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| UTJ leader, MK Yitzhak Goldknopf (NYT) |
Members of the Peleg Yerushalmi took to the streets on Sunday, protesting over the recent discussions regarding drafting Yeshiva students into the IDF.
Dozens of protestors, mostly teenaged Bochrim, shut down Route 4 near the Coca Cola Factory in Bnei Brak. The highway was shut for more than two hours, and police clashed with the protestors.
Additionally, Peleg protestors managed to shut down the light rail in Petach Tikvah.
I wish I could say I’m surprised. But, sadly, I’m not. These protesters are unmoved by the fact that people their own age are dying so they can keep learning full time in Yeshivas. That is a function of their quasi religious indoctrination that places no value on their country or the people that serve it. And yet this is a way of life in certain Charedi circles in Israel. It isn't the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last.
The question arises about whether this faction represents the mainstream of the Charedi world - or are they just black hatted hoodlums with too much time on their hands. I don’t think they are either. They are just victims of a intransigent mentor (the late R’ Shmuel Auerbach) who has lead them astray with inauthentic (in my view) religious dogma.
Although the divisiveness in the Charedi world over the issue of the draft is not new, it has taken on new meaning since the war against Hamas began. Differences between Charedi leaders are being now being crystalized by these events.
We had a taste of one side of this issue when an elderly highly respected Rosh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak opined about the ‘Chilul HaShem’ of expressing appreciation to the IDF. His point being that the only thing that matters with respect to succeeding in this war was time spent on Torah study. Not doing favors for soldiers.
That kind of thinking is obviously alive and well in places like Bnei Brak.
But as noted here recently there is something in the air that is changing the way mainstream Charedim are looking at the IDF. It took a shock of monumental proportion to do that but it’s happening. The New York Times reports the following:
In a neighborhood of Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents cheered a soldier returning from military service. At a religious seminary, similarly devout students gathered to hear an officer talk about his military duties. And at a synagogue attended by some of the most observant Jews in the country, members devoted a Torah scroll in memory of a soldier slain in Gaza.
This kind of thing was rare if it happened at all in these communities. Animosity to the army was de rigueur in virtually all Charedi circles. Perhaps not as stridently expressed that did the Peleg Yerushalmi protestors. But their antipathy towards the IDF was pretty much the same.
But the unity that took place after October 7th has not entirely warn off - as the Times suggests:
Nearly 30 percent of the Haredi public now supports conscription, 20 points higher than before the war, according to a poll conducted in December by the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, a Jerusalem-based research group. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said their sense of shared destiny with other Israelis had intensified since the Oct. 7 attacks.
Secular and Charedi Jews realized that they were all in the same precarious boat. The Charedi world now understands that the IDF is not simply a agent of social change. It is a vital part of their safety net. Without which there could easily be another Holocaust.
In some cases Charedim are reconsidering their ‘roles in the nation’s fabric’. That helps explains some of the Charedi enlistments in the early stages of the war. Unfortunately as of yet, there has not been nearly enough of them to assuage the increased resentment against Charedim for not serving. Sparing them the trauma of war while the rest of the country suffers it.
What about the Charedi leadership? Do any of them share this new awareness and appreciation for the IDF? Will they now rethink their stridently anti IDF attitude?
Well we know how at least the above mentioned elderly Rosh Yeshiva feels about it. Is he a lone wolf? Unfortunately he is not:
“The way to help is to study Torah,” (Poenvezh Rosh Yeshiva) Meir Zvi Bergman, one of the most revered rabbis in Israel, said during a rare audience with journalists from The New York Times. “No one can give up on the Torah,” he added.
To show how Rabbi Bergman reflected mainstream Haredi opinion, a Haredi commentator took us to meet boys from a nearby school.
“How are we going to win the war?” the commentator, Bezalel Stauber, asked. “With guns?”
“Not with guns,” one boy replied.
“With what, then?” Mr. Stauber asked.
“Just with prayer,” another boy shot back.
“So where are we going to get our soldiers from?” Mr. Stauber said.
“If all the soldiers studied Torah, we wouldn’t need an army,” the boy replied.
Has nothing changed in the upper echelons of the Yeshiva world? I can’t say for sure but at least one hardline Charedi politician seems to be bucking that trend:
Yitzhak Goldknopf is a Haredi government minister and the leader of Israel’s second-largest Haredi political alliance. In his government office, Mr. Goldknopf sat surrounded by images of the hostages, many of whom are young women. It was a striking juxtaposition in a society where pictures of women, even in advertisements, are often omitted for fear of upsetting ultraconservative sensibilities…
Mr. Goldknopf broke the rules of the Jewish Sabbath for the first time on Oct. 7, he said, when he was summoned from synagogue for an urgent cabinet meeting. It was also the first time he had been to Israel’s military headquarters. As the officials viewed early images of the carnage, Mr. Goldknopf recalled, a fellow cabinet minister broke down in tears.
“It changed me a great deal,” Mr. Goldknopf said..
Now, Mr. Goldknopf is prepared to concede that some Haredim can join the army — the ones who aren’t likely to make it as Torah scholars.
“Those who won’t study should go,” he said.
I never would have expected to hear that from MK Goldknopf. Does this foreshadow an eventual change in policy? I hope so. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.