Self-Churban, Episode LXXI

"It's forbidden for religious Jews to do the mitzvah of protecting and helping Israel, and it's entirely unneccessary to be upset about that!"

Aaaaaaand here’s the latest in how the Torah-True Charedim are destroying the people of Israel, with the support of the Likud and Religious Zionism parties, along with the effective support of centrist religious Jewish leaders in the US!

First, we have a letter by some of the leading Sefardic charedi rabbinic leaders, declaring that all Gedolei Yisrael have prohibited every mitzvah-observant Jew from joining the army. Note that that’s whether they are in yeshiva or not, and even including religious Zionists too. Apparently only non-mitzvah-observant Jews can fulfill the mitzvah of helping defend the Jewish People from attack!

Meanwhile, the government approved calling up FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND reservists to fight, and is sending them away from their studies and jobs and families for what for many is the FIFTH long stint, and thousands have been killed or injured. Against this background, Likud Minister of Culture Miki Zohar told his charedi Knesset colleagues that he will "turn the world over"! Is he going to turn the world over to ensure that their constituents start to share the responsibility of national defense? No, silly! He explained that he is going to turn the world over to ensure that a law is passed to exempt the vast majority of charedim from army service!

Of course, Zohar is merely being consistent with the approach of his fellow Likud MKs such as Yisrael Katz, who in his role of Minister of Defense recently assured the charedi community that he will defend them from being called up. That’s what a Minister of Defense is for!

And then we have the latest edition of the OU’s overall excellent Jewish Action magazine. In the Letters section, Rabbi Dr. Moshe Simon-Shoshan takes the OU’s Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer to task for claiming that, in the name of achdus, we should respect the charedi community’s decision to avoid sharing the burden of the war. Rabbi Hauer first responds that one only need not respect those who actually disrespect soldiers, but not those who are merely insisting on charedi yeshiva students not sharing the crushing burden being carried by everyone else, because that’s a legitimate approach that we need to respect.

Rabbi Hauer follows this up by claiming that it’s “unneccessary” for Religious Zionists to be upset that they are dying in the hundreds and injured in the thousands and being called up for a fifth round of reserve duty while hundreds of thousands of charedim have been paid not to serve. And why is it unnecessary? Because, says Rabbi Hauer, there’s lots of charedi leaders who have been secretly working to draft a few charedim who aren’t learning! It's just that it’s so dangerous in the charedi community to talk about even drafting those who are not learning Torah, that all this has been kept dead secret for a year and a half and forever, and almost nobody from the charedi community is actually enlisting. But resentment against the charedi community is therefore entirely unnecessary! Achdus!

God help us. Although I’m not sure if we even deserve it.