Natan Slifkin's Blog, page 10

Some Exciting Publications

I was very excited to receive the following two books in the mail yesterday:

Her’es the descriptions from the publisher on each of these volumes:

For over seventy-five years, the question of military service has remained one of the most contested issues in Israeli society, raising fundamental tensions between national defense, Torah study, and religious leadership. Milhemet Mitzvah, vol. 1: Halakhic Foundations, Religious Authority, and Military Service in Israel’s War of Independence examines thi...

Something To Celebrate

Today, we hosted a party for my oldest son, on the occasion of his enlisting into the IDF immediately after Pesach. He was joined by around twenty of his friends who are also about to enlist. Here is the speech that I delivered:

I have to admit something. The idea of having a party for going into the army is not something that initially resonated with me.

My precious son. When you were 18, you decided that it was time to go out into the big wide world. However, you weren’t 18 years old, you were 1...

The Generation Gap

Today is the eighteenth yahrzeit of my father, Professor Michael Slifkin, of blessed memory, pictured above with me at my wedding, nearly 25 years ago. He was a wonderfully patient and good-natured father, a brilliant scientist, a very down-to-earth and sensible person, and a man of outstanding integrity. In a career spanning biochemistry, physics, electronics, membrane biology, and nanoparticles (among other things), he published 197 papers, including 11 in the prestigious journal Nature. He ne...

The Endless Sacrifice

Nearly one thousand IDF soldiers have sacrificed their lives for the nation since October 7, 2023. Thousands more have been crippled for life or injured. Tens (and possibly hundreds) of thousands more suffer PTSD.

But it’s not only lives and physical and mental health that have been sacrificed. It’s also jobs.

I know someone who had invested an enormous amount of money to create a ceramic tile business, due to open in the fall of 2023. Then Oct 7 happened, and he was called up. And then he was ca...

Cognitive Dissonance

In my previous post, Clueless People, I described how many well-meaning American religious Jews are simply unaware of the realities of Israel, and of how their values are actually better reflected by the Dati-Leumi community rather than by the charedi community. Subsequently, a few people reached out to me and correctly pointed out that I had left out another important part of the picture.

Being a religious Jew in the US or UK is the same as what being a religious Jew has been about for the past ...

Clueless People

I’m continually struck by how many well-meaning people, especially in the United States, do not understand the situation in Israel.

There’s a certain mailing list for Orthodox Jewish professionals in a very specific field that I’m on. One of the professionals, going completely off-topic, sent an email reminding everyone to vote for Eretz HaKodesh in the World Zionist Organization elections, “to represent Torah values in Eretz Yisroel.”

I responded as follows: “I do not believe that this mailing li...

Thief, Robber, or Liar?

The Torah famously differentiates between a gannev, a thief - someone who surreptitiously steals - and a gazlan, a robber - someone who brazenly robs in broad daylight. You might think that the latter is worse, but it’s actually a thief who receives greater punishment. Chazal explain while a robber is simply a brazen person who is not afraid of anyone, a thief demonstrates that he is afraid of people, but not of God.

But what if someone boasts publicly about having secretly stolen? Such is the s...

From Madness to Insanity

After a long absence, the Biblical Museum of Natural History finally has kosher locusts back in stock (see below for details on how to order them). People who haven’t heard about this famous kosher speciality respond as though it’s something far-out and crazy. But by the standards of what passes as normal in Israel today, it’s positively mundane.

Here in Israel, things are only getting more insane. It emerged as factual that one of the Prime Minister’s aides was receiving payments from Qatar (!)....

Self-Churban, Episode LXXI

Aaaaaaand here’s the latest in how the Torah-True Charedim are destroying the people of Israel, with the support of the Likud and Religious Zionism parties, along with the effective support of centrist religious Jewish leaders in the US!

First, we have a letter by some of the leading Sefardic charedi rabbinic leaders, declaring that all Gedolei Yisrael have prohibited every mitzvah-observant Jew from joining the army. Note that that’s whether they are in yeshiva or not, and even including religio...

The Mad King

Six months before Oct 7, 2023, I wrote a post called The Mad King. It was about how Bibi was tolerating the most outrageous behavior from government ministers, but fired the Minister of Defense for actually doing his job. The Minister of Defense was saying that the extreme judicial reform bills should be paused for a few weeks while an attempt is made to reach a compromise, in light of how they are tearing the country apart and causing serious harm to the ability of the IDF to protect Israel.

Tw...