How Dare You Steal Our Song

Charedi chutzpah knows no bounds.

How does one cope with the horrors of Oct. 7th, the two years of war, the endless hatred of Israel from around the world? Personally, I drew strength from the song Am HaNetzach Lo Mefached MiDerech Arucha, “The eternal nation does not fear a long journey.” We are the eternal nation - we’ve survived for thousands of years, from Biblical times through to today. We’ve fought wars before - sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. There have been good time in our history, and there have been dark times. But we made it through. And there were times when things seemed hopeless, and they miraculously turned around. Knowing all this, we can have faith and get through whatever challenges we face. Singing Am HaNetzach Lo Mefached MiDerech Arucha is immensely powerful for me.

The song is particularly meaningful to me for another reason. Its words were composed by none other than my own son’s Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Yehoshua Weitzman of Yeshivat Hesder Maalot.

Rav Weitzman’s yeshivah has produced thousands of IDF soldiers over the past fifty years. I am of course immensely proud that my son has become a combat soldier in the Givati Brigade, along with 36 friends from his shiur in Maalot. Yet simultaneously, I am naturally consumed with worry. And I am also distressed that he will have to do a minimum of seventy days reserve duty annually until he is forty-five due to the IDF manpower shortage. It’s going to be a long journey. I have to keep reminding myself, Am HaNetzach Lo Mefached MiDerech Arucha.

I therefore felt like I had been punched in the gut when I saw the following poster advertising the charedi rally against IDF service taking place tomorrow:

Are you @#$%& kidding me?!

You take a phrase composed for the dedication of those facing genuine hardship, ready to sacrifice their very lives, and which draws strength from the Jews who fought in Biblical times until today. And you pervert it for a completely modern phenomenon of a hundred thousand Jews in yeshivah (a large portion of whom are not even actually learning) who are trying to avoid all responsibility to their brethren (and demand to be financially supported for it)?!

And you call those who want to change this situation rodfei haTorah?! Like there’s no other possible reason that we want charedim to enlist? Like there’s no manpower shortage which means that thousands of men have had to leave their yeshivot, their jobs, their wives, their children for much of the last two years, causing people’s careers to collapse, their marriages and families to fall apart, thousands of cases of PTSD, mental and physical harm and even death?!

But of course, charedim don’t care about any of that. They don’t care about the rest of the Jewish People, because as far as they are concerned, charedim are the only Jewish People who count (except when it comes to getting financial support).

We’ve survived the Egyptians, the Amalekites, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Nazis. I hope that we can also survive the Jews who don’t care about the rest of us and just want to drain our resources and strength, leaving us vulnerable to the Arabs - and the non-charedi MKs who enthusiastically enable all this for the sake of short-term power.