Natan Slifkin's Blog, page 16

Can People be Parasites?

There are various occasions over the years when left-wing MKs and journalists described the haredi community as “parasites” or as engaging in parasitic behavior. This is due to their way of life which means that, as a community, they extract far more from the economy than they contribute, and they benefit from other people sacrificing themselves for army service while not contributing towards it. In such cases, haredim reacted furiously at such language, describing it as “antisemitic” and as evo...

American Achdus

There’s a very strange notion of achdus which seems to be particularly prominent among Americans.

I recently listened to a Headlines podcast from several months ago in which several rabbis were interviewed on the topic of achdus. All of them are wonderful people; I know some of them personally. And all are American middle-of-the-road types - raised in the American yeshivish (or right-wing YU) world, but open-minded and positively disposed towards army service.

Yet I was deeply troubled by the int...

Meanwhile in Israel

Many people were obsessed last night with maps showing various breakdowns of states in the US. I found this one to be particularly interesting:

But readers in the USA were probably too distracted by elections to know about what happened in Israel yesterday and why so many Israelis are so upset.

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We're in a war on seven fronts, and our prime minister just fired...

10 Myths about Charedim and Army

With all the lengthy polemics about charedim and army service, I decided to prepare a handy short list of the ten most common myths about this topic, with brief responses.

Myth #1: “Rambam says that yeshiva students are like Levites and are exempt from army!”

FACT: Rambam praises someone as being similar to a Levite if they dedicate their entire life to spirituality, free themselves of worldly concerns, and rely on God for their sustenance. He is not referring to someone spending a few years in ye...

The Charedi Secession from Klal Yisrael

Over a decade ago, Mishpacha magazine published a column by Jonathan Rosenblum in which he made a crucial observation about charedi society:

In the more than two centuries since the ghetto walls began to fall, Torah communities have often had to fight to preserve themselves. Those that followed the principle of separation from larger communal frameworks were usually the most successful in preserving their Torah identity. But that victory too came with a cost in terms of a diminished Klal Yisrael ...

No Sense of Shame

It occurred to me that the great frustration and anger towards the charedi community is not just about their refusing to help out with the crushing burden of national defense. It’s also about the attitude that goes along with it.

Several years ago, Rav Aharon Lopiansky wrote that “the robbing of our youths’ formative years as a ben Torah would be a price that we could not pay.” In response, Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein responded pithily, “Agreed. But how do we ask other, reluctant Israelis to pay a ...

Snapped

Something big happened in Israel this week. The dati-leumi community finally snapped.

It had been building up for months. At the very beginning of the war, when reservists were called up, there were all kinds of cute and funny videos when they returned back home. Nobody makes those videos anymore. Because after they were called back again, and again, and again, the situation became intolerable.

And meanwhile, the charedi community refused to participate.

It became increasingly clear to everyone th...

It's Time for Bravery

I am not a particularly brave person. I won’t go on rollercoasters, and I don’t ever complain at restaurants or even return items to stores. And while you might have seen pictures of me swimming with large sharks or manhandling alligators and pythons and leopards, that’s not bravery, it’s just that I have no fear of animals.

I also happen not to have a fear of public speaking. Nevertheless, when I went to the neighborhood shiur a few weeks ago in which R. Mordechai Neugerschal explained why char...

The Dati Roshei Yeshiva Speak Out

It has been an especially challenging week, with the deaths of numerous soldiers, including many from the dati-leumi community. Meanwhile at the Knesset, the charedi parties UTJ and Shas, along with their enablers from Likud and Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit, are figuring out how to legalize the charedi avoidance of army service and how to grant financial benefits for charedim and remove any incentive for them to serve. Consequently, two roshei yeshiva from the Dati-Leumi community have ju...

Noah and Charedi Draft-Dodgers

(Above: A chassidic Noah on his ark, by Israeli artist Tanya Lombrozo, on exhibit at the Biblical Museum of Natural History)

Some people claim that I’m singularly obsessed with the topic of charedim and army. Inevitably, these are people in charedi society whose children are not in the army. With those people in Israel who are part of wider society in which tremendous and terrible sacrifices are being made, they are generally likewise intensely upset about the charedi lack of participation, which...