Before I start, a few words about Rabbi
Moshe Yechiel HaLevi Tzuriel (Weiss), born in 1938, who passed away 24 Av,
three days ago. He was a musmach of
Rav Ruderman, zt”l, in Ner Israel,
and moved to Israel as a young man. An enormous talmid chacham, the
author of 49 books on halacha and Jewish philosophy, he also came into contact
with the writings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook and was attracted to
them. In Israel, he learned in both Mercaz HaRav and Kollel Chazon Ish. He
remained a chareidi rabbi all his
life, raised a chareidi family, and was revered in Bnei Brak. But he also
served as a moral beacon to the Torah-true settler community, particularly
during the difficult 1990s and 2000s, the years of Oslo and the Disengagement,
and provided guidance when it was needed. His son, Rav Avraham, is the Chief
Rabbi of Nes Tziyona, a medium-sized Israeli town.
I remember those
years, when the country was in danger because successive governments were
trying to give away pieces of the Land of Israel to our enemies. When the right
wing demonstrated back then, peacefully I might add, the goal was to save Jews
from being killed, to keep Jews from being thrown out of their homes, or to
stop wars from happening. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that those were
real issues of life and death. You just had to open your eyes. Well, we never
succeeded in our demonstrations, and all the bad things we feared would happen,
happened. Jews were killed by terrorists emboldened by Israeli weakness. Jews
were thrown out of their homes, in Gush Katif, and four wars happened, the
result of Israeli weakness.
I suppose every
cloud has a silver lining. Because we did not succeed in any of our demonstrations,
the Israeli people had to learn from their mistakes, and today the country is
different than it was. What half of the country was willing to do to make
Israel’s enemies smile in 1995, most of them would not even think about doing
now. Their fingers have been burnt.
So, if everything
is so wonderful regarding those issues, why is there still such a ferocious
fight going on between the Israeli government and the opposition? Why do there
continue to be loud demonstrations every Saturday night? Can the issue really
be the Incapacitation Law and the Reasonableness Law, and the “changes in the
selection of judges,” the court protocol changes being made by the present
government? That makes no sense. Nobody is dying, and nobody is being thrown
out of their homes.
I have a suggested
answer, but I will only share it at the end. First I would like to share a few
stories to show you that, on the grassroots level, things in Israel in 2023 are
fine.
Three Stories about the Paratroopers
1)
In 1950, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who had learned in the Chevron Yeshiva for many
years, was appointed to be the Chief Rabbi of the Israeli Army. He was
reassured that the entire army was kosher. On one of his first days, he walked
into an army kitchen of the paratroopers and discovered that the kitchen was
not kosher. He asked the mess sergeant, a Sefardic Jew, why the kitchen was not
kosher, and he replied, “Look out there at those soldiers eating. Those are 300
paratroopers from secular kibbutzim. They are all atheists! Not one of them is
interested in kosher food. If one
paratrooper would ask me to make the kitchen kosher, I would do it.”
What
did Rabbi Goren do? He volunteered for paratrooper training, and months later
returned to that mess sergeant, who then proceeded to make the kitchen kosher.
The rest of the army followed.
2) In 1995, I walk up from Hebron at 9:00 a.m. on Shabbos
morning. It is the middle of the Oslo period. The press is daily describing
settlers as selfish people uninterested in peace, and many people seem to be
buying it. Eighteen paratroopers are manning the way home. Almost all of them
seem to be irreligious. When I say good morning and Shabbat shalom to them as I
pass them, they look up briefly and give me a sullen glance. They won’t talk to
me.
3) In 2023, I walk up from Hebron at 9:00 a.m. on
Shabbos morning, heading towards Kiryat Arba after sunrise davening and Daf Yomi
(and Sfat Emet). Thirty-six soldiers are guarding along the way. They
are all paratroopers, and many look like yeshiva students, which surprises me.
I give each one five hard candies and say thank you for being here, and these 18-year-old
boys all smilingly respond, “My pleasure! The thanks go to you for being
here, protecting the country with your presence.” I ask one of them, “Is this a
hesder unit? (a special unit of
religious boys learning three years in yeshiva and doing 18 months of army
together), and he answers, “No, this is a regular unit! Many of us just happen
to be religious…”
The Chabad
Tefillin Stand
In a mall in Tel Aviv,
three Chabadniks set up a booth to offer the opportunity to put on tefillin,
and business was booming. At one point, a secular woman approached the men and
started yelling, asking them, “What right do you think you have to come to a
public place and engage in religious missionizing of this sort? Do you realize
that this is against the law?” But she was in for a surprise. Suddenly, many
people starting approaching her and shouting at her to leave the Chabadniks
alone. They said, “People have a right to engage in these activities, and we
are grateful to these Chabadniks that they are here!” The exchange was caught
on tape and went viral on the Net. Interestingly, none of the people who
defended the Chabadniks were outwardly religious.
My Son’s Experience
My son works as a mashgiach kashrut at three air force
bases in the south, so over the past eight years, he has had an enormous amount
of contact with all sorts of Jews. A few days ago, I asked him if the soldiers
on a particular base were religious, and he responded, “Abba, I don’t use those
terms anymore. Sometimes the people without yarmulkes are much more frum
than the people who have yarmulkes.”
And indeed, from
what I understand, there are fewer people declaring, “Starting today, I am
going to dress and be religious,” the way it used to happen in the 1970s. And
there are more and more people quietly adopting various aspects of religious
observance without making a big deal out of it, and I think that is very
blessed.
The Chareidi’s
Encounter on the Bus
The
following story likewise went viral, and it was very much in the news a few
months ago. A young chareidi man in a
jacket and hat got on a bus in Ramat Gan. A middle-aged woman was sitting
across the aisle from him, and she suddenly asked, “Why don’t you chareidim work? Why don’t you chareidim do the army?” And she seemed
angry. The young man pulled out his cell phone to video the conversation, and
he said, “On the contrary! I’m an officer in the paratroopers, and I work in high
tech in Ramat Gan! Why do you think you have the right to insult me in this
way?”
Later,
both were interviewed on Israeli television, separately. The young man talked
about his army service, his work in high tech, and about the time he devoted to
Torah learning. The woman, for her part, eventually made it clear that she did
not hate the young man she had insulted. She was simply afraid that the religious were taking over, and she had
trouble coping with that.
Why the Protests?
And
that brings me to my explanation regarding the continued protests. Politically,
the country really does still have a problem. There are still pockets of
secular power in all walks of life. The lower level of the officers’ corps in
the army are about half religious, but the top brass of the army, the decision makers, are almost all
secular leftists. They simply do not choose the religious officers for
promotion beyond a certain rank. So, during the Disengagement, if a religious
soldier asked not to participate in evacuating Jews, he risked being thrown out
of the army for good. Today, when fighter pilots threaten to go on strike
against reserve duty (thus threatening Tel Aviv), they are backed up by the
army top brass.
The Supreme Court is very secular and left wing. And
right now, these same judges pick who the new judges will be, so this far-left-wing
milieu is self-perpetuating.
A single minor example of damage the Supreme Court will
do: My
town, Kiryat Arba, had a wonderful swimming pool for 30 years. Everyone could
swim there. Yet it is presently closed. Why? Because for 30 years, based on a
decision by the majority of the town council, it was decided that there would
be no hours for mixed swimming. This approach was vociferously pushed by the
great rabbis who founded the town, themselves students of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda
Kook. Well, eight years ago, a single secular Russian immigrant went to the
Supreme Court and petitioned to force the pool to open with mixed hours. It
opened that way, and many young yeshiva couples cancelled their memberships.
The pool could not survive financially, and
it has been closed for six years!
The Israeli press is very left wing, although that
situation is changing. The station with the highest ratings is Channel 14, a
right-wing station. The Tel Aviv protesters and the opposition are the
political darlings of most of the press.
So these pockets
of power – the
army, the press, and the Supreme Court – work together to undo the popular
decision of the Israeli electorate. Judicial reform really has very little do
with the protests.
There are major
issues in Israeli society that we have to deal with. What kind of country do we
want? Is Israel a Jewish country? How can the religious and the secular live
together in peace and mutual respect? We settlers thought everything would be
okay once the country elected right-wing governments, but I guess not. Hashem
is making us work hard right now to figure out how to improve things. The
present government is having a hard time, but they are all very capable and
idealistic people. I think they will learn.
Let me finish off
with a relevant quotation from Rabbi Kook (from over 100 years ago): “Because
the concepts of serving and knowing G-d are still not sufficiently clear to all
G-d-fearing people, that is why G-d causes heresy and anarchy. It is to force
[the religious] to delve deeper in their knowledge of G-d until it is very
clear and lofty for them. This will help them to banish the darkness that has covered the earth.” (Kevatzim Miktav Yad Kadsho, Volume II, Machbarot Ketanot).
Just what the doctor ordered!
