I tend to keep my phone with me up until a minute before I run to shul on Friday night. When calls come in within an hour or two before Shabbos, they are almost always emergencies. I say ‘almost’ because once in a while I will get a call to see what time candle lighting is or if there is a kiddush in shul. Last Friday, I received a call about two hours before Shabbos that was not necessarily an emergency, but it was certainly an urgent matter.
The call was from a friend who received a fundraising call from Keren Olam HaTorah. Keren Olam HaTorah is a mega-fundraising campaign on a mission to ensure that the Charedi community in Israel, which is losing its government funding, will be able to survive without those funds. Their goal is 107 million dollars. They already have 84 million dollars worth of commitments from major donors, and they are now raising another 23 million dollars to close the gap, of which they already raised 12 million.
Someone had reached out to my friend, asking him for a substantial donation, and he was not sure what to do, and was asking me for my opinion. Should he donate to this campaign supporting the Charedi community to allow them to continue to study Torah without serving in the IDF, or not?
Let’s review a little history: Before the formation of the State of Israel, David Ben Gurion wanted the support of the Charedi community and so he struck a deal with the Chazon Ish allowing anyone in the Charedi community to receive an exemption from serving in the army so that they could study Torah uninterrupted. Presumably, Ben Gurion’s thinking at the time was that the Charedim would eventually disappear, there is no way such a “backward” group of people would live on in the modern State of Israel, and this would not be a long-term issue. A less cynical take was that people recognized, after the Holocaust, there was a need to rebuild Torah Jewry, and therefore there was little if any pushback.
Well, as we all know, things did not go as Ben Gurion planned. The Charedi population has exploded. They now make up 13% of the country. Their poverty rate is at about 41%. The community is propped up by charities but also by the government, which creates an incredible financial strain on the government. To make matters worse, due to the ongoing conflicts in the North and South, the Israeli government voted to extend the amount of time reservists need to serve while the Charedi community is not serving at all. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court recently voted to revoke the funding they have been providing for decades to Charedim who are in yeshiva, and to start drafting Charedim into the army. (There is broad consensus that there would be a carve-out, enabling many Charedim who are fully devoted to Torah learning continue to do so.)
And it seems to many like a no-brainer.
Of course, Charedim need to share the burden of defending Israel against her enemies!
Of course, we cannot rely on Torah study alone to protect us. We have never taken such an approach in all of our history; from Moshe through the Maccabees, while we place an absolute premium on Torah study and prayer, relying on a miracle is not our way!
The government should probably do a much better job negotiating with the Charedi community, they should probably slow down a little, be less threatening, provide genuine accommodations to Charedim joining the IDF, and they would probably be much more effective. But yes, it seems like a no-brainer that a good portion of the Charedi community should take part in some form of national service.
But that was not the question posed to me; the question was if this man should give a donation to enable the Charedi community to continue their way of life.
The answer, in my opinion, is not so simple.
First of all, I told him this is quite similar to any given meshulach who comes to your door. The individual who may be very bright and capable, never got a well-paying job because he did not serve in the IDF and did not have access to a whole host of jobs. Now, he has a family emergency, they are unsurprisingly broke, and they come to you for money. On the one hand, it’s ridiculous. Why didn’t you go to the army? Why didn’t you get a normal job? And at the same time, they were born into a system. They are standing before you, impoverished, with a starving family at home. They are, despite your many differences, your brother. When my brother makes a stupid decision, I am still in his corner. No matter what. So, I pull out my checkbook and give this person some money. And now, it is not one or two or ten meshulachim, but an entire society that was not ready for this change (even if they should have been). Are we going to let our brothers and sisters starve so that they’ll serve in the army? Heaven forbid.
But there is something else, something quite uncomfortable and complicated that we would be wise to acknowledge. The typical argument to Charedim is that they can still maintain their religious observance level in the army. The proof is the Religious Zionist community. The community of people that I imagine most of us identify with; kippah serugah, they go to Hesder Yeshivot where they learn for a few years and then serve for a few years, they embrace the secular world. Why can’t you Charedim be just like them?
A few years ago, a study was published by Chotam. Chotam is a religious Zionist thinktank. The study concluded that only 46% of Religious Zionists young adults are fully observant. More than half of their youth are not maintaining the values they were taught. If Religious Zionism were a company, they would be forced to shut down. Those are not normal numbers. That is an abject failure. By contrast, the study concluded that despite some high-profile Charedim leaving the fold, the Charedi attrition rate is negligible.
To put it differently, the Charedi world, for all the complaints that we may have about army service, is doing something right. They are doing something that is needed for the future of the Jewish People. They are keeping Jews practicing Judaism.
In 1975, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, probably the most outspoken advocate of Modern Orthodoxy gave a speech about zealotry. Though we are a religion of peace and pleasantness, Pinchas, the protagonist of our parsha is celebrated for his zealotry. “Unquestionably,” writes Rabbi Lamm, “zealotry is a valuable sentiment. Without [it], without this passion, commitment is at best superficial. Zeal involves self-sacrifice and earnestness of purpose.”
He goes on to write: “This is why I am not overly anxious for our camp, what we call “Modern Orthodoxy,” to cut off from the “right wing.” “The Yeshiva world,” and the “Hasidic world” are reservoirs of passionate commitment, without which we are wishy-washy, wan, weak, and wavering. Of course,” he writes, “I am unhappy with many of their policies and their… rhetoric. But our very survival may very well depend on the degree to which we can become inspired by their zeal and learn to bring passion to our own commitments, no matter how much we disagree with them on specific issues.”
If you want to understand what he means, drive up to Lakewood, New Jersey, on any given weekday and join them for a Mincha Minyan. They will pray with more passion than many of us do on Yom Kippur. Go into any Beis Medrash in our community at 8 PM and you will find it packed with people learning Torah after a long day of work, while many Modern Orthodox shul’s lights are off. And go look at the numbers of Tzedakah dollars or Chesed organizations coming from those on the right compared to those down the middle, and you will see a community of people, in Israel and in the USA who are doing something right; there is a passion, a zeal, a self-sacrifice that no one else has come close to.
Should Charedim serve in the IDF? I think so. They have an absolute responsibility to do their part in defending the Jewish People. Full stop.
But will pushing them to serve, even with all the accommodations, impact the future of Judaism? It just might. Do we have what to learn from this community? We most absolutely do.
And so, with a few hours left before Shabbos began, I encouraged my friend to donate to Keren Olam HaTorah – and I donated as well.
We are in the midst of the Three Weeks of Mourning, a time during which we reflect on the destruction of the Temple caused by infighting. More Jews died in the fall of Jerusalem by the sword of their brother than by the Romans. Let’s be fiercely proud of and profoundly grateful to the Religious-Zionist community who have been bravely fighting at the front line, giving their lives to defend us. Let us hope and pray that they can be joined by more Jews who can help them carry their crushing burden. And let’s be open-minded to the incredible value and the lessons we need to learn from our Charedi brethren.