When "Daas Torah" Goes Too Far

The "Gadol HaDor" officially becomes an enemy of the State

Yesterday’s shocking video featured the Roshei Yeshiva of Mir giggling along as R. Dov Landau, top Lithuanian charedi “Gadol HaDor,” declared that dati-leumi Jews are a bunch of “foolish” “evil” “murderers” and that the IDF sends soldiers to kill Arabs not for the sake of protecting lives, but just for the “glory of the state.” This was way too far even by the extreme charedi standards that have become increasingly common and accepted. No less than the Prime Minister himself - a person who has steadily kowtowed to charedim out of desperation for their political support - was forced to condemn it. This is a historic event.

Charedi apologists are in trouble. Some are trying to ignore the words of their Daas Torah (I’ll be amazed if Mishpacha reports it). Degel HaTorah, rather unconvincingly, insisted that R. Landau’s words are so holy that they can only be understood and explained by people who live in the world of Torah - but they did not offer to explain them. Others tried to rewrite them. The popular CBN yeshivish news outlet decided that once again they can’t ignore a “washed-up iconoclast” and devoted an emergency bulletin to me in which they declared as follows:

“🚨 Natan Slifkin Joins Chorus Distorting HaGaon HaRav Dov Landau’s Words

“Natan Slifkin, who seems to not have anything better to do than act as a keyboard warrior on behalf of those who would close the very Yeshivos he was trained in, has joined the pile-on against HaGaon HaRav Dov Landau, accusing the Gadol Hador of branding the entire dati-leumi community “foolish,” “evil” murderers and proceeding to mock him R”l in ways that might even make chilonim uncomfortable and which are unfit for us to repeat.”

What was the distortion? CBN claims that R. Landau was condemning only those few religious Zionists who are forcibly trying to enlist charedim into the IDF. This is a rather strange attempt at a defense, for three reasons:

1. The majority of the religious Zionist community believe that charedim should enlist (and if we’re talking about non-learning charedim, which R. Landau equally opposes, it’s near 100% of religious Zionists), and that this should be enforced just as with everyone else.

2. Whoever he was referring to, why does believing that charedim should be forced to take some time out to help relieve a crushing burden that is destroying so many families and lives, and fulfill some very important mitzvos regarding saving lives, as do all yeshiva students in the dati-leumi world, make you into an “evil person”?

3. Drafting charedim was not even what R. Landau was talking about when he spoke about “murderers.” He was talking about the fighting of Israel’s wars.

CBN also presents a “defense” for R. Landau’s condemnation of the IDF as “murderers”:

“It’s worth noting Rav Landau never made this declaration about the IDF’s earlier operations in Gaza following October 7. The question worth asking is whether the current activity he was referring to is actually making Klal Yisrael safer from another October 7 — or whether it’s something else entirely.”

Whether Israel’s current military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon are strategically beneficial might be a question worth asking. But R. Landau was raising no such question. Instead, he was condemning the soldiers of the IDF as murderers, for killing Hamas terrorists in Gaza and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

There are some other very important points to be noted about R. Landau’s speech. First is that the subtitles changed what he said by moving the word “only.” The subtitles have R. Landau saying that the IDF fights wars and kills people not only to save lives, but also for “the glory of the state.” That would be bad enough, but what he actually said was even worse; he said that the IDF fights wars and kills people not to save lives, but only for “the glory of the state.”

Second is that it further demonstrates that the idea spread by Bibi and Channel 14 and co. that charedim are part of the “Right” in Israel, with everyone else being the “Left,” is a farce. Believing that the IDF, as a matter of policy, kills people for no valid reasons of defense is even more far left than Yair Golan.

Third is that R. Landau is not just slandering religious Zionists. He is issuing a very serious charge against the State of Israel itself, one voiced by Israel’s worst haters around the world - that the IDF kills people for completely unneccessary reasons that have nothing to do with self-defense. Antisemites can now correctly say that a man considered by many to be Israel’s top rabbi rates the IDF as deliberate murderers of innocent people. The political/ security ramifications for Israel, and the legal ramifications for the soldiers who defend it, could be severe.