It is the moral issue of military conscription and its weighty demands and dangers sustained by our brave soldiers that have brought the place of haredim in society to a critical crisis point.
HAREDI DEMONSTRATORS protest in Jerusalem against performing national service. Photo: Marc Israel Sellem The haredi lifestyle, designed to preserve and protect their conception of traditional Jewish values, rejects the Zionist ethos, the culture contours of general Israeli society, and the integrating, melting-pot process for the “ingathering of the exiles” in the homeland. Moreover, the haredi community as a rule audaciously considers this era of Jewish national restoration in Israel as galut (exile), because the fullness of the sacred and religious themes are not in their view manifestly apparent, though the redemptive return compellingly fulfills biblical prophecy and Divine providence in history.
The ongoing public uproar and debate touching on an equal bearing and sharing of the security yoke in the country, that demands military service for all Jews, has focused attention on this specific haredi segment in Israeli society. The ultra-Orthodox haredi community in Israel, while fractionalized within, has built and conducts its daily life in a virtual “state within a state.”
Displaying pronounced insularity and separatism, this very conspicuous sector has cultivated a self imposed mental segregation that befits a religious cult. The haredi public overwhelmingly follows discernible and generally monolithic rabbinic directives regarding which newspapers to read, what modest clothing to wear, what kosher foods to eat, which hotels, beaches and restaurants to frequent, which malls to shop at, and which busses to travel on.
The parallel physical segregation is a form of secession from the broader society and culture, considered alien and threatening.
Most haredim reside in and prefer their own distinctive neighborhoods as in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh, their own towns (e.g.
Beitar Illit), and robustly seek to transform non-haredi neighborhoods into haredi ones, as in Ma’alot Dafna and Ramat Eshkol in Jerusalem. Bubbling and permissive Israeli public space is considered dangerous to the solidity and integrity of traditional self-encased haredi cohesion.
One cannot blame haredim for aspiring to sustain a life pattern guarded by the rules and regulations of a conservative legal framework; but they can be expected nonetheless to accept and respect the state which offers them liberty and security, services and opportunities; and yet their attitude runs along a spectrum from revulsion of the state, ignoring its heroic history, badmouthing its political leaders and policies, to emotional detachment from its symbols like the flag and national celebrations like Independence Day.
They do not appreciate or take part in the economic-technological-medical- agricultural-scientific-military miracle that marks Israel’s political renaissance, never offering an expression of gratitude for the sensational transformation of the “Jewish condition” in modern times.
It is the moral issue of military conscription and its weighty demands and dangers sustained by our brave soldiers that have brought the place of haredim in society to a critical crisis point. The democratic equation that all inhabitants should equally enjoy the rights of citizenship is a placid and abstract definition; whereas the equitable principle that compensation should be provided for contribution establishes the primacy of duty-performance at the forefront of collective responsibility for national well-being.
As our national and personal existence is a patently daily reality under siege and peril, the defense of the country is the definitive imperative to be expected from all citizens. The last generation to willingly be recruited to the army is the last generation of Israel’s existence.
The haredim have essentially made the military draft a nonnegotiable issue. Their stance of refusing to do military service threatens to exacerbate the divisions among the people, demoralize those who carry the military burden, and tear asunder the fiber of national unity so needed in our long-term campaign for survival.
Can a divided house stand over time? How much longer can active patriotic citizens be expected to respond willingly to their draft call and do reserve duty two decades thereafter – generation after generation – while a sizable and visible segment of the population does not? The haredi community has advanced from its initial goal of religious survival, to the stage of community resurgence, and now to the point of incremental neighborhood- by-neighborhood conquest.
More than a quarter of grade one Jewish school-children will be studying next year in haredi schools; this percentage is rising from year-to-year.
The haredi success, financed by generous governmental support, is the pitfall and menace facing the wider Israeli society. While enjoying demographic growth and increasing parliamentary representation, haredim defiantly reject the call for meaningful brotherhood.
The haredim mock the State of Israel while they build their own haredi state – and hope it will ultimately replace the Jewish state with a haredi- dominated state over all of us.
The author is a retired lecturer from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
@ yamit82:
This is the essence of your point but it is even more nuanced than you think.
It’s a combination of Torah study and bearing arms that G-d wants to see (We learn this from Yaakov when returning from Lavan and confronting Easov he does three things – he prays, he prepares for battle and he prepares for peace, offering gifts). The Hareidim see that those that take up arms do not study Torah, so Torah study is left to them. Not sure if Moshe would have had the same concern if Reuven, Gad and Half of Menasha were suggesting to stay behind to study Torah or pray for Devine favor and intervention. They indicated that they wanted to build towns and enclosures for their livestock which are endeavors that could wait.
I am veteran of war with the IDF and an invited consultant to the IMoD. Mostly retired. While not a fabricated big shot in the Israeli media, I have seen military in the US and here and lived through enough in person to be able to discern.
Lets take a tranquil, realistic objective look at the purported worth of the IDF today. Since Sharon’s dash into Egypt, which specific operation or war produced long term results? Perhaps the Syrian reactor operation, full stop.
Beside stunts of marginal strategic relevance in Sudan and Aza.
Today the IDF is a bloated, untrustworthy political enterprise. I prefer not to dwell too much on their expertise against JEWS.
The incorporation of tens of thousands of Haredi young folk will not make any difference other than providing for thousands of padded jobs for more colonels and generals. We do not need more grunts and even less political generals, we need more cohones and Jewish identification.
Oh, by the way I am a religious Jew, recognized during the Sh’lom HaGalil War, OT LEBANON. Some say an expert Senior-Fellow Engineer on Military Avionics.
@ Laura:
You’re essentially correct but even if they don’t care much for the secular state, it’s not the state but their fellow Jews’ welfare that concerns them. Torah teaches that we share one super-soul and we are all guarantors for the other.
yamit82 Said:
Seymour Freund, inventor of the woman’s rayon slip.
Maybe.
Shy Guy Said:
Who’s Freud?
This is for all Jews in the Diaspora:
“shall your brothers go to war while you remain here?” (Numbers 32:6)
Even if diaspora Jews don’t move to Israel they should send their kids to the IDF.
That’s not a Zionist obligation, it’s a Jewish obligation.
Comment #8 in moderation
@ Yidvocate:
I think even our (s) upreme Court would rule in their favor forcing the IDF to comply with their religious requirement in order to serve.
How would such religious discrimination look to the goyim? Especially the liberals and leftists?
I think Haredi Rabbinate are afraid of losing control of their kids after they are separated and come under what for them is foreign control and authority. They stand to lose hundreds of millions of shekels that fund their yeshivot based on head count. Thousands of Jobs for them are on the line.
All of their fears and concerns are valid. Too bad! Adapt or die is their choice.
They have turned their collective backs on the mitzvah of military service and nobody buys their excuses and reasoning outside of their camp.
@ Yidvocate:
They have marginalized themselves by choice.
It’s not that they think they are doing the state an enormous favor. The point is that they don’t care about the state of Israel. They reject it.
@ yamit82:
I agree this would be a very positive thing but this outcome is far from certain and their concern is that it might just as easily or more easily, I suggest, end up the opposite way.
And I suggest that is a valid concern. Not stupid nor disingenuous.
I don’t hear the IDF offing up iron clad assurances in support of your suggested outcome. Hence the real concern.
@ Laura:
Laura: I usually agree with all your comments. but “Bullshit” – really?
Do you really think it was the IDF that won the war in 6 days and tripled the size of Israel in 67? Or that the nascent Jewish fighting force, fresh from the ashes of the Holocaust defeated the 5 Arab armies who were aided by the British in 48? I could go on. No doubt you chalk it up to sheer luck. I call it Divine favor.
I may consider your opinion influenced by lack of faith and naivety but I would never call it bullshit (even though I may think it). A little decorum please!
They think they do the state an enormous favor. You may not agree and that’s fine but at least accord your fellow Jew a but of respect for their worldview.
I don’t think the answer is to cast them off or marginalize them even more than they are. Why not call their “bluff” and offer them time in the yeshivas by the secular soldiers in exchange for their time manning the posts in the IDF. They should buy into it on the basis that Hashem will have more nachas from people like you taking on Torah study than more of the same from the Haredim. More nachas equals more divine favor.
@ Yidvocate:
This is bullshit.
They cannot have it both ways. If they consider themselves separate from the rest of Israeli society in that they refuse to serve in the IDF, then they should not be supported by the state.
yamit82 Said:
Freudian?
@ Yidvocate:
The Haredim are either stupid or disingenuous. What greater impact on the IDF and society in general is there than inducting up to 50,000 Ultra Orthodox Jews into the IDF?
The IDF would have to educate many of them in basic scholastic disciplines but they will also have to accommodate them by stricter religious observances like Glatt Kosher,complete gender separation. providing or accommodating set times for Torah study prayer and stricter observance of the Laws of Shabbat.
THE IDF will become a real Jewish fighting force in all things. Their influence will permeate far more than the units they are assigned to. In time they could set the standards for all of the IDF and increased influence through the IDF to the wider society in general.
I don’t think most anti Jewish secular activists clamoring for Heredity draft fully realize the consequences or potential of the Pandora box they are trying to open.
What, not a word about the 1+ million Arab citizens of the state that also don’t serve?
The Haredim believe that they do more to protect the state by their fastidious study of Torah than the IDF by inviting divine favor.
Why not call their bluff and volunteer the IDF to come to the yeshivahs and the Haredim will man the ranks of the IDF.