Please forgive me if I sound like I am preaching. I do not write this as someone entitled to lecture on the weighty decisions that are the realm of the gedolim who guide us. I write simply as one who wishes to share an example where we can see the truth of what our gedolim have taught us.
The national conversation about drafting yeshiva bochurim has reached a boiling point. Even within our own community, some are speaking critically about those who devote their lives to Torah (see comment section of this website). These voices ignore the most basic truth handed down through our mesorah: Torah protects Klal Yisroel. Our survival has always depended on lomdei Torah.
It is not easy even for ourselves to see how this is true, and it is definitely not an easy message to communicate to a world that measures strength only in tanks and technology. Yet our gedolim tell a very different story. We have endured not because we matched the nations of the world weapon for weapon. We exist because HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us a completely different kind of strength.
Chazal teach us that the nations of the world fight with the “cherev” -the sword- while Klal Yisroel’s might lies in the “peh”: in Torah, in tefillah, and in the kedushah of our words.
Rashi comments that when Moav saw Klal Yisroel defeating great powerful nations and slaying the mighty giants Sichon and Og, they searched for the secret of their success. The answer they received was:
אין כוחם אלא בפיהם
Their strength is in their mouth.
Moav immediately hired Bilam to curse us, attempting to wield our spiritual weapon against us.
Over the last two years, we have witnessed astonishing military miracles, in the battlefield of the cherev. Operations in Gaza, the success against overwhelming threats, the protection from thousands of incoming rockets and missiles. These events shout to us that Hashem is carrying this war.
Yet in the battlefield of the peh — media, messaging, public morality — it feels like the ground is crumbling. Positions that once belonged to the extreme fringe have taken over mainstream conversation by the likes of popular podcasters like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. Support for Israel abroad is shrinking at a terrifying pace. Antisemitism has gone viral. Is it any surprise that when pressure to draft yeshiva bochurim intensifies, the world’s public opinion turns on us more sharply? Governments hesitate to supply weapons. Allies challenge Israel openly. Hostility rises. May I suggest that this is not a coincidence.
If we rip away our warriors — the lomdei torah who fight with Torah and tefillah — and force them to exchange our “klei zayin” of the peh, to fight with the “klei zayin” of the nations, we weaken the very koach Hashem gave us to survive. Removing thousands of lomdim from the beis midrash is not strengthening our defense. It is dismantling it in a real way.
We are watching in real time what happens when the nations pick up our spiritual weapon of the peh and use it against us.
Disarm klal yisroel’s warriors of the peh – the lomdei torah – but do so at your own peril.
Signed,
A Jew
The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.
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One Response
This is a surprise that so many people are devoid of any belief whatsoever in our own torah’s teachings? This has all been predicted by the talmud that this generation will be the most obnoxious rabbi-hating apikorsim known to man. And it’s also how Hashem is going to know which cancer to remove before the geulah