Gedolim Against Israel

Opposing its birth as well as its physical defense

In all the fuss over the Trump plan, there was something very important that some people missed. The leader of the Lithuanian stream of charedi Judaism, Rav Dov Landau, came out with some astonishing statements. As a reminder, over the past year and a half, he has not only opposed charedim serving in the IDF (whether they are in yeshiva or not), but also claimed that those who do want charedim to help relieve the crushing burden on everyone else are evil. He has also opposed charedim visiting injured soldiers in hospital and those who do kindnesses for them. Here are some extracts from a recent discussion that he had:

“Everyone says that the situation in Israel where the Arabs didn't come and flood the land, and didn't kill and destroy everything, has no logical explanation. And when there's no logical explanation, then it's proven, as Rabbi Baruch Ber said, that there's something special protecting the Jewish community in Israel, and there's nothing else to attribute it to except Torah study.”

First of all, the claim that there is “no logical explanation” is irresponsible and silly. Has he actually looked into the history of exactly what happened? Of course not. It reminds me of people who claim that various biological phenomena have no scientific explanation and are proof of direct Divine design, when they haven’t even looked into the scientific explanations that exist.

Second, it’s ironic that R. Landau is quoting R. Baruch Ber Leibowitz to explain why none of the million people in the charedi community should be in the army, since when R. Baruch Ber said this, there were not 100,000 people in yeshiva/ kollel - there were a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, tops. And after R. Baruch Ber died, when Israel was fighting its war of Independence, Agudas Yisrael urged its young men to go and fight, not to learn Torah.

R. Landau was then asked about all the religious Zionist Jews who have left their yeshivot and jobs and families for months on end and dying in disproportionate numbers to protect everyone else. Here is what he had to say:

"They die because we don't study enough, and we need to save even more. They die because their rabbis teach them distorted Torah.”

Putting aside the stupidity and nastiness of his statement, if religious Zionist soldiers die because charedim don’t study enough, why do charedim take ten weeks of vacation every year - far more than soldiers or regular people? And if they die because they learn distorted Torah, then maybe charedim should serve in the army instead? They could have saved 800 lives!

Then R. Landau declares that the entire Zionist ideal is what brought about all the wars and deaths in the first place:

“…it's possible without a state to live well with the Arabs. If we go back further, it's possible like Rabbi Chaim Sonnenfeld did, to respect the Arabs, it was quite good when Arabs ruled here, the best situation, the Arabs ruled, they respected them, didn't interfere with them, brought money to the land, Arabs love money…. Zionism was as if they would save the Jewish people, and they brought physical disasters not just spiritual ones to the Jewish people, never did Arabs hate so much in the whole world.”

This is a common charedi belief, also shared by some non-Jewish haters of Israel, but it’s nonsense. First of all, Jews did not “live well” with the Arabs before Zionism - there were plenty of massacres. Second, what made relationships between Jews and Arabs in Palestine vastly worse in the 20th century was not Zionism per se - it was the plan to rescue millions of Jews from the horrors of Europe. The resident Arabs in Palestine wanted to be part of an Arab country; they didn’t want to be outnumbered by millions of Jews. It wouldn’t have made a difference whether these millions would have come under the banner of Zionism or Agudas Yisrael. Zionism at least had a plan for them to survive and thrive. (Besides, without Zionism, they wouldn’t have even been able to get into Palestine in the first place, for all kinds of reasons.)

Incidentally, what was the Charedi Torah leadership’s plan for saving the millions of Jews in Europe? They didn’t have one. In fact, quite a few of them claimed that the Jews of Europe would be perfectly fine and should stay there. Thankfully, Zionist leaders knew better, and realized that a large-scale plan was required.

R. Landau unfortunately reflects the standard charedi thinking which has no concept of how to deal with large-scale scenarios. And that, of course, is why 45 charedim died in Meron, as well as why the charedi community is in an ever-growing financial crisis.

Finally, R. Landau says something very reasonable:

“I don't know what to say, from a political perspective I don't know.”

Right. He doesn’t know anything about politics - about big issues of management and policy and dealing with reality and how to run a country. He is an elderly Talmudist who achieved what he did by staying in complete isolation from all matters other than learning and teaching. The tragedy is that people take him seriously and consider him a wise leader who should be obeyed.

(And if you’re wondering why I titled this post “Gedolim Against Israel” when I’m only quoting one person, the answer is simple: All the other charedi gedolim profess that R. Landau is one of the greatest and should not be challenged. If you’re going to hold Palestinians accountable for not challenging Hamas, we also have to hold accountable those who do not challenge R. Landau.)