Natan Slifkin's Blog, page 19

Another War this Sunday

Amidst a year of fighting in Gaza which has killed hundreds and wounded thousands and is still far from concluded, and attacks from Iran and Yemen, and rising tensions in Judea and Samaria, and a war with Hezbollah which has already killed nearly a hundred people and looks imminently about to explode into something much larger and require a ground invasion of Lebanon, the charedim have decided that it’s time for them to leave yeshivah in order participate in an intensive war effort. Against Isra...

Yeah, They Went Ahead And Did It

What’s even more audacious than planting explosives in 5000 pagers and blowing them up in the faces of Hezbollah terrorists?

Yeah, planting explosives in 1000 walkie-talkies and blowing them up the following day.

And what’s even more audacious than that?

Yeah, having set up the front company that actually sold the pagers and walkie-talkies in the first place, which means that the terrorists paid you to blow them up.

But what’s even more audacious than that?

Claiming that the success of this extraord...

Beep Beep

As you might have already heard, thousands of Hezbollah terrorists were just attacked by their own pagers, which all simultaneously blew up!

The media is reporting that “Lebanon’s Information Minister is the first to point a finger at Israel.” He’s lucky he still has one to point. The numbers are constantly climbing, but it’s looking like several were killed, hundreds very seriously injured, and thousands moderately injured.

This is simply an extraordinary event. Never in the history of the world ...

Yemen Day

Yesterday morning was a little unusual, in that at 6:30am I was shaken by the sound of a hypersonic missile that flew a thousand miles from Yemen in twelve minutes and was intercepted not too far away.

But here’s the really weird part.

Believe it or not, at the exact moment when the long instrument of war from Yemen landed with a blast, I was writing about long instruments of war from Yemen that emit a blast!

Someone suggested that I should reconsider rationalism. I replied that I only write about ...

Gedolim and Slogans

In the previous post, Daas Torah and Army, I noted that expertise on knowing the Torah approach to contemporary army service relates to several things:

An awareness of Jewish history - from Biblical times to recent times;

A knowledge of Torah sources relating to this topic;

A skilled analysis of the sources;

Intellectual honesty to enable one to understand what the Torah says, rather than forcing it to conform with a particular approach;

The ability to form a comprehensive and consistent approach whi...

Daas Torah and Army

The other day a woman asked me an interesting question. She said that her gut feeling tells her that everyone needs to serve in the army. But she said that she is not a Torah scholar, and surely The Gedolim™ are the experts on Judaism. And so surely they are reliable to determine what the Jewish approach to serving in the army is?

In response, I first pointed out there are also non-charedi Gedolei Torah who take the opposite position. The woman replied that this makes her all the more confused! H...

Dinos and Rhinos

Several years ago I was at the home of a frum Jewish family in Brooklyn for a Shabbos meal. The conversation turned to Torah and science, and eventually the topic of dinosaurs came up. The daughter, who was around twenty years old, had an opinion to share.

“The only dinosaur I believe in is the rinosaurus,” she said.

Now, I’m fairly proficient in dinosaur species, but I had never heard of a rinosaurus. “What’s that?” I asked.

“That’s the one with the horn on its head,” she replied. “I’ve seen one i...

The Amazing Ahmed's Error

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is an amazing person.

His grandparents were expelled from Palestine in the War of Independence. His parents were raised in a refugee camp in Rafah. Ahmed himself grew up in Gaza (he now lives in San Francisco). He was nearly killed and suffered a permanent partial loss of hearing during an IDF bombardment. Many of his relatives, who are not part of Hamas, have suffered severely or have been killed during the war, through no fault of their own.

You’d expect someone like Ahmed t...

Torah on a Large Scale

One core difference between the charedi community and the dati-leumi community is seen very powerfully in this week’s Torah reading.

Many mitzvot apply on a personal level. Tefila, arba minim, lashon hara, etc. Parashat Shoftim, on the other hand, is about various mitzvot which come into play when you’re operating an entire society. Shoftim v’shotrim - creating a legal system and a police force. Al pi haTorah asher yarucha - establishing a national system of rabbinic authority. Som tasim alecha ...

Joy Amidst Pain

Israel is in a lot of pain right now. I wouldn’t say that it’s as bad as the days following October 7th, but it’s close. The murder of the six hostages has triggered a wave of despair. So many people have suffered so much in the past ten months, and there seems to be no end in sight - neither recovering the hostages nor eliminating Hamas (which has certainly been enormously weakened, but also just got 3000 new recruits and has no replacement in sight).

Meanwhile, last night my wife and I, along w...