Ohr Chodesh – oooo. krum. reform. calling names – nice response to a Rashi that contradicts your perspective. This is an anonymous forum, so your name and shame, malbin pnei chaveiro brabim intimidation tactics (particularly noteworthy in the first week of Av) won’t work. Try addressing the question like MW13 ( I may not agree with his perspective, but at least he is conducting himself in a menschlech way) instead of a kneejerk name calling dismissal.
mw13, thanks for your response. I have a few questions and observations. I am not an American, so I don’t know how it is now, but when I was in Yeshiva a few decades ago, there were a few American citizens in my class, and they had a legal requirement to register for the draft (even though there was no conscription at the time, registration was mandatory) and they did so, as penalties for not doing so were severe. Do yeshiva bochurim still do so? If not, why not?
My larger observation is that Israel is not America. There are, it seems to me, responsibilities that go beyond dina demalchusa dina, such as kol yisroel areivim ze bazeh, and how that is accomplished, the value and sanctity of Jewish life, and how it is safeguarded, as well as the obvious, which is that one CAN use the infrastructure and still be to some larger or smaller degree, a hypocrite. Many years ago, I had an ongoing online forum discussion with a man from Kansas who was insistent on Israel’s colonialist and imperialist illegitimacy. I pointed out to him that where he lived was clearly traditional Kiowa land, and his “occupation” of it, deriving benefit from it, was clear hypocrisy if he was going to criticize Israel, and even more so because Jews were there in Israel thousands of years ago and he was a newcomer of two generations in Kansas. I wasn’t saying that he had to get up and leave, but I was pointing out the moral quandary that his advocacy put him in. Same here, except that I expect higher moral and ethical standards from Chareidim than I do from an anti-Israel agitator from Kansas. In short, again, hypocrisy is hypocrisy even if you can continue using the infrastructure without sanction.
As to your response to the Zevulun Yissochor comparison. I have said before that I feel there is an unfortunate perception among chareidim (especially in chutz laaretz) that chiloni Israelis have only one thought in their mind, one goal in life that animates all of their actions, and that is to spiritually destroy chariedim. This may have been the case with a small number of hyper politicized secular zionists years ago (especially pre WW2), but it is simply not the case now.
Chilonim ( and there are many different motivations among them, they are not one homogeneous group) simply don’t care enough about the daily lives of chareidim to want to “shmad” them. Those chareidim who think they do have never talked about it with an average chiloni and have an exaggerated sense of self importance. Chilonim care about their business, their education, their security, their kids, their garden, their hobbies, their social life and a dozen other things more than they do about what kind of spiritual life the residents of Bnei Brak or Meah Shearim have. The only cases in which they do care are the points at which chareidi practice intersects or interferes with their lives and the freedoms Israeli law mandates to them. If you believe otherwise, again, you haven’t talked to the people you are describing as not being able to overtly discriminate (but wanting to). Someone has been lying to you about the chilonim. I suggest you think about why they would do that.
I concede that the Zevulun Yissochor comparison is not perfect, but the willingness of the chilonim to defend every Jew and lay down his or her life as part of a social compact with all of their fellow citizens, allowing their fellow citizens to live a normal life including learning in Yeshiva or Kollel represents the mundane side of the equation pretty well.