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May 17, 2012
Quote Of The Day
Quote Of The Day
...There must be equality in the bearing of the national burden, all of the nation of Israel must share in bearing the burden, to be "ameilim ba'torah". Nobody should evade this obligation, otherwise there is in the parsha the "tochacha" with a long list of things that will happen to the people if God forbid the number of dodgers from this burden of our existence would increase....Those who toil in Torah are the ones bearing the burden of the security and economy, as Chazal have said that only by the merit of those who are busy with Torah did they stand i the gates of jerusalem. This needs to be known not just to the Palestinians but also to those who dance on Jerusalem Day that is coming up. So it is correct that it is impossible to convince a secular MK of these types of spiritual words, but still, it is good that the words were said..
-- MK Yisroel Eichler (UTJ)
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Massive, deliberate and blatant misquote. What it really says is
ReplyDelete"אִם-בְּחֻקֹּתַי תֵּלֵכוּ וְאֶת-מִצְוֹתַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם".
No mention of ameilim batorah. This is typical disinformation in order to support the unprecedented-in-all-times number of people who have never worked a day in their lives and throw themselves on the rest of community to support their unsustainable lifestyle.
See Rashi on that pasuk.
DeleteThree points.
Delete1. Rashi had a job.
2. Try Sforno instead. He makes more sense for the pshat here.
3. The assertion that learning Torah can in some way be equivalent to laying your life on the line to defend your people and country is absurd and offensive.
the statement was much longer, and included the actual passuk.
ReplyDeleteIt was too long though, and as you can see by various sets of ... I only ended up excerpting from it...
Hellfire and damnation. That's the way to win em over.
ReplyDeleteHe's absolutely right.
ReplyDeleteBUT
He failed to draw the argument to its logical conclusion.
Just as the army does not tolerate skivers, AWOLs and incompetents in its ranks, so the Yeshiva world should be cracking down on students who are simply warming the benches, treating their Torah study as "the daily grind" and taking time off to go to demonstrations and spit at little girls.
People who are "ameilim b'Torah" do, indeed, bring a great protection to themselves and Klal Yisrael in general; batlanim who neither learn Torah with passion, nor do anything productive in the natural world, do not help Klal Yisrael at all, and should be encouraged to go out and earn a living.
Not everyone is cut out for learning Torah full time; in fact if there's one in a thousand who has the requisite skills and personality, it's a lot. For that 1 in 1,000, they should definitely be learning Torah full time. For the rest, spend as many years as you can getting a strong grounding in Torah, then take that with you into the world outside the Beis Midrash. That's what our grandparents did.
Which all goes to show that he doesn't believe his own words. Which make the cynical use of God's name and dragging it through the dirt of all that is done in his name all the more offensive.
DeleteBut they need those other 999 in the yeshiva or else it won't work: isn't there a chazal that for every 1000 that enter yeshiva, one comes out ?
DeleteHere's the quote as I heard it from my Rosh Yeshiva (can't find you a black and white source though):
DeleteOf 1,000 children who enter kindergarten (mechina?), 100 progress to Yeshiva Ketana, then 10 to Yeshiva Gedola, and 1 to Rabbonus.
The hesder yeshivot do a marvelous job of being mekayim this inyin, without shirking their duty to perform the physical and life-threatening job of soldiering. Meanwhile, Eichler and his people should stop making excuses and stop wondering why the average Israeli who serves in the army, and may have to fight in 2 or 3 wars in his or her lieftime, resents people who don't, and who won't even have the decency to participate in the process of formulating a new and hopefully fairer arrangement.
ReplyDeleteBaruch - as a different blogger wrote, once they are done drafting the haredim, the dati leumi have to be worried they will be next. It seems like unequal sharing of the burden when you ask why a hesder boy gets to serve only a year and a half rather than the 3 years his secular counterpart has to serve.
ReplyDeleteAnd why are religious girls exempt?
True - and I know there are people who complain about it. But in general, the public accepts this. I think the public would also accept a limited number of yeshiva students being exempt. This was the official position of Meretz on the issue a few years ago, although I don't know if it still is. To me, that shows that the general public is willing to accept the idea that Eichler is talking about. But the haredi establishment has pushed this way past the point of reasonableness, which is why the reaction against them is so strong. And what infuriates me now is that these people won't even sit with the committee and negoiate - they're taking an all or nothing position, and that certainly isn't reasonable in my book.
DeleteJust a quick postscript to my reply - I think the reason the public generally accepts the hesder system is that most people realize that the hesder students are sincere in their desire to both learn and serve, and that in effect they are giving up more years of their lives when you combine the two. The haredim, in contrast, often seem to be using learning as an excuse not to serve, as evidenced by the fact, obvious to anybody that has ever lived among large numbers of haredim, that many bochurs supposedly enrolled in yeshivas are not really learning in any meaningful way (not meant to disparage the many that are seriously learning), combined with the totally obstructionist attitude taken by people like Eichler.
DeleteAs for drafting women, I think that's a whole separate and more complicated subject, like drafting the Arabs.
Why are any girls not exempt?
ReplyDeleteby law all girls have to serve. in the 50s there was a major fight between the state and the religious community about "giyus banos". the result was drafting women.
ReplyDeletethe compromise was that a girl could declare that she is religious (getting it confirmed in a letter from her school) and she would be exempted from the army.
once the equal service issue is being raised, these other issues might come up next after the haredim are dealt with.
I was just pointing out (quoting from a dati leumi blogger) that the dati leumi community shouldnt get so excited about this, as there is plenty of inequality in the DL system as well.
It should be mentioned that most dati leumi women do participate in national service for one or two years, and that an increasing number are going into the army. I think if the haredim proposed some kind of a national service option, or a local mishmar ezrachi arragnment, or even an arrangmenet where they would a shortened form of army training so that they could be called up in an emergency, such a proposal might have a chance of acceptance. Aside from populist demagauges like Lieberman, I think most people are not calling for a total draft of all army-age haredim, but are looking for some other solution by which the majority of haredim would contribute to the national defense in some way. But as I wrote above, their leaders aren't suggesting solutions, they are not trying to be creative, they are just being totally obstructionist, whereas the dati leumi community as a whole plays a significant part in the national defense and still manages to produce high-quality yeshivas and Torah learning.
DeleteWhen all is said and done there are going to be two options. Army or Community Service. Everyone has to devote time serving the State in some capacity. Arabs will do community service in their own communities so in practical terms, they should be willing to go along with it.
ReplyDeleteRav Amnon Yitzhak pretty much said the same thing.
ReplyDelete