Protect both body and spirit: How to draft haredim into the IDF - opinion

Pam

My grandchildren, sheltering in London after being evacuated from the North, attend a British Jewish day school. The boys wear kippot and tzitzit to class, bless the food they eat, and daven [recite] Shacharit. They’re just like us in our Diaspora days, learning to love our religion, culture, and traditions without any pressure to actually wait three hours between steak and a chocolate delight.

I’m constantly struck how, for secular Jews, it’s easier to teach kids basic tenets of their heritage outside of Israel than in their own land.

Why is this? Because in the Holy Land, religion is associated with compulsion, oppression, and disgust.

The laws are imposed on us: Governments can fall over airplanes landing on Saturday or bread served in hospitals on Passover.

We see haredim in their Polish-gentry getup, and we think: money-grabbing leaders clinging on to power, rabbis dictating who can convert and who can be buried, politicians imposing halachic constraints on roadwork and Shabbat transportation.

We see hordes of able-bodied men not working, while our hard-earned taxes support their lifetime study habits. But mostly we resent, with a gut-churning fury, their squirming evasion of the army.

We know this is un-Jewish; their piteous pleas of their piety saving the Jewish people ring hollow and sick. “Shall your fellow Israelites go to war while you yourselves sit here?” Moses admonished Gad and Reuben when he thought they asked for tribal exemption from military service (Numbers 32:6). Moses was horrified; so are we. And, unlike the Israelites of yore, we are paying for them to slither out of civic responsibility; they exist on our taxes. 

We resent this and, by extension, we resent what they represent. They’ve hijacked religion and made it repulsive. Enough is enough. 

Tzippi

It’s a new day. The Supreme Court recognized what haredim haven’t: Their arms are suited for more than holding heavy Gemaras; they must enlist and bear arms, too!

My mechutainista recently bemoaned sons in reserve duty – fathers of multiple children, professions on hold, fighting our enemy with bodies that are getting too old for this. Our reservists are on overload, while young single bochers sit in yeshiva with no parnasa [earnings] or family responsibilities at stake.

Mandating conscription and defunding yeshivot are essential, but in addition we need to factor in haredi sensitivities. Haredim have hearts, but because they’re removed from any meaningful interactions with our soldiers, they simply don’t sufficiently think about them.

Here’s my threefold plan to galvanize haredim:

Launch a massive poster campaign of faces of religious reservists, their occupations, and number of children awaiting their return from war. These posters should be strategically plastered en route to haredi yeshivot on shuls, bus stops, hospitals, and airports. We must put a human face on those carrying the bulk of the war. Poster tagline: “Our brothers, we need you. Davening and fighting are not mutually exclusive.”

Fast-track an IDF program for haredim (staffed by haredim) to be trained to man all checkpoints (first) throughout Jerusalem and later throughout the rest of the country to free our soldiers for other purposes. This can be an interim measure before haredim are treated equally in the army.

Haredim and all who serve will receive free tuition in yeshivot or universities. The true tzaddikim of our generation: Our soldiers!

Danit

Like all of Am Yisrael, I grieve daily at the horror of fallen soldiers, and I’m saddened that some question the depth and sincerity of my pain.

I also understand the demand for our assistance on the front lines. I acknowledge that we, the haredim, can gather ourselves and contribute more of what we are already doing: working in emergency units, caring for the dead, assisting the hapless in hospitals, and providing food for soldiers.

The haredi community is split on the issue of conscription. I believe that our boys who are not studying Torah should do civil guard duty in our cities, to give a respite to other soldiers, and even get drafted for mandatory military service. 

Our collective unhappy state of mind suggests that we need to maintain rather than abandon our equilibrium. The “solution” of forcing all haredi boys away from the beit midrash [study hall], which may temporarily appease the rage, will have unwanted consequences. To destroy a construct of Torah study carefully built from the genesis of the state will change the face of Israel.

Your belief, or lack thereof, in this truth does not change the fact of it. Our society is built on complementarity, protecting both body and spirit.

I speak only to those few who can still hear me beyond the noise of hate, shame, and blame.

This state will not be Jewish without Torah study. Even if you don’t believe in Torah, you must concede that our only right to this God-given land is written there. Are our soldiers fighting for just another democracy or our right as Jews to live in our land?

Haredi boys should be either true soldiers of Torah or enlist to the IDF, protecting both our spirit and our bodies. 

It’s not that I have no heart, but now is not the time to lose our heads.  