A Defense of Charedim

But with strings attached

London readers - I’m coming to London next week, and I am thinking of doing a RationalistJudaism get-together. If you’re interested in joining, please be in touch!

When the charedi leadership banned my books twenty years ago as being heretical, most people thought that it was the most ridiculous thing. Consequently, several charedi apologists rushed to defend the “Gedolim.” Yet their contorted attempts to justify why it was heretical for me to voice positions that had been stated by such greats as Rambam and Rav Hirsch ended up making the Gedolim’s position even more untenable.

But I was bothered by this. I felt that when people do something, they might be very wrong, but there is surely a reason why they are doing it. Accordingly, I wrote my own article, In Defense of my Opponents, in which I explained their position in a way that was more limited but much more tenable. (Alas, I went a little too far in defending them, and I had to release a follow-up article in which I dialed it back down!)

I’d like to do a similar thing with regard to the charedi refusal to participate in the war.

The justifications presented by the charedi world are ridiculous. No, there is no basis in Judaism for saying that learning Torah replaces military or any other physical effort, and the charedim themselves (including the Gedolim) don’t really believe that anyway. No, going to the army does not need to threaten your religious lifestyle, and even if it did, that wouldn’t justify not serving. And you certainly don’t need 80,000 charedim to be exempt from the army when only about half are actually in yeshiva and many are far from any strict religious standard, let alone charedi.

Since such professed justifications have no validity, what we seem to be left with is a supposedly religious community that ignores significant mitzvos in the Torah, such as milchemet mitzvah - helping protect Israel from its enemies, and Lo taamod al dam reyecha - not standing by as your brethren’s blood is spilled. And even more disturbing is their lack of concern for basic empathy, for Nosei b’ol chavero - helping relieve the crushing burden on the reservists, the endless extended rounds of reserve duty that cause so much devastation to careers, marriages, families, and lives, all of which could be avoided if even a quarter of the charedim would enlist.

There is so much financial ruin, so much emotional and family trauma caused by PTSD, so many divorces, so many thousands struggling with suicidal drives, all because the reservists have had to serve for so long because charedim refuse to help. And the charedim largely don’t even care! It all seems so anti-Torah, and so fundamentally unethical - callous to the point of cruelty. At which point surely the correct term is “evil.”

But is that really the case? Could we describe an entire community’s way of life as being so fundamentally at odds with Judaism and basic morality? Could these people - many of whom the rest of us know socially as decent, kind people - really be so cruel?

I think that there is a defense that can be offered. And I think that it’s largely fairly accurate. However, reducing the moral shortcomings in this area makes them worse in another area. And it comes with some very significant strings attached - and that’s why the charedi community does not want to utilize it.

The defense is as follows. When Lithuania, in the 1920s, was conscripting men for the army, Jews tried to avoid it. And I think that everyone is fine with that. After all, the Jews of Lithuania were not really part of the Lithuanian people - and that was made abundantly clear a few years later when so many Lithuanians happily cooperated with the Nazis in massacring Jews.

The same is true today. Let’s face it - charedim are a separate ethno-religious community. That’s what being charedi is all about. Their leadership even sometimes lets this slip when they make statements about “Klal Yisrael” which are actually specifically referring only to the charedi community. And even when it comes to mitzvos in the Torah that technically apply to every Jew’s relationship to all other Jews, they effectively understand them as only referring to their own community, which they see as very fundamentally different and distinct from everyone else.

And so their lack of concern for helping the Jews of Israel is no more cruel than the lack of concern of 1920s Jews for helping the non-Jews of Lithuania. Indeed, charedim themselves often argue that since Arabs are exempt from military service, they too should be exempt from military service. There are two entirely separate ethnoreligious communities - adherents of charedi Judaism and adherents of Zionist Judaism. (I actually prefer to avoid the term “Zionist” because it has nothing necessarily to do with ideology about the state, it’s just about responsibilities to the population of the state; originally I preferred to use the term “civic Judaism,” but it’s easier to just use the word Zionist.)

I think that this is largely accurate and largely explains the lack of concern for helping others. But now let’s get to the strings that are attached.

If charedim are a separate ethno-religious community to such a degree that they should be neither halachically, ethically or legally bound to help alleviate the terrible suffering of other Jews in Israel, then this division of the Jewish people into two ethno-religious communities, charedi Jews and Zionist Jews, needs to be consistently applied across the board. And it cuts both ways. The halachic, legal, financial and social ramifications for the charedi community are huge.