In one of his weekly shiurim HaGaon HaRav Yaakov Yosef addresses the increase in incitement against bnei torah in Eretz Yisrael. The rav referred to them as “hypocrites”, people who commit an act like Zimri yet they want to earn reward like Pinchas.
“Where is this from? In the Givat Ram area we have a building called the Knesset and the MKs wish to earn additional mandates. They are the leading hypocrites because they continue to speak of equality for all while the law says MKs are not compelled to serve in the IDF. If equality is so important why is this so? They deceive us and they are hypocrites and Chazal warn us to distance ourselves from such people. We are not afraid because HKBH gave us the torah and we learn ‘לא ישכח מפי זרעו’. The boys did not serve all these years and they will not serve in the future. They can continue carrying on all they want. They can continue speaking if they wish”.
When asked about recent comments made by MK (Yisrael Beitenu) David Rotem, that “It is preferable to have goyim that fight on behalf of the state and are willing to die than to have parasites that remain unwilling to contribute to the state”, the Rav explained “This person does not matter to us even if he has a yarmulke on his head for under the yarmulke it is all worthless. BeEzras Hashem HKBH is with us. Fear not!”
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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8 Responses
Not clear what his point is regarding MKs not serving in the IDF. There is a legal exemption that excuses MKs from serving if their reserve units are activated during a national emergency so that the government can continue to function. As a practical matter, most MKs are of an age where they are unlikely to be activated and many MKs from the labor, Kadimah and other center/left and secualr parties have served in the IDF before being elected as MKs. There is no hypocricy here. Rav Yosef continues to avoid the basic issue of why kollel yungerleit cannot take off for a year or two and perform some public service if they don’t want to serve directly in the army? There will be plenty of time in their lives to learn after they complete such service.
Comparing the secular leaders to Zimri!
And the Israelis want to supply the Pinchos-wannabees with automatic weapons and training in their use.
Is the Torah leadership in Eretz Israel aware of how the population feels about draft? They negotiate with the politicians, but such agreements will have no standing because the population is furious at the charedim whom they see as taking advantage of the rest of the population. The likes of Lapid and Mofaz and Ehud Barak, each one a failure in his own right, senses that this is the issue that will give them political standing and the votes in the next elections that they so badly want.
IF Share Military THEN Share Torah Study.
#3: The secular anti-Torah politicians have (unwittingly no doubt) discovered the gemara in Gittin which says that whoever goes against Israel (whether he himself happens to be Jewish r’l or not!) becomes a leader. They are just missing the next part of that which is that they destroy themselves in the process, in this world and the next r’l. Let’s just hope for their sake that they realise that before they have to learn it the hard way…
#1: To say people learning Torah (at ANY age) should take ‘time off to perform some public service’ is as ridiculous as saying that your head should take time-off from sitting on your neck the whole time and make some use for itself by going down to help out your hands for a bit
One SINGLE WORD of Torah learnt by ONE SINGLE JEW is worth more to the UNIVERSE (let alone the Israeli public!) than a billion people in the IDF
How is an MK’s work more important than that of a Ben Torah? If the MK is exempt then so should be the Ben Torah. MKs are not needed “so that the government can continue to function”; Bnei Torah are needed so that the nation can continue to exist.
It’s a shame that the Torah observant world is so splintered and fragmented. If we all banded together for once, instead of focusing on our differences, we could protect the greater Torah community from these types of attacks. The chiloni world, and lehavdil, the Nazis (yimach shemum) did not really care whether we followed the Baal Hatanya, or the Vilna Gaon, or whether we ate kitniyot on Pesach or not.
In my opinion, the biggest downfall of the Torah world isn’t the internet, dirty movies, or goyish music, its the total absence of achdus in Klal Yisroel.
To #3- No they don’t they only see some vast conspiracy. If they do know it they don’t care since they have convinced themselves that the way Juadism worked for 3500 years is every male learned always unless they were some sort of shlub.