My secular brothers still think the outcry is about disparaging the army but this is no anti-army protest. It’s an outcry against turning long-term Torah learners into criminals. Could a Jewish state really do such a thing? Even Ben-Gurion who despised chareidim wouldn’t dare

My dear secular brother
I heard what you said to your friend as you sat behind me on the bus the other day: “I don’t understand these chareidim” you said. “What are they so angry about that they have to stage a mass protest at the entrance to Jerusalem? Who do they think they are that the law that applies to everyone else doesn’t apply to them? All the law is saying is that all draft dodgers should be treated alike whether they’re secular or religious. Draft dodging is a criminal act and there are consequences. So what are they screaming to the high heavens for? I just don’t understand how they can separate themselves from everyone else like that — it’s infuriating!”
I didn’t turn around then to try to explain to you what all the fuss is about. I didn’t expect to gain a listening ear in the middle of a bumpy bus ride. But after I got home and sat down by my computer I remembered what you’d said and I thought maybe I should ask you to make a sincere and honest effort to comprehend before you judge the masses of people going out to protest. To quote the widely adulated Bob Dylan “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.” I assume you’re an upstanding person who believes in democracy and as such you value the ability to make room for those who are different from you. Well if that’s so it requires some intellectual and emotional effort to get past being simply infuriated.
But the truth is that during that bus ride to Tel Aviv I wanted to ask you how you would explain the fact that hundreds of thousands of normal non-delusional people feel so injured that they are willing to take time out from their regular routine to take part in a million-man prayer rally. And mind you these aren’t militant anti-Zionist zealots waging a holy war against the State of Israel but just ordinary believing Jews from all sectors of chareidi society. Among them are thousands of chareidim who have served in the army yet here they are crying out in protest about a clause in a law that equates Torah learners with criminals. I too served for nearly 20 years in the reserves — and it wasn’t in the rabbinate or in food service or writing for the army newspaper or working for Army Radio. It was the real thing in a field unit. So what is it about this proposed law that I too find so unacceptable?
How would you explain the desire of army veterans including commanders of combat units pilots and reconnaissance soldiers some of whom are baalei teshuvah to organize a protest rally of their own to oppose the criminalization of those who devote their time to Torah study? Even chareidi soldiers who left yeshivah and joined the army requested permission from their superiors to take part in the protest. The army did not grant that permission of course but it showed which side their loyalty is on.
Sir do you get it now? This is not a protest against the army; it is a protest against marking those who continue to study in yeshivos as criminals. As one soldier put it “As one who chose to go to the army I am not willing to let my brother who continues to learn be labeled as a criminal in the eyes of Israeli law.” Even the chareidi students enrolled in Ono College for example announced that they’re stopping their studies to take part in the demonstration. There are even some rabbis from Zionist Hesder yeshivos who’ve expressed support for attending the rally. So what does all this tell you? It demands some effort on your part to understand us to think about what motivates us and examine the underlying reasoning don’t you think?
You might want to know that since the founding of the state there have been staunchly secular people who although no lovers of the chareidi community understood that there are some issues so essential that it was just never worth antagonizing us over them.
One example is Miriam Ben-Porat deputy chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision rendered by the court in July 1984 concerning state support of Torah students she wrote the following: “In Israel the young men who devote themselves to Torah study are continuing in the same age-old tradition… and the yeshivah students now merit monetary support from the state treasury as if they were army recruits.”
Do you get it? Just as if they were army recruits! Which part of the learned lady’s assessment do you not understand?
To help you to deepen your own understanding of what the rally is really all about I would like to share with you what Mr. Shimon Peres said to me in an interview for Mishpacha magazine several years ago before becoming president of the State of Israel. I asked him if he could relate exactly what happened the day that Ben-Gurion exempted hundreds of yeshivah students from the draft in the midst of the War of Independence. He was together with Ben-Gurion at the time and recalled their considerations: “Both Ben-Gurion and I felt it was inconceivable that the one country in the world without complete freedom for Torah study should be the Jewish state. And that is still my feeling today.”
Permit me to add an addendum to the above a piece of information told to me by a Knesset Member from the Mizrachi Party Reb Eliyahu Moshe Genichovsky z”l. He was present in an adjoining room when Ben-Gurion met with the gedolei Torah who came to plead with him to release those few who devoted their time to Torah from obligatory military service. As we know Ben-Gurion acceded to their request. And then Genichovsky recalled Ben-Gurion entered the room where he was waiting and in the course of their discussion he said “I will not be the destroyer of Yavneh and its Sages.” Ben-Gurion who detested the chareidim nevertheless felt that stifling the life force of Judaism was beyond him.
And now the Jewish state has decided that it will be the destroyer of Yavneh and its Sages in the form of a law that criminalizes the occupation of Torah study. Is that not infuriating?
Postscript to my dear readers both inside and outside Israel about the law that makes full-time Torah study a crime if conscription quotas aren’t met: What it boils down to is that the secular legal system of Israel views itself as a higher authority than the Torah and that it can dictate to us when and how to study Torah. This proclamation in itself degrades the status of Torah in the eyes of the people constituting a terrible chillul Hashem that demands a protest from all who are faithful to the covenant of Sinai. And anyone who really believes the eternal truth that the Torah is the life breath of the nation feels attacked and degraded. The “million-man” prayer rally has nothing to do with the question of whether or not to serve in the army. It is a demonstration of the unity of all who are faithful to Torah and a proclamation by the people that no secular law even in a Jewish state can reign supreme over the law of the Torah. It is an obligatory act of kiddush Hashem forced upon a million Israeli citizens by their government. —