Rabbis on the Inside

"Put pressure on us": Rabbis from the heart of the Lithuanian world speak about the enlistment issue

A very significant article appeared in Makor Rishon recently, presented an interview with three charedi rabbis. Here is an AI translation, lightly touched up by a friend. It’s a long article but crucial reading.

Disconnection, detachment, historical consciousness, and national missed opportunities: Three Torah scholars from the heart of the Lithuanian yeshiva world speak openly and critically about the concepts that cause the Haredi society to entrench itself in its opposition to enlistment, and they honestly clarify: without a firm and forceful hand from the state, nothing will change.

By Yehuda Yifrach

5 Kislev 5775 (06 December 2024)

Near the door of the apartment where we meet, in the heart of a distinctly Haredi neighborhood, are six large batteries. The homeowner is careful to only use "kosher electricity" on Shabbat, the kind that doesn't come from the electricity company whose technicians work on Shabbat. He and his two friends, in their forties, are Torah scholars and scholars from the depths of the Lithuanian mainstream. All three grew up in well-known aristocratic families, studied in the "Ivy League" of Lithuanian yeshivos, and to this day study in kollelim and teach in yeshivos.

The three people I spoke to completely identify with their Haredi identity, but they have a strong dislike for the rabbinical and political leadership of the sector. Their monologues are fascinating. They refuse to be photographed or identified by their names, fearing that such a step would exact a heavy price from them (“We don’t have “chochmos”, if you are marked – the girls won’t be accepted into the seminaries, you won’t receive matchmaking offers, they won’t let you continue teaching classes. You’re finished ”).

The original meeting was supposed to be attended by six interviewees; three of them canceled their participation at the last minute. "My wife vetoed it out of fear for the future of the family," one of them justified. Those who came asked that I not write their names even on the draft file on the computer, for fear that it would be leaked and their identities would be revealed. We will call them Rabbi Zvi, Rabbi Yaakov, and Rabbi Shlomo.

"Ever since I formed my own opinion, I have been pondering the fundamental questions of Haredi society," begins Rabbi Zvi. "I am a man who comes from the 'Inside of the inside'. My father was an avreich at the 'Kollel Chazon Ish' and served as a dayan in one of the Lithuanian batei din, and I continue on the same path. They say that even after decades of studying the brain, scientists have managed to decipher perhaps three percent of its secrets. That's how I feel about my community - it is full of contradictions and cannot be deciphered to the end. If you try to crack the code of the Haredi world with common sense - you will reach a dead end."

To illustrate his point, Rabbi Zvi describes a kind of sub-sector within Haredi society, people he calls "sociological Haredim": "We have a synagogue here in the neighborhood whose large part of the congregation is very modern Haredim. I will describe a typical 'balebat' (householder) like this: He has two phones – one a smartphone without filtering, and one kosher so he can talk to the Rebbe in Talmud-Torah; he can't remember the last time he opened a sefer; if you try to talk to him in a study session, you will discover that he is quite an ‘am ha’aretz’; his wife will stretch the boundaries of modesty to the limit; and when he sits in a restaurant, he doesn't bother to check if there is even a kosher certificate. But sociologically he identifies himself as Haredi.

"You would expect one of these people to be the first to send his son to mamlachti Haredi (the state-run Haredi school system), so that he could learn a lot and acquire a respectable profession and not become a merchant or businessman like his father. You would think that he would express a more open opinion regarding conscription. In reality, the situation is exactly the opposite. One of these people passionately argued in my ears that Rabbi Bezalel Cohen (founder of the Haredi high school yeshiva 'Chachmei Lev'), a Jewish talmid chacham with an honest and clean mind, is a 'complete heretic.' Another person in the same community - whose son insisted on going to a Haredi header yeshiva and whose parents gave in so that he wouldn't completely fall away - asked his son on Shabbat: 'Tell me, what did the Hellenists innovate this week?'"

Rabbi Yaakov tells of another case that expresses the same split between modern life and Haredi ideology: "In a community that is mostly modern Haredim, they needed to appoint a rabbi to the synagogue, and there were two candidates. One is a great talmid chacham and a serious scholar, but he once expressed sympathy for the institutions of the military academy, and he will quietly tell you that anyone who does not study should enlist. The other is the director of a wealthy institution who spends a lot of time abroad, wears designer brands, lives the good life, but knows how to give a 'vort' on the weekly parsha and act like he is knowledgeable. They chose the second one, because 'his hashkafah is not ruined’.”

How do you explain this ?

"In my opinion, it's actually simple," answers Rabbi Shlomo. "They say to themselves, 'I have an evil inclination, I don't meet the standard, but my way to connect with my grandfather and my father is to adhere to the 'pure view.' I personally don't study, but by opposing conscription and core studies, I connect with the greats of the generation and strengthen them. This is my contribution ."

Bank problem

Something happened a year ago. A terrible war broke out, people were displaced from their families for hundreds of days, Israeli society is paying a terrible price in deaths and injuries. Don't the students in the kollelim feel it ?

"Why should they feel it? This is happening far away, beyond the mountains of darkness," replies Rabbi Shlomo. "You don't know anyone and it has nothing to do with you at all. You hear rumors here and there when people are killed, but it has no relevance to everyday life. It's not a matter of public awareness, and explanations won't help at all. The average Lithuanian Haredi doesn't know what citizenship is and what civic duties are. As far as he is concerned, he's not a citizen.

"A debate with the ultra-Orthodox is a debate between separate universes that there is no way to win. When it comes to defending the ultra-Orthodox position in the media, they will always send the idiot on duty in the role of Geviha ben Pesisa," says Rabbi Shlomo, referring to the figure of a Jewish sage from the Second Temple period, whom the Sages describe as someone who was sent to debate with the Gentiles, among other things, on the question of who the land belongs to. In this context, the Gemara narrates: "Geviha ben Pesisa said to the sages: Give me permission to go and speak with them before Alexander the Great. If they defeat me, say, 'You have defeated the layman among us!' And if I defeat them, say, 'The Torah of Moses has defeated you .'"

Aren't the Haredim themselves afraid that religious Zionism, which paid the heaviest price in the war, has reached its breaking point, and if there is no change, it may break the traditional political alliance with them ?

"In the eyes of the average Lithuanian Haredi, religious Zionism is the bottom of the barrel," says Rabbi Zvi. "It's a mix of deep hatred and disgust, and a belief that they are worse than the secular. My father is an old-generation Haredi, and one of his neighbors is secular. Sometimes, when he wants to, he can understand his neighbor and say, 'If I were secular, I don't know what I would do to the Haredim.' But if you just talk to him about 'Mizrochnikim,' he will immediately attack: 'They are the worst, they have a brain defect, useful idiots, they have this craziness about Rav Kook.' In our distant family, we have relatives from Merkaz HaRav, people who have Torah, fear of God and modesty. At one of the weddings, my father-in-law felt uncomfortable around them because his daughters are less modest, so he blurted out: 'But their hashkafah is confused.'

"In every conversation about Mazrohniks, they will tell you: '30 percent of them become secular because of the army. Their education is failing, they are failing to educate their children to continue in the path of their parents, whereas we are.' Many avreichim watched Rabbi Tamir Granot's video in which he called on them to enlist, and they fail to understand what he means when he says that they will benefit from enlisting in the army."

Where does this disdain come from?

"From the perspective of the average Haredi, there is only one scale to assess whether you are a good Jew: how much Gemara you study, what is your quality as a lamdan, what is your level of adherence to the mitzvot. He is unable to imagine a view that has two measures (of a person’s worth). He is unable to grasp that there is a yeshiva student who prays devoutly because he recites poetry, and that military service is the realization of an authentic Jewish value. And there is nothing to be done, against the Haredi scale of values - the Mazrohniks will always lose. The Zionist yeshiva - during the hours when Gemara is studied - do what they do here, only in a much less serious way. Your rabbis recognize this superiority. No Zionist rabbi would erase the Haredi gedolei hador."

So what will help ?

"They say that if you owe a million shekels to the bank, that's your problem, but if you owe a hundred million, that's the bank's problem. The issue of recruiting Haredim is 'the bank's problem', that is, a problem for the State of Israel. Arrests will not help and will even harm. Pictures of police raiding the Beit Midrash in Mir will immediately cause a closing of ranks. All the memories of the forced apostasy from Soviet Russia will be awakened."

"The starting point here is difficult. If you are a student at Ponivezh, Mir or Wolfson, the possibility of conscription does not even cross your mind. It's like someone coming and telling you, 'go to Tibet.' For this to change, there needs to be an internalization that not serving in the army puts you in a very complicated situation. That being a criminal in the State of Israel means screwing up your life. That's where the effort should be directed, and it must be expressed in significant economic pressure: not funding either dormitories or municipal taxes, not allowing draft evaders to register for the “Mechir Lemishtaken” housing lottery, perhaps even preventing them from taking out a mortgage. That would be a tiebreaker."

"Today, the Haredi public lives in a relatively good general situation. It is true that it is content with little, the majority without a car, without restaurants, and without flights abroad, but it lives okay. If there is a major decline in the standard of living, it will force it to undergo a change. We need to think about the content that can be poured into the 'felon' status: you cannot get a driver's license, cannot open a bank account, cannot go abroad, and more than that – you cannot register for marriage. That would be a serious shock."

Let me get off the bus.

Meanwhile, it seems that the representatives of religious Zionism in the Knesset, who constitute a central pillar of the coalition, are very far from promoting such a determined policy, and are actually guarding the political alliance with the Haredim with all their might. Precisely from their position at the heart of the Haredi world, and as those who understand well the system of perceptions and incentives that drive the sector, my interlocutors regret and are concerned about this and hope for change. In fact, this is perhaps the main reason for them to be interviewed by Makor Rishon.

"Religious Zionism is missing the event," says Rabbi Zvi. "You must understand that the war opened a short window of opportunity. This event has a shelf life with an expiration date, and it is not as long as it might seem. There is already an agreement in the north, the IDF will remain in Gaza on a small scale, you and your friends will no longer do 300 reserve days a year but only sixty, and public attention will be directed elsewhere. What is the 7th of October? A one- or two-year event. What is it compared to our eternity, the Haredim? We got through Pharaoh, we will get through this too, we will take a breath and lower our heads until the wave passes.

"Therefore, I urge you: Don't take your foot off the gas. You are a large public and you have power, don't let Smotrich drag it out. If you don't apply disproportionate pressure on the Haredi public now, you won't have another chance. Power needs to be applied on the ground, because there's no chance you'll be able to move the 'gedolim', the politicians or the activists, even a millimeter. No matter what you claim, no matter what you prove, no matter what evidence you bring - their 'opinion' won't budge an inch. Only heavy economic sanctions, without taking your foot off the gas. This should be a pain that the young men and women won't be able to deal with, won't be able to shake off.

"With the full backing he gives to the Haredi MKs, Smotrich is actually damaging and sabotaging the opportunity to bring about change. It would be great if he were negotiating with Deri and Goldknopf and gaining something. He could offer a compromise: tell the Haredim, 'Don't enlist, but at least don't hurt anyone who wants to enlist. Don't abuse Rabbi Dovid Leibel. Let anyone who wants to get off the bus do it without ruining their life.' Let's say you're riding a bus, and the driver is driving wildly and irresponsibly, you come to take control of the wheel and they stop you, claiming that 'one leader for the generation' - there is only one driver per bus. Let's say you're right and only the 'gedolim' are allowed to decide, the minimum is to stop for a moment and allow you to get off."

The three of you testify that this issue bothered you even before the war. What caused this?

"For me, the disillusionment began with the coronavirus," says Rabbi Shlomo. "Our conduct was so shocking and reckless that I thought that perhaps there would be a public uproar, that people would ask themselves: Do we belong to this sector? But nothing happened. Even the Meron disaster didn't change anything. Our leadership normalizes irresponsibility, normalizes lawlessness and failure to take responsibility, and this makes people ‘disabled’ and undeveloped."

How is this expressed?

"Listen to an anecdote: There is a 'Friday Kollel' in the area here for 'Etznikim' and 'Briskers', people from the Haredi extreme, with a high level of fanaticism. There is a coffee and biscuit corner in the kollel, and there is one whose job is to arrive at the beginning of the 'Seder', take out a kettle and cups and coffee from the cupboard, and go to the grocery store to buy cookies and milk. One time he arrived towards the end of the 'Seder', and saw that no one had opened the cupboard and taken out the equipment. It's not that they don't care, they rely on the coffee and the biscuits, but if you don't open it for them – they are physically and mentally incapable of doing it on their own.

"It's a curiosity, but it illustrates a deep problem with Lithuanian men: they suffer from a pampering that consumes everything good. Guys in a Lithuanian 'yeshiva gedola' don't have to do anything in life – not cook, not iron, not wash dishes, not clean the room. A whole system surrounds them from every direction, and they don't have to do anything except sit in the study hall, think about some distinction in the Rambam, and wag their finger. Even when they come to matchmaking, they don't have to make an effort, inquire, and search, just sit in the hotel lobby like a Turkish sheikh and reject proposals. They become people who lack any life skills, are extremely undeveloped. But if you talk to them, you'll discover that their self-esteem is crazy, they're sure that they're the crown of creation. Against this background, military service has a vital role that goes far beyond carrying a burden. It will help these guys grow up, develop a basic awareness of taking responsibility for life."

Uniforms in the neighborhoods

How do you create a precedent that will make them believe it's possible?

"The biggest challenge is how to normalize the military draft," believes Rabbi Zvi. "In my opinion, that's the key to everything. When Rabbi Kalman Bar wanted to be elected Chief Rabbi, he hired a shrewd publicist who managed to normalize it with Lithuanian decision-makers, even though he used to be a Mizrochnik. Normalization also works on social issues. Take, for example, the issue of higher education for women. Ten years ago, a rabbi asked me: 'Tell me, is your wife studying at Jerusalem College?' I told him, 'She does other things there, she doesn't study.' Then he said, 'My wife studies there.' I replied, 'Okay, my wife studies there too.' Today, if a woman says that she enrolled at the Hebrew University, no one will raise an eyebrow. The issue of education has been normalized, just as working in high-tech has been normalized.

"Normalization can happen in a short time. Suddenly you'll read an article in Yated Ne'eman about the fact that Ponivezher Rav hoisted a flag on Yom Ha’Atzmaut, and Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky said after the Six-Day War that the miraculous victory was thanks to the dedication of the Israeli soldiers. You can see a total change in one day, which will be presented by the leadership as if there was no change at all.

"You see this in many areas. Rabbi Schach's war with Rav Ovadia over the establishment of a government with the left was very fierce, and in those years, Shas was viewed as the devil. Then 'Degel' entered the government with Ehud Barak, and in an instant an article came out that normalized the drastic change under the title 'Give me Yavne and its sages.' Four years of wars against the left were erased in an instant. I was a child and I remember it. Rav Ovadia underwent normalization, Chabad underwent normalization. Even Rabbi Dov Lando, the gadol of the current generation, underwent normalization. When I was a child, he was Rabbi Schach's opponent, and Yated loathed him. If you had said then that he would be the leader of the Lithuanians, it's just like you would say today that Rabbi Dovid Leibel, who recently established a Haredi Hesder yeshiva, will be the leader of the Lithuanians. Haredi pragmatic flexibility is endless. Strange things are normalized in an instant."

Here, it's about normalizing change on the ground, not in leadership. How do you do that?

"We need to work with a carrot and stick approach," believes Rabbi Shlomo. "Normalization requires investment in two areas. The first is a significant financial investment in initiatives in the field of recruitment. In a Haredi hesder yeshiva that I know, there is no money to buy chicken for lunch, and the students walk around hungry. This is not the way to turn the yeshiva into a place that people look up to. Of course, it is a question of the chicken and the egg - if you don't open good Haredi hesder yeshivos, you won't have examples of success. Even parents who are willing to make the leap in consciousness will want their child to join the guys who study Torah and enlist, not the shabbanikim and the youth who drop out.

"Another point is the utilitarian gain of the young men. They were not raised on the importance of military service, and if you want to attract them to combat training, you have to offer them something in return, meaning a preparatory course and a bachelor's degree in a field in which one can make a respectable living. If the young man knows that at the end of the whole process he has entered the market with the possibility of earning a living that commands respect, this will influence him.

"Normalization is also visibility," continues Rabbi Zvi. "That more and more guys like this will walk around the neighborhoods in uniform. It doesn't matter what this guy does and what role he plays, because anyway, most Haredim don't know the unit symbols and it means nothing to them. The very fact that a person sees his neighbor in the stairwell wearing a uniform, and then he sees him in the synagogue praying seriously, gives him a new perspective on the phenomenon. To get the cart moving, you have to pour money, just as was done in the field of higher education: when the State of Israel decided that it wanted more Haredim to graduate with a bachelor's degree, then the Higher Education Commission poured money. It turned to colleges and made sure that it was worth it for them to open tracks for Haredim. Slowly, a situation was created where going and studying for a bachelor's degree became something normal.

"Another direction is in the field of public relations. The average Haredi is influenced by the images he sees in the press, on Haredi websites and WhatsApp groups. If you see in the newspaper 'Bakehilla' a photo of Major General David Zini meeting with Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, or of young men from a Haredi hesder yeshiva coming to be tested on their Gemara studies with Rabbi so-and-so, things slowly become normalized. When the average Haredi sees in the newspaper a picture of a situation he is unfamiliar with, in the first second he asks himself: wait, what is this thing? But within a few moments his mind undergoes a change, he explains to himself that it is normal and that is it. His picture of 'what is normal' and 'what is not normal' changes within three minutes. As soon as conscription becomes something that is done, you will see masses of Haredi young men enlisting."

Will the leadership not fight the normalization efforts?

"Of course it will fight. Against the 'gedolim' and the politicians, you will never achieve anything. You have to shake the tree so that a few branches fall and take root in a healthy way somewhere else, to lead change on the ground. And when the scope increases, you will see the leadership normalizing it in order to try to control the event. Haredi sociology works in circles. The central circle has an interest in convincing that if you leave the kollel, you will be stripped of all your spiritual assets and destroyed. Therefore, they will never create a spiritual alternative, and it is good for them that the ones who are recruited are the Shababnikim. If you succeed in creating small circles on the ground that constitute a spiritual alternative, their effort will collapse.

"The initial target audience is a lot of Haredim who are not hardcore avreichim but who are not 'dropouts' either. I call them 'Beit Shemesh people', because this city has a lot of that kind of population, Israelis and foreigners. If you shake their rug effectively enough, they will move. Many of them have WhatsApp, they have been exposed to videos of the righteous soldiers who fell in the war, and they know that they live by empty slogans."

Sterile learning

They claim that it is impossible to crack Haredi without understanding its deep anxiety. What is this anxiety in your opinion?

"When two young men sit for three hours in a 'seder' and passionately debate the question of what the 'migo' claim is, at that moment they are in the holy of holies. This is the covenant, this is the uniqueness. This covenant has no body, no heart, no emotions, no world, no reality – only the mind of the learner and the Torah. The separation and detachment are a value. It is told of Rabbi Baruch Ber Leibowitz, the head of the Kamenitz yeshiva, who was urged to adjudicate a dispute in a Beit Din. He came, sat for fifteen minutes and left. When they asked him why, he replied: 'When I deal with a sugya involving two litigants, one argues like the Ramban and one like the Rosh. In reality, both sides make up stories and mess with my head.

"The level of 'sterility' in Lithuanian learning is unimaginable. When I teach 'Eizehu Neshech’ (a chapter dealing with usury issues) I don't even dare ask where the word 'neshikah' came from. The moment you ask such a question, you're out of the beit midrash. When I teach 'Befanai Nechtav' (it was written in my presence and it was sealed in my presence) (the opening sugya of Masechet Gittin), it's pure mathematics. I don't even think about the actual event of a couple getting divorced. From a Haredi perspective, this is the only way to preserve the intimate covenant with the Torah. The Mizrochnik comes from outside, from a secular world, and not only is he unable to understand the covenant, he violates it with his external concepts.

"From the perspective of the average Haredi, he is doing exactly what the Jewish people did for 3,500 years. He does not think there is a difference between his Judaism and that of our forefather Avraham. This leads to unfounded investigations, such as the question about Eliezer, Avraham's servant, who was sent to betroth Rivka for Yitzchak: After all, Eliezer is a gentile, and a gentile 'is not in the category of a valid agent’ for divorce and betrothal! All kinds of explanations are given, no one can imagine that Avraham did not exactly ponder this question."

They also do not recognize the influence of science on the rulings of halakhic law in various periods.

"In one of the kollelim, the mashgiach taught a passage from 'Shaarei Kedusha' by Rabbi Chaim Vital, in which the four elements are mentioned. A fifty-year-old avreich asked me: Tell me, doesn't this come from science? I told him: Yes, it comes from Aristotle. He raised an eyebrow and asked: Is this accepted in science today? I told him: Even in Rabbi Chaim Vital's time, it wasn't accepted. He had no idea. This leads us to the heavy price that Haredi Judaism pays: intimacy is achieved at the price of ignorance. People are raised with the brains of a bird, with zero understanding and orientation in the world around them. They are willing to pay this price because they are convinced that the alternative is the loss of Jewish identity.

"From the perspective of the Haredim, Israel wants to force them to lose the game and not continue the tradition. Even the guy who barely studies, and goes to the kiosk near the central station to watch football - they are afraid that if you put more things into his head, he will not be in the covenant. From this perspective, the Mizrochniks may gain other things, but they are not preserving the thousand-year-old covenant."

In your opinion, what needs to change in the conduct of the army?

"The Haredi public needs to be convinced that the IDF is truly making every effort to enable service in units that will maintain all the spiritual conditions required for Haredi service. If the army cuts corners, it will not slip and will not pass. For example, Rabbi Leibel wrote a letter warning that if the operating instructions of the Haredi Hasmonean brigade are not anchored in the General Staff orders, they will not be enforced, and we will be dependent on the goodwill of the brigade commander. People read this letter and said: "Even Rabbi Leibel, who supports the draft, admits that there are problems."

Give up to gain

After the conversation ended, one of the rabbis who was afraid to come contacted me and asked to add his perspective. According to him, "In order to be pragmatic and create achievements, it is better not to insist on equality but to think conservatively about the conditions that will benefit the IDF and Israeli society, and will constitute a lower price from a Haredi perspective. And these conditions should be dictated, not negotiated about. Not in a condescending formula that would arouse antagonism like 'we found the exact formula to combine Torah and life', but to speak matter-of-factly about the extreme security need that causes these demands."

What do you actually offer?

"Morally and practically, it is more correct to follow the path of a big stick and a carrot, but to target them to each age group separately. The significant carrot is not money, but shortened service. The average Haredi thinks: three years in the Golani is not something you thought you would ever do, you didn't grow up with it, and it is a long period with no end in sight."

"You can target audiences: offer a service like the 'hesder Merkaz' for married people aged 21 and over. And the sanctions will be related to them: cancellation of discounts on property taxes, dormitories, medical insurance, and so on. The interests of 18-year-old singles are different, and if they know that they will be able to return to yeshiva by the age of 19 and a half, it will be less threatening. They also have to face a relevant obstacle: high-cost health insurance, and the prevention of the possibility of opening a bank account, registering for marriage, and obtaining a driver's license.

"There is indeed a concession here by the entire Israeli society, but this concession is accompanied by achieving a return, not only on a public level but also on a private level. On the other hand, there is a conservative logic in it. It is difficult to shock tens of thousands of people who never dreamed that the IDF would be part of their worldview, and all at once to conscript them for three years, this is a revolution that will exact a high social price. It is better to go step by step and correct as we go".

"A second direction is to establish in law a mandatory service at the level of basic combat training, for everyone who is physically able, with no exemptions for anyone, and to establish severe personal financial sanctions against it so that everyone will come. Such training should be in a maximally Haredi atmosphere, and as short as possible. After it, the enlistment will be determined according to the needs of the IDF, and there will be the possibility of 'torato umanuto' (‘Torah is his profession’) after the IDF has exhausted its needs. In such a situation, what will happen is that people will meet the IDF for the first time and experience the military world directly, and the one who will have to decide will be someone who knows and not someone who is told stories."