Joining the growing number of gedolei torah opposed to state efforts to draft avreichim, Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef Shlita in his motzei shabbos shiur sent a message to the Plesner Committee, requesting they refrain from their plan to compel yeshiva students to leave the beis medrash to serve in the IDF or an approved national service.
Rav Ovadia asked not to compel anyone wishing to continue studying torah from doing so, “not to prevent one who has declared torah study his profession from bringing nachas to HKBH and by doing so, they will receive all the brochos in the torah”.
Interestingly, there is a dispute between members of the committee and according to reports leaked to the media; Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is working behind the scenes to prevent the committee from setting a defined number of chareidim that will be drafted. The prime minister is quite aware that doing so, as most of the committee members plan to do, will lead to an abrupt coalition crisis and in all likelihood, the chareidi parties will break from the coalition.
Some feel the result of a compelled draft could be worse, civil war or tens of thousands of chareidim leaving Eretz Yisrael chas v’sholom.
Just last week Defense Minister Ehud Barak met with the committee, presenting his vision, to permit 10% of the avreichim to continue learning while the others would be drafted into the IDF and national service. According to the figure that 60,000 avreichim are learning, 50,000 of them would be compelled to leave the beis medrash.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
Didn’t anyone on the Plesner committee read Parshas Korach and notice the resemblance?
“Some feel the result of a compelled draft could be worse, civil war or tens of thousands of chareidim leaving Eretz Yisrael chas v’sholom.”
That is exactly what the leftists want. They realize that in a short time demographic will make Chareidim the majority in Israel.
The best way to keep the “Hebrew speaking genitles” in power is to get the Chareidiim to leave.
“According to the figure that 60,000 avreichim are learning, 50,000 of them would be compelled to leave the beis medrash.”
Actually simple math would say that 54,000 would be compelled to leave. Leaving only 6,000, or about the size of the Mir Yeshiva.
“…or tens of thousands of chareidim leaving Eretz Yisrael chas v’sholom.”
At our current period and given the circumstances, there are bigger Chas V’sholoms than that.