What is really the Viewpoint of the Gedolim on the army? Really!

 

by Daas Yochid

Before you read the article below you need to read part one, which I posted on April 18 that I headlined as "Rav wonders why emperor won't put on clothes ....The shidduch initiative and army debacles return"

Here goes:
What is the Gedolim’s approach to Chareidim and the army, especially once the draft law collapsed and the war started?
When the chareidim weren’t being drafted and there was no war it was easy to pretend that we value the soldiers but we value lomdei torah more.

 We made a whole nice shtickel torah about how we are both doing our part protecting the country. Since in pretty much every country, not everyone serves, and the Chareidim weren’t needed, no one really minded.
After Oct 7th, this became impossible. Soldiers were putting their lives on the line in Gaza and bochrim were putting their bodies in their beds at home. This led to an enormous amount of resentment towards chareidim and an enormous amount of insecurity among bochurim. The chareidi myth that our learning is shivyon benetel came crashing down.
Worse, not going to the army and not working became an essential part of chareidi identity, as only the losers left the system to go work. So you ended up with an undercurrent of 30% or so people who couldn’t hack it in yeshiva but cannot psychologically go work. They became our version of welfare kings, being paid to be in kollel but hocking all day long. Many of them couldn’t even work if they wanted to, due to a lack of education.
Finally, the fact that the government is giving millions to married able-bodied men to fulfill their religious fantasies has always caused resentment, but it certainly isn’t the worst thing a government has done with money, so it was tolerated.

When those men didn’t serve when they were actually needed, years of repressed resentment finally expressed itself. This all came to a head when Chareidim found themselves psychologically abandoned and alone from the rest of Israel, who generally love the fact that they exist (almost every Israeli I have ever spoken to feels the existence of the chareidim in Israel is a net plus and adds to the country’s Jewishness) but cannot understand why they are acting so selfish. This spread to Chareidim as well, who are generally good, kind-hearted people, and shattered morale and led to questions like the ones posed by the Agudah.
The Gedolim saw this happening, and generally split into two camps: 

Desperately trying to restore the shattered status quo with some sort of draft law, believing that probably 30% of chareidim can be drafted without affecting the lomdei torah among them, just like in America many go to work. This attitude prioritizes actual learning over cultural identity. Better that 70% learn and 30% get drafted and possibly drift away to preserve Yavneh and its people. This approach also has the side benefit of sounding (and actually being) moral, allows funding to continue to yeshivos and kollelim, and reduces almost all the antagonism that Chareidim currently face. Thus, the 30% drafted is a worthy sacrifice. 

This is largely the shita of R Moshe Hillel Hirsch and has talmidim.
The other camp - R Dov Landau and all of Etz - recognizes (correctly IMO) that sending Chareidim to the army will destroy the chareidi way of life, which is essentially that of a fundamentalist cult (unlike the yeshivish way of life in America.) The Chareidi way of life, in Israel, holds that the only think worth doing is learning Torah Lishma. Period. 

It does not recognize any value in any other undertaking. Even mitzvos are viewed as a necessity to learn Torah (because without them there’s nothing to learn about). It believes that if one learns Torah the whole day, he is holding up the world, while doing anything else one is not. 

As a result, it views doing anything besides learning as a bedieved, no matter how valued that is. A large part of this attitude, which while based on classical Judaism is totally distorted, is a result of not being able to do anything else and not being around other people with other attitudes that matter. It is a result of living in a bubble. Americans by and large do not have this attitude simply because they do not live in this bubble. (It is not a coincidence that R MH Hirsch is American in thought and upbringing.)

 What happens if a significant amount of Chareidim would go to the army? 

Lets assume the army is glatt mehadrin, no women, no issues. Lets assume that it was guaranteed that everyone would survive and come out alive and frum. Those are all smokescreens. They still will not agree! 

The issue is that 30% of Chareidim will now be doing something else than learning - and that will affect their attitude! Not as a bedieved, but a lechatchila! It is very hard to maintain the false belief that the only thing of importance is learning when the society at large starts to recognize other things of importance. When the army is looked at as a serious part of life for people, it will change the society in foundational ways.

This is easily provable. 

There was another innovation similar to this that was safe, societally useful and would likely only help Chareidi society, yet was campaigned against even more aggressively than the army. 

That is the campaign to introduce basic secular studies to chareidi elementary schools and some mesivtas.

 To be clear - when even one or two mesivtas wanted to open up, for struggling chareidi students, with basic secular studies, they were protested against and in some cases shut down. And even the elementary schools do not teach more than a bare minimum of secular studies. This is not dangerous to chareidim’s lives, this is not integrating them for many years with secular soldiers, this is not integrating them with secular society at all. This is having people with a big yarmulka and long tzitzis teach basic life skills, and it was still attacked! If that is the case, there is no - zero - version of an army that would be acceptable to Chareidim (and even the first group agrees and they just think its fine to sacrifice 30% of chareidi society so the rest can survive unhindered).

The reason for this is a combination of the absolutely unhinged belief that ONLY Torah matters taken to the extreme conclusion, plus recognizing the reality that the only way to preserve such a crazy societal belief as that is to prevent any outside successes as being worthwhile. Rav Shach had a very good nose for this and most of his protests was for this.

However, there is no way to tell this to Americans and not sound insane.

When R Malkiel wanted to prevent a mesivta in Lakewood from teaching English (he quickly retracted), it was obvious that he absorbed the message that outside studies were bad in Israel and was trying to bring it over, but in a society in America like Lakewood, it makes no sense. American students are surrounded by successful Baalei Batim who are considered successes in their communities, and who get respect for the chesed they do.

It is clear that many of these balebatim do not consider them second class citizens, and someone who is not successful in learning can strive to be like one.

 Contrast this to how R Dov Lando treated Shai Graucher, calling him a mazzik for the chesed he did for the soldiers. Even the balebatim who donate to Israeli yeshivos are still not considered chashuv.

This attitude of only Torah is a hard sell to Chareidi society in Israel as well, but there are enough people there who are true believers there that this works.

 (A cousin shared with me that when some Chareidi parents did laundry for soldiers post october 7th, a bunch of others did laundry for yeshiva bochrim, to show that our soldiers are just as valuable. Never mind that they could have come home to use the washing machine.) The ones who feel unsuccessful at Torah only don’t have any real options, because they are considered the underclass of society, so the only way they can prove themselves is either keep pretending they care about learning, go OTD - the OTD chareidi rate is way higher than the American - or go Eitz and riot, hoping that makes them feel important and fulfilled.

This is why the army and secular studies are ironically such a threat, because the leadership knows that the second there are other viable options that are societally socially acceptable, people will choose them in droves, so they are campaigned against, which makes more people unsatisfied, which creates a never ending spiral, and which may all come crashing down with a viable draft law.

And this is the source of the machlokes. 

One side holds we should let it all come crashing down on 30% of chareidi society (which it eventually must) and hope we can push hard enough that those thirty percent still feel like unfulfilled losers so they keep being machshiv learning. 

The other side rathers we keep protesting the army with all our might using various transparent excuses, showing that we will be machshiv our ingroup and its values no matter what moral and Torah principles we have to sacrifice - going from hakaros hatov to calling soldiers chardakim, from acting like a mensch to endorsing violent riots - just as long that ‘Torah learning’ does not lose one iota on the societal value totem pole.⁸

This is why the Agudah and Gedolim spokespeople are stuck. If they explain the only thing that matters is valuing Torah learning to the extent that we must belittle every other accomplishment, including those who are moiser nefesh their lives to protect Jews and those who keep shabbos in the hostage tunnels and of course those who work hard to keep a living, and we need to do this or otherwise Chareidi society will explode, they will sound insane to the balebatim - and worse, the balebatim will realize just how little these gedolim respect them. So they have to obfuscate and resort to bizarre conspiracy theories like R Elefant’s or deflect and gaslight like R Uri Deutch

But R Cohen wanted the honest answer. This is it.

The Gedolim’s approach is that the Chareidi way of life is predicated on a belief that the only thing worth doing is learning, and because learning sucks for so many people, the only way to keep that belief is to bubblize them from any outside possible methods of accomplishment recognized by society (it’s ok for people to work or efshar become singers, and feel good about it, but only once they - or at least the society around them -absorbed that they are losers for doing so.) Introducing secular studies in mesivta shakens this foundation, and al achas kama vekama the army. 

This is why even if the army is the frummest in the world they would not go. As far as practical, the American-born gadol is fine with allowing thirty percent or so to be drafted, because he truly values learning and wants as much people to learn, and is willing to risk the system collapsing to save Yavneh vechachamav.

 In contrast, the true Israeli born gadol knows the real deal is keeping the society alive, which is why he would never compromise one iota, even if it means sacrificing every Torah value besides learning.

This is the Gedolim’s view as far as I understand it. I’m not Daas Torah so I may be wrong.