Fighting in Gaza
Fighting in GazaIDF Spokesperson

Tzvi Fishman was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Jewish Culture and Creativity. Before making Aliyah to Israel in 1984, he was a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He has co-authored 4 books with Rabbi David Samson, based on the teachings of Rabbis A. Y. Kook and T. Y. Kook. His other books include: "The Kuzari For Young Readers" and "Tuvia in the Promised Land". His books are available on Amazon. Recently, he directed the movie, "Stories of Rebbe Nachman."

This Motzei Shabbat a bombshell was fired in Jerusalem, not in Gaza, during the weekly shiur of Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, Israel’s Sefardi Chief Rabbi. “If they force us to enlist we will leave Israel!” he exclaimed. His strong statement against the wholesale drafting of Haredi yeshiva students brought fierce return fire from all directions.

Before addressing his statements directly, allow me to remind readers that the issue of drafting Haredi yeshiva students is nothing new. It has become headline news once again, not only because Israel finds itself short of soldiers, but because the political Left is using it as another spade to try to bury the prime minister. By aligning Netanyahu’s covenant with the anti-Zionist stand of the Haredim, the Left hopes to win votes in the next election. (Isn’t it interesting that when the Left called for mass refusal to serve in the army reserves and to emigrate from the country in response to the proposed Judicial reform, no big ruckus was raised. And we haven't heard a call to draft those non-observant Israelis in Tel Aviv who leave the country to avoid the draft among other methods).

Simply put, it also hopes to break up the current coalition– without Haredi support of the present government, the Right will fall and the Left will seize power, the motive behind all of its many “spontaneous grassroots” campaigns to take control of the country. This would pose an even greater danger for the future of the Jewish Homeland since the lords of the Left are still in favor of creating a Palestinian Arab State.

In truth, for the IDF, the enlistment of ten-thousand Haredim would be more of a headache than a salvation. If the army truly wants Haredi soldiers, they have to provide army frameworks which do not conflict with Haredi values. With good intentions on both sides, this can be achieved through negotiation, but forcing all yeshiva students to serve in Tzahal without the necessary formats (for example no contact with women) will only cause an internal war in the ranks.

And now to the controversial statements of the Sefardi Chief Rabbi. First of all, no one is talking about shutting down yeshivot and drafting all Torah students. A certain non-seriously learning percentage may be drafted and the others will continue to learn. Certainly, a long list of former Chief Rabbis would not have agreed with the present Chief Rabbi’s rhetoric, certainly not Relgious Zionist ones such as Rabbi Avraham Shapira or Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu who were also outspoken on crucial issues. Nor Rabbi Shlomo Goren who was a heroic commander in Tzahal during the Six Day War and the IDF Chief Rabbi before becoming Israel’s Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi.

A giant in Torah, Rabbi Goren did not avoid controversy and vehemently opposed the Oslo Peace Agreement from its inception, unlike his colleague, Sefardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the father of the current Sefardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef who has now placed himself in the center of the draft-law controversy.

In his shiur, Rabbi Yosef compared today’s yeshiva students with the tribe of Levi whom he maintained were exempt from army service. Other Rabbis point out that in the Torah commandment of a Milchemet Mitzvah to maintain Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel and to defend Jews from enemies who rise up to kill us, EVERYONE is obligated to join the war. Also, Moshe Rabenu, the giver of the Torah and the Commander of the Israel Armed Forces, was a member of the Tribe of Levi, as were the Maccabees and they certainly didn’t hesitate to set forth to war in defense of the nation.

The Spies in the Wilderness were the heads of the Sanhedrin, but they wanted to sit all day learning Torah in their yeshivas in the wilderness, without have to exert themselves in dangerous and mundane matters like defending the Nation against the enemies residing in the Land of Israel. Nonetheless, the Holy One Blessed Be He wanted something else for His Holy People.

No one loves His people engaging in Torah learning more than Hashem, but He seems to have wanted the Torah leaders and all of their yeshiva students to take up swords and go up to conquer the Promised Land! He wanted them to establish a holy Torah society and to sanctify His Name, not in the wilderness, but rather in the hills and valleys of the Land of Israel, the Holy Land, the unique place on the globe which Hashem Himself created for the Jewish People and Torah, even though they would have to fight and conquer fierce enemies.

Day and night, Joshua Ben Nun served in the tent of Moshe Rabeinu but when he was needed he left the study hall and led the armies of Israel in the conquest of Eretz Yisrael. King David upheld the Torah in Israel and crushed the enemies of Israel until they were utterly defeated. And the Gemara tells us that Rabbi Akiva carried the weapons of Bar Kochva when the Israelites faced the Romans in battle.

It is true, as Rabbi Yosef asserted, that Israel’s strength emanates from its allegiance to Torah and through its devotion to Torah study. But also from its willingness to pick up the sword and to fight with self-sacrifice for the welfare of the nation. Let it be as clear as the noon sun in a cloudless blue sky, without the Israel Defense Forces at full force, all of the yeshiva students in Israel wouldn’t survive more than ten minutes before Ishmaelite murderers stormed into their yeshivot and slit their throats from ear to ear until their blood reddened all of their pages of Gemara, just as the Arab terrorists did to the devout holy Jews in Hebron and the Old City during the pogrom of 1929 when there was no Israel Defense Forces to protect them, the students at Otniel and Merkaz Harav yeshivas.

Just as the Torah alone didn’t protect all of the millions of devout holy Jews from Nazi firing squads and gas chambers. Just as Hashem brings healing through doctors and medicine, He brings security to the Nation through the tanks and holy soldiers of the IDF. All of the Jews in the Holy Land today can live here in the Holy Land precisely because the Holy One Blessed Be He has enabled us to have our own Jewish army after being slaughtered helplessly for 2000 years in foreign lands at the whims of the goyim.

No one is demanding that all yeshiva students be drafted. But there are many who can serve and indeed they must for the future of the Jewish Nation.