In his motzei shabbos shiur, Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef Shlita spoke of the harassment of talmidim and avreichim as many are working to draft them into the military.
Rav Ovadia stated “A strong Shas will not permit them to be drafted” as the gadol hador worked to drum up support for Shas, with the general elections set for 11 Shevat 5773.
The rav spoke of the difficult time and therefore, the need to vote Shas towards preventing the drafting of avreichim into the IDF, “upon whose merit the world stands” he explained. The rav called on everyone to do his utmost to influence others to vote on Election Day and to cast a ballot for Shas.
He asked “all those who told the Torah dear” to be a “shield to the Torah and a shield to the bnei Torah” by voting Shas and giving the party the strength to intervene and stop this harsh gezeira.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
Since when is the blood of Jews who are in yeshivas have more value than the blood of other Jews who risk being killed in the army??
#1, it’s not a matter of whose blood is redder.
(For discussion’s sake, we’ll ignore the various issues with Zionism and the IDF.)
Perhaps you don’t realize that without Torah learning, the world cannot stand. Think about that for a moment.
Again, the world cannot exist without Torah learning.
Imagine your driver’s license is about to permanently expire in one hour. You have a choice to either take a defensive driving course or to renew your license. There is only enough time to do one or the other. Which do you do?
Obviously, defensive driving is a nice thing to take, but without a license there is no driving at all.
We are not talking about BLOOD; we are talking abut Torah values. This is Chanukah. Learn all about its implications and what it means for our mesorah. Our survival as a Jewish people – Torah Jews – does not depend on “my might”. The recent parashas and haftorahs make this obvious.
The essential message of Chanukah and the statement we insert into our Amidah davening at this time make it clear that we are not a nation of military supremacists. After we thank Hashem and praise Him for the many times He has saved Our People, we again ask Him to save Klal Israel.
You should not have a problem with that. Hashem was, is, and will be the only One. All else flows from that.
#1 Who claimed that it does? Certainly no supporter of the yeshivos has ever done so. It’s davka the opponents of the Torah who constantly raise that canard, so maybe they secretly suspect that it’s really true.
Just because a job is dangerous doesn’t mean the blood of those who do it is cheaper. Construction workers’ blood is not cheaper than that of computer programmers, and nobody thinks that it is. So why raise this here?