When Torah is Poison

How Torah is corrupted

The Talmud makes a surprising statement: “If one merits, Torah can be an elixir of life; if one does not merit, Torah can be a deadly poison” (Yoma 72b).

Those of us blessed to live in a healthy religious Jewish community with good rabbinic leadership can easily understand how Torah can be an elixir of life. But how can the Sages describe Torah as potentially being a poison - a deadly poison, no less? Alas, it’s all too easy to understand in light of the response of the charedi community to the war.

For various historical and sociological reasons, the charedi community adopted a particular way of life. But they locked themselves into it, such that even when the circumstances call for change, they can’t break out of it. And then in order to still implement and justify their way of life, they have to corrupt their values.

Take hakaras hatov (gratitude). This is a very, very fundamental value in Judaism. We learn from Moshe Rabbeinu not striking the sand and the water that you should have hakaras hatov even to inanimate objects. And the Torah and Talmud say that we should even have hakaras hatov to Egypt, since they hosted us in their country. It’s the biggest kal v’chomer of all time that we should have hakaras hatov to our brethren who leave their families and jobs and yeshivot and risk their lives to defend us.

And yet many charedim are deeply uncomfortable with such a thing. Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky, in a recent video, claimed that charedim don’t stand silent for the Yom HaZikaron siren because they believe that it’s not a proper Torah way of honoring soldiers. But this is disingenuous - they don’t do anything else either! There are thousands of charedi yeshivos and shuls, and with some rare exceptions, they do not acknowledge the IDF in any way at all, not on Yom HaZikaron and not at any other time. The most they will do is say tehillim “for the matzav.”

Meanwhile, Rabbi Dovid Lichtenstein interviewed a charedi Rosh Kollel, Rabbi Daniel Haymann, who spent nine years writing an extensive work on hakaros hatov, and he asked him about hakaras hatov to soldiers. Rabbi Haymann admitted that a feeling of tremendous hakaras hatov is obviously required, but said that, practically speaking, one should not make any demonstration of it! R. Lichtenstein asked R. Haymann if, upon seeing a soldier on duty, he simply thanks him for his service. And R. Haymann, the man who literally wrote the book on hakaras hatov, says that he doesn’t!

Why are they so opposed to it? Because, as R. Haymann and Rav Aharon Feldman explicitly said, showing regard for people in the IDF might lead to charedim joining it. And chas v’shalom that charedim should join in protecting the Jewish People. It’s such a terrible danger that it’s more important not to show any hakaras hatov.

It’s astonishing and horrifying. They corrupt basic Torah values in order to maintain their purported Torah way of life.

Another aspect of this was seen in the comments to a previous post, The Anguish of Kivilevitzism. Certain charedi apologists kept insisting that Israel’s defense is not technically in the halachic category of milchemes mitzvah, because according to their (very much disputed) understanding of Rambam, it’s only a milchemes mitzvah if there is a king, Kohen and Sanhedrin. And they argued that Moshe Rabbeinu’s argument of “Shall your brother go to war, while you sit here?” therefore doesn’t apply, because he was referring to a milchemes mitzvah. And therefore charedim have no need to join the army, and it is actually forbidden for them to risk their lives by doing so.

Have you ever heard such insanity? Can you imagine if the Arabs adjoining Kiryat Sefer and Beitar would burst in with a Hamas-style attack - would the charedim there be saying “but according to our shittah in Rambam, there’s no halachic milchemes mitzvah”?! The residents of those towns are already begging the IDF for more protection.

Meanwhile, these alleged champions of Torah proclaimed that arguments about fairness and mutual responsibility are just “emotions.” No, they are values. Moshe Rabbeinu was not calling upon the Bnei Gad and Bnei Reuven to fight because it’s a halachic milchemes mitzvah, he was making an argument about values.

As I mentioned in a post a while ago, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein has an English essay in which elaborates on the idea that serving in the army is not just about a specific mitzvah of milchemes mitzvah, but also a more fundamental idea of what Torah is all about:

“…military service is often the fullest manifestation of a far broader value:  g'milut hasadim, the empathetic concern for others and action on their behalf.  This element defined by Hazal as one of the three cardinal foundations of the world, is the basis of Jewish social ethics, and its realization, even at some cost to single-minded development of Torah scholarship, virtually imperative…  When, as in contemporary Israel, the greatest single hesed one can perform is helping to defend his fellows' very lives, the implications for yeshiva education should be obvious… There is, then, no halakhic, moral, or philosophic mandate for the blanket exemption of Bnei Torah from military service.”

To many of us, this is all so obvious. How can anyone be oblivious to the fundamental importance of sharing national responsibility for protecting the lives of the nation? Those who cannot see this are suffering from a worldview which has developed in a Beis HaMidrash that is disconnected from the world.

This point was powerfully made by Rabbi Elchanan Nir. With words that should be read again and again, he writes as follows:

“…In its charedi version, the Torah was deprived of being an elixir of life. It has lost its connection to its surroundings, to the wide avenues of the nation, to the reality to which it is supposed to turn and influence it from its spirit. It is not for nothing that the Sages said, "Whoever says he has nothing but Torah – he does not even have Torah" (Yevamot 109b). There can be no true Torah with those who are not involved in life itself. From being a Torah of life, which provides an answer and light to its surroundings, a Torah has instead developed that does not deal with reality, that does not have responsibility and simple humanity, lending a shoulder to collapsing agriculture or a partnership with the soldiers who fight for it… Suddenly, many in the national-religious public are internalizing the truth: This Torah that our charedi brothers boast about is not the Torah we are studying. In our community, we don’t believe in a Torah that absolves one of responsibility and of sharing the burden with one’s friend, a Torah that is not a Torah of life.”

Ramban, commenting on the verse "Ve'asisa hayashar vehatov," points out that the Torah cannot discuss every case that arises (this is interesting in light of Ramban's mystical view that "everything is in the Torah"), and therefore we must extrapolate moral values from the mitzvos to apply to other cases. Otherwise, one is a naval b’rshus haTorah, a depraved person who is technically following Torah law but eviscerating all its values.

A community which cannot see any reason to share the national responsibility to help and protect the lives of our people has turned Torah from an elixir of life into a poison. And it’s a deadly poison. If the growing community of one million charedim does not radically change its approach to the army and the economy, all our lives will be at risk.

(Note: If you live in the Five Towns and you are a fan of the Biblical Museum of Natural History, please write to me.)