the Israeli Army, Religious Conflicts, and Women Singing

While some feel that when there is a religious conflict in the army it is an attempt by the army to "stick it" to the religious soldiers, to the religious community, I feel there is more ignorance involved than maliciousness. Most of the time they probably have no idea what the religious soldiers want or need.

The IDF has been so caught up in its own system for so long, it cannot be easy to suddenly have to recognize new issues, find solutions to complex societal problems that they never before realized existed. When they are aware of an issue, they often try to accommodate as well as they can. Some readers will point to Israel's leadership of the 1950s and 1960s, to the IDF of those days as well, and say that they are anti--religious, they have their agenda to secularize all the religious people. I would suggest that the country has changed. they realize the religious people are not going to secularize en masse, and they are not going to leave. The religious community will continue increasing and it is better to build a society together than not.

Israel is now 2011 and no longer 1950.

Are things perfect? of course not. There are still situations where anti-religion bias comes out and there are situations where ignorance prevails. Things will continue to improve, as religious people take more leadership roles and help shape our society, and as more religious soldiers take leadership roles in the army and help shape the face of the Israeli army.

A good example of this is the report that the IAF, the Israeli Air Force, has installed a "shabbos elevator" in its central facility, the famous "bor" where systems are controlled in real time in a deeply underground bunker, for the religious soldiers. They will no longer need to be transgressing anything, even if it was allowed because of pikuach nefesh.

Did the army need to do this? They have not felt the need until now. Any soldier who had a problem with it could have easily justified the use of a regular elevator by pointing to the urgency and level of pikuach nefesh. Yet they installed the shabbos elevator anyway to remove any level of conflict a soldier might have and question the need for using an elevator. Now no soldier working there needs to worry that he might be transgressing Shabbos.

The army needs to figure out how to accommodate the soldiers in ways that were previously not necessary. They need to figure out solutions to complex  problems and conflicting needs - such as the need for equality of women and the needs of more and more religious soldiers to not compromise their religion and religious standards. To me it looks like the army is trying.

While a solution must be found, and it was really the courage of some soldiers to put themselves on the line that has forced the issue, it is probably long overdue, now that it is out in the open, soldiers, until a solution is worked out, should go in advance to their rabbis and to their rosh yeshivas and to their mentors and figure otu in advance how to deal with such situations should they arise, rather than finding oneself in a position and having to make such a last-moment decision.

Interestingly, Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger finds himself in such situations frequently. As chief rabbi he is required to participate in many ceremonies in which women and girls are singers and members of choirs and performers. Rav Metzger has never walked out of a ceremony when a woman got up to sing. Rav Metzger said that when such a situation arises he says verses of tehillim to keep himself distracted from listening to the woman singing.