The headline on Arutz-7 yesterday had a slogan taken from the chareidi protest against the implementation of a draft on yeshiva students: "We will not be cantonists of the 'shilton ha'rasha'."
This is beyond absurd. Cantonists were Jewish boys conscripted by the Czar against their will in their early teens and forced to serve in the army for as long as 25 years. They were not afforded an opportunity to have a Jewish education and army life broke their will and robbed them of the ability to properly observe Torah and mitzvos. This is what the chareidim are comparing Tzahal to? The country that provides them with the freedom and protection (and financial subsidy) to open yeshivos and learn Torah is a 'shilton ha'rasah'?
This is beyond absurd. Cantonists were Jewish boys conscripted by the Czar against their will in their early teens and forced to serve in the army for as long as 25 years. They were not afforded an opportunity to have a Jewish education and army life broke their will and robbed them of the ability to properly observe Torah and mitzvos. This is what the chareidim are comparing Tzahal to? The country that provides them with the freedom and protection (and financial subsidy) to open yeshivos and learn Torah is a 'shilton ha'rasah'?
When you live in a reality that says that reality is whatever the "Godol" says it is no matter what your five senses tell you then this kind of thing is believable.
ReplyDeleteConsider it this way: let's say you wanted to whip up fervent opposition to the new draft law. Which works better? "They're trying to wipe us out!" or "They're trying to reach a reasonable compromise and we don't want it!"?
We built a reputation as a learned, sober-minded people. Every over-the-top rabble-rousing act or statement by identifiable Jews undermines that. Calling all religious or political opponents nazis or czarists, etc., is obscene and beneath all of us.
ReplyDeletethough yeshiva attendance is not one of the 3 cases of "communal"
ReplyDeleteexemption from even a milchemes mitzvah (IDF wars by definition?)[see
Divrei Chaim, 8/16/07, labelled "zachor"], would mere machshava* between
placing the tefillah shel yad & the tefillah shel rosh warrant avoidance
of war? if bochrim subconsciously think in those moments between donning
tefillin that their arms will not perform militarily, would/should that hefsek keep them off the front-line? if so, should they be trained to think differently?
*whereas talk is a clear hefsek, Sota 44b