Don’t Draft Haredim, Zionist Orthodox Political Leader Says

“We will be a partner which will fight for Torah study in Israel, and we will fight against laws that coerce service. Whoever is learning Torah should continue to learn Torah, full stop. This is my stance from the beginning. Although it’s not always easy to explain this to our secular brothers, my way is to explain that the Jewish people have existed for thousands of years in exile because of Torah, and in the State of Israel we need to strengthen this.”

Naftali Bennett

Don’t Draft Haredim, HaBayit HaYehudi Leader Naftali Bennett Says
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

So much for equality under law.

HaBayit HaYehudi leader Naftali Bennett told the haredi radio station Radio Kol Hai yesterday that he is opposed to drafting haredi yeshiva and kollel students or forcing them to do some form of national service, the Jerusalem Post reported. HaBayit HaYehudi, Bennett declared, would “fight against legislation which would coercively draft” yeshiva students.

“We will be a partner which will fight for Torah study in Israel, and we will fight against laws that coerce service. Whoever is learning Torah should continue to learn Torah, full stop. This is my stance from the beginning. Although it’s not always easy to explain this to our secular brothers, my way is to explain that the Jewish people have existed for thousands of years in exile because of Torah, and in the State of Israel we need to strengthen this,” Bennett said.

Last February, Israel’s High Court of Justice struck down a law that exempted haredi yeshiva students from Israel’s mandatory military service or its national civil service option, but the coalition government of Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu has been slow to enforce the ruling, dagging its feet many observers believe, to please his haredi coalition partners.

Bennett’s remarks were condemned by politicians and activists from across the Israeli political spectrum, many of whom have fought for years and even decades to try make haredim share in the burden of defending Israel’s sometimes precarious borders.

As it stood until the High Court struck down the exemption law, all haredi yeshiva students of initial draft age and above were exempt from military or national civil service as long as they were full time students. Additionally, these yeshiva students – who number in the tens of thousands and who often spend decades of their adult lives in yeshiva study – receive government stipends and a basket of welfare benefits tailored to families with many children. Most haredi men do not work and rely on these stipends and welfare benefits, along with any money their wives may be able to earn between pregnancies.

All of these benefits are paid for by taxpayers – the vast majority of whom serve in military or military reserves. This, along with the haredi failure to share the defense burden, has created intense resentment for haredim.

During his Radio Kol Hai interview, Bennett also touched on another haredi issue that deeply angers many Israelis – the state’s haredi-controlled Chief Rabbinate and its crushing bureaucracy which all Israeli Jews, Orthodox or not, religious or completely secular, are by law governed by.

Israel’s secular majority must deal with the state Rabbinate’s haredi bureaucracy for all lifecycle matters from birth to marriage, divorce, and eventually burial. And they are often victimized by it.

Stories are legion of women waiting several years or more to be granted a rabbinic divorce called a get. Jews have come to Israel from all parts of the world, from established Jewish communities where they were known as Jews and where their parents and grandparents were known as Jews, only to have Israel’s state haredi rabbis block them from being married due to “questions” about their Jewish status the rabbis can take years to investigate.

A grandchild of a Holocaust survivor can be banned from marriage because she cannot produce her mother’s mother’s ketuba, marriage contract to “prove” that – even though her family has been known as Jews for generations in Omaha, Nebraska or Dallas, Texas – she really is a Jew. The ketuba was burned by the Nazis when they murdered most of your grandmother’s family? Sorry, the Rabbinate doesn’t do history.

A soldier dies while saving his comrades from enemy fire but he can’t be buried because the rabbis aren’t sure his mother – who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union – is really Jewish.

There are hundreds of stories like this in this tiny country.

But rather than fee Israeli Jews from this, Bennett says he wants to make the existing system more user friendly for Israel’s secular majority and develop better propaganda to make the Rabbinate experience more palatable.

“[G]reater efforts must be made to embrace the secular public and explain” Jewish laws and values to them, Bennett reportedly said.

However, Bennett did criticize the haredi-controlled Chief Rabbinate, calling it a “machine for dolling out jobs.”

Because of the Rabbinate’s unfriendly bureaucracy, Bennett continued, it is “no surprise that young couples are going to Cyprus to get married” in civil ceremonies there.

Israel does not have civil marriage, forcing Jewish atheists, agnostics and thousands of other secular Israelis to marry and, if necessary, divorce, using a religious system they do not believe in and often dislike.

In cases where there is a question about the Jewishness of a bride or groom, or where one of them is openly non-Jewish, Israelis have no way to marry in Israel. Many of those couples along with hundreds more who are simply fed up with the Rabbinate and Orthodox Judaism, travel to Cyprys or other foreign countries to marry.

Israel recognizes foreign marriages of its citizens, even if those marriages would not have been permitted to take place in Israel itself.

Comments

[Seraphya]

An enabler can be worse than the person doing the action, because they should know better.

[David]

There is no point in "learning" Torah if Israel ceases to exist.

And if these pagans knew any Torah they would know that it is a Halachic obligation to defend Israel (and also educate your children and work).

There was never in Jewish history a concept of "learning" full-time. They have invented this.

[Nachum]

They're taking him completely out of context. Read his positions, for God's sake. Notice that nowhere in this piece are numbers mentioned; Bennett thinks that maybe a small percent of those currently "learning" should be exempt. I disagree, but it's not so outrageous. And, of course, you can watch the charedi world explode over who gets the exemptions. :-)

[S M L]

The Haredi draft aside, the un-freeness of an ordinary Jew to conduct the ordinary business of life - to marry, even to be buried - is a scathing indictment of Israel and of the compromises its governments have made with the Haredim and constitutes reason enough in my view for young assimilated Jews to avoid making aliyah. I doubt we've got my wife's grandmother's ketuba anywhere. Would that mean that a daughter of ours would have to be 'investigated' by some graybeard before being allowed to marry a "Jew" in Israel? I wonder how much longer it will take before Israel reaches a tipping point, where the secular population, feeling sucked dry by the Haredim in every possible way, begins to emigrate in significant numbers to places where they can truly live free.

[Heshy]

Look, the country was founded on certain principles and values - it' a JEWISH State. Just because you were born there doesn't mean you have to like it or even stay. Even if you're right and the founding principles aren't rational, that doesn't mean you automatically have the right to force your views. Either deal with a Rabbinate controlled democracy or get the hell out.

[Filipo171]

Hey Shmarya,

if you are so interested in equality of law, shouldn't serving in the army also apply to arabs?

@S M L
"where they can truly live free."
Yeah--Egypt, Venezuela, and the Sudan are waiting for them.
There must be some reason why thousands of Sudanese refugees risk their lives to come and settle in the evil zionist entity.....

[Garnel Ironheart]

Well you have to understand what Bennett is really saying.
Don't draft the Chareidim, let them sit and learn.
But don't pay for it either.

[Rocky]

Filipo171: Don't be so silly. The secular Jews with good job skills will move to the US, Canada, Australia and even Germany. In recent years, Germany has probably had the fastest growing Jewish population of any country in the world because of its liberal Jewish immigration policies. Of course, many of these Jews (from the former Soviet Union) would not be recognized as real Jews by Israel's chief rabbinate.

In the end, the Haredi in Israel will have their theocratic state, if they can keep it.

[S M L]

...either deal with a Rabbinate-controlled democracy or get the hell out...

If it's Rabbinate controlled it's a theocracy and not a democracy. It's supposed to be a Jewish homeland, for all Jews. Let the Haredim live by their precepts WITHIN the structure of a democracy. As for getting out: I'm not in, OK? I'm in the US. If your attitude is reflective of that of many Israelis then I say: I'm out, my family is staying out and stop expectiing this democracy to support Israel other than to the extent that that country serves the US's larger geopolitical purpose. It's time for non-frum American Jews to wake up and realize just what's going on over there.

"..there must be some reason why thousands of Sudanese refugees risk their lives to come and setttle..."

Sure. When you come from a Muslim hellhole like the Sudan even life as a marginalized pauper in Israel, which is accessible overland, looks better, at least at present. This is totally irrelevant to the subject under discussion. If those Sudanese could come to the US they would but there's the matter of a few thousand miles of water to be crossed. So they head to Israel the way refugees from El Salvador end up in Arizona. Secular Jews leaving Israel with their skills and education have no reason to head for those places on the globe where they'd be least welcome - Islamic republics and Venezuela, the violence capital of the western hemisphere. There are sufficient alternatives.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Apologies to: Barry Sadler - Ballad Of The Green Beret:

Learned scholars, friend in the sky
Fearful men "Gevalt!" they schrei
Men who repeat what Rebbes says
The frum men, Black Hats, oy vey!
Tzitziyot under their vests
These are men Israel's best
There's a gemara test today but
Only three will pass, oy vey!
Trained to live off taxpayer's hand
Trained in torah, you won't understand
Men who sleep by night and day
Courage take from Black Hats, oy vey!

Tzitziyot under their vest
These are men, Israel’s pests
There is a gemara test today
But only three will pass, oy vey!

Back at home a young wife waits
Her Black Hat is on a date
He has sighed, and got undressed
Leaving her a chore request
Put tzitziyot on my son’s vest
Make him one of Israel’s pests
He'll from the army stay away
Have him wear a black hat, oy vey!

[Sarek]

YL - superb!
[Note that Sadler was a Nazi sympathizer (or at minimum, collected Nazi memorabilia).]

[Jeff]

An enabler can be worse than the person doing the action, because they should know better.

Posted by: Seraphya | January 08, 2013 at 05:37 AM

I couldn't agree more. It's an idiosyncrasy of mine - enablers and sycophants always make me angrier than the person they're supporting and validating does.

[Jeff]

Either deal with a Rabbinate controlled democracy or get the hell out.

Posted by: Heshy | January 08, 2013 at 07:08 AM

Are you kidding me? Israel wasn't founded as a rabbinate-controlled anything. It was founded by secular Jews who envisioned it as a largely socialist democracy with a rabbinate as a governmental department mandated to oversee religious affairs for those that cared about them, and that authority was ceded to the Orthodox only because Ben Gurion needed their political support. It's a decision that has biting Israel in the ass on a daily basis ever since. The Haredim will be the destruction of Israel. They are more toxic to its future than are all of the surrounding hostile nations combined.

Your attitude is so typical of the frum - stand on the sidelines and wait for the frei yidden to do all the work, then show up, claim ownership and tell them how right you are and how wrong they are, while the frei yidden are footing the bill.

When I think of all of the effort and planning, all of the pain, struggle and sacrifice that went on for generations, only to result in this - it sickens me.

Herzl's dream is dead.

[Jeff]

Very good, YL.

[Jake]

Editorial?

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thanks Sarek, Jeff.

[Dovid]

Filipo171 said: "..shouldn't serving in the army also apply to arabs?"

I'm sure, Filipo171, you will be the first to insist that Israel is a JEWISH state. Last I heard, the Haredim were Jews. They should perform some kind of national service.

When Arabs are given equality of resources(which is not the same as the vote) and are treated as though the country is theirs too, perhaps you could demand they serve in the army.

[Dovid]

Filipo171 said:

"where they can truly live free."
Yeah--Egypt, Venezuela, and the Sudan are waiting for them.
There must be some reason why thousands of Sudanese refugees risk their lives to come and settle in the evil zionist entity....."

More stupidity. I love how these Right-Wingers love to compare Israel with all the worst regimes in the world, as though these are the yardsticks for comparison.

Got complaints about freedom of speech? "Why don't you go live in Gaza!!" they shout. Don't like discrimination against women? "Go live in Saudi Arabia!!"

Idiot.