An internal fight in Israel is as important as the external fight against the country’s foes.
A well known truism in Israel is that if the Arabs had made peace with Israel long ago, Israelis would have gone after each other: religious versus non-religious, Ashkenazi versus Sepharadi, local born versus “olim” from other countries. But as the Arabs have kept attacking, the Jews have had to focus on the enemy at hand.
One chicken that has come home to roost deals with a very sensitive subject. When the state of Israel came into existence shortly after the destruction of European Jewry, there were very few Torah students and scholars still alive. David Ben-Gurion, who was not noted for his religious fervor, agreed to give the 400 “yeshiva students” a release from army duty so that Torah should not be lost from the Jewish people. Our tradition is that God gave the Jewish people the Torah via Moses on Mt. Sinai over 3,300 years ago. The fact that Jews have been around that long while many other stronger nations like the Babylonians and Romans came and went might suggest that the Torah is a critical piece of the Jewish puzzle. It is essentially the holy USB cord that connects God and the Jewish people. A question that cannot be answered with standard measuring equipment like scales and spectrophotometers is simply the following: what is the value of learning Torah for the Jewish nation? For ages, Jews have learned Torah. Even religious Jews who work set aside time each day to learn. The question now facing the state of Israel is how important is Torah learning for the well-being and safety of the country.
The war that started nearly two years ago has shaken the foundations of Israel. One place where the war’s impact has been most felt has been in the IDF. Beyond the standing army, reserve soldiers have been called back numerous times to fight due to the need for manpower. This situation creates challenges and hardships for families and companies whose employees vanish for periods of time when they may be needed most. With the issue of numbers becoming so central, the age-old question of whether to draft the ultraorthodox has become more pressing, especially as the previous law that allowed yeshiva students to learn in place of army service was thrown out by the High Court and for two years there has been no formal law defining the obligations of an ultraorthodox student towards the state. One of our boys ran into an ultraorthodox Knesset member and asked him if a new law will be passed. He just shrugged his shoulders and said that he honestly was not sure.
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Israel, unlike the U.S., has armed forces based on the draft. The draft is not universal. Very few Arab citizens serve in the IDF. Ultraorthodox women are also free from military service. Probably around 30 percent of non-religious young men and women find ways to avoid army duty. One very famous model made a quick wedding to get out of the IDF and continue her career. The question facing the country today is what to do with nearly 90,000 ultraorthodox students and male adults who could be called up for the army. The position of the High Court and many in the non-religious world is simple: one draft rule for everybody. Whatever Tal from Tel Aviv has to do, Moshe from Jerusalem has to do the same. And certainly this would seem fair and appealing. There are several issues with such an approach.
The first issue is that many ultraorthodox would choose either jail or moving away from Israel rather than serve in the army. Many IDF inductees become less religious or even non-religious during their stay in the army. The proposals for mass ultraorthodox conscription have not addressed this fundamental concern: the most important job for a religious parent is to pass along Jewish ways to the next generation. If the army risks a child’s Jewish future, then the parents will not agree to send him to the IDF. There is nothing more central in a religious family than the continuation of tradition from generation to generation. So while one might stand on his pedestal of equal service for all, he might find that the military jails and not the platoons are filling up. He may also realize that the ultraorthodox, with their large buying power and growth, will pick up and leave and potentially damage the Israeli economy in a very noticeable way. Many Israelis have additional citizenship, and if there is a draconian effort to send yeshiva students to the army, I believe that those who can will leave. There are many fine religious communities throughout the world and the center of Torah learning will move from Israel to the U.S.
But beyond the question of what is fair comes back the issue of the value of learning Torah. If yeshiva students told, say, the Swiss government that they could not go to the Swiss army because they sit and learn for hours each day, the argument would fall on deaf ears. But Israel was established on Jewish values, and those values come from the Torah. Across the board, rabbis will say that Torah study helps to protect the Jewish people. This concept was accepted by non-religious Jews pretty much up until the present generation. Those sitting in the Knesset dreaming of throwing ultraorthodox Jews into tanks see guys learning Torah 10 hours a day as if they were sitting around reading magazines or newspapers. They may pay some lip service to Jewish tradition, but in their mind a guy with a rifle protects fellow Jews but not a guy poring over a tractate of the Talmud. These are questions of faith and belief and are not subject to accurate measurement and analysis. I was dismayed when a few decades back some professor at Harvard Medical School tried to calibrate the effect of prayer on people recovering from illness. It was a ridiculous exercise: who was praying to what about whom? There are things that cannot be quantified or distilled in a lab. Is a yeshiva student doing more to protect the Jewish people by sitting and learning Torah or by flying a drone over Lebanon? There is no way to objectively answer that question. The High Court and many others go for the drone. The existence of the Jewish people for thousands of years and through periods of persecution and destruction may suggest that Torah learning has kept the Jewish people alive. Jews have been around for over 3,000 years. The state of Israel is approaching its 80th birthday.
Forcing the ultraorthodox to serve “like everybody else” might make a lot of people feel good. But one should always be careful what he asks for, as such an approach may lead to more damage than good. Meeting the ultraorthodox in the middle, filling up numbers while taking into account the unique features of ultraothodox life and community should be the way to go. Unfortunately, those wanting to fix 80 years of not being required to serve have no interest in finding a sensitive but practical solution. Many are not really looking for a manpower solution. They want revenge for their kids serving but not those of their ultraorthodox neighbors. Revenge, as the Italians advise us, is a dish best served cold, and right now things are way too hot on this subject. In the end, everyone may have an equal obligation to serve in the IDF. No one has an obligation to remain in Israel. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis living outside of the country are heavily non-religious as religious Jews treasure being in the land of our forefathers. If push comes to shove, rabbis may instruct their students and followers to simply pack up and move. And that would be a major loss for Israel in every possible way. A solution is possible, but only if people are seriously looking for one.
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