DIN: I believe in Torato Umanuto—for those truly immersed in Torah learning. I don’t support mass arrests of yeshiva students, and I respect genuine Torah scholars who dedicate their lives to study. But the prayer rally organized on Thursday was a grave mistake.
Thousands of young Charedi men flooded the streets, many of whom are not learning full-time and are eligible for army service. Their absence from the IDF is glaring—and that public display alienated the Israeli public like nothing else.
To secular Israelis, it felt like a slap in the face. Their children and grandchildren are fighting and dying in a brutal war, and this rally sent a message of indifference.
Are the organizers blind to how this looks?
The insensitivity, the chutzpah, the refusal to share the burden—it’s supercilious and uncaring.
I would like to know if this rally was "mekareiv" one single soul? I don't necessarily have an answer to that question, but what I am certain of is that it turned off hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jews!
These young men should have stayed in yeshiva and let the politicians handle the protest. Instead, they gained no supporters and likely lost many.
We need unity, not division. And we need honesty about who is truly learning—and who is simply avoiding responsibility.
And now this from Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll
For years I have spoken about the dangers of allowing a community to segregate from society and make its own rules.
For years I have said an entire generation is being raised on fake enemies, intense fear mongering, and deep ignorance of reality.
For years I begged the moderate majority to speak against the mind control and extremism running rampant through the community.
For years I said this extremism is turning people away from Judaism and giving a bad face to Torah.
For years I said Beit Shemesh was the canary in the coalmine,
That the trajectory of a separatist community that vilifies the wider world and sees anything different as poison can only go one dark way
That allowing an exponentially growing population to not acknowledge the real world was a recipe for disaster.
That a curriculum that does not include math, science, civics, that holds one community above all while being told that the others want to destroy them crafts a wide and deep divide that will not be easily or quickly bridged
That a community built on fear and thriving on uniformity cannot stand without crushing everything beyond the mold and is not compatible with normative society
Because you can throw things at women when they aren't clothed the way you are taught they must be for you to be safe
And you can attack a newscaster's equipment when you're told he's trying to end your way of life
And you can destroy property when it belongs to an aggressive regime that seeks to steal your children's soul
And you can refuse to serve in an army that protects you when you're told it is run by heretics
And you can deny the sacrifice of thousands when you hold that all they stand for is illegitimate and nothing they do can come close to the importance of your deeds.
And we cannot allow this to continue
We cannot allow this divide, this hate, this pitting of our communities against one another.
We cannot allow the government to buy their votes while keeping them poor. We cannot remain silent while the government allows them to flout the laws against discrimination, enjoy tax benefits and discounts. We must demand an end to curriculums that make jobs impossible and people dependent.
We need to heal the rifts and balance the burden.
The damage is deep and vast and it will not change overnight. We must have tracks for integration and national service.
It's been 77 years of creating a population with a different set of rules. It will take decades to undo it.
But for this country to survive we must begin. Now.
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