are not religious and many of whom are not Jewish at all) populations have grown, that does not explain why Israelis have become what Yglesias calls 'hawkish right,' nor does it explain why fewer and fewer Israelis are sympathetic to the 'Palestinian' cause.
The Likud gets very few Haredi votes and probably not a whole lot of National Religious votes or Russian immigrant votes either. What's driven Israel to the right is not changing demographics but changing perceptions of the possibility of peace (without scare quotes) with the 'Palestinians.' Most Israelis have realized the truth over the last 6-11 years (look up those dates): That it's not peace or a state that the 'Palestinians' want. It's that they want to destroy the Jewish state. We won't roll over and play dead for them.
Some people would call that kind of shift democracy.
And by the way, those Haredim and National Religious Jews are more Jewish (in practice) than Yglesias will ever be. I would definitely not call them 'post Jewish.' That's absurd.
Israel's new demographic threat: It might become - GULP! - a Jewish state
Professor Arnon Sofer of the University of Haifa is the biggest fear mongerer over the 'demographic threat' to the State of Israel. Now, Soffer is warning of a new 'demographic threat': The State of Israel might become - GULP! - Jewish by 2030.
The report concludes that by the year 2030, the majority of Israel’s Jewish population will be religious – a reality that could lead to several different results, including an increase in poverty, the annexation of the West Bank settlements and Israel’s deterioration into an anti-democratic country.
The report, which was compiled by Prof. Arnon Soffer, who holds the Reuven Chaikin Chair in Geostrategy at the University of Haifa, also concluded that by 2030, the haredi population will reach more than a million people, which will place an especially high economic burden on the secular population.
“As long as the haredi percentage of the population increases, the economic gaps between the haredi population and the remainder of the population will continue to grow, requiring a greater transfer of funds [from the secular population] to support them.
“Their differential participation in the workforce not only creates a situation of total dependence on the income-earning population, but also inequalities that only continue to grow as well as higher dissatisfaction, bitterness and feelings of suffocation among taxpayers.”
The report, a continuation of Soffer’s 2008 study “Israel: Demography and Density 2007-2020” also finds that the higher haredi birthrate and their increasing demographic weight will strengthen the voting power within their community and the legislative influence of the haredi parties.
“The public agenda, the public square and the cultural aspects of the country stand to all reflect the spirit of the haredi and religious world,” it stated. “Education will become Torah-based, courts will be operated according to Jewish religious law and much of the media will undergo a transformation in which a large amount of the content it broadcasts will disappear.”
The report states that these changes will lead to greater emigration of secular Israelis from the country, further degrading the quality of life in the country.
Soffer is assuming that the current situation - in which most Haredi men study Torah full time into their 40's and 50's and earn practically nothing - will continue. It may or it may not. He also assumes that the national religious public will vote with the Haredim on everything. They may or they may not. He's also making a whole lot of other assumptions about which I could spend an hour writing a post if I had the time to spend an hour on one post. I don't right now.
But here's the bottom line: Soffer is a fear mongerer. He deserves to be ignored. If this really disturbs people who are secular, they have two options: if they're in Israel, they can join the crowd or leave. And if they're abroad and they want to have an impact in Israel, they can move to Israel. No one who is religious here is going to become not religious to satisfy Jewish donors from abroad.
On the scale of things about which this country needs to worry, I'd put an explosion in the number of religious Jews far down the list.
A police officer tried to explain before the Knesset’s Status of Women Committee why they would strip search Jewish religious teenage girls who were arrested at demonstrations in outposts.
"It’s possible that they could have been arrested while in possession of explosives," he said.
About to go out of existence, Newsweek suddenly concerned about religious soldiers in IDF
With Newsweek about to merge with the Daily Beast and go out of existence, it has finally awoken to the reality that the demographics of the IDF officer corps are not from groups that are likely to want to surrender land to 'Palestinians' unnecessarily.
But if a peace deal is ever achieved, it would undoubtedly require the evacuation of at least some settlements—a job for the Army. Some defense analysts and former officers worry that the military’s new religiosity could lead to mass insubordination. “If soldiers decide they don’t want to participate, that’s one thing,” says Mikhael Manekin, a reserve lieutenant who co-chairs the left-wing group Breaking the Silence. “If commanders don’t want to participate, that would be much more worrying.” (Manekin says all his commanding officers were settlers during his four years of active duty.)
The threat isn’t as farfetched as it sounds. Ever since the government demolished the West Bank settlement of Homesh in 2005, former residents have kept trying to establish an illegal outpost there, and authorities have kept sending troops to evict them. A year ago, during swearing-in ceremonies for new recruits of the Shimshon Battalion in Jerusalem, several soldiers unfurled a banner proclaiming: SHIMSHON DOES NOT EVACUATE HOMESH. The military court-martialed the perpetrators, sentenced them to the brig, and expelled them from their unit. But in the weeks that followed, similar signs were displayed at two other units’ training bases.
Although the military publishes little information about the backgrounds of its enlistees, a recent issue of the defense journal Maarachot reported that in recent years some 30 percent of graduates from the infantry officers’ course have defined themselves as “Zionist-religious,” up from only 2.5 percent 20 years ago. (About 12 percent of Israelis in general choose that label.) Many of those fledgling lieutenants, along with a number of higher-ranking combat officers, were drawn from Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and some are residents of outposts—smaller, makeshift settlements—established without authorization from the government.
The mere specter of widespread refusal is enough to make the government think twice before ordering evacuations, whether of settlements or of outposts, says sociologist Yagil Levy, who specializes in military trends. (The threat might explain why most outposts remain standing despite Israel’s promise to dismantle dozens of them under a U.S. initiative back in 2003.) Some analysts have suggested that the police should handle future evacuations, rather than the Army.
The rise within the military of the “knitted skullcaps” has been building for years. In the 1990s, after the controversial first Lebanon war, many liberal Israelis stopped encouraging their kids to go beyond the mandatory three years of national service. “We secular people can only blame ourselves for no longer being able to convince our kids to spend as many years in the military as in the past,” says Avshalom Vilan, a former member of Parliament from the left-wing Meretz Party and a kibbutznik.
At about the same time, more religious Israelis were concluding that their community should have played a larger role in building the country’s secular institutions decades earlier. Embracing military service more fervently was a way to make up for lost time. “The religious community has to be involved in all public institutions, not just the Army,” says Rabbi Eli Sadan, 62, at his home in the settlement of Eli, deep in the West Bank. “That’s the revolution we’re creating.” Sadan oversees one of a string of West Bank pre-military academies where rabbis teach Torah and Jewish philosophy for up to two years while preparing students for military service and imbuing them (this is where some secular Israelis get nervous) with a religious sense of mission. Most graduates forgo the option of serving in strictly religious units, mixing instead with the general population.
Name me another country in the world where the army or police was told to expel people from their homes (in which they were not squatters) so that the homes could be given over to people who wanted to kill them. It's insane.
Yes, the country has shifted right. There are two factors behind that. One is that the new immigrants have been mostly from the Right (both the Russians and the Americans among others), while those who leave are mostly the yefei ha'nefesh (a contemptuous way of saying 'beautiful people' in Hebrew) from the Left. Second, the people have seen what we got for Oslo and the 'withdrawals' from southern Lebanon and Gaza. We have decided we don't want anymore of that.
You won't hear most Israelis worrying too much about the army carrying out its orders. It's a concern of the Leftists - just look whom Newsweek interviewed.
The picture at the top is Rabbi Avichai Ronski, who was the IDF chief rabbi until he was forced out in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead. He had the gall to encourage soldiers to believe they were on a mission from God (which they were).
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
