What if it was the other way around?

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  • #2339032
    simcha613
    Participant

    What you think the Charedi attitude would be regarding the army and refusers if the roles were reversed?

    In other words, let’s say Israel was a Charedi state. And the army was a perfectly Halachic army. And it was under attack by the surrounding murderous Arabs. And the Charedi soldiers were overwhelmed, they were dying, their businesses failing, their families breaking apart .. everything that’s happening today to the current soldiers. But the Dati Leumi refuse to join ranks for whatever reason (maybe they don’t want to be influenced by the Charedim). And the secular refuse to join a Halachic army because they don’t want to have to go minyan or eat kosher or have kiruv done to them. But the reason doesn’t matter… but because of that reason, the Charedim are the only ones serving and sacrificing for the safety of all of Klal Yisroel. Do you not think there would be that same anger and frustration? Would they not be offended by calls for achdus with their brothers who refuse to serve?

    I think one of the main problems is a lack (or a refusal) of Charedim to understand the other side. To have genuine empathy. To be nosei be’ol chavero. I don’t know how many Charedim really put themselves in the shoes of what the soldiers are going through and how much pain they’re suffering. Maybe I’m wrong… But that’s the impression in getting.

    Maybe more important then forcing Charedim to join, or cutting finding, or even trying to convince them to join is to have them interact with soldiers. Bring chayalim to Charedi shuls and Yeshivos and kollelim. Hear their stories, feel their pain, cry with them. Do you think there is room for that in the Charedi world?

    #2339165
    gottytruth
    Participant

    how discusting of you do you think you are bigger bal middos tovos and there for mor nosei beol chavaro more than the chazzon ish, reb aharon kotler, reb moshe feinstein, the brisker rov, the steipler, reb chaim kanievsky reb nosson tzvi……………. and all of them told their talmidim to stay away from the army.

    #2339182
    akuperma
    Participant

    1. By halacha, non-frum people are banned from military service on the theory they are probably liable to be killed as punishment for much of the daily conduct, so why “tempt fate” by letting them be soldiers. They could be drafted as jobniks.

    2. If the Hareidim were running the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, as was the case in the pre-zionist era, we wouldn’t be war with the Islamic world. The rabbanim warned that demanding to rule over the goyim and making them do our bidding would lead to conflict, and the rabbanim were correct.

    3. It is tempting to say “It was the Zionist’s idea to start a war with the Muslims, so let them fight it” but the problem is now that the medinah’s enemies are engaged in a global campaign of genocide against all Jews, and in this are being helped by non-Muslim left-wingers who always found the continued existence of Jews annoying (since according to Marxist theory, we should have been assimilated long ago).

    #2339218
    Gadolhadorah
    Participant

    .f the Hareidim were running the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, as was the case in the pre-zionist era, we wouldn’t be war with the Islamic world.

    Agreed. We would all have been dead. Its quite delusional to believe that the pre-1948 “peaceful” relationships between yidden and the Islamic world would have been perpetuated to the modern era had we simply remained subservient and docile and gone about our business waitng for the geulah.

    #2339243
    ☕️coffee addict
    Participant

    Simcha,

    It seems like you can’t let go of this because you constantly bring up this topic over and over again

    Why don’t you ask a Charedi rav your questions and hopefully he will give you a satisfactory answer (finally)

    What if the roles were reversed and chilonim didn’t want to go to the army would you be so upset about it?

    #2339272
    gottytruth
    Participant

    to gadolhadoral, just want to say that in the arab countries for the past hundreds of years the jews were pretty safe and succesful, yes there were stories here and there but over all the sefardim were not non stop being destroyed expuled and dealing with pogrom in town after town all the pogroms were all basicly in the western countries but the sefardim were over all flourishing in their countries untill zionism yes zionism got the muslims all riled up and exploded their sinas yisroel.

    #2339273
    gottytruth
    Participant

    just keep in mind that if the medina were all charaidem we wouldnt be in this war with gaza, do you remember how all all all gedolim said in 2005 do not give them the gaza strip do you remember when reb ovadia yosef ztl cursed sharon for giving it to the arabs so the zionist made this war they are responsible to fight it not the charaidem who said dont give gaza to them.

    #2339275
    Litvish95
    Participant

    Where is the evidence that Rav Moshe Feinstein told his talmidim not to go to the army?

    I am not sure that these gedolim would have said the same in the current war, when many hundreds of soldiers, letza’areinu, have been killed protecting their Jewish brothers, and the war is still ongoing, by far the longest war in the history of the country.

    Let us be strong enough to admit at least one painful truth. I know of a hesder rosh yeshiva, who has five sons all of whom have been in the army over the past year. The minimum number of days any one of them did was 240 days. For forty year old men (including many talmidei chachomim) to be taken away from their families, while SOME (by no means all), dodge the draft and do not learn many hours, is criminal. (Rav Goldberg who was killed in action was a father of ten.) Rav Shach zt”l said that anyone who dodges the draft but doesn’t learn is a rodef and endangers those who learn as they should. People are quick to quote the gedolim’s anti-state lines. However, let us remember how Rav Shach cried upon hearing about two helicoptors of soldiers being shot down (he did not know of the soldiers in them). Similar stories are known about other gedolim. Do we aspire to cry as they do and genuinely feel the pain of אחינו בני ישראל, or do we spend more time bashing those with whom we disagree (as this is far easier to do)? Let us remember that those we disagree with have often risked their lives for us.

    One thing I hope and pray we increase our achdus, genuinely understand the suffering and frustration of the Dati Leumi and cry out to Hashem during this war as we would over a relative whose health is in danger. Too often, we see a laid back attitude during Tehillim at the end of davening, when in truth, tefilla at a time of tzora is a mitzva de’oraisa, while we pasken that ma’ariv is not even derabanan. Chas veshalom, i do not intend to downplay the value of maariv or any tefilla. I only mean to say that we need to be honest about our individual, communal and national areas for obvious improvement.

    #2339277
    ujm
    Participant

    Dorah: If the relationship between the first Yishuv and the local Arabs hadn’t been interrupted by the Zionists starting with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and continuing their agitation to take control of Palestine ever after, the relationship between the Jews and Arabs could have continued as it was until then, until now.

    #2339281
    ard
    Participant

    gottytruth well said

    #2339285
    Participant
    Participant

    very legitimate question.

    #2339286

    akuperma > If the Hareidim were running the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, as was the case in the pre-zionist era, we wouldn’t be war with the Islamic world.

    Look, I am sure someone said that during 1930s or even 40s – and it was a reasonable supposition. With all the wars that happened in muslim countries from that time, you really think Jewish community would live peacefully under Homeini/ISIS/Assad/Arafat?

    I presume if you were to live in 1910s Russia, you would say – let me stay in my frum shtetl, the rabbis will find a way to live with Communists? Or you would do like Chofetz Chaim who ask his SIL to take a train on Shabbos to get visas from USSR to Lithuania

    #2339334
    ujm
    Participant

    L95: Rav Schach *never* said anyone who isn’t in learning should join the Israeli army. He never said anything remotely close to advocating for *anyone* to enlist.

    #2339344
    Gadolhadorah
    Participant

    UJM: Respectfully disagree that the relationship would have continued unchanged. I don’t think it has anything to do with Tziyonim, Israeli politics, or anything on OUR side of the equation. Sadly, the degree of extremism and intolerance for other belief systems (even within Islam itself) has so changed since the early 1900s that I just cannot believe yidden living in eretz yisroel would be secure today under any scenario.

    #2339356

    Gadol, he is trolling you. Otherwise, he would move long time ago from monsey hills to syrian golan heights.

    #2339360
    SQUARE_ROOT
    Participant

    akuperma said:

    “If the Hareidim were running the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael,
    as was the case in the pre-Zionist era,
    we wouldn’t be war with the Islamic world.”

    ===========================================

    MY RESPONSE:

    That statement could only be made by a person who
    knows NOTHING about Islamic theology and Islamic History.

    ===========================================
    [1] Mohammed, the founder of Islam, who all Muslims must imitate,
    ordered the beheading of 800 Jewish prisoners of war.

    Their orphans became slaves and their widows were used for immoral purposes.

    This was more than a dozen centuries BEFORE the Zionists.

    ===========================================
    [2] The Koran, chapter 5, verse 82, teaches that Jews [and polytheists]
    are THE WORST ENEMIES OF MUSLIMS.

    Not just enemies of Muslims. but THE WORST ENEMIES OF MUSLIMS.

    This was more than a dozen centuries BEFORE the Zionists.

    ===========================================
    [3] The Hadith (an ancient Muslim holy book) teaches that
    the Last Day cannot come, until ALL JEWS [100%] are killed by Muslims.

    The Hadith teaches that when The Last Day comes,
    a rock will miraculously speak, and say:

    “MUSLIM!! A JEW IS HIDING BEHIND ME!! ARISE AND SLAY HIM!!”

    This wicked story is repeated in The Hadith, seven [7] times!

    This was more than a dozen centuries BEFORE the Zionists.

    ===========================================
    [4] Mohammed’s last words before he died:

    “O Lord, kill the Jews and Christians.”

    SOURCE: Hadith Malik, 511:1588

    This was more than a dozen centuries BEFORE the Zionists.

    ===========================================
    [5] Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura sas this, in a letter to his father in year 1488 August 15:

    “Jews in Muslim lands make themselves appear poor.

    They go about like an impoverished, despised people,
    with their heads bowed before Muslims.”

    CHRONOLOGY: Rabbi Ovadiah ben Abraham of Bartenura was
    born around 1445 CE in Bertinoro, Italy, and died around 1515 CE in Jerusalem.

    SOURCE: Pathway to Jerusalem: the Travel Letters of Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura,
    written between 1488 and 1490 during his journey to the Holy Land (page 40)
    translated by Yaakov Dovid Shulman, year 1992 CE, 93 pages,
    CIS Publishers, Lakewood, New Jersey, ISBN 1-56062-130-3

    ===========================================
    [6] Abdul Aziz told this to Harold Dickson in [year] 1937 [CE]:

    “Our hatred for the Jews, dates from God’s condemnation of them
    for their persecution and rejection of ‘Isa [the founder of Christianity]
    and their subsequent rejection later of His chosen Prophet [Muhammad]…

    “Verily the word of God teaches us – and we implicitly believe this O Dickson
    – that for a Muslim to kill a Jew [in war], or for him to be killed by a Jew,
    ensures him immediate entry in Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty.”

    Abdul Aziz made this statement to [Harold] Dickson as part of his
    protest at the Peel Report, Britain’s 1937 plan to partition Palestine
    into separate Jewish and Arab areas, thereby granting the
    Zionists the basis for the independent state that they dreamed of…”

    SOURCE: The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa’ud
    (chapter 29, page 259) by Robert Lacey, published in year 1981
    by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York,
    ISBN-10: 0006365094 * ISBN-13: 978-0006365099

    ===========================================
    [7] Robert Lacey said:

    “Arabians are conspiracy theorists, and not afraid to admit it.

    Just as they believe in an active power for good intervening
    daily in their lives, so they believe that evil and the powers
    of darkness are manifest here on earth.

    A Westerner takes the credit for his own successes
    and blames himself for his failures.

    An Arabian thanks God for the good and blames the bad
    on evil influences beyond his control. It makes for a guilt-free existence.

    It also makes for deep suspicions, and nowhere is this more obvious
    than in the Arab attitude towards the Jews.”

    SOURCE: The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa’ud
    (chapter 41, page 386) by Robert Lacey, published in year 1981
    by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York,
    ISBN-10: 0006365094 ISBN-13: 978-0006365099

    ===========================================
    PS: Please feel free to copy these quotes for future reference.

    #2339476
    Menachem Shmei
    Participant

    What if it was the other way around?

    What do you think the Charedi attitude would be regarding the army and refusers if the roles were reversed?

    Let’s say Israel was a chareidi state. The IDF would be defending Israel in one way only: Through sitting and learning Torah, thus drawing Hashem’s protection on the Jewish people.

    However, then will come the Jews who don’t spend much time learning Torah (“chilonim”) with a taanah:

    “The Gemara says that without Dovid’s Torah learning Yoav couldn’t successfully fight wars, but without Yoav’s battles Dovid wouldn’t be able to learn Torah.
    “We admire your Torah learning and are thankful for the protection that it brings, but it’s also necessary for us to fight physical battles.
    “Allow us to prepare an army that will go take care of the physical Jewish Defense while you take care of the spiritual defense.”

    Imagine if the chareidim would respond: “Absolutely not. You despicable people obviously have no interest in protecting the Jewish people, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Every single Jew must be drafted to the learning brigade, fighting is bittul Torah!”

    This is exactly what the government is doing now in Israel, just in the reverse.

    #2339642
    dbrim
    Participant

    Projecting what would have, could have been during the century and a half from the beginning of the yishuv hayashan, and discussions of what might have been had the Zionist movement not existed is moot. The question the needs to be addressed is is how do close to 7 million Jews with at least 7 million differing opinions do proper hishtadlus in trying to get along and defend their lives in 2024 from hostile neighbors in 2024. What’s the plan?

    #2339689
    simcha613
    Participant

    “Let’s say Israel was a chareidi state. The IDF would be defending Israel in one way only: Through sitting and learning Torah, thus drawing Hashem’s protection on the Jewish people.”

    At what point in history was a standing army replaced by Kollel? In the Torah, in the midbar, an army fought the wars. So did Yehishua in conquering Eretz Yisroel. So did the shoftime and Malchus Beis Dovid and the Chashmonaim. Where in the world do you get the idea that a Halachic state will require no army and no natural hishtadlus for protection from enemies?

    And even the Gemara that you quote doesn’t seem to support your case. Yes, Dovid HaMelech’a Torah gave the zechusim for the army to succeed… But Dovid HaMelech wasn’t in Kollel 24/7. He was a warrior! A general! A king! This doesn’t support that we need Torah learners in Kollel while the army fights. This supports that we need Torah learners bringing their zechusim to the front lines! We need Torah with our soldiers!

    #2339696
    ZSK
    Participant

    Simcha,

    There’s no point in bringing this subject up. It’s not worth it. The majority of posters here have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the “Z” word and the IDF and will never change. You can’t argue with such people, or even convince them of your position. And quite frankly, no Charedi Rav will be able to answer your question satisfactorily.

    #2339919
    Gadolhadorah
    Participant

    AAQ: I suspect a bit of Trollisher hyperbole and a bit of actual belief that but for Tziyonists, we would still be living in a time warp where yidden and Muslims would still be living peacefully side by side.

    #2340016

    Gadol, it is unfortunate that such posters give a bad name to gedolim who advocated consistent anti Z in previous generations. Modern anti Zs are such a disappointment
    .. yeridas hadoros. No joke.

    #2340102
    Menachem Shmei
    Participant

    Where in the world do you get the idea that a Halachic state will require no army and no natural hishtadlus for protection from enemies?

    If you reread my post you’ll see that I was MOCKING the thought that learning Torah is enough and no army is needed. So too vice versa.

    And even the Gemara that you quote doesn’t seem to support your case. Yes, Dovid HaMelech’a Torah gave the zechusim for the army to succeed… But Dovid HaMelech wasn’t in Kollel 24/7. He was a warrior! A general! A king! This doesn’t support that we need Torah learners in Kollel while the army fights. This supports that we need Torah learners bringing their zechusim to the front lines!

    What’s your source that Dovid always fought with Yoav? From Rashi it doesn’t seem that way.

    Rashi writes on Tehillim kapital chof (which is said till today to daven for Jews in danger): This mizmor was composed because Dovid would send Yoav and all of Israel to war, and he would stand in Yerushlayim and daven… Our Rabbis say, if not for Dovid, Yoav wouldn’t go to war.

    #2340343
    simcha613
    Participant

    Menachem shmei- interesting, I wasn’t aware of that Rashi. Though I don’t think that supports the Charedi system of avoiding army service.

    Even if you argue that this Gemara supports the need for people dedicated solely to Talmud Torah and Tefilah to spiritually support the physical army like Dovid HaMelech did (according to Rashi), this was already when Dovid HaMelech was older. In his youth, it was clear that he was a warrior and a general. The population st aside for our spiritual needs doesn’t have to be military age youths that could be used on the front. Older individuals who wouldn’t be serving anyways in that capacity could fill that role, as we see from Dovid HaMelech.

    #2340360

    Dovid surely did not delegate fighting Goliath.

    #2340845

    And he personally was going to punish Naval, otherwise Abigail would have met someone else!

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