I do not plan to directly engage with the sources R. David Shulman brought up in his recent article about charedim and army service (“Insight Into the Mind of a Charedi,” December 24, 2024). I assume that your esteemed readers were aware of at least the basic outline of these sugyas, and that, contrary to what the author set out to do, nothing was really cleared up for anyone.
This article would make R’ Zecharia ben Avkulus blush, and that is not a statement I make lightly. For those unfamiliar with the reference, it is in the Gemaras in Gittin on the churban where it relates the Kamtza/Bar Kamtza story, a situation when the chachamim were faced with a tough halachic question. R’ Zecharia offered arguments against multiple courses of action, and in the end, nothing was done. R’ Yochanan Ben Zakai, in a very harsh indictment, blames R’ Zecharia’s humility for the churban. I see churban around me and _”limud al menas *lo* laasos”_ from this article.
The author (and other charedi apologists) seem to have two methods of defense:
1) What I newly call the “Brisker method of hashkafa,” which says that there are a lot of opinions on how to deal with a hashkafic question, and it’s very hard for us to decide how to answer, so we might have to default into inaction. Making the question more difficult is that these questions were not sufficiently dealt with in previous generations. I find this Brisker method standing in harsh contrast with Rabbi Israel Salanter, who famously ran into the dangerously contagious cholera plague to save lives because he was so machmir in pikuach nefesh.
I don’t actually want to engage with the sources because I know that these sugyas are relatively underdeveloped; the Jews were in exile for so long, topics relating to communal responsibility were usually less relevant. (Please don’t mistake this for not respecting the Torah, I have heard and learned all these sugyas and questions before. The author was not shedding any new ight on them for me.) Now that the Jews have their own sovereignty, these issues are back in full force, and they require deliberation and psak. But this is something that the charedim refuse to engage with for one reason or another.
The dati leumi world, on the other hand, at least makes attempts. Sometimes, I hear the argument that the army does not have rabbis involved in making the military decisions, so the charedim don’t want to join. Did you know that R. Shlomo Goren wrote responsa on many tactical military decisions made by the IDF? Where are the teshuvas from the charedim? I don’t think they are interested in seriously engaging in this issue.
2) The author notes that even if we could decide on a course of action, the devil is in the details, and executing this course would be hard and bumpy. To this, all I can say is that the Torah doesn’t change, these sugyas had the same meaning before the war, and the status quo was unacceptable then as well. Only now, we are suffering much more because of it. If the charedim were genuinely interested in the details and actually fixing the problem, why did they drag their feet for so long? For a community that prides itself on its commitment to its values, I find them sorely lacking in this area. I had a minor back-and-forth with the author in the comments of the original article on Chaim Goldberg’s substack. He gave the impression that he would personally be unhappy if the status quo remained unchanged a few years down the road. That’s very good, but his article and the arguments behind it may appear to offer support for those who would be just as comfortable not acting (see point 1).
The author, throughout the article, seems very interested in establishing which points the dati leumi world should/would agree to, so allow me to tell you how a significant part of the dati leumi world (indeed, Israelis at large) is feeling. Why are there fathers of four, five, and six children in Lebanon? Why are they getting called up for their third round of reserve duty in a year? (Please believe us, we are not interested in persecuting the charedim. Nowadays, the zeitgeist places more emphasis on personal freedom.) We tried reasoning with the charedim, but they seem totally uninterested, so we have come to view them as an infected limb. We want them to get better, they are part of our body, but what can we do? We might have to go back to the original status quo where yeshivos didn’t get massive government funding, as was the case until the late 1970s (and yet Hashem still gave us miraculous victories in 1948 and 1967).
We do not have the time anymore to try to reason with them. They need to get their own house in order. So please spare me these articles that belong to a Shana Alef Hashkafa shiur from October 6.
Dovid Gottesman
Harish, Israel (originally Teaneck)
