Before I begin I beg my readers not to take what I am about to write as a political position paper. Please don’t accuse me of being either a leftist dove or a nationalist hawk. And most of all don’t jump to the conclusion that chas v’chalilah I am against the settlements in our ancestral lands in Yehudah and Shomron. All I want to do is to shed light on a certain weakness that in my humble opinion is shared by all the various groups in the Torah-observant camp.

Every man and his agenda…

As I will go on to explain this is more than just a matter of local Israeli politics probably of no interest to our international readership. There is a message here that transcends political and religious borders and applies to all of us.

On June 6Israel’s Knesset torpedoed the proposed “Settlement Regulations Bill” a controversial legislative proposal which came on the heels of a Supreme Court decision in favor of an Arab who claimed ownership of a plot of land near Beit El occupied by Jewish homes. In consequence of the court’s decision the government had no choice but to evacuate the neighborhood known as Givat Ulpana — or defy the Supreme Court. The bill which was vigorously opposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu was intended to create a solution that would comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling while preventing further cases of this nature from coming before the Court.

Naturally the original Supreme Court ruling triggered an outcry of public protest. While Givat Ulpana involves a small group of Jewish families the ruling sets a precedent that could lead to the forced evacuation of nearly 9000 more homes in Yehudah and Shomron whose Jewish occupants have been living there for many years.

According to the terms of the proposed bill if a home built on privately-owned land has been occupied for at least four years and during that time no one has filed a claim on the land then even in case a claim is filed and proved at a later date the residents cannot be evacuated but will be made to pay some sort of compensation to the landowner. Passage of the bill would have prevented the necessity of moving the residents out scheduled to take place on July 1. The bill however was defeated in the Knesset vote.

Among those who voted against it were two MK’s from the United Torah Judaism party Moshe Gafni and Uri Maklev a move that provoked anger and disappointment from the right-wing religious parties who had backed the bill and looked to the chareidi parties for support. “You wouldn’t help us on an issue that means everything to us” they fumed. “Just you wait — we won’t help you on the issues that mean everything to you like drafting the yeshivah students.”

Why in fact did the UTJ Knesset representatives vote against the bill which at first they had favored? What made them change their mind?

It turns out that their vote had nothing to do with political considerations of any kind. Rather Rav Aharon Leib Steinman shlita handed down a halachic ruling based on a psak in the Shulchan Aruch clearly stating that a non-Jew cannot be deprived of his legally-owned land in this manner. “You can’t vote for a law that goes against what is plainly written in the Shulchan Aruch” Rav Steinman told them. This was not about Beit Uplana per se according to the posek but about the general principal of de facto squatting.

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This episode highlights one of the problems that plagues almost every sector of religious and chareidi Jewry today. In this case it happens to be the national-religious camp that demonstrates the symptoms but that is only because it was triggered by the Knesset vote on an issue close to their hearts. The truth is that it applies equally to all of us.

We have 613 mitzvos and none of them should be turned into an agenda a chief mitzvah to which all the rest of the mitzvos are subordinate -- one inflexible principle to which all the others must adjust.

In the case at hand it seems that in some circles the mitzvah of yishuv haaretz (settlement of the Land) has become the supreme mitzvah that all other mitzvos must serve. Unbending adherence to his principle has led Jews astray in ways that I don’t wish to address now because that is not the purpose of this article. I will confine my focus to the angry reaction against the chareidi MK’s following the vote.

My words might very well upset some of my readers but I ask of them to look at the problem itself at what happens when one of the Torah’s mitzvos is turned into an agenda and the rest of the mitzvos are made subordinate to that one mitzvah. If they suit the agenda then they’re fine. If not then tweak them a bit update them or come up with a thousand arguments to permit circumventing the halachah.

The angry reaction of against the chareidi MKs was really a way of saying “So what if the halachah forbids robbing a non-Jew. This is Eretz Yisrael we’re talking about!” It’s all very well to love the mitzvah of yishuv haaretz but the halachah says we can’t take away land owned privately by a non-Jew including land in Eretz Yisrael. The psak halachah here makes this idea very clear: there is no room in the Torah for agendas. All the factors must be weighed correctly; every mitzvah that comes into play has something to say on the issue.

Yes the mitzvah of yishuv haaretz is very important. I wish that a million Jews kein yirbu would settle in Yehudah and Shomron — on state-owned land or land that’s been purchased from its Arab owners. But in such a manner that the halachah is made to bend and stretch like rubber in order to permit robbery? Never!

Let me reassure my brethren in the national-religious camp who dedicatedly sacrifice themselves for the sake of Eretz Yisrael that I am not singling them out for attack. This kind of anomaly is seen in nearly every part of our chareidi camp as well. Everyone chooses a different agenda but the attitude is the same — the whole Torah is made subordinate to one mitzvah. For some extreme modesty in dress is the top agenda and splashing bleach on women whose attire may be modest but not quite up to their standards destroying property in clothing stores or in a few cases even direct assault is permitted in service of the supreme mitzvah. If you ask them where they obtained their heter for striking a fellow Jew damaging his property or publicly embarrassing him what is their answer? Don’t be ridiculous — this is a sacred matter of tzniyus we’re talking about!

I could go on to show how every subgroup within the chareidi camp is similarly enslaved to its own agenda. Let everyone do some homework some local research and put some thought into it and you’ll see how the same system operates everywhere.

Rav Steinman by means of this recent psak has reminded us all that there is a Torah one Torah. And if our Torah prohibits robbing a non-Jew then no agenda not even the agenda of a great and precious mitzvah can override the halachah.

Food for Thought

Where is the yetzer hara?

Wherever people think he isn’t.

(Rebbe Naftali of Ropschitz)