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.
4 comments:
Dude, if Jewish deaths are due to deficient Torah study, then all the casaulties on and after Oct 7 are the Chareidi community's fault.
Just saying that the vast majority of the Jews killed in october 7th were NOT CHAREIDI COMMUNITY. But I dont think its proper for any rabbi to say he knows GODS plan and intentions when Jewish lives are lost.
You think? Isn't that what they are always saying as the reason they shouldn't go to military, bc they're "learning in yeshiva is what is keeping the army safe! When the gov cut millions in yeshiva stipends, they had to pay for it in Iron Dome defending from Iran." Yeshiva guys need to keep their end of the bargain.
Maybe it is the Yeshiva's fault for not davening properly for the soldiers' welfare.
But that part the good Rabbi won't say out loud.
He won't because the Rabbi doesn't believe in what he say's either, he just puts out a ruling sounding like halachic, but in reality is just an agenda driven gobbledygook.
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