The Vizhnitzer Rebbe is upset over stories that yeshiva students have been forced to
undergo the standard medical exams given to all male inductees. Those
exams include a testicles check, and the doctors carrying out the exams
can sometimes be females. When haredi leaders first approached
the IDF with complaints about female doctors several weeks ago, the IDF
pledged to immediately ensure that all the doctors examining the haredi
inductees would be males, but this did not satisfy haredi leaders, who
seemed upset by the idea of testicle checks no matter who carried them
out.
The Vizhnitzer Rebbe
IDF Says It Might Allow Haredim To Get Induction Physical From Private Doctors To Avoid Testicles Issue
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Last week the Vizhnitzer Rebbe Rabbi Yisroel Hagar told his yeshiva students not to report to IDF induction centers if called for the military draft. He told the yeshiva students to tell the IDF that they are listening to their rebbe, and dared police to come and arrest him, saying that he wasn’t afraid and would go to prison with “tambourines and dancing.”
Hagar is upset over stories that yeshiva students have been forced to undergo the standard medical exams given to all male inductees. Those exams include a testicles check, and the doctors carrying out the exams can sometimes be females.
When haredi leaders first approached the IDF with complaints about female doctors several weeks ago, the IDF pledged to immediately ensure that all the doctors examining the haredi inductees would be males, but this did not satisfy haredi leaders, who seemed upset by the idea of testicle checks no matter who carried them out.
Israel’s haredi “Deputy” Health Minister Ya’akov Litzman (there is no actual Health Minister, the title of Deputy Health Minister is a legal fiction that allows Litzman to avoid voting on security issues in cabinet meetings) reportedly met recently with Hagar to update him on meetings Litzman held on the issue with Defense Ministry officials.
Litzman reportedly told Hagar that IDF officials are looking into making changes in the process of inducting haredi yeshiva students to accommodate haredi leaders’ demands. One option would be to allow each haredi inductee to be examined by his own private civilian physician in the physician’s own office, rather than in the induction center.
This option would cost the IDF significantly more money than a normal in-house physical. No wordyet on whether or not testicles will still be checked for cancer, hernias and other problems.
Litzman told Hagar that he will not settle for verbal assurances from Defense Ministry officials and the IDF. Instead, he is demanding that the details of the new arrangements are put in writing. Hagar allegedly responded that he and other leading haredi rabbis won’t accept anything less than an agreement that includes the signature of the chief of the IDF Personnel Branch Major-General Orna Barvibai.
After meeting with Litzman, Hagar met with Ashkenazi non-hasidic haredi leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman.
Shteinman is quoted by leaders of his political faction as ruling that yeshiva students should report to induction centers as always, but they are not to sign any documents given them by the IDF. Instead, they are to go to special centers opened by the umbrella organization of haredi yeshivas and fill out special documents that declare that their full time occupation is Torah study and that they refuse to serve in the military.
Hagar’s students would normally follow the same process as Shteinman’s if the issue of reaction to the testicle checks and female doctors had not come between them.