Black Ops

The Other Army

There’s an extraordinary poster that appeared in Israel, produce by an operation called Tzeva Shachor, Color Black:

Tzeva Shachor describes itself as the “National Alert Operation for Protecting Yeshiva Students.” It summons the gibborim, the “mighty heroes” of the yeshiva world to prevent the military police from arresting yeshiva students who do not show up for their draft appointments, which they claim tends to happen in the middle of the night.

And how does one prevent such things from happening?

They call on all the yeshiva students to register to be called to physically come to protest when this happens, even at the cost of going out in the middle of the night and compromising one’s learning the next day. Because that is “proven by experience,” they say, to work. It is YOU, they stress with underlining, that will stop the police.

Eh?

Isn’t it Hashem who is in charge of such things?

According to charedi hashkafa, Hashem operates based on Torah and tefilah. Physical endeavor is just a charade. Sure, that charade might have to be done sometimes, but that can be minimized and left for others - the main way to fight is with Torah and tefilah. So why can’t people just choose to learn Torah and davven for them instead? Wouldn’t that be better than actually harming one’s ability to learn Torah?

The answer, of course, is that this is the real world, and it’s action that counts. Learning Torah and davenning is important to accompany action, but it never replaces it. Everyone recognizes that when it’s a matter of accomplishing things that are important to you, and that you can’t offload to someone else.

It occurred to me that instead of organizing their own fighting operation, all these people might as well just join the national army. They’re 99% there already.