DIN: I guess once you issue a Fatwa against eating chulent on Thursday night, you can say the most outrageous things!
" we want to remain in Chutz Le'aaretz to learn Torah, rather than work in Eretz Yisrael"
At the anti-draft meeting of Gedolim held Wednesday night in Ma’ale HaHamisha, Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein, a member of the Council of Torah Sages of the “Degel HaTorah” party, quoted a halachic ruling in the name of his teacher, Rabbi Yechezkel Abramski Zts’l:
“If it is impossible to (obtain an exemption) from the army, then there is a mitzvah for every person to leave the Land of Israel and make every effort not to live here.”
He continued with a shocking statement:
“I said to my rabbi, ‘I’m horrified to hear that.’
But he responded, ‘You haven’t heard everything yet. Listen to what I’m saying: desecrate the Sabbath and flee the country.’
I asked again, ‘Rabbi, can such things really be said in public?’
And he said, ‘If you won’t say it, I will.’
And indeed, he went and said it publicly. “If there’s someone among us being forced into the army, and there’s a concern he might stray from the religious path, I command him to desecrate the Sabbath.”
Two weeks ago, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the Shas party, launched a sharp attack on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and MK Yuli Edelstein. The reason: Netanyahu’s claim that a charedi youth can serve in the army while maintaining a religious lifestyle.
Rabbi Yosef lashed out:
“The Prime Minister said that one can join a charedi unit and stay charedi—why are you lying?! What brazenness!” He then escalated: “Maran (referring to his late father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef) said he [Netanyahu] is a blind goat, and I say he’s a blind fox, not a goat.You’re lying like that? No one leaves the army the same. Anyone who enlists becomes corrupted—there’s no doubt.”
This rhetoric reflects the deepening opposition within the charedi leadership to any form of military conscription, and signals the growing tension between the charedi public and the Israeli government, particularly as the issue of mandatory enlistment returns to the political and legal forefront.