Recently, he issued a claim that there are Israelis who avoid using the plus sign in mathematics (and instead substitute an inverted “T” shape) because it is similar to a Christian cross:

Now, how should one respond to that? In a post that received a huge number of likes, one popular self-appointed hasbara activist drew attention to this video. He responded that Tucker is truly insane and pure evil, and that his claim about the plus sign “is a total 100% lie.”

But actually, while Tucker is indeed truly insane and pure evil, his claim about the plus sign is totally 100% the truth.

Tucker did not claim that all Israelis do not use the plus sign. He specifically said that it was in “some Israeli religious schools.” And this is absolutely true, as people with actual knowledge of Israeli religious schools are well aware. I’ve seen it myself in my own kids’ schoolbooks. (In the earlier days of the State, it was widespread across even non-religious schools.)

And it’s sometimes also found outside of the context of schools:

But claiming otherwise does not just reveal a lack of knowledge of the Israeli religious community that the person has decided to publicly defend (and lives in!). It also demonstrates a lack of interest in doing the easiest thing in the world before making a public claim about Israel. Everyone with even the most basic tech skills can simply ask AI or Google it:

And naturally, this is what Tucker’s fans did, and made an absolute fool of the hasbara activist (who did not retract or respond).

There is a much more truthful and appropriate way to respond to Tucker’s claim: So what?! Yes, there are some Israeli religious schools that stay away from anything resembling a cross, a custom that dates back to Europe when Jews were endlessly persecuted and massacred by people acting in the name of Christianity. This is not something that needs to be hidden and it’s not something particularly significant.

Do you know what’s much, much more significant, if you care about Christianity? It’s how Tucker makes false claims about the collapse of the Christian community in Gaza being the fault of Israel rather than the fault of Hamas. It’s how he regularly ignores the severe, legal, and societal persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority nations like Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Tucker’s beloved Qatar, where church-building is heavily restricted or illegal, and conversion to Christianity is a crime theoretically punishable by death.

The bigger lesson here is something that I’ve been trying to teach for decades. Avoid knee-jerk, tribalist, simplistic reactions. Realize that the facts and the truth might not be the perfect fairy-tale that you imagined when you were a kid. Contemplate, research, and only then react. And then your response will be far more powerful - and truthful.

If you’re not British, you might not have heard of Jason Arday, Britain’s academic superstar, whose work focused on dismantling institutional racism, decolonizing academia, and diversifying representation within higher education. He was the esteemed University of Cambridge’s youngest-ever black professor, at age 37, with dreadlocks down to his waist. He was a television favorite and received several honorary doctorates, all kinds of awards, and important roles in various organizations. He even carried the Olympic torch. And his latest book, a memoir titled Great and Unfortunate Things, was just published by Simon & Shuster, following an advance payment of 1.4 million pounds.

As Professor Arday told it, his life was an extraordinary story of overcoming obstacles and challenges while trying to do good:

• Diagnosed with autism as an infant, he did not speak until he was 12 and could not read or write until he was 18.

• He won professional snooker tournaments at age 10.

• As a child he was beaten by youths into a weeks-long coma, during which medics told his parents to switch off life support. When he later miraculously recovered, he begged the judge to spare his assailants, who later became his students.

• He completed thirty marathons. In 35 days. With a fractured leg for the last eight.

• He raised five million pounds for charity, even before he became famous.

• He installed water points overseas for the needy with the WaterAid charity organization.

• He had a brain tumor while completing his PhD, which was removed just before having to defend his thesis, requiring him to re-learn the material.

• He was threatened by masked men with knives who cornered him at the university - twice.

• A severed pig’s head was sent to his parents’ home to harass and intimidate them.

If this list of challenges and accomplishments sounds unbelievable, that’s because it is unbelievable. Every claim that he made in the list above was a lie. Even his dreadlocks were fake.

This was first suspected by Times Higher Education journalist Jack Grove a few years ago, who also found that much of Arday’s academic work seemed to have been plagiarized. He contacted Arday with questions, whereupon Arday reported Grove for harassment to the Metropolitan Police, who engaged in a four-month investigation and warned Grove to stop. Arday also hired an aggressive law firm specializing in defamation which warned the Times Higher Education that Grove’s inquiries may have been “racially motivated” and intimidated them into dropping the story.

But soon others also started investigating and revealing Arday’s lies and plagiarism. Cambridge responded by describing Arday as the “victim of a vile campaign to undermine his credibility.” (Speaking as someone who has actually been the victim of a vile campaign to undermine my credibility, I don’t think that this is a remotely accurate description of what happened to Arday.) A petition to the same effect, accusing Arday’s critics of racism, gained twenty thousand signatures, including from leading academics and other important figures.

Eventually, as was inevitable, the house of cards collapsed. The lies were just too many, the plagiarism too rampant, the fraud too obvious. It also emerged that students at Cambridge had been complaining that Arday wasn’t actually teaching them anything in class, to no avail. Last week’s British press was full of the revelation that Arday was in fact a fraud.

Arday responded on Friday by killing himself, leaving behind a wife and two children, along with a still-fawning fan base who insist that he was bullied by racists into suicide. I have enormous sympathy for most cases of suicide, but not this one. This was Arday’s final act of doing something that he excelled at: harming others while emotionally manipulating people into thinking that he was a victim. The blame lies with Arday and those who enabled him.

But the story here is not Arday; delusional people and scam artists are two a penny. Nor is it a story about those who exposed him, who were simply doing their job. And nor, contrary to what many are still claiming, is it a story about racism.

Rather, the story here is the rotten state of the academic establishment (and much of the media). They uncritically accepted all his claims, did not care about his lack of ability, hired him at the expense of other candidates, elevated him to the highest levels, had him teach students that had paid a fortune for an excellent education, and attacked anyone who dared question him as being racist, because he perfectly satisfied their desire to show aversion to racism. Even after he was exposed and Cambridge acknowledged that an investigation was required as to how he was hired to begin with, they still insisted - before an investigation had even started - that Arday was an aberration and not reflective of DEI causing a wider problem.

Personally, I found all this oddly reassuring. I used to have great respect for the world of academia. My late father was a brilliant physicist who spent his life in academia, with two doctorates, and had exceptional integrity. My own professors in Jewish Studies at the Jerusalem Lander Institute and Bar-Ilan University were impressive and honest scholars.

As such, after Gaza’s brutal invasion of Israel, when I started researching academic writings on Israel, it was shocking. Article after article, in prominent publications by accomplished academics, condemned Israel, presenting Jews as the eternal oppressors and Palestinians as the eternal victims. The charges seemed to be false, but when so many prestigious scholars are in agreement, it’s only natural (and even important) to question whether perhaps they are indeed correct and it is oneself who is subject to bias. The Arday case superbly illustrates the sham that is modern academia, especially with regard to its ideas about colonialism and victimhood.

When I was preparing my book The Lions Of Zion: Biblical Natural History and the Significance of Israel, half of which is a response to academic delegitimization of Israel, I wrote to the authors and journal editors that I was disputing, pointing out the serious flaws in their work. They dismissed me out of hand, not bothering to respond to my challenges or publish my critiques. (And I found that Israeli and Jewish academics were some of the worst offenders!) One of my goals with the book is not just to dispute specific examples of academic attacks on Israel, but also to demonstrate the broader problems of a false populist ideology that brooks no critique.

The brainwashing and pressures on people, especially young students, to applaud woke values and oppose Israel are immense. We must exert ourselves to counter them.

You can purchase my book The Lions Of Zion on Amazon or preferably from the website store of the Biblical Museum of Natural History. Meanwhile, I am visiting the US later this week for two weeks (first Los Angeles and then NJ/NY), and will be doing some parlor meetings in Teaneck and Lawrence on behalf of the museum; please write to Ellen at advancement@BiblicalNaturalHistory.org if you would like to participate.

I’m not sure whether I was acting on motivations that were journalistic or masochistic, but I subscribed to the WhatsApp announcement group of “Keren Olam HaTorah,” the organization headed by The Gedolim™ that raises funds to maintain the charedi freeloading lifestyle. Here’s a recent post from them, recapping a recent event:

On Thursday evening, June 11, more than 35,000 Yidden gathered in the heart of Lakewood, in the shadow of Beis Medrash Govoha to declare their allegiance to Torah v’lomdeha. At the center of the dais sat HaRav Dov Landau, the delegation of gedolim who joined him on this mission to America to save Torah, and the Beis Medrash Govoha’s roshei yeshiva. Their one resounding message: Tens of thousands of bnei yeshiva and kollel yungeleit in Eretz Yisroel, whose sole aspiration is to sit and learn, are facing crushing financial pressures and unprecedented gezeiros.

The lies embedded in this single paragaph are subtle, and yet simultaneously simply extraordinary in their depth.

First there is the description of their mission being as “to save Torah.” For the sake of argument, let’s even grant that what charedim do in yeshiva and kollel qualifies as learning Torah rather than being an utter perversion of what learning Torah is actually about. This needs to be “saved”? From what?! Pick your absolute “worst case” anti-charedi government scenario and its consequences, and there would still be more Torah being learned, full-time, than at any period in our history up until a generation ago!

Then we have the description of the plight of the poor bnei yeshiva and kollel yungeleit, “whose sole aspiration is to sit and learn.” Well, no, that’s actually not all they want. They also insist upon being financially supported by everyone else rather than supporting themselves and contributing to the economy and national financial needs. (And, of course, they also insist upon being militarily defended by everyone else rather than helping share the responsibility of national defense.)

You’ll hear extremist charedim declare namus v’lo negayes, “We will die rather than enlist!” Strangely, what they don’t offer is a much more straightforward option: “We will renounce financial aid rather than enlist!” And that’s an offer that would widely be accepted!

Everyone knows that nobody is going to actually force charedim into becoming soldiers - there’s no way to do that. All it means, as Bennett has explicitly stated when he talks about “mandatory service for everyone,” is that if you don’t enlist, you don’t get a shekel from the government. Which was, of course, the norm for most of history; no country ever paid Jews to sit and learn. But the modern welfare state of Israel, with charedi political power, has spoiled charedim into thinking that being financially supported by everyone else is a basic right.

And this leads us to Keren Olam HaTorah’s description of “unprecedented gezeiros (oppressive decrees).” These “gezeiros” are simply finally applying some of the same rules to charedim that apply to everyone else! There was a video circulating this week of a charedi father in his thirties bemoaning the oppression of the government no longer providing daycare subsidies merely because he’s a draft-dodger. But that’s not even the reason why! The reason is simply that the point of the country giving money for daycare subsidies is to ensure workforce participation and economic health. You don’t get daycare subsidies in order to not work!

The spoiled sense of entitlement of the charedi world is appalling.

Last week, relatives of four soldiers wounded in Lebanon claimed on social media that the Arab night-shift staff at Rambam hospital mistreated the soldiers. The administration of Rambam hospital flatly denies it. The far-right in Israel is calling for all kinds of measures - having IDF soldiers protect wounded soldiers, having only Jewish medical staff take care of them, etc. It’s creating a storm in Israel, so I thought that this would be a good opportunity to return to a still-relevant topic that I raised several months ago.

In my earlier post, “The Bibiggest Lie In Israel Today,” I exposed the fraudulent claim being constantly pounded out by Bibi, the Likud and his other groupies: that it’s traitorous to vote for Bennett, since he is ready to include Mansour Abbas’s Arab party in a coalition. Now, aside from the fact that Bennett has ruled this out, and that the best way to ensure that there is no pressure for it to happen is to encourage more people to vote for Bennett, what Bibi and co. are not revealing is that Bibi himself was ready to do the same back in 2021. Yinon Magel of Channel 14, Bibi’s most dedicated acolyte, announced at the time that the Right is very much in favor of cooperation with Arabs, and that he personally would like to see Mansour Abbas as a minister! And in order to try to placate the more right-wing religious elements of his coalition, Bibi arranged for the endorsement of R. Shmuel Eliyahu and R. Tau.

But there was a question that I did not discuss in that post. How was this possible? How could Bibi and these prominent right-wing religious rabbis approve of including an Arab party in the government?

The answer is as follows.

Jews often don’t like to think about this fact and its ramifications, but one fifth of Israel’s population - over two million people - are Arabs. Amongst this population, there is a very wide range of attitudes to the Jewish state.

At one end of the spectrum, you have those who are implacably hostile to Israel, like former MK Haneen Zoabi, and even supportive of terrorist attacks against it. At the other end, there are not just Druze, but also Muslim Arabs who serve in the IDF. Lucy Aharish, a prominent Muslim Arab television news anchor, was a powerful voice condemning Hamas and expressing solidarity with the families of fallen soldiers. And, of course, there are people at every level in between these two extremes.

Then there’s the economic factor. Much of the Arab population is very poor, and the community is a net drain on the economy. But it is far, far less of a drain than, say, the charedi community. In addition, there is no ideology of deliberately not working, as there is the charedi community. And especially when it comes to the medical field, Arabs particularly excel - they are fully forty percent of the medical workforce in Israel.

So, what do you do with such a community? While the knee-jerk reaction of many Jews is that “they are all the enemy, we must not ever cooperate with them or help them!” this does not make any sense from a strategic perspective (and arguably not from a Torah/ ethical perspective either). The two million Arab citizens of Israel are not going anywhere. And so the choices available to Israel are as follows: Do we want to influence them to be more like Haneen Zoabi or more like Lucy Aharish? Do we want them to be more economically productive or less economically productive?

Mansour Abbas is not a Zionist. However, he is a revolutionary among leaders of Arab parties. He has rejected the practice that Arab politicians exist to further the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. He has publicly stated in both Hebrew and Arabic speeches that Israel is and will remain a Jewish state (which is more than charedi leaders are willing to do). He seeks funds in order to improve economic growth for Arab society (again in contrast to charedi leaders). And he has spoken in support of national service (also in contrast to charedi leaders).

Again, Mansour Abbas is no Zionist. He has made problematic statements, and elements of his party have been linked with an organization funding Hamas (though then again, there were Jews who saw Hamas as an asset and helped them obtain enormous sources of funding to control Gaza - Bibi and co.) But if you want to understand how Bibi and prominent Religious Zionist rabbis were ready to include Mansour Abbas in the government, this is the explanation.

Now let’s put the topic of political appointments aside and discuss this week’s controversy. Much of the debate is revolving around protecting wounded soldiers from the possibility of maltreatment vs. harming the work environment for Arabic medical staff. But there’s also another issue to consider.

If you want to decrease the number of Arabic medical staff, who are you going to replace them with?! Israel is already facing a severe and worsening shortage of medical workers, lagging significantly behind developed world benchmarks. And nearly half of all practicing doctors in Israel are over 55, with there soon being a mass retirement wave of physicians who originally immigrated from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Meanwhile nearly a fifth (and sharply rising) of Israel’s Jewish population are charedi. And they are not producing any physicians or other professional medical workers, since they don’t teach biology. You get some religious and even charedi baal-teshuva American immigrants who are physicians, but the numbers do not come close to compensating for the number of medical professionals retiring or leaving the country in the past few years.

The knee-jerk tribalists can never see any further than “Jews good, Arabs bad.” But thoughtful people can see that in terms of ideology, economics, and Israel’s long-term well-being and survival, it’s more in Israel’s interests to cooperate with certain Arabs than with certain Jews.

Reminder: I have availability as scholar-in-residence for Shabbos August 28/29. It can be anywhere in North America, since I anyway need to fly across the country. Please be in touch if you're interested!

I’ve covered some pretty strange topics in Jewish anti-rationalism over the years, including sentient pigs, karma chameleons, magical artifacts, and eating pulverized pig’s testicles, but this one might just take the cake.

A page circulating from a sefer by R. Yitzchak Meir Morgenstern quotes R. Dov Landau, top rabbi of the Lithuanian - not chassidic - charedi world. R. Landau raises a question regarding a miraculous account regarding the 18th century founder of the chassidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov (BeShT).

The question stems from a story told recounted by a R. Moshe Wolf, which he heard from a very old man, who in turn had heard an account from another person. When this person once passed by the Besht’s house on the way to synagogue, he could see through the window that the Besht was sitting in his house - but when he reached the synagogue he found that the Besht was there! The person went back to the Besht’s house and looked through the window to double-check, and saw that he was also still in his house! He went back to the shul and back to the house three times, and saw that the Besht was unequivocally in two places at once.

You might think that the resulting question would be “since this is not possible, why would people believe such a thing?” But you’d be wrong.

Read more

Yoeli Landau, the Satmar billionaire tycoon recently featured in Mishpacha Magazine, met this week with the Gerer Rebbe, leader of the largest chassidic movement in Israel and dominant personality on the Council of Torah Sages. He presenting to him a bunch of lies and nonsense about a discriminatory campaign of persecution against charedim. And then he offered a proposal.

They would set up an organization, to which Landau would contribute one million dollars. And the goal of this organization would make a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

So, not only are they not interested in helping at all with the nation’s very difficult war against our Arab enemies, they even want to enlist our European enemies against us.

After all the developments with the charedi world in the last few years - the opposition to even non-learners helping relieve the burden on the reservists, the refusal to help with the war in any way, R. Dov Landau’s statement that it would have been better had Israel not come into existence - I’m not surprised at their anti-Israel behavior. They have separated themselves out into a different nation that is hostile to Israel and doesn’t care about that harm they cause to it. I only have two questions.

Will Mishpacha magazine cover this story - and will they continue to present Landau as some sort of hero?

And will supporters of the current government continue to claim that people such as Yair Lapid, Yair Golan and Mansour Abbas are inconceivable as coalition partners, while happily partnering with those who seek both to weaken Israel domestically and to recruit Israel’s international enemies?

There are breathless news announcements about a huge fight and split between Bibi and the charedim. A “leak” from a high-level closed-door Likud meeting quoted Bibi as saying that under his next government, there will be a full conscription law that meets the IDF’s needs, and charedi draft evaders who aren’t learning will be sent to prison if they refuse to enlist. Meanwhile, charedi MKs are saying that they don’t trust Bibi and are reluctant to join his next coalition.

In fact, it’s all a performance, like professional wrestling. According to some reports, just like professional wrestling, it was actually planned and coordinated in advance.

Bibi is not going to make any attempt to meet the IDF’s needs. He’s going to continue to try to exempt all the charedim and give them billions of shekels. He’s not even pretending to want to draft charedim who are learning Torah; he’s already managed to convince sufficient people that they should legitimately be not only exempt from army service, but also receive vast financial subsidies for their lifestyle. And he won’t make any efforts to draft and punish those who aren’t learning; instead he will ensure that there is no auditing of who is really learning (just like Likud ensured that there is no auditing of which schools are actually giving their students a useful education), and that there are no serious punishments for evaders.

In other words, he’ll continue to do exactly what he’s been working hard at doing all along. This is because he doesn’t have enough support from Zionists and is desperate for charedi political support. And if he manages to form another government, this time without Zionists like Gallant and Edelstein and Ilouz who frustrate his plans, he’ll be even more successful at it.

Meanwhile, for the charedim’s part, they are well aware that nobody will ever offer them as much money and assistance with draft evasion as Bibi and the current government parties do. They will never be partners with anyone else.

So what’s this “public fight” all about? Simple. The charedi blanket opposition to enlistment, along with their refusal to give their children a basic education and their insistence on massive financial support, is deeply problematic even for some of Likud’s voters. And so Bibi has to pretend that he won’t tolerate it any longer, and his charedi partners have to pretend that there is a rift between them. Then, they hope, enough people will vote Likud so that Bibi can continue to enable charedi freeloading.

This is all perfectly obvious, but if you want some supporting evidence, the government just arranged to transfer an additional NIS 267 million ($88 million) for charedi “education.” This includes funds for the Vaad HaYeshivos, an organization that helps arrange for charedim to avoid enlistment, as well as millions for “dropout yeshivos” that exist in order to ensure that charedim who are not interested in learning have other engaging activities and do not enlist. These are not the actions of a government that is interested in meeting the IDF’s needs and enlisting charedim, even those who are not learning.

The fight is all an act. Let’s hope that not too many people are gullible enough to fall for it.

Six months ago, Ben-Gvir announced an idea to build crocodile-filled moats around prisons. At the time, I wrote a post, Crazy Crocodile Cretins, describing how absurd it was. There are vastly more effective ways to stop prisoners from escaping. This is why the thousands of prisons around the world do not use crocodiles.

At the time, Ben-Gvir claimed that he is following the precedent of “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida. But of course if this credulous cretin would have spent a moment looking into it - which I assumed that since then, he did - he would have discovered that Alligator Alcatraz is known by that name simply because it is located in the Florida wetlands that are home to alligators, not because alligators are actually used to prevent escapes!

I thought that this ridiculous idea would simply fade away, but I was wrong. Ben-Gvir proceeded with making it happen.

First, he recruited the assistance of one of the most venal and unintelligent people in the Knesset, MK Idit Silman, who received the position of Minister of Environment from Likud in exchange for defecting from the previous government and causing its collapse. Crocodiles, like all wild animals in Israel, are legally protected, and may only be kept for educational, scientific or conservation purposes, so Idiot Siliman reclassified them as being “managed wildlife.” This in itself is not inherently problematic - crocodiles are not remotely endangered - but they would be very unlikely to be properly managed in the context of stuffing them into a moat around a prison in the desert.

Next, Ben-Gvir redirected 21 million shekels (approximately $7 million) from the National Security Ministry budget to fund the infrastructure and pilot project for this, with the eventual full-scale implementation being even more expensive. The argument was made that in the long run, it would save money by reducing the need for human guards.

This is sheer nonsense. As dangerous as crocodiles can be when hunting for food, they certainly cannot be relied upon to stop people escaping! They are sluggish, cold-blooded reptiles with a very slow metabolism. They do not need to eat particularly often, typically only weekly or monthly in the wild and sometimes going over a year without food.

In the famous scene in Live and Let Die where James Bond runs on top of the backs of crocodiles, the crocodiles were not fake - the stuntman playing Bond really did this! Millions of people go into crocodile-infested rivers in Africa all the time without being attacked. Reducing the number of human guards in favor of crocodiles is going to make it more likely that terrorists will escape, not less likely.

And it’s not even as though Israel has a problem with security prisoners escaping. It only ever happened once, in 2021, with them digging a tunnel. A crocodile-populated moat would be less effective and far more expensive than simply digging a much narrower moat right next to the wall and filling it with concrete!

But here’s where it gets even crazier. The Jerusalem District Court put a temporary hold on the plan due to all the different crazy aspects, including severe concerns regarding animal welfare, a lack of professional feasibility studies, procedural bypasses of legal authorities, and the fact that Ben-Gvir’s analogy to “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida was baseless. And this is what Ben-Gvir responded:

In English, this reads: “Another routine day: again the justice system is on the side of the terrorists and against the Jewish People. This is what the elections will be about.”

What a horrifying claim. If you think that the crocodile idea is a harmful waste of public funds that won’t do anything to bolster security - and there is absolutely no reason to think otherwise - then you’re “on the side of the terrorists.”

Of course, this sort of hateful, nonsensical attribution of nefarious motives rather than the perfectly obvious reasons for someone’s actions is standard for the various parties in the government. For the charedim, if you’re against their blanket refusal to enlist and their insistence on being publicly funded, then you’re “anti-Torah.” For the Likud, if you’re against their negligence, corruption and cooperation with anti-Zionists, you’re a “Leftist.” But I suppose this sort of nasty nonsense works well for rallying the primitive base, and damn the consequences for society.

The crocodile idea is apparently particularly attractive to Ben-Gvir’s base, an audience that is infatuated by braggadocio, chest-thumping, and empty claims about strength, and which doesn’t know much about crocodiles or common sense. People need to be better-educated - including about how wild animals, while potentially unsafe and requiring respect and appropriate behavior, are not nearly as fearsome and dangerous as people imagine.

Which is a perfect segue for me to conclude with a recommendation that if you’re in Israel, come visit the Biblical Museum of Natural History! You can see our ten-foot stuffed crocodile, which was killed after it attacked someone who was behaving irresponsibly with it. And you can learn more about the amazing world of animals and Torah, as well as supporting our work in inspiring and educating people across the spectrum of society, by becoming a Friend of the Museum. Crocodiles might not be particularly effective as prison guards, but they make great teachers, and they need friends!

Thanks to the determined efforts of the charedi rabbis and politicians, a whole bunch of yeshiva students are going to be in the IDF rather than in yeshiva, while another bunch of non-yeshiva students are going to be bumming around rather than being either in the IDF or in yeshiva.

Allow me to explain. My son and his friends from yeshiva are nearing the end of their prescribed service in Lebanon and Gaza, and were very much looking forward to returning to yeshiva and continuing their learning. However, my son just told us that it seems that their service will be extended for another few months. The reason for this is very simple: There are not enough soldiers to protect the country.

Now, of course there are plenty of young men available. You see them all around the country in their white shirts, hanging out, smoking, having fun. Some of them are currently on break from yeshiva, but many of them - estimated in the several tens of thousands - are never even in yeshiva, except on paper. They could enlist, and then my son and his friends could be learning in yeshiva. And for many of these guys, enlisting in frameworks such as Chashmonaim would likely keep them more attached to Torah and mitzvos.

But the Gedolim™ and the charedi political leaders are not interested in making that happen - in fact, they are dead against it. Because it’s not about Torah. It’s not even about keeping people religious. It’s about keeping charedim, all charedim, as part of a sociopolitical entity, the charedi community. But meanwhile of course the Gedolim™ and the charedi political leaders want to keep themselves safe, so they support (including their MKs voting for) the IDF maximizing the enlistment of everyone else.

So the Gedolim™ and the charedi political leaders are keeping thousands of young men, such as my son and his friends, out of yeshiva. Keep that in mind next time you hear them piously and self-righteously talk about the importance of yeshiva students learning Torah.

Israel’s High Court convened this morning to hear petitions against the Arrest Freeze Law, which was enacted to prevent the arrest of draft-dodging charedim for approximately six months (since it’s too difficult for the government to achieve its aim of permanently exempting them and paying them). The following remarkable exchange took place between charedi attorney Nosson Rosenblatt and religious Justice David Mintz (English translation follows):

Attorney Rosenblatt: “Is it appropriate that in a Jewish and democratic state to place a person in a dilemma of whether to follow the Torah or the law?!”

Justice Mintz: “Sir, with all due respect, I’m restraining myself. I’m listening to these statements, and I simply can’t believe what I’m hearing. Is there a Torah prohibition against enlisting?!”

Attorney Rosenblatt: “Yes!”

Justice Mintz: “That in itself is apparently a matter of very serious dispute.”

Attorney Rosenblatt: “All the leading Torah sages...”

Justice Mintz: “Not all the leading Torah sages! With all due respect, you are speaking from a sectarian perspective. What is this?!”

Now, I know that you’re expecting me to say that Rosenblatt is obviously and clearly and unequivocally wrong, and Justice Mintz is obviously and clearly and unequivocally right. But actually I’m not going to say that.

What is the “Torah” perspective on anything? What do we mean by the “Torah” perspective? A Sadducee will have one perspective on what the Torah means by “an eye for an eye,” and a Pharisee will have a different perspective, and neither thinks that the other is correctly presenting the Torah perspective, or is even qualified to give a perspective. The same goes for Reform and Orthodox rabbis.

And the same is true even within Orthodoxy. There are Orthodox rabbis who believe that enlisting in the IDF is a mitzvah, an obligation, and there are Orthodox rabbis who believe that it is absolutely forbidden, almost (or perhaps exactly) as severely as idolatry.

(In fact, the same is even true within charedi Orthodoxy, between generations. Twenty years ago when my books were banned, R. Aharon Feldman interpreted R. Elyashiv as saying that understandings of Torah which were perfectly legitimate at certain points in history are heretical theological perversions at other points in history.)

And I’ll go even further in justifying what Attorney Rosenblatt claims. When he says “all the leading Torah sages,” he is correct! - from his perspective. The countless Religious-Zionist rabbis who say otherwise, or even maverick charedi rabbis like Rav Dovid Leibel, simply don’t count as “Torah sages” or even remotely credible people in his eyes. This is not an inconceivable attitude; the same is true in reverse from the perspective of many rabbis in my community (including myself), that both Reform and charedi rabbis are simpy not representing Torah.

But here’s where Attorney Rosenblatt is being inconsistent.

If you want to claim that religious Zionist rabbis are not even rabbis, and serving in the IDF is forbidden by the Torah, then what you’re saying is that modern charedism is a completely different religion from religious Zionism. Which is fine! In fact, I personally fully agree that these are two completely different religions, and I have written as such on several occasions.

But this is not what Rosenblatt is willing to say. Because his opening sentence - upon which rests his main argument - is to appeal to the Jewish nature of the state. Yet if there are two completely different and utterly opposed forms of Judaism, then there is no common ground to appeal to. The Judaism of the State of Israel is most certainly not one in which religious Zionist rabbis are not rabbis and serving in the IDF is against the Torah.

And there’s more. The State of Israel certainly has no reason to fund other, radically different forms of Judaism. It doesn’t need to fund Sadducees, it doesn’t need to fund anti-Zionist J-Street type Judaism, it doesn’t need to fund Neturei Karta, and it doesn’t need to fund charedi Judaism. In fact, it is actually wrong for the State to do so, if they are opposed to supporting its existence!

Charedim need to be consistent. If their interpretation of Judaism means that they are a completely different socio-religious community from the Judaism acknowledged by the State of Israel, then they need to follow that through.

And if they don’t, the rest of us need to hold them to that.

Attorney Rosenblatt: “Is it appropriate that in a Jewish and democratic state to place a person in a dilemma of whether to follow the Torah or the law?!”

Justice Mintz: “Sir, with all due respect, I’m restraining myself. I’m listening to these statements, and I simply can’t believe what I’m hearing. Is there a Torah prohibition against enlisting?!”

Attorney Rosenblatt: “Yes!”

Justice Mintz: “That in itself is apparently a matter of very serious dispute.”

Attorney Rosenblatt: “All the leading Torah sages...”

Justice Mintz: “Not all the leading Torah sages! With all due respect, you are speaking from a sectarian perspective. What is this?!”

Now, I know that you’re expecting me to say that Rosenblatt is obviously and clearly and unequivocally wrong, and Justice Mintz is obviously and clearly and unequivocally right. But actually I’m not going to say that.

What is the “Torah” perspective on anything? What do we mean by the “Torah” perspective? A Sadducee will have one perspective on what the Torah means by “an eye for an eye,” and a Pharisee will have a different perspective, and neither thinks that the other is correctly presenting the Torah perspective, or is even qualified to give a perspective. The same goes for Reform and Orthodox rabbis.

And the same is true even within Orthodoxy. There are Orthodox rabbis who believe that enlisting in the IDF is a mitzvah, an obligation, and there are Orthodox rabbis who believe that it is absolutely forbidden, almost (or perhaps exactly) as severely as idolatry.

(In fact, the same is even true within charedi Orthodoxy, between generations. Twenty years ago when my books were banned, R. Aharon Feldman interpreted R. Elyashiv as saying that understandings of Torah which were perfectly legitimate at certain points in history are heretical theological perversions at other points in history.)

And I’ll go even further in justifying what Attorney Rosenblatt claims. When he says “all the leading Torah sages,” he is correct! - from his perspective. The countless Religious-Zionist rabbis who say otherwise, or even maverick charedi rabbis like Rav Dovid Leibel, simply don’t count as “Torah sages” or even remotely credible people in his eyes. This is not an inconceivable attitude; the same is true in reverse from the perspective of many rabbis in my community (including myself), that both Reform and charedi rabbis are simpy not representing Torah.

But here’s where Attorney Rosenblatt is being inconsistent.

If you want to claim that religious Zionist rabbis are not even rabbis, and serving in the IDF is forbidden by the Torah, then what you’re saying is that modern charedism is a completely different religion from religious Zionism. Which is fine! In fact, I personally fully agree that these are two completely different religions, and I have written as such on several occasions.

But this is not what Rosenblatt is willing to say. Because his opening sentence - upon which rests his main argument - is to appeal to the Jewish nature of the state. Yet if there are two completely different and utterly opposed forms of Judaism, then there is no common ground to appeal to. The Judaism of the State of Israel is most certainly not one in which religious Zionist rabbis are not rabbis and serving in the IDF is against the Torah.

And there’s more. The State of Israel certainly has no reason to fund other, radically different forms of Judaism. It doesn’t need to fund Sadducees, it doesn’t need to fund anti-Zionist J-Street type Judaism, it doesn’t need to fund Neturei Karta, and it doesn’t need to fund charedi Judaism. In fact, it is actually wrong for the State to do so, if they are opposed to supporting its existence!

Charedim need to be consistent. If their interpretation of Judaism means that they are a completely different socio-religious community from the Judaism acknowledged by the State of Israel, then they need to follow that through.

And if they don’t, the rest of us need to hold them to that.

There are all kinds of books in Hebrew about army service. But what about Anglo-charedim? What kind of publication would help educate and motivate charedim to help defend Israel by enlisting? A discussion of the Torah sources? Or inspirational stories about Torah Jews who fought (and fell) in the IDF?

I had only ever thought about the former. But a friend of mine raised the idea of the latter. He insists that it is even more likely to create change, by presenting heroes other than The Gedolim™ for charedi boys to emulate.

Personally I think that both are of great importance. My own book about the Torah sources on this topic is still far off from publication; I lack the necessary time to devote to it. But Moshe Klausner has been expanding his excellent short publication on the topic; it will be available via Amazon with Print-On-Demand, and he has launched a Kickstarter to get it published in Hebrew. You can help make it happen at this link.

On the other hand, with regards to a book of inspirational stories about Torah Jews who fought for Israel, the opposite situation exists: I know a donor who is ready to make it happen, but we need someone to write it! If you have any ideas, please contact me; perhaps there is an existing such book in Hebrew that could be translated?

Meanwhile, I have accumulated an enormous amount of fascinating material on Torah and nature that has never been published, as well as insights into so many incredible exhibits at the museum that most people don’t get to see, along with all kinds of fabulous footage that I’ve filmed over the years with exotic animals around the world. So I’m going to be releasing written material and videos as an additional perk for those who join the family of Friends of the Biblical Museum of Natural History. (That’s additional beyond the other perks and the good feeling of helping support inspiration and education during these challenging war years!) Click here to join!

Finally, I’m coming to America in a few weeks, and I have availability as scholar-in-residence for Shabbos August 28/29. It can be anywhere in North America, since I anyway need to fly across the country. Please be in touch if you're interested!

Little Yuval Kogan wandered off from his parents when they went to the beach in Ashkelon, just after noon on Thursday. If you’ve ever had your kid go missing (it’s happened to me twice), you know the icy fear that clutches your heart.

The search efforts were immense, by air, land and sea. Fire and Rescue Services were using ATVs, SUVs, and advanced scanning equipment. The police dispatched hundreds of officers along with helicopters, the Marine Unit, and divers to check the sea. The Shin Bet explored the possibility that he was kidnapped. Hundreds of drones were deployed. The Israel Dog Unit operated from a command center established by the Israel Police near the shoreline, where teams received updates and were assigned search sectors.

The afternoon came and went, then the night, then the morning. No results. At this point many people concluded that Yuval could not possibly be alive. The entire area had been searched with the utmost thoroughness. Even if he hadn’t disappeared into the ocean or been kidnapped, it had been 24 hours since he went missing, under brutally hot conditions.

And then, a man on a horse with a big knitted kippah and long peyos (the man, not the horse) got lost in the dunes and separated from the other riders in his volunteer group. And he came across a little boy sitting under a tree, weak and crying but very much alive! Yuval had wandered for miles, far beyond where the search was focused, going an entire day in the heat without food or water. Here is a heartwarming interview with the man who found him:

It was a miracle, and everyone celebrated. Yuval’s mother, a pediatrician, gave an emotional speech in which she profusely thanked everyone who had helped in the search for her son.

But some people had criticisms.

Read more

Over the past few years I’ve been writing about how Tisha B’Av has undergone revisionism in various ways. Contrary to popular ideas today, it’s not about yearning for spirituality, it’s about mourning tragedy. And contrary to widespread belief, this mourning is not primarily about the tragedy of the destruction of the two Batei Mikdash. The Temples were the ultimate symbol of the Jewish nation’s status and center of our way of life, even after corruption had emptied them of spiritual significance, and thus the day on which they were destroyed was the logical date to select for annual mourning. But Megillat Eichah and the kinnot are primarily about the destruction of the first two Jewish commonwealths, with the enormous loss of life and human suffering that were involved.

In this post I’d like to explore another seeming case of Tisha B’Av revisionism. In yesterday’s guest post by Rabbi Eli Clark, he argued that while the Sages’ reason for the destruction of the Second Commonwealth, sinat chinam, is usually understood to mean baseless hatred among the nation as a whole, this ignores other statements in Chazal that demonstrate them to be referring to the moral corruption and failure of the priestly and rabbinic leadership. Meanwhile, some others explain sinat chinam to refer to the sectarianism that divided the nation. And Chazal elsewhere give all kinds of other reasons for the destruction, including the desecration of Shabbat, the interruption of Torah study for children, people not rebuking bad behavior in others, people disrespecting Torah scholars, etc.

But surely all these kinds of explanations ignore the most obvious reason for the destruction of the Second Commonwealth: that the Jews started a rebellion against Rome which they lost!

The same is the case with the destruction of the First Commonwealth. The Sages attributed it to the sins of idolatry, illicit relationships, and bloodshed. But surely the real reason was that the Jews started a rebellion against Babylon which they lost!

And it’s not as though this is some kind of secular heretical perspective. With the destruction of the First Commonwealth, the prophet Yirmiyah himself was explicit about this being the cause! He told King Tzedkiah to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, or else Judah would be destroyed and the people would be massacred. Likewise, with the destruction of the Second Commonwealth, the Sages blamed R. Zecharia ben Avkolos for rejecting the Emperor’s sacrifice and provoking Rome. So why would the Sages give different explanations than these accurate historical-political ones?

There are two answers that I can think of. One is that while the Sages were obviously well aware of the proximate historical causes, they were describing the underlying metaphysical causes, stemming from ethical and spiritual shortcomings in the nation. These too are things that Yirmiyah mentioned. Had these sins not existed, God would have arranged for the problems with Babylon and Rome not to have existed.

Another answer would be that the Sages took the opportunity to point out more general and widespread problematic behaviour that needed to be fixed. And just like the Sage who attributed it to the desecration of Shabbos was not ruling out other causes, the Sages were not excluding the problematic behavior of Jews who were arrogant or overly-confident that God was on their side, instead of accepting that they should show some deference to Babylon and to Rome.

The lesson for us today should be clear. True, we don’t need to listen to dictates from the farcical UN and ICC and ICJ, and there are innumerable people who will be opposed to Israel no matter what we do. But nevertheless there is a particular problem of Jews who think that we can do whatever we want, and do not remotely need to take into account what anyone else thinks, because Israel is strong and God is on our side. Rome Schmome!

Alas, the events of our history prove otherwise. This mistake cost us the land twice before, and it can do so again. We are not invulnerable, and we are not guaranteed to have God’s protection. We need to be as strong as we can - not just militarily, not just economically, but also in our moral integrity. But even with all that, we need to accept that we also need to be wise rather than arrogant, and know when we need to be deferential. Putting all those together correctly is the path to surviving and thriving.

Every year as we approach Tisha Be-Av, we hear the familiar refrain that the Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam (baseless hatred). This is a valuable and important message for all of us. Except, like so many things that “everyone knows,” it isn’t true.

The Gemara (Yoma 9b) seems to explicitly support the common view: “The Second Temple … why was it destroyed? Because there was sinat chinam in it.” But there are two reasons why this text does not prove the popular understanding is correct.

First, the Gemara is actually quoting an older text found in the Tosefta (Menachot 13:4), which words things differently: “[In the Second Temple] why were they exiled? Because they loved money and hated one another.” The original version gives two reasons why the Temple was destroyed and the people exiled: love of money and internal hatred.

Some may say that I am merely splitting hairs and the primary thrust of the Tosefta is the same as that of the Gemara – hatred among Jews caused the Temple’s destruction. However, a careful reading of the Gemara points in a different direction. The Second Temple was destroyed “because there was baseless hatred in it (betochah),” meaning, in the Temple itself. Chazal are saying that the Divine punishment was mida ke-neged mida (measure for measure). The sins committed in the Temple brought about its destruction.

In short, the Gemara is concerned with the sinful actions of the kohanim (priests) who served in the Temple, not those of the general Jewish population. This is confirmed in the Tosefta, which relates in detail the corruption of the priestly families and speaks of specific families “who are High Priests and their sons are treasurers… and their servants beat us with wooden staffs.” In other words, the Tosefta identifies the priests who loved money and hated their fellow Jews as the cause of the Temple’s destruction.

The Tosefta in another location (Kippurim 1:12) reiterates the responsibility of the kohanim for the destruction of the Temple but tells a harrowing story of one kohen murdering another in a race to the top of the altar. The people burst into tears, then the father of the victim reassures them that his son still breathes, so the knife can be removed before it becomes tamei (ritually impure), “which teaches that that the impurity of the knife was more disturbing for Israel than the spilling of blood.” Their religious values had become so warped that the laws of ritual impurity were of greater import than life itself.

What of the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza? Is that not a tale of sinat hinam? That is how it is generally understood, but R. Yochanan in the Gemara (Gittin 56a) frames things differently: “Because of the humility of R. Zecharia ben Eokolos, our Temple was destroyed, our Sanctuary was burned and we were exiled from our land.” The hatred of Bar Kamtza was not the cause, rather the blame lies with the Sage who prevented his rabbinic colleagues from defeating Bar Kamtza’s vengeful scheme. In short, the Gemara is not assigning the blame to the anonymous host with the incompetent servant, but to the rabbinic leadership which made decisions that were oblivious to the larger communal and national interest. This idea is expressed by R. Yochanan in another Gemara (Bava Metzia 30b): “Jerusalem was destroyed only … because they made their rulings based on the law and did not go beyond the letter of the law.”

In Eicha Rabba (4:3) the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza is told slightly differently from the version in the Gemara. This version describes R. Zecharia ben Eokolos as sitting at the feast and watching Bar Kamtza being ejected “and he was unsure whether to protest and did not protest.” On this telling, the “humility” of R. Zecharia was not a conservative policy of halachic decision-making but a shameful silence in the face of public humiliation. The midrash casts the rabbinic leadership as lacking moral backbone when Jews denigrate other Jews. The midrash makes the same point in a different vein (1:33): “‘Her princes are like deer’ (Eicha 1:6)… Just as these deer turn their faces away from one another during a heatwave, so too the great ones of Israel would see sinful acts and would turn their faces away. The Holy One blessed be He said to them: A time will come when I will do so to you.”

If our Sages criticized the rabbinic leadership during the late Second Temple period, we are surely required, especially on the eve of Tisha be-Av, to demand of the rabbinic leaders of today to issue halachic rulings animated by communal and national responsibility and serve as shining examples of morality and human dignity. And me we merit to see the speedy rebuilding of the Temple.

With the fall-out over R. Landau’s horrific attacks on Dati-Leumi Jews and the IDF continuing, there has been a revealing development. But first, I would like to talk about a controversy involving Rambam that it reminds me of.

One of Rambam’s many controversial statements was regard to korbanos, offerings. He talks about how it’s impossible to transform people rapidly, and thus while korbanos are not an ideal form of religious service, the Torah included them as a necessary concession to the primitive state of religious worship that was standard in the world at that time.

Now, this is obviously a rather shocking notion for many people. And so there have been all kinds of ingenious reinterpretations according to which Rambam wasn’t actually saying anything controversial at all.

But there is one fatal problem with all of these ingenious explanations.

Rambam himself admits that his explanation is going to be very difficult for people to accept! And consequently he goes to lengths to try to make it more palatable. But at no point does he simply proffer one of the non-controversial explanations that later people devised!

A similar phenomenon is taking place with R. Landau’s statements. There are people trying to give various reinterpretations. “He wasn’t talking about what the IDF actually does, just about a theoretical possibility.” “When he said that IDF soldiers kill people, he meant that they themselves are killed as a result of wrongful political decisions.”

The problem with these explanations is threefold. First is that they do not actually match the words that he said. Second is that the Mir Roshei Yeshiva who nodded along did not claim that that’s what he said. But third is that with the firestorm that erupted, R. Landau and his representatives themselves did not present any such explanation!

Degel HaTorah’s official statement was that “people who are outside the world of Torah do not understand his words, and should not criticize them” - but they made no attempt to explain what he allegedly actually meant. And R. Landau himself weighed in, with a public video statement that was also published on the front page of Yated, in which he stated as follows:

“One must be careful to avoid all ideological debates. Our outlook is clear to us from our teachers, the mighty pillars of the earth, whose waters we drink. In particular, one must be extremely cautious about debating with people who, under the guise of their beliefs, persecute the Torah and those who study it, and who are incapable of understanding or delving deeply into our outlook—the outlook of our great teachers, the Chazon Ish and Rabbi of Brisk, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing. This was demonstrated over the past day, when remarks I made in a private conversation were publicized, and, with the hatred characteristic of the ignorant, were treated in a distorted manner and with a complete lack of understanding.”

He says that people who rated his words as appallingly offensive and slanderous are ignorant haters of Torah who distorted his words and didn’t understand them. Let’s put aside that this “clarification” is itself offensive and slanderous, and instead ask a simple and obvious question: So what is the non-distorted understanding?

Silence.

It is similar to when R. Bunim Schreiber gave his notorious speech to Mir students stating that “there’s no need to express gratitude to soldiers fighting in Gaza any more than to street cleaners” along with other horrifying statements. After the resultant uproar, a statement was published in Yated declaring that his words were “taken out of context and thereby distorted.” Which was a difficult case to make, seeing as his entire speech was available as a video online. But nor did he clarify what he actually purportedly meant to say!

Someone put out a biting piece of satire that perfectly encapsulates the situation. It doesn’t work so well in English translation, but here goes:

“CLARIFICATION: My remarks that “all secular people are deviant, drug-addicted pieces of excrement who are going to thoroughly burn in hell, and the Religious Zionists are no better than them” were taken out of context, and there was absolutely no intention to demean anyone. Someone who is unfamiliar with the slang and does not know the community may misunderstand and attribute all sorts of mistaken intentions to the words, but of course that was not what was intended.”

In any case, R. Landau’s comments are exactly in line with numerous other comments that he has made over the last few years. He’s made his views very clear, for those who are interested in listening to what he has actually said: The state should never have come into existence, the Arabs would have happily allowed hundreds of thousands of Jews to come from Europe and live peacefully in Palestine, Zionists are responsible for all the terrible things that have happened, religious-Zionist soldiers die because of the corrupt teachings of their rabbis, Jews should only learn charedi-taught Torah, and charedim should not participate in the war effort, even if they are not learning, and should not even do any acts of kindness for soldiers - they should not visit them in hospitals or attend funerals or raise money for their wellbeing, and anyone who wants charedim to be subject to the same rules as everyone else and forced to help with the war is evil.

R. Landau is the revered leader of the Litvishe charedi community, and nobody in that community will criticize him. He’s made it very clear that this is not the same socio-religious community, not the same nation, as that to which the rest of us belong. We need to acknowledge the truth of that.

NOTE: I have availability as Scholar-in-Residence for Shabbos of August 29th, and it can be anywhere in the US. If you are interested, please write to me. Also, if you are traveling from Teaneck or West Hempstead to Israel, and can bring something for my museum, please be in touch.

Yesterday’s shocking video featured the Roshei Yeshiva of Mir giggling along as R. Dov Landau, top Lithuanian charedi “Gadol HaDor,” declared that dati-leumi Jews are a bunch of “foolish” “evil” “murderers” and that the IDF sends soldiers to kill Arabs not for the sake of protecting lives, but just for the “glory of the state.” This was way too far even by the extreme charedi standards that have become increasingly common and accepted. No less than the Prime Minister himself - a person who has steadily kowtowed to charedim out of desperation for their political support - was forced to condemn it. This is a historic event.

Charedi apologists are in trouble. Some are trying to ignore the words of their Daas Torah (I’ll be amazed if Mishpacha reports it). Degel HaTorah, rather unconvincingly, insisted that R. Landau’s words are so holy that they can only be understood and explained by people who live in the world of Torah - but they did not offer to explain them. Others tried to rewrite them. The popular CBN yeshivish news outlet decided that once again they can’t ignore a “washed-up iconoclast” and devoted an emergency bulletin to me in which they declared as follows:

“🚨 Natan Slifkin Joins Chorus Distorting HaGaon HaRav Dov Landau’s Words

“Natan Slifkin, who seems to not have anything better to do than act as a keyboard warrior on behalf of those who would close the very Yeshivos he was trained in, has joined the pile-on against HaGaon HaRav Dov Landau, accusing the Gadol Hador of branding the entire dati-leumi community “foolish,” “evil” murderers and proceeding to mock him R”l in ways that might even make chilonim uncomfortable and which are unfit for us to repeat.”

What was the distortion? CBN claims that R. Landau was condemning only those few religious Zionists who are forcibly trying to enlist charedim into the IDF. This is a rather strange attempt at a defense, for three reasons:

1. The majority of the religious Zionist community believe that charedim should enlist (and if we’re talking about non-learning charedim, which R. Landau equally opposes, it’s near 100% of religious Zionists), and that this should be enforced just as with everyone else.

2. Whoever he was referring to, why does believing that charedim should be forced to take some time out to help relieve a crushing burden that is destroying so many families and lives, and fulfill some very important mitzvos regarding saving lives, as do all yeshiva students in the dati-leumi world, make you into an “evil person”?

3. Drafting charedim was not even what R. Landau was talking about when he spoke about “murderers.” He was talking about the fighting of Israel’s wars.

CBN also presents a “defense” for R. Landau’s condemnation of the IDF as “murderers”:

“It’s worth noting Rav Landau never made this declaration about the IDF’s earlier operations in Gaza following October 7. The question worth asking is whether the current activity he was referring to is actually making Klal Yisrael safer from another October 7 — or whether it’s something else entirely.”

Whether Israel’s current military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon are strategically beneficial might be a question worth asking. But R. Landau was raising no such question. Instead, he was condemning the soldiers of the IDF as murderers, for killing Hamas terrorists in Gaza and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

There are some other very important points to be noted about R. Landau’s speech. First is that the subtitles changed what he said by moving the word “only.” The subtitles have R. Landau saying that the IDF fights wars and kills people not only to save lives, but also for “the glory of the state.” That would be bad enough, but what he actually said was even worse; he said that the IDF fights wars and kills people not to save lives, but only for “the glory of the state.”

Second is that it further demonstrates that the idea spread by Bibi and Channel 14 and co. that charedim are part of the “Right” in Israel, with everyone else being the “Left,” is a farce. Believing that the IDF, as a matter of policy, kills people for no valid reasons of defense is even more far left than Yair Golan.

Third is that R. Landau is not just slandering religious Zionists. He is issuing a very serious charge against the State of Israel itself, one voiced by Israel’s worst haters around the world - that the IDF kills people for completely unneccessary reasons that have nothing to do with self-defense. Antisemites can now correctly say that a man considered by many to be Israel’s top rabbi rates the IDF as deliberate murderers of innocent people. The political/ security ramifications for Israel, and the legal ramifications for the soldiers who defend it, could be severe.

Read more

First we have HaRav Chaim Mordechai Ausband, Rosh Yeshiva of the prestigous Ateres Shlomo yeshivah (I inserted some minor comments):

“...We’ve gone through WWII and the Spanish Inquisition, but we are still Cholas Ahava for Hashem, and we continue to learn Torah m’toch d’chak (I’m not sure what he means by that; never were so many Torah students subsidized by others as in Israel today). In E”Y they have made it so difficult so that we will get to a point where we can’t go on anymore, much worse than simply learning m’toch d’chak which always has been the case, they want it to be far more difficult than that. They are working openly toward this goal - they want us to die from hunger (!!!) and so that we won’t have any food for our children... They are stealing money from us, it’s not their money to withhold from us. (The government is stealing money from charedim? Charedim withdraw far more from the public coffers than they put in!) More than half of the taxes go to the government to fund the police (actually less than 4%), so that they can take all that money and be rodef us and drag the yeshivaleit out of their beds and throw them into jail... (Actually the police arrest far fewer charedi draft-dodgers than non-charedi draft-dodgers, even though there are vastly more charedi draft-dodgers.)

“By government offices and courts, and in the streets, there is a great hatred against Bnei Torah. (Nobody hates Bnei Torah; there is only resentment against those who learn Torah rather than helping with the war.) I’m not talking about the frei, I’m talking about the Mizrachists. (Mizrachists certainly don’t hate Bnei Torah; they just believe that charedim are not genuine Bnei Torah, since they don’t do what the Torah says.) They are right now heading the war against us. By the entrance to Bnei Brak, the Mizrachi recently made protests holding up signs which said ‘Your brothers are going out to war, and you are sitting?’ They discovered new pesukim - I don’t know how they found about it, probably they got it from a newspaper. They don’t know from Anochi Hashem or from V’ohavta es Hashem, but this posuk they know. (So he has nothing to say regarding the message of the passuk other than to insult the Dati Leumi community as not knowing Tanach?!) A yungerman from Yerushalayim had to get to the hospital, and by Gush Tziyon where the Mizrachists live, he was waiting for a ‘tremp’, but none of the Mizrachists who drove by would stop for him to take him. They will not stop their car for a yungerman - since we do not want to take part in their war. (Their war?!)

“Greater is the hatred of an am ha’aretz to talmidei chochomim, than the hatred that the goyim have toward Yisroel” (Pesachim 49a). The Israeli Government is the Eirev Rav who are from zera Amalek - and that’s coupled together with the hatred of the am ha’aretz to the talmid chochom. A goy hates a Yid even if he wouldn’t be Amalek, but these wicked people have the hatred from Amalek, the hatred from the Eirev Rav and the hatred from the am ha’aretz - all together. They have the coupled hatred of Amaleki-am h’aretz in them. Of course, we have always had nothing to do with Mizrachi - but now they are going after our neshamos and bothering the frum Yidden and don’t want to leave us alone. (Is there not even the teensy-weeniest possibility that there is an IDF manpower crisis causing a crushing burden on the reservists and we want charedi to help rather than do nothing and demand money for it?)

“Rashi (in Shelach) brings, ‘Once a person abandons Torah study, immediately he goes to idol worship.’ They want us not only to leave the Gemara and leave the Beis Midrash and kollel (just for a short time to help us, they are welcome to right back afterwards) but also to immediately embrace the same avodah zarah that they serve. (What avodah zarah is that - saving lives?!) This is what we are seeing now. They will do everything so that we won’t learn. What do they care if someone isn’t a Mizrachi, what do they care if someone wants to be a Ben Torah?! (Erm, because endless thousands of people are collapsing under the burden of endless reserve duty?) All they want is to make sure that we won’t be in the Beis Midrash. You can see how anyone who isn’t in the Beis Midrash becomes a hater of the Torah...”

Now, should you think that this vile and slanderous diatribe is only from an aberrant figure or a second-tier Gadol, here’s a video of the number one in the Charedi Litvishe world, Rav Dov Landau himself, addressing the Roshei Yeshivah of Mir who are chuckling along:

Here, the “Gadol HaDor” declares that dati-leumi Jews are a bunch of “foolish” “evil” “murderers” who send soldiers to kill Arabs not for the sake of protecting lives, but just for the “glory of the state.” It’s not clear on what basis he slanders the entire Dati Leumi community in this way, nor what he thinks about who is actually engaged in missions to save the lives of people in Israel, or even if he does think about it at all. Remember, this is the same person who said that it would have been better had the state not come into existence, and millions of Jews fleeing Europe could have lived here in peace with the Arabs.

If anyone thinks that the charedi world is correct in platforming these people as wise, moral leaders, they need their heads examining. And if anyone cannot call this out for the evil drivel that it is, they are moral cowards.

Hopefully we can all see through the claims of so many Israel-haters that they are not being antisemitic by criticizing the Israeli government, and that accusations of antisemitism are being falsely leveled to suppress war crimes. Natan Sharansky’s “three D’s” of antisemitism work perfectly - it’s double-standards, delegitimization and demonization. Nobody addresses how Israel is supposed to respond to groups such as Hamas, who not only brutally invaded on October 7th but also spent months launching rockets at towns, and who promised to try to repeat October 7th forever, no matter what the cost to them.

Nevertheless, people who automatically dismiss every criticism of Israel as being antisemitic or Israelopathic are making an error. No country is perfect, and Israel is no exception. And not everyone who criticizes Israel is driven by antisemitism - some criticism comes from genuine supporters who are pained by its flaws (and for the sake of Israel’s well-being, it’s crucial to try to address such criticisms). Unfortunately the gross prevalence of antisemitic criticism of Israel makes it too easy to dismiss all criticism as antisemitic.

Another problem is that some people fear that admitting to any problems gives fuel to antisemites. This is a mistake. Antisemites aren’t held back by a lack of fuel. Whereas Israel’s supporters and people on the fence, on the other hand, are more likely to be sympathetic by seeing an honest admission of problems and an intent to deal with them than by a cover-up. Not to mention that genuine problems should innately be acknowledged and addressed, regardless of what others may think!

The same applies with criticism of charedim.

For centuries, antisemites have leveled false accusations against Jews. Jews kill innocent Christian children. Jews engage in predatory lending and swindle people out of money. Jews have horns.

But what happens when Jews really do engage in predatory lending, or swindle people out of money? Of course it’s still wrong and antisemitic to extrapolate from this to “the Jews.” But such financial shenanigans do happen, and may well even happen with disproportionate frequency (I have heard terrible stories). Likewise, while the IDF is not targeting children in Gaza, there is certainly a very problem of extremist settler violence against innocents. It’s a problem if Jews either brandish accusations of antisemitism to deflect legitimate criticism, or if fear of stoking antisemitism makes people want to sweep things under the carpet.

The same is true with the fury over charedim in Israel who insist on a blanket sectoral exemption from helping with the war, while demanding huge sums to support their way of life, and professing to do all this in the name of Torah. And this is all while their rabbinic and political leadership expresses a total lack of care for the hardships born by our community on their behalf. If you don’t live in Israel and/or are not part of the serving and working community, I don’t think you can grasp just how furious and upset people in my community are. (See this post from two years ago - and things have only gotten worse since then.)

The suffering born by the reservists and their families over the past three years is infinitely more than you can grasp. And our children are going to be spending a minimum of a quarter of their lives in reserve duty due to the IDF manpower shortage. And with whatever jobs they can secure with such limitations, they will be paying taxes to support a million charedi freeloaders. And that’s not even the worst problem - the charedim are a direct existential to the economy and thus to the state’s existence.

But when we voice condemnation, in the hope of influencing change - and cartoons of the situation depict charedim, because that’s who the whole argument is about - then charedim in Israel and the US, along with their Likud and Religious Zionism/ Otzma Yehudit enablers, accuse us of being “anti-Torah” and “antisemitic”!

The charedi community is causing tremendous pain, harm and danger to everyone else. We have not just a right, but a responsibility to protest it and campaign for change. Nobody should use either accusations of antisemitism or fear of stoking antisemitism to try to stifle this. The blame lies with the charedi community and with those who enable their behavior for political power.

Yesterday, the government passed its “Desecration of Torah” law to pave the way for exempting charedim (even those not learning) from serving, and for them to be financially subsidized to the tune of tens of billions by the serving/working public. It also further advanced a law stating that only non-charedim will continue to be arrested if they evade drafting, whereas charedim will not.

It’s ironic that these events came on the 28th of Tammuz, shortly after the Seventeenth of Tammuz, because they were a repeat of the historical tragedies of that day.

On the 17th of Tammuz, Moses broke the first tablets of the Ten Commandments after witnessing the worship of the Golden Calf. On the 28th of Tammuz, the Torah was ruined after being itself used as an idol in place of the service to God that it requires.

On the 17th of Tammuz, the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Babylonians (prior to the First Temple’s destruction) and by the Romans (prior to the Second Temple’s destruction). On the 28th of Tammuz, the Chief of Staff of the IDF (picked by Bibi, so clearly not acting out of political motives), warned that the government’s new laws would drastically harm Israel’s security, both in terms of morale and manpower shortage.

On the 17th of Tammuz, the Roman general Apostamos publicly burned a Torah scroll. On the 28th of Tammuz, the charedi and national-religious members of the Government of Israel publicly disgraced the Torah by using it to exempt an entire sector of the population from helping their brethren with a war.

On the 17th of Tammuz, the daily Tamid offerings in the First Temple, which the Midrash says atoned for the nation’s sins, were halted. On the 28th of Tammuz, the charedi and national-religious MKs were not even shamefaced about having harmed the lives and morale of the hundreds of thousands of reservists and their families.

On the 17th of Tammuz, an idol was brazenly placed inside the Holy Temple. On the 28th of Tammuz, the study of Torah was brazenly turned into an idol in the Knesset in Jerusalem at the expense of Torah being a guide to serving God and improving society.

Woe to the Torah and to Israel. We can only hope that instead of this leading to the Third Destruction, we will be able to rectify things in the next election.