Rav Yosef said that soldiers in such a situation should lower their glasses, so as not to look at the women singing, and pick up a sefer and bring it close to the eyes and read from thee sefer in such a public way that everyone can see they are not listening to the female singer.
Rav Yosef pointed to himself as an example, saying he himself has done this.
source: Kikar
Rav Yosef's instructions are very well and good, except for two problems:
1. not all soldiers have glasses to publicly remove
2. most of the time soldiers are not carrying seforim, nor are they able to even if they would want to. Perhaps during downtime on the base they might have access to a sefer and be able to follow Rav Yosef's instructions in such a scenario, though I don't see such a scenario happening. If they are going to an official ceremony, which is where these problems usually happen, the soldiers will not be carrying seforim with them.
Rav Yosef should give them some more realistic, or plausible, instructions that will actually be helpful.
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#3 The Chacham's stature and position outside the military chain of command allows him to get away with behavior. The soldiers, I suspect even the chief military rabbi couldn't.
ReplyDelete#4 He doesn't say what he's going to do to protect soldiers depending on his instructions to protect them from the very definitely unpleasant and undesirable results of following his direction. The army is very, very interested in enforcing its secular humanist program (which its shown itself quite willing to do in various matters from other women singing incidents to trying to integrate living and showering)over the rights of religious soldiers, even those promised they wouldn't have to deal with these things.
"Rav Yosef said that soldiers in such a situation should lower their glasses, so as not to look at the women singing, and pick up a sefer and bring it close to the eyes and read from thee sefer in such a public way that everyone can see they are not listening to the female singer."
ReplyDeleteEven as a non-religious person (or because I am a non-religious person), I can see the hypocrisy here. His main goal seems to be not to take his eyes off the woman, but to make sure everyone ELSE can see he is not looking at the woman; in other words, the priority is what other people think, not what he is doing. This is the opposite of tzanuah, of true modesty, of doing what is right without making a public display of yourself. What he is doing only embarrasses the woman and brings attention to himself.
The real problem here is that it is disgraceful that in the 'Jewish' country, these fine soldiers cannot heed the Torah dictates in the Land of the Torah. How low we have come as a nation where there is no respect for our most precious laws and customs.
ReplyDelete... in the Land of the Torah...
ReplyDeleteCharedim want Israel to be a land of Torah while simultaneously having as little as possible to do with the country. There's no magic here, folks. If you want Israel to be religious, you have to get out there and make it happen. Frankly, when it comes to what supposedly matters, Charedim are absolutely terrible marketers. But they can get you a great discount on a new suit!