Category: Cross-Currents

Ordinarily, TV portrayal of Orthodox Jews isn’t worthy of comment (even for those who own one). A degree of negativity, something to make us uncomfortable, is practically to be expected. That writers of fictional TV programs don’t understand our community and misportray it is a given. That the media prefers to focus upon the most negative stories is not only true regarding the Orthodox — and writers and reporters for stories of that kind can usually be counted upon to add a heavy dose of cynicism when the alleged miscreant is perceived as religious.

Even so-called “reality” TV, where the people portraying the Orthodox are Orthodox, is little different. Yes, the kipah-clad kid singing non-Jewish lyrics has a great voice, but he’s singing non-Jewish lyrics. Such is the nature of national TV, where the audience doesn’t want to hear him sing a Shwekey track (or, more apropos, one from Shalshelet).

The most recent such case, though, is different.

First, some background, though you may know all of the following better than I do. There’s a show called “America’s Got Talent” — it’s a national variety show, and apparently gets huge audiences. It’s in a different league than “The Gong Show.” It must be, because countless stories and individuals told me that I just have to watch a clip from its most recent episode… and say something about it.

A talent show of this size attracts fame-seekers like moths to a flame, whether or not they have any talent of record. Producers filter through the hundreds or thousands of applicants, deciding who will get to appear before the judges. The judges determine who will appear on the live shows, at which point people call in to vote for their favorite acts.

So what makes this show, this year, different from the others? It is different because of a sixth-grader who, with Dad’s advice and encouragement, introduced himself as a stand-up comic — and then proceeded to deliver a series of off-color jokes. Oh… and he was wearing a kipah.

Let’s be blunt — he didn’t get on stage on the merit of his comedic genius. Whatever talents he might have, stand-up comedy isn’t it. He opened with “what an honor to be auditioning in front of the best judges in the world” with precisely the same intonation used for “it’s such an honor to read you the script that Daddy gave me on the occasion of my Bar Mitzvah.” It made me cringe. And then he made me cringe for different reasons.

Why did he get onto the show? As mentioned, the staff only send on those whose appearance will make for good viewing — they have to be particularly good, bad, amusing, or shocking. I remember my childhood friend Eric Witt telling jokes in our school’s talent show — if I recall correctly, we were all of one grade older. And just being honest, Eric’s delivery was much smoother. I remember because I was impressed, I didn’t know he would be that good on stage. And needless to say, Eric did not tell, in front of his teachers, the sort of jokes that seventh-grade boys in the secular world share with their friends.

In my opinion, Eric, as good as he was, would not have made it onto the show. Both because he wouldn’t tell that type of joke, and because he didn’t wear a yarmulke.

It’s nothing new that the use of nivul peh, vulgar speech, can make people laugh, masking otherwise mediocre talent. And in general, comedy is a two-edged sword — the Gemara both advises starting a shiur with a milsa d’bedichusa, a joke, and describes one joke as capable of nullifying the benefits of a thousands words of mussar, rebuke. One of my closest teachers and advisers once mentioned how important it is to have a “Torahdig” sense of humor. It is important that we be able to smile and laugh — and equally important not to use humor to profane the holy.

In this case, as shocking as his filth was, I wonder if he could have proceeded past the producers and out onto the stage — much less get through to the next round — without the kipah. A twelve-year-old boy telling jokes of that variety isn’t particularly newsworthy, and his delivery was, as I said, stiff like cardboard.

What is the yarmulke supposed to symbolize? Why does the Torah tell us to look different in the first place? Our mission is to proclaim — in both word and deed — G-d’s Presence in the world. We should strive to represent the highest and holiest of values.

We live at a time when society is going in the opposite direction. What was scandalous a generation ago is commonplace today — in dress, in conduct, and in dialogue. And what did this boy tell the judges, two of whom are Jewish (and one of whom made his career by lowering the standards for broadcast radio)? “You’re right, society is going your way. Even we so-called religious guys, we’re just as gutter-mouthed as you are.” And, to no one’s surprise, they ate it up.

In describing the failures of the criminal justice system twenty years ago, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the term “defining deviancy down,” allowing ever worse behavior to pass as acceptable. And as Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani knew that when things are spiraling out of control, you need to compensate. He ordered the police to address even petty crimes, and reversed the trend Moynihan observed.

Chazal told us the same, that you need to push in the opposite direction just to preserve proper standards. Seeing for what passes as acceptable (or even expected) dress for girls and women today, we understand why many Rabbonim push for more care and higher levels of tznius than were tolerated fifty years ago. It’s not only because the community has grown and gained so much internal strength and respect, but because no American woman fifty years ago would dare walk outside in what ten-year-old girls consider “normal” today. It’s not a time to be lax. And confronted with rampant nivul peh, our response must be similar.

Clearly we have reached the time described by the Mishnah when chutzpah yasgi, when to be brazen or bold-faced overruns the world. But the embarrassment to Kavod Shamayim still turns the stomach. No, that level of speech is not acceptable — on the contrary, we should be more careful in Lashon Hora, Ona’as Devarim, Nivul Peh (gossip, hurtful words, and vulgarity) and all other Halachos of speech, as we are surrounded by a generation that has made vulgarity commonplace.

May our doing so be a merit for three other young men — Yaakov Naftali ben Rachel Devorah, Gilad Michael ben Bat Galim, and Eyal ben Iris Teshurah.

Why? Well, I can’t claim it makes sense. My impression is that if you’re The Forward, everything oppresses (Orthodox) women.

As acknowledged by Footsteps, an organization helping people leave the “ultra-” Orthodox community, women are much less likely to leave Torah observance than men (in a TV interview, the head of Footsteps said only one-third of its clients are women). But as demonstrated by Deborah Feldman, Leah Vincent and Frimet Goldberger, they are much more likely to provide fictionalized depictions of their past lives and communities after they do.

Even so, this article is an amazing journey into the realm of illogic. Its basis is a single anonymous phone call to a store in Lakewood selling “trendy” clothing, berating them for advertising depicting a seven or eight-year-old boy dressed according to current fashion — which, in all honesty, outfits him as a Ringling Bros. employee. Be that as it may, the caller was outraged, not amused, and she threatens a boycott if the store won’t stop wasting their money trying to market clown costumes to the Orthodox Jews of Lakewood.

Which, to Frimet Goldberger, “continues a cycle in which women perpetuate their own victimhood.” I wish I were making this up.

To her, the fact that women seem even more concerned with tznius than men, despite her own acknowledgment that “ultra-Orthodox women are not the gullible and oppressed creatures we sometimes purport them to be” (an amazing admission, that, especially with her confession to having done this herself), just means that women are being more oppressed. It is women, not men or children, who are “outraged,” “unwilling,” yet “forced to conform.”

It’s good enough for Ripley — but given that it denigrates the Orthodox, its appearance in the Forward is little surprise.

Besides the legal changes affecting the funding for the Yeshivos, the Religion Ministry under Bennet has a few tricks up its sleeve that we don’t even know about. I just spoke with a Rosh Yeshiva in Israel whom I know personally to confirm details of this, and who insisted that his name not be used, so he had no reason to exaggerate.

Like college after the end of exams, students from abroad will often exit during the last few days of a yeshiva zman, especially at the end of the winter before Pesach. It is quite routine that if a zman ends on Monday, for example, students will be permitted to fly back home on Saturday night or Sunday.

The inspectors from the Religion Ministry are essentially hired accountants, who come to visit a yeshiva and see how many students they have. But they do not have control over their schedules. An inspector who had visited a yeshiva several times previously, and knew that it was functioning and flourishing, was deliberately instructed to come visit the yeshiva on Sunday, immediately prior to the “official” end of zman but once all the students had been let go. And by taking a tally at that time, he was forced to report that the Yeshiva had a tiny fraction of the students that it claimed, had lied to the government, and not only should not receive money but should be forced to pay money back to the ministry that it had taken illegally.

All of which, of course, the inspector knew to be false, and he was honestly quite apologetic about it to the Rosh Yeshiva.

The Rosh Yeshiva sounded content and happy as he always is, but the Yeshiva was facing very significant debts before this happened. This is how you ruin an institution which brings hundreds of young men to spend lots of money in Israel — with lies and fraud. It’s how you murder a person via government fiat. Believe what you will, but this is the truth. This is what now runs the government of Israel.

There’s an organization called “Dossim” in Israel that has been working to counter the anti-charedi bias of Israel’s secular media for over a year. It is how I first met Tzippy Yarom, who did the first-draft translation of my earlier post about Yom HaZikaron-related incitement.

A group from Dossim assembled last night in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park, which is where the media usually go to capture their annual photographs of those Charedim who do not stand during the siren. When media arrived, they found the group had lit memorial candles and was reciting Tehillim on behalf of the IDF’s fallen soldiers, before and during the siren.

They made the point that the vast majority of charedim do indeed stand during the siren, and that we must remember something else — to call for the end of incitement.

[Hat Tip: Ellen Solomon]

Journalist Amnon Levi speaks to Yaron Dekel concerning incitement against the Charedi community due to their failure to stand during the alarm on Yom HaZikaron:

YD: Welcome to the journalist Amnon Levi.

AL: Shalom Yaron.

YD: Let’s talk about one sector that is always portrayed in TV as one who does not respect the siren, and that is the Charedi sector.

AL: Yes, the truth is that for many years I have wanted to talk about this, and even to speak sharply, because in my eyes this is an example of ugly, blunt incitement against the charedim with this topic.

YD: Why?

AL: You see, in truth every year they take photos of the charedim in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem that are not standing at the time of the siren on the Memorial Day for the IDF casualties.

This is ugly. Why? Because, first of all, it’s not at random that they select Memorial Day as the day to take pictures of them there. They also do not stand during the siren on Holocaust Remembrance Day that occurs exactly a week before! Last week as well, during the siren on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the charedim didn’t stand.

The more “Orthodox” charedim, let’s say – and by the way there are parts of the charedim that do stand during the siren – to the vast majority of them, the siren is very difficult to them, and they don’t stand on Holocaust Remembrance Day either.

You are saying that Holocaust Remembrance Day – this is not the casualties of the IDF that they are accused of alienating – this is their father and their mother, entire chassidic groups were consumed in the Holocaust, so you cannot say that the charedim have no interest in the Holocaust!

So perhaps the reason is not one of respect or remembrance, and what there is here is incitement.

YD: Incitement of who? Of the secular community against the charedim?

AL: Look, there is a secularist coercion here. You know, they talk so much about…

YD: What about respecting our feelings, us the secular people that do stand?

AL: Let’s talk about this for a moment, ok? I just want to say one thing. We the secular people love to say so many times that there is a religious coercion, and here is a clear case of secularist coercion.

Because if a religious Jew, charedi Jew, in all the ways of his life wants to separate himself from the ways of the nations and to go on his way, which is according to the code of the Halacha and Jewish way of behaving – for a religious Jew, to respect the dead is done by saying Kaddish for them, saying Kel Maaleh Rachamim for them, there is a very clear code of behavior.

Alarms, flowers, a bouqet with a black bow, this is not part of their code.

YD: 100%, and what about respect for the majority of secular people who respect, or other religious people who respect, the IDF casualties with a moment of silence?

AL: Come let me ask you: imagine that tomorrow, Shas becomes the ruling party.

YD: Yes…

AL: Or another charedi party, even more extreme, and it says, we want to respect the memory of IDF casualties – but in our way! Therefore at 11:00 am on Memorial Day, there is no moment of silence siren,

YD: But?

AL: Everybody, including you, the secular Yaron Dekel, is obligated to come to the synagogue to say Kaddish in memory of the fallen.

YD: Then we would say no, this doesn’t even come to mind!

AL: This is exactly the point. This is exactly the point, Yaron! We demand too much of them. Why shouldn’t we respect [their way]? You know they too have casualties, they too have dead. Why wouldn’t each and every one respect the dead in his way? This has no connection whatsoever to disrespect of the memory of the fallen soldiers. It is ugly to say this. It is incitement.

Because we know it! Everyone that is even a little familiar with the ways of charedi society knows it! This has no connection whatsoever to respect of the dead.

YD: I must say that I don’t remember hearing such things, especially not from someone who is secular. These are things that you would usually hear from charedi spokespeople, but we never heard them from a secular journalist.

AL: See, you need to know the charedim a little bit to understand, truly just a little, that this is not the issue. In the last few years, a patriotic national wave has flooded the charedim, in a way that their rabbis perceive a threat. The whole issue of saying it’s alienation against the dead, and they are not serving in the army at all, so this is why they don’t care about those who died… this is so low, this is so crooked, this is so…

YD: Is there no truth in it?

AL: There is no truth in it, but there is another one truth in it, a very big one, our lack of tolerance by us. You know I see it during the siren you mainly…

YD: And also in the intolerance of charedim towards eating Chametz on Passover, so this is reciprocal, it’s not one-sided.

AL: 100%, 100%. But I say during the siren I stand and think about myself and my friends. I’m not glancing to the side to see who is not standing.

YD: Amnon Levi.

Thanks to Tzippy Yarom for her translation of this video.

I had this as a comment to Rabbi Landesman’s post, but Rabbi Adlerstein encouraged me to elevate it to a post unto itself. He did say that Rabbi Landesman may go “a second round” as well — so let me say now that much as I might wish to continue, it is already known in the Menken house that my study, which is the one room that is my sole responsibility to clean, is also the last to be ready for bedikas chametz. Should Rabbi Landesman wish to have it, I’ll have to surrender the last word.

Nonetheless, what Rabbi Landesman appears to have overlooked is that the problem of the day is neither motzi dibat ha’Aretz nor motzi dibat ha-medinah, but rather, motzi dibat ha-haredim l’dvar HaShem, the bad-mouthing of the Charedim who, on advice of their Gedolim, continue not to go into the Army. Rabbi Landesman seems to level no criticism against those who reside outside our world yet critique it (often in the most bizarre fashion) at every occasion, including the present one — on the contrary, he only seems to find fault with those of us in Chutz L’Aretz who presume to defend the position of the Gedolim (and the members of the Moetzos in question, at last count, do all reside in Eretz Yisrael).

Based on interaction between Rabbi Landesman and myself, I believe it reasonable to conclude that, in both appearance and in fact, I was one of those criticized for playing armchair quarterback — residing in Chutz L’Aretz (a decision made due to the needs of my Kiruv work) yet commenting upon situations in Israel based upon “hearsay evidence, isolated incidents or the agenda driven reporting of the chareidi and non-chareidi press.”

I’m sure Rabbi Landesman recalls that he and I disagreed on the situation in Emanuel — up until the government sent a Yemenite Rabbi to jail for racism and the farce of the entire enterprise was revealed. By that time, the sources for my research and the first-person accounts were well known. In this case, let me just say that Rabbi Landesman does not know my sources, what I know, or how I know it — but none of “hearsay,” “isolated incidents” or “agenda-driven reporting” apply.

Rabbi Landesman writes that he is “deeply troubled by the total self-denial characteristic of many elements in the yeshiva world that we – the chareidi world of which I consider myself a member in good standing – may well be at least partially at fault for the success of Yair Lapid and his cohorts.” I’m going to return to something I wrote in reply to Rabbi Landesman almost precisely four years ago:

One thing I can tell you with certainty: we are not viewed with antipathy because of our failures; we are viewed with antipathy because of our successes. How do I know? Simple: 25 years ago, today’s problems were barely on the radar, yet the antipathy was much the same. If anything has changed, it is that the Chinuch Atzmai schools are blossoming, attracting ever more non-religious Israeli families to “abandon” the secular system. It is that the Rabbi of the Western Wall is now able to preserve Jewish practice at our holiest site. It is that the number of those serving the Jewish people in the halls of a yeshiva rather than on a military base increases every year, rather than dying on the vine as the Zionists expected (Despite the Charedi Nachal units, with their apparently very positive history of discipline and performance).

The supporters of Lapid are not a new breed. His father, Shulamit Aloni, and others were decrying charedi parasites a generation ago. And people of good will in both the IDF and the charedi community were trying to find a mutually-acceptable solution — thus the start of Nahal Charedi, despite all its problems and rough patches.

We seem to agree that Nachal was designed with “young men who did not find their place in the olam hayeshivot” in mind. A close relative (whose son contemplated joining Nachal) put it that the program attracts the same sort of yeshiva dropouts being supported by yeshiva-work and other study programs in America which help yeshiva boys to not drop out completely. This matches closely an article in Times of Israel which appeared after several MKs invited a cluster of reporters to observe the “largest-yet draft of ultra-Orthodox soldiers.” The reporter dryly observed that “those glimpsed entering the base… did not appear to have left a very observant yeshiva in the recent past” [the accompanying photo explains nicely], and quoted another as having told the MKs that “The army is running a program that brings (wayward ultra-Orthodox) back into a fold, and that’s very nice, but there were no ultra-Orthodox drafted today.”

I know where I’ve done my research, and where I haven’t. But it is my understanding that the past draft to which Rabbi Landesman refers, “wherein Netzach was forced to create a second battalion,” preceded the current draft law, which only passed a month ago. But even so, we seem to be in agreement that due to rough language and other influences, even the Nachal Charedi program is not a great environment for “good” yeshiva boys.

Has there been another Kol Isha incident, of the kind that caused the Chief Rabbi of the IAF, Lt. Moshe Ravad, to resign from the Shachar IAF program due to its broken promises? Perhaps not. But Tzippy Diskind Yarom has documented thirteen recent incidents which, in her words, indicate that “the Army is not prepared for Charedim, does not want Charedim, and does not want them [to be] Charedim.” The list has been translated by Israel Matzav, and I suggest a careful perusal by anyone who believes I was relying upon hearsay or isolated incidents. Soldiers of Nachal Charedi were taken to observe a baptism and an all-day “educational seminar” in a church, placed in courses with women, and required to choose between making a kitchen kosher on their own time or eating treif. And in a throw-back to the good old days, several had their payos shaven off. Would Rabbi Landesman honestly have us believe that these are merely “problems” opposite “a great deal of good will and desire to remove all of the obstacles?”

All of the above explains the position of the Gedolim that, as HaRav Aharon Feldman shlit”a stated, IDF service is at present a situation of spiritual pikuach nefesh. I suppose his words, as well, could be set aside as those of a “chutz-nik,” as he is now the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel and member of the American Moetzes following some 5 decades in Israel — but I don’t think his words should be so cavalierly dismissed.

There were, and remain, many opportunities for measured and intelligent change — all of which cannot happen while under fire. There was agreement from the Gedolim that they could understand the State reducing financial support of yeshivos, but not criminalization of students. Shaked herself did not want the criminalization clause, outside experts on our community warned it would be counter-productive, and Lapid quite deliberately declared war against the idea of students sitting in yeshiva. Let’s agree that is what he did. Before you have a treaty, you have to have a cease-fire, and right now Lapid is up on the ramparts with guns blazing.

I’d like to polish this further, but Shabbos is also too close at hand!

I received an email from a Charedi man with two sons in learning (one in Lakewood), who is very troubled by the current rejection of the draft. It is obvious that he does not count himself among those who do not understand that learning Torah all day requires extreme dedication and personal sacrifice, and is providing a profound service to the Jewish people — including by helping protect it. In other words, his problem is not with those who are successful in learning, but with those who are not. Why are they not in the Army, and why are the Gedolim, at present, making no effort to send them where they belong? This is a point addressed briefly by Rabbi Doron Beckerman in his larger post on the draft issue, but deserves greater elaboration.

This is my reply:

In an ideal world, it is obvious that any charedi boy who is not successful in his studies, and is prepared to go out to work, ought to be doing military service in any situation where everyone else is subject to conscription. That is indeed simple fairness; the IDF is preserving the security of Israel, and those who do not protect Israel by learning should certainly participate.

But, and this is a particularly large but, in order to respect the religious liberty of all people, a civilized nation has to provide the opportunity for a soldier to preserve his own religious values to the maximum extent possible — in our case, Torah and Mitzvos. If we expect Brazil and Denmark to respect the rights of religious soldiers or exempt them from mandatory service, we can and should expect the same of Israel.

In other words, the State of Israel should be expected, at a bare minimum, to provide a proper and kosher environment where a person can remain observant while serving in the Army. The problem is that it has thus far failed to achieve this quite basic goal. We know about the Hesder officers who were disciplined for excusing themselves from hearing a woman sing. A friend of mine in Hesder (Yeshivat HaKotel) told me that because he wasn’t fit for a combat unit, he spent a year in an office with a young woman who found it uncomfortable to keep her pants closed. And besides the two officers who resigned from involvement with Nachal Charedi because the IDF wasn’t keeping its promises, Rabbi Akiva Path described in detail his son’s horrible experience. He had nothing but tuna fish and corn for weeks, there was insufficient time for the most basic davening, he was challenged to violate Shabbos and Yom Tov repeatedly, and he would have had to go AWOL to perform the Mitzvah of hearing the Megillah on Purim — not because of any military need, but because of the arbitrary decision of the base commander.

What the US Army was anxious to provide to soldiers in Iraq was denied a charedi soldier on a base next to a community with religious residents — for no reason whatsoever. Participating in Nachal Charedi directly impeded his ability to perform Mitzvos. No one who values the Mitzvos of the Torah can declare that acceptable under any circumstances whatsoever. It’s a deal-breaker — and this is why there is, at present, no “deal.” It’s why the next Path boy got an exemption.

What is an appropriate solution? The IDF must revise Nachal Charedi to make it a truly acceptable framework for an observant Jew. Israel is not a Third World country. It is not Tzarist Russia. It claims to respect freedom of religion. Anything that is a “right” is, by definition, something that we must honor and respect 100% of the time. Not “most of the time.” Not “at the discretion of the commander” when there isn’t the least military need. If you respect the rights of another only until you don’t, you’re not respecting their rights at all.

If the IDF creates a solid Nachal Charedi program, then the government can expand the financial benefits, call it the route into the working world, and guess what? There will be a “deal”, and the program will expand naturally. That is, in fact, the road that was quietly being traveled to address the problem — before this government came in and bulldozed that roadway.

The current government is making no positive changes to Nachal Charedi to address its problems — rather, it is saying we are going to take charedim out of yeshiva, whether or not they are truly not learning and ready to go out to work, and put them in an unacceptable environment more consonant with the values of the secular Israeli. And to put a cherry on top, the Army declares it has no need for the additional manpower — but no matter, the government will compel young men to compromise their religious values to “share” a burden that is, in actuality, “shared” by a dwindling number of front-line troops.

At some point, it becomes obvious that since the Army doesn’t need the manpower, and religious values are being trampled rather than respected, that there is another agenda: social engineering. It’s about changing the Charedi world into something it isn’t (and some have been quite blatant about this). The wolf is wearing sheep’s clothing, bejeweled with platitudes about “sharing the burden” and “participation” and “valuing the IDF.” Don’t be fooled. It’s the value of Torah that is at stake, not that of the Army.

In describing the effects of the new draft bill one month ago, I considered only the response of what we would call the “core” charedi community — families in which both parents and children consider themselves bound to follow the directives of the Gedolei HaDor. An article in Ami Magazine about Rav Ovadiah Yosef zt”l, considered the leading authority of Sephardic Jewry until his passing in October of last year, alerted me that I had not considered the disproportionate impact that the law will have on the Sephardic community.

What I described was accurate, and is already coming to pass. That could almost be a pun, as my statement that “the budding Torah scholars will very happily choose jail, and be fêted as heroes for doing so,” was proven in the person of Yaakov Yisrael Paz, who was arrested for following the directive of HaRav Shmuel Auerbach shlit”a not to report to an induction center. He was released after ten days, and promptly escorted to an audience with Rav Auerbach himself, carried by a crowd of singing and dancing bochurim happy that one of their friends had sanctified G-d’s name by going to jail for his religious beliefs.

Galei Tzahal tried to get Paz to discuss the disagreement between Rav Auerbach and the consensus of Gedolim, or to admit that he didn’t enjoy being in jail. Both times, Paz brushed them off. His final response to the latter question is worth printing in its entirety:

You don’t get it! It isn’t slogans but my belief, our belief. We were 22 in my room and I earned the respect of all. They admired me for sticking with my beliefs. Actually the jail time was uplifting and inspiring. We davened every day and we had a minyan too.

You just do not understand, you will not break us. We are stronger than you and them. We have rabbonim and Torah on our side. We will not serve. We will not fold and we will continue adhering to the words of our gedolim, not the IDF.

Much as I’d like to pat myself on the back for my prescient insight, the only ones surprised by this are those who thought financial or even criminal sanction could measure up to the words of leading Gedolim. Yet as I said, that only pertains to the “core” of the charedi community, which skews Ashkenazic. Thus Rav Moshe Yosef quoted his father, Rav Ovadiah zt”l, as saying that this law is a much bigger problem for Sephardim than Ashekenazim: “The Ashekenazim are strong. They know how to fight against [the government] and they do. But the Sephardim we brought to Torah and to yeshivot can be snatched back more easily. It could bring down the whole level of the Sephardic community.”

For all the attention that we give to American, Russian, and Israeli Ashkenazi Baalei Teshuvah, we could overlook the fact that the Ma’ayan HaChinuch HaTorani, the network of over 130 Sephardic Torah schools in Israel, is having the most transformative impact upon its community. It explains in part why the Sha”s political party is supported by hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews who are not traditionally observant themselves. The Sephardic outreach effort is aided by two things: the level of education and overall atmosphere provided by Ma’ayan stands head and shoulders above that of secular Israeli schools, and Sephardim, for the most part, never left Judaism for ideological reasons in the first place.

Why did Sephardim leave observance? Because the Jewish Agency sent children ahead of their parents and planted them on secular kibbutzim, surrounded by Ashkenazi adults committed to rescuing them from themselves (which sounds familiar only because it actually is). In those days, their techniques included offering delicacies for consumption uniquely on Tisha B’Av and Yom Kippur, holding down boys and shaving off their peyos (which Yemenites call Simanim, signs), and confiscating modest clothing from girls to the point that former MK Rabbi Yitchak Peretz, a Moroccan immigrant, reported that his sister slept in her sole remaining skirt for months so that she would wake when they tried to steal it. And let’s not forget the Yemenite Baby Affair.

It is thus unsurprising that so many Sephardic parents are willing to send their children to Torah schools, where those boys who excel naturally wish to continue their studies in senior Yeshivot. At the same time, of course, children from less observant homes who spent more time on secular studies will naturally lag a bit behind for the first year, which makes them perfect targets for Dov Lipman’s infamous skills test. In their case, such a test has all the fairness of poll taxes in the deep South, and would have similar results.

And as Rav Yosef zt”l pointed out, these boys are naturally much more vulnerable to this newest round of inducements and threats from Israel’s enlightened elite, now represented by Yesh Atid. Receiving PM Netanyahu during the shiva of his son Rav Yaakov zt”l, Rav Ovadiah told the Prime Minister that “what is planned for yeshiva students hurts me even more” than losing his son. So it is not merely true that the law deliberately crossed the red lines which both Charedi leaders and thirty “leading experts and analysts of the haredi community” warned would provoke open conflict. The law not merely set back all current efforts to integrate charedim into job training and the work force, coercing them to join an Army that denies any need. The law also singles out an ethnic group that has suffered greatly from Israel’s elite in the past for further degradation.

This is not the first time something like this has happened in Jewish history, and efforts to single out the weakest among us are not recalled favorably: “vayezanev b’cha kol hanechshalim acharecha, v’ata ayef v’yagea,” “and he attacked the weakest among you, those stumbling in the rear, when you were tired and weak” [Deut. 25:18].

Yes, I am quite aware that this is a reference to Amalek, the greatest enemy of the Jews. It is not my fault that the disproportionate, race-based impact of this law makes the shoe such a perfect fit.

If one were trying to prove to the Chareidi community that the new draft bill is not an attempt at coercive social engineering, that it is not motivated by a desire to change Chareidi life, or that there is a real effort to develop understanding and to work for mutual benefit, then one could scarcely imagine a more counterproductive effort than recent pieces attempting to “prove” from Torah sources that the unanimous position of the Gedolim is, in a word, wrong.

The Teshuvah of Reb Moshe zt”l referenced by R’ Yair Hoffman is clear and unambiguous. To claim that R’ Moshe was referring only to “scholars” or “metzuyanim” makes a pretzel from the straight words of his Teshuvah. R’ Moshe says that his words apply to “מי שלומד בישיבה גדולה ועוסק בתורה,” “whomever sits in yeshiva gedolah and involves himself with Torah.” According to R’ Moshe, the Gemara makes no distinction between Zekeinim and Tzurbah MiRabanon, between elders and the young — all are Rabanon, and “רבנן לא צריכי נטירותא” (they need no defense nor to participate in defense) applies to them all. It is his position that one who has a desire to learn Torah and become great in Torah should attend yeshiva, not go to the Army. That’s what the Teshuvah says in black and white, all the efforts to obscure its words to the contrary. Chazal say “אין דבר עומד בפני הרצון,” “nothing stands before the will” — the sole criterion that determines who should be allowed to sit in yeshiva is the desire to learn.

But that’s not even the point. How any of us understand R’ Moshe — or, for that matter, the Rambam, Rashi, or Rav Kook — is completely irrelevant. R’ Moshe’s leading disciples have their opinion, and it is unanimous. The very idea that one can “debate” halacha with the current Gedolei Torah, people to whose toenails none of us reach in understanding of Torah, demonstrates understanding of neither what it takes to become a Torah scholar of that stature, nor what it means to be Chareidi.

To be Chareidi means to recognize the authority of Gedolei Torah in all Torah matters, to accept the position expressed so clearly by Rav Herschel Schachter (among others) that basic life decisions are Torah matters and subject to Rabbinic guidance, and thus to subscribe to the guidance of Gedolei Torah, period, full stop. And frankly, to be Chareidi requires a degree of humility. It requires that a person accept his own limitations, rather than try to explain why neurosurgeons don’t understand neurosurgery, why mathematicians don’t know math, or (l’havdil) the Gedolei Torah don’t understand Torah.

For many observant Jews to disagree with our Gedolim is hardly a new phenomenon. The majority of the Jews chose to ignore the directive of the Rabbanon that one should not go to the party held by King Achashverosh, although the food offered to Jews was at the highest standards of kashrus. The majority of Jews thought they knew better, felt they had to participate to honor the King and participate in state matters, and went to the party. Later, most Jews thought that Mordechai was being needlessly obstinate about bowing to Haman. One who subscribed to that position would conclude that it was not attendance at the party, but Mordechai’s refusal to bow, which nearly led to the annihilation of the Jewish people. The celebration of Purim centers around the notion that the Torah leaders of each generation see clearly what the rest of us do not.

The problem is that the rest of the “case” for conscription of yeshiva students is no more logical. The Army does not need more soldiers. It has enough discipline problems without attempting to control battalions of Chareidi soldiers who will disobey orders every Shacharis, Mincha and Maariv, to say nothing of Shabbos and Yom Tov. [I heard recently from a father whose son contemplated joining Nachal Chareidi that many/most of the boys in the program are similar to the American teens at risk who are helped by mixed yeshiva-work programs. These are boys who were less likely to adhere to Rabbinic standards; the Army has no experience whatsoever with a battalion of regular bochurim.] Yair Lapid spent his time in the Army writing newspaper articles, yet no one questions why he did not serve in a combat unit; that is reserved for those writing Chidushei Torah instead. So they’re left with no choice but to attempt to delegitimize the unanimous opinion of all Chareidi leaders, our Gedolim, that Torah study is service to the Jewish nation at a more profound level, and that all those who choose to remain in yeshiva should be permitted to do so.

This attempt to argue that the current Eynei Ha’Eydah (“Eyes of the Congregation”) have been reading it wrong demonstrates not only disrespect for their tremendous knowledge of Torah, but “al korchach,” as an obvious and necessary consequence, attempts to change the chareidi lifestyle — which begins and ends with following their guidance — exactly the thing proponents of the draft bill are claiming not to want to do. It is no more sensible or rational than the “gay rights” activists who would like us to believe that we have been reading the Book of Leviticus incorrectly for the last few thousand years.

And as Purim Torah goes, it’s not even particularly funny.