After his partner in Mechinat Bnei David in Yishuv Eli, Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, raised a storm following remarks he made against the LGBT community, Rabbi Eli Sadan is now harshly criticizing the army and calling the Joint Service Ordinance ‘Gezeiras Shmad’.
The dati leumi Srugim website report that in a lecture Rav Sadan gave to his students in the preparatory program, he explained ordering an officer to take charge of a gender-mixed unit is a ‘gezeiras shmad’ by which the religious officer is forced to violate Torah prohibitions. In addition, he made it clear that in a complex reality, there was no change in the importance of enlistment and the army and to serve in the most combat unit as possible.
Rav Sadan explained he and his colleagues failed in efforts to persuade IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-General Gadi Eizenkott and senior commanders to abandon the mixed units.
He explains the army has created a situation that prohibits an officer from refusing to serve over a mixed unit. This despite the strong message delivered to Eizenkott by the dati leumi rabbonim, that doing so violates Torah and a religious Jew is prohibited from doing so. Rav Sadan highlighted the seriousness of the situation, and at present, one wishing to become an officer in the IDF has to be willing to give up on a Torah life, citing this is a new low, one that has not existed in any area since the establishment of the state.
This said, at present, there is no change in the attitude of Bnei David and its valuing IDF service as meritorious act that is a mitzvah.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
In one sentence it says, “he explained ordering an officer to take charge of a gender-mixed unit is a ‘gezeiras shmad’ by which the religious officer is forced to violate Torah prohibitions.” Yet at the end of the article we read, “there is no change in the attitude of Bnei David and its valuing IDF service as meritorious act that is a mitzvah.”
Is there any rational explanation for this glaring contradiction?
american_yerushalmi – Sure, let me help you out. It’s like saying that we condemn men molesting boys in the mikvah but still see toiveling in the mikvah as a meritorious act that is a mitzvah. OK? Harav Sadan is saying that it is a great mitzvah to serve in the IDF but that the recent order that may result in a religious officer being given command of a mixed unit is a bad order. He and other D”L rabbis are working to get it amended so that such a situation does not occur.
He worships the military and the state. That’s what’s going on.