As the IDF is compelled to address new fiscal realities, it appears one of the areas that will be hit with a major cut is the military’s rabbinate. Officials in the IDF Rabbinate have received a memo informing them to plan future activities around the fact the operating budget will be cut by 25%.
Officials in the military rabbinate explain that the tachlis of the memo is simple. Dozens of rabbonim serving in the military will be on the unemployment line and this will result in a drastic reduction in shiurim and other activities in the IDF to provide Yiddishkheit for soldiers and officers.
Some members of the military Rabbanut are very concerned, explaining this is not the time to cut hundreds of hours of limud Torah and shiurim and they feel that such a drastic cut of such vital services may chas v’sholom lead to unwanted results.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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Unlike American chaplains, whose functions are similar to social workers or counselors, Israeli chaplains are administrators whose primary function is to see that the needs of religious soldiers are accomodated, and to prevent conflict between religious soldiers and the largely secular elite running the army. Reducing the staff of the rabbinate, at the same time as increasing the number of religious soldiers, means that there will be no one to intervene beween the religious soldiers and their secular commanders. It’s almost as if they were looking for increased confrontations.
#1- All of a sudden you are acknowledging that there are people whose job it is to accommodate (2 m’s there, super-poster) the needs of religious soldiers? This for an army that is looking to make people become non-religious???