Shas spiritual leader says deaths of 5 soldiers in Gaza may be due to yeshiva students’ neglect of Torah study

 In an open letter to yeshiva students, former Sephardic chief rabbi and Shas spiritual leader Yitzhak Yosef asserts that the deaths of five IDF servicemen overnight in Gaza may have been caused by the students’ insufficient Torah study and calls on the Haredi community “to strengthen and grow stronger in Torah study.”

Yosef’s call comes as his faction prepares to go to the barricades against the government over its demand that those engaged in such study be exempted from shouldering the burden of military service.

Mourning the deaths of the “dear soldiers” who “gave their lives for the people of Israel” Yosef says that the Torah-observant community is “obligated to come to an account of why this trouble has come upon us, and perhaps it is nothing but the sin of neglecting the Torah.”

Four of those who fell in Gaza last night were members of the IDF’s ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion.

Yosef has been an outspoken opponent of efforts to conscript yeshiva students and, like many other prominent leaders of the Haredi community, has asserted that mass Torah study is vital to the national defense.

In May, he stated that if the government arrests ultra-Orthodox men for dodging the draft, then the community will be forced to leave Israel. Declaring that “our Torah protects the soldiers,” Yosef argued that Israel’s anti-missile defenses only succeeded in blocking attacks in the merit of yeshiva students’ studies. He has also later called Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Yuli Edelstein “wicked” for demanding tough sanctions on yeshiva students who evade military service.