Addressing a kenos of avreichim in the Ramot Aleph neighborhood of Jerusalem on Sunday night, the eve of 25 Kislev, MK Moshe Gafne, who heads the Knesset Finance Committee, spoke of the new draft law and induction of chareidim into the IDF.
Gafne said that “today’s battle continues as well”, stating the miracle of the modern day is that bnei yeshivos were supposed to receive draft notices to compel them to enter the IDF. “Not that they would have complied” he added, but the draft notices were expected and Baruch Hashem this did not occur. “We are not just sitting around idly for the battle is not over and it continues, as do our efforts to protect bnei yeshivos”.
“I saw papers that indicated the assistance for yeshivos was to go down to NIS 70 [per student] a year. This is without mentioning plans to eliminate supplemental income payments. We restored this and the yeshiva budgeting…” Gafne explains “this money was ours and they took it from us”, accusing the Bayit Yehudi party of not wanting to give back the money it redirected from chareidim to dati leumi institutions, highlighting he restored what the chareidim previously had prior to Bayit Yehudi taking it in the previous administration. “I have seen miracles and wonders from HKBH!”
“The war against those trying to uproot all that is dear to us continues…We are doing what we must. We are silent. We do not speak out for each work we utter is misinterpreted. We do not utilize the tools available to others but I know how much my colleagues and I fight on behalf of bnei Torah”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
A Miracle?
Maybe a shanda that more who aren’t seriously learning don’t stand up to sharebin their responsibility to serve.
Self-interest really isn’t the stuff miracles are made of. If it was in the zionist’s interests to close down the yeshivos and draft the hareidim, they would have done so. They may hate the hareidim, but not enough to risk the state’s existence.
Conscripting hareidim would undermine the army from within, and lead to many hareidim going from trying to be neutral at best on the Arab-Israeli conflict to being openly hostile to the state, and could serious erode Israel’s international standing by giving ammunition to its enemies (who would support the hareidim to show they are anti-zionist rather than anti-semitic), and would alienate most of Israel’s friends (who are goyim who see Israel in religious term and will not be pleased to see religious Jews denouncing the state).
I don’t seem to recall learning in cheder that the Torah exempts persons learning Torah from military service. It seems to me that if military service was mandatory for Hashem and Moshe it should be mandatory for all who learn in Kollel. I know that all of our “Gedolim” will find reasons to distinguish between the the IDF and those who went to war under Moshe, Yohoshua and Dovid, but, in truth, there is no distinction. Pkuach nefesh is pkuach nefesh and no amount of talmudic reasoning will change that.
well long island yid ,at least we’re here in eretz Israel!I bet you and yr kids aren’t serving the jewish people in the IDF -so quit telling others to endanger their souls in the IDF which has an agenda to secularize charedim so they “can take their place in Israeli society” as the anti-frum say.Sorry but the only society my kids are going to be part of is shomreiTorah u’mitzvot.