By Alan Perlman
October 6, 2005
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| Troops face girls outside Neve Dekalim synagogue (AP) |
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Since the forced transfer of Jews from Katif, the national religious community has been reexamining its relationship to the state and the army. Unfortunately, its focus is misdirected. Instead of examining how it should relate to the state and the army, the national religious community should examine how the state and army deliberately destroyed all understandings with the religious and settler public, and how it is trying to destroy Torah observance amongst its youth.
From a Torah perspective, the ideal Israeli army should be a holy army, guided by the Torah sages in all that it does (and hopefully when the redemption is complete, it will be so). Until that ideal is achieved, the non-religious state of Israel needs a modus operandi that could satisfy both the needs of its secular and religious community.
Early on, Ben Gurion recognized this need, and established understandings between the army and the religious public. When the issue of drafting women threatened to split the country along religious and secular lines, Ben Gurion consulted the foremost sage at the time, the Chazon Ish, and as a result, he authorized exemptions for religious women. Non-observant though Ben Gurion was, he saw the harm that could result if the state or army tried to demand that Torah Jews violate Torah. He also recognized that there can only be one source for religious rulings -- the Torah sages; the state cannot tell the sages what religious rulings to issue.
This understanding served the army, the state, and the religious community well -- until the transfer. With the transfer, the army not only changed its mission from Jewish defense to Jewish expulsion, it did a complete about face on its understandings with the religious public by demanding that religious soldiers put the army above G-d and Torah and reject the rulings of their Torah sages.
The entire Torah world, national and Haredi, were virtually unanimous in ruling that the expulsion was forbidden by Torah. Most rabbis, including HaRav Avraham Shapira, the foremost sage in the national religious world, ruled that soldiers should refuse all orders to expel Jews and destroy Jewish villages. Even those individual rabbis whose rulings granted religious soldiers carte blanche to expel their fellow Jews ruled against the expulsion; only they also ruled against army refusal lest it further damage society.
The expulsion was a gross violation of Torah, and no Torah observant soldier should have been called upon to participate. (Of course, no Jew should have participated or been asked to participate in it, but that is a separate matter not specifically related to the religious public.) The state and the army violated its most basic understandings with the religious public. And it did this at a time when a disproportionately large number of national religious youth serve in the most elite and dangerous units. No community has been more Zionist or more dedicated to serving the state than the national religious community. The army could have, and should have, exempted religious soldiers from participating in the expulsion. But it did not.
Nor is the problem is not limited to the expulsion alone. Sharon's hand-picked army chief of staff, whom he chose to replace a less pliable chief of staff, also launched an offensive against the Hesder yeshivas which combine army service with Torah learning. First, the army threatened to terminate the Hesder arrangement entirely. Then, following the expulsion, the IDF manpower officer threatened to end the army-Torah learning program at two Hesder yeshivas if their head rabbis, who issued religious rulings forbidding soldiers from expelling Jews, did not resign.
The army's message is loud and clear. It will not tolerate soldiers putting G-d and Torah above the army, and for now on, Rabbis must rubber stamp rulings made by the Israeli Expulsion Forces, or face having their yeshivas shut down.
Ruling powers dictating religious rulings is, of course, nothing new for the Jewish people. Not so long ago, the KGB used the same threats when they told the rabbis in the former Soviet Union what rulings to issue. And even the Bible details the accounts of evil Jewish kings targeting priests and prophets for refusing to distort Torah at the behest of the king.
At their core, all these examples have one thing in common -- they all constitute a form of idol worship. Wicked kings, an evil empire, and now the Israeli army, deny G-d and Torah or place themselves above them. The Israeli army is now a religious cult where the army is god; the Knesset is its Sanhedrin (with the Prime Minister at its head); and the Defense minister and chief of staff, and their compliant underlings, are its high priests. If you want Torah rulings, ask the IDF manpower officer.
The religious community and its Torah sages err greatly by considering the possibility of business as usual with this idolatrous army and state. The army and state seek to destroy the allegiance of religious soldiers to Torah, and they have already largely succeeded. The national religious community taught its soldiers such complete loyalty to Israel and the army that, at the moment of truth, its soldiers turned their backs on Torah and the words of the sages. And there is every reason to believe that it will happen again. Sharon's IDF bears no resemblance to Ben Gurion's IDF; if the national religious community pretends otherwise, it only ensures more of the same. It put too much faith in the state and army -- an honest mistake. But if the national religious community does not learn from its mistakes, it is doomed as a religious community.
This army is no place for religious boys. Rather than allow the army to corrupt yeshivas by telling rabbis what they can and cannot rule, the rabbis should close down religious army preparatory programs, turn Hesder yeshivas into full time yeshivas, counsel all young people to refuse to serve in the IDF, and encourage these upright, young men to learn Torah full time. Rather than focus on how it should relate to the state and army, it must focus on how to prevent the state and army from destroying Torah observance amongst its youth.
This article is dedicated to the brave Israeli soldiers who chose jail over participation in the first wholesale expulsion of Jews in the 21st century. Unlike your fellow soldiers who must bear their shame for the rest of their lives, you will never regret your courage.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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