Monkeys and Charedi Purity

When wildlife meets draft-dodging

(In the picture above, I am bonding with an usually tame monkey, a rescued animal that I encountered at a sanctuary in Africa. It has absolutely nothing to do with this post. Except that it features a monkey.)

My difficult decision of whether to write about exotic animals or charedi army enlistment has now been solved, thanks to the latest development which involves both.

The former exemption from army service was for those for whom “Torasam U’mnasam” - Torah is their (economically unproductive) “trade.” This was originally for a few hundred students to rebuild the losses of the Holocaust, but was subsequently opened to an unlimited number by Menachem Begin. Still, it only applied to charedim who were learning in yeshivah. Thus, charedim who used this exemption from IDF service could not work - at least, not legally. The Gedolim of the charedi world back then, including Rav Abramsky, Rav Shach and the Steipler, declared that any charedi young man who takes advantage of this exemption but is not learning in yeshivah is a rodef - someone who is effectively persecuting yeshiva students, because he will be the cause of opposition to any kind of exemption for charedim.

This past week, this is exactly what happened. The general Israeli public realized that of the 80,000 charedim who received an official exemption on the basis of Torasam U’mnasam, countless numbers - assessed as being in the tens of thousands, a number that could make an enormous difference to reducing the suffering in the rest of the country - are doing no such thing. Instead, they are working illegally, or just leading a life of leisure.

How did this realization come about? Because there were a number of television interviews with charedim who admitted it outright. And they weren’t even afraid or ashamed to do so! They insisted that they were still perfectly entitled to avoid helping relieve the burden of military defense, because the army does not accommodate their religious way of life. (Of course this is not remotely true - the army opened a chareidi hesder yeshivah - and nor would it be relevant; even if the army does not cater for your specific preferences, that does not absolve you of the responsibility to help your brethren.)

One particularly widely-watched program was a panel debate with Yonatan Shalev, who is heading an organization calling for equal service, and a young charedi man, Eleazar Efrogen, who works as a charedi media consultant. First Efrogen stated that Arabs don’t serve, which astonishingly is something that charedim often bring up, to which Shalev asked whether charedim really want to place themselves in the category of Arabs. Then Efrogen repeated the frequent charedi claim that secular Jews from Tel Aviv also don’t serve, which Shalev pointed out is utterly false. Finally Efrogen declared that he will not serve because the army cannot guarantee that he will leave as a charedi. Shalev yelled, “You’re worried about leaving as a charedi? I’m worried about leaving alive!”

But as if this wasn’t enough of an outrage, it was all exposed as a lie. Because of the monkey video.

Someone managed to find a video from two months ago of Eleazar Efrogen on vacation. At the beach in Thailand, which I can attest is not exactly a charedi environment. Specifically, he was feeding some monkeys that were on a cliff overhanging the sea that he was wading in. He was totally ignoring all the people yelling at him not to feed them (interacting with wild monkeys is always a very bad idea, but then, rules are for goyim). And he was alongside women who were dressed considerably less modestly than any woman could dress in the IDF (not to mention that charedi hesder units have no women on base).

A person who is engaged in such monkey business alongside bikini-clad women in Thailand is clearly someone for whom preserving his charedi religious lifestyle against any possible breach is not of paramount value. With this and other discoveries on social media, it became apparent that many charedi young men who are officially registered in yeshiva are not only not in yeshiva; they are sometimes not even leading a lifestyle that is particularly religious, let along charedi.

This was the final straw for many non-charedim. Exactly as the charedi rabbinic leaders of previous generations predicted, it rebounds back on the entire charedi community, even those in yeshivah. The rest of Israel might be ready to compromise on allowing charedim who are actually learning to remain in yeshivah (provided that taxpayers do not have to subsidize their freeloading lifestyle). But once it has become clear that the charedi refusal to serve has nothing to do with Torah study, and even nothing to do with maintaining a charedi lifestyle, then people are naturally less inclined to compromise on anything.

But it’s not only the guys engaged in monkey business that fall into the charedi category of rodfim.