Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
I wanted to ask whether I can make a response video based on what the Rabbi wrote.

The Haredim are very angry at Bunim Schreiber. And because the change is happening very strongly.

In the synagogue on the Sabbath, one Haredi guy who enlisted said that in his opinion people should enlist because it’s enjoyable. The public crushed him, saying that you should enlist in order to contribute.

Afterward there were two who argued that one should not enlist, and there was an actual war there until those in favor of enlistment won.
What can you do—there’s Maimonides and so on? They clicked their tongues until they gave in.
Because for the first time, people simply didn’t let them get away with it.

In my opinion, a big part of the reason for the enlistment wave (aside from the war), in my opinion:

A lot of Haredim identify with Channel 14.

It never says a bad word about Haredim, even when it should.
Channel 14 brings on Haredi soldiers and embraces them and values them. And it succeeds. It works.
It will still take time. And in my opinion, an article on the halakhic obligation to enlist could help a lot.

I’m Haredi, and it’s shameful that there are rabbis like this. I hope the change will come specifically from the Haredi public itself. It’s very hard because most of the public listens to rabbis whose instructions, and unfortunately a large part of them are idiots. But I do hear other voices. I study in a kollel, and there too there is already change. It’s no longer embarrassing to wear IDF uniforms, and there is a lot of volunteering. A large part wants to be connected to the state, to the Jewish people as a whole.

Rabbi, I couldn’t understand what the problem was with his analogy to sanitation workers.
Plainly, he meant that they too deserve gratitude, and all the more so the soldiers.

When the Rabbi sees a sanitation worker, doesn’t he feel “well done”? (At least that’s how I feel, I’m just uncomfortable saying it to them.)
——-
Second, don’t you think the state suffers a lot from a lack of cold intellectual analysis?
I feel that in this war specifically the right is speaking in a lighter and more measured way (even if not correctly) than the left, which seems to me like a whirring top of emotions.

Elhanan, I think you’re naïve. The Haredim are saying what they’re saying because we’re at war; time will pass and they’ll go back to entrenching themselves in total non-enlistment.

In my opinion Channel 14 does more harm to the effort to draft Haredim, because it gives backing to the broad non-enlistment of Haredi society.
Channel 14 supports those few who enlist, and even that is only to create the impression that Haredim are enlisting.

The opposite, Akiva—you should know a great secret:
The thing Haredim fear most is a bear hug.
And Channel 14 is giving them exactly that.

(The success of the Haredi structure is that the secular are against them—that is exactly what creates the wall between them and the secular. It’s no coincidence that some say: if people love you, it’s a sign you’re on the wrong path.)

Y.,
The Haredim almost always speak in two voices.
In this matter, one voice is that of the rabbis, directed inward to the public, and that is Rabbi Schreiber’s voice. It is also the voice that calls for distancing from Channel 14.

The second voice is that of the Haredi politicians, journalists, and fixers. All the scum of that second voice are connected to Channel 14 and try to influence public opinion with Ali Baba stories about broad Haredi enlistment or contribution in other ways to the community, and about the protection that comes from Torah study. Just talk to committed Channel 14 viewers and see how many excuses they have for Haredi draft evasion.

Channel 14 is the most harmful channel. Because it gives legitimacy to Harediness while distorting the data and giving the average Bibist the general feeling that there is no acute problem here (more than that, that they’re even superior to everyone else). That is the greatest danger, because in order to deal with the Haredi problem you need to cut stipends dramatically, not double and triple them. Channel 14 is Haredi-budget propaganda.

Dear Rabbi Akiva,
That’s my impression. I see that when nobody attacks, people start to shift uncomfortably. Suddenly the excuses run out.
Suddenly the Haredim start asking the hard questions.

As far as I’m concerned, you can use it however you want.

“George Orwell already said that (another wicked man)”

Why is he wicked?

“And especially because they are Jews (though those are, as is known, mistaken martyrdoms”

Why are those mistaken martyrdoms?

There is a huge amount of Haredi contribution, so why not show the good? True, there are lots of idiots in the community who are just a herd following blocked-up rabbis,
but most—at least in the Hasidic, liberal, Sephardi, Chabad, and Karlin Hasidic public—are helping the national effort.
There are leftists who are 40 percent of the people and they harm the Jewish people, so should we say that all secular people are harmful?
The vile Haredim who are against the army at least think and talk, but don’t do harmful actions, so please don’t generalize. I personally can tell you that my son and I—he’s a student in a Lithuanian yeshiva—went out with some of his friends to distribute food to army bases.
And there’s much more. I have friends who have been fasting for several weeks for the success of the Jewish people. So why
generalize?

Doesn’t Matter,

What are you talking about?!
Haredim as a collective do not enlist and are not partners in the war effort, and that’s not enough for them—they also want to take credit for Israel’s security.
To show the good (“Haredim contribute”) when in practice they do not enlist—that’s throwing sand in people’s eyes.

Just a correction: he did not say they are not our brothers and that there is no need to feel gratitude toward them.
All his twisted remarks were directed against the questioners—telling them not to talk nonsense about gratitude (since even garbage workers deserve gratitude and they don’t show it), and not to claim they care because they are their brothers (since in car accidents they are also their brothers and they don’t care).
And from here, he says, one should conclude that what really bothers them is a warped outlook: they want to feel gratitude toward soldiers who fight “in their place,” and they feel that they themselves should have been the ones fighting, whereas the truth is that without the secular they would not have had to fight at all.
Precisely the Rabbi, who justifies the comparison to a private disaster and argues that one should also mourn car accidents, is accepting the argument. But clearly in the public mind this is perceived differently, and there is a difference between a private disaster and a national disaster, and the large number of dead gives it a completely different aspect, not merely a quantitative addition.

Does anyone have an updated link? The video was deleted from the Drive the Rabbi shared.

I would like to remark to Rabbi Michi Abraham that one must understand several things:
A. The army’s soldiers are not protecting the Haredi individual. They are protecting their own public. What can you do—there also happen to be some Haredim in that public, but no one is really going to sacrifice himself for them. Imagine there were a Haredi terminally ill patient whom one could help: do you really think a soldier would endanger himself?
B. Aside from the simple fact above—that the soldier is not protecting the Haredi person except incidentally and without any intention at all—there is another important thing to understand: even what he does protect, the soldier does because he is obligated and has no option to evade it. And those who do it for ideological reasons do so for the sake of the State of Israel and the wholeness of the land, etc.—with no connection to protecting specific groups like Haredim or anyone else with different views from theirs, since if those groups were isolated, the soldiers would not go out to defend them at all.
I do not see this as a childish point of view but as a calculated and cool one, unmoved by “what people will say.” A kind of left-wing conduct, just in Haredi form.

To the MK,
You are much worse than the rabbi…
Talk to people on the ground.
Now the disgrace is even greater—not only is there supposedly no need for gratitude, they’re not even doing anything for me at all…
I think the state should transfer people like that, or at the very least not give them stipends…

Regarding

Oren, that was written sarcastically. From the Haredi perspective, anyone who isn’t Haredi is wicked, and certainly a gentile. As for mistaken martyrdoms, that’s not my term; it refers to the fact that someone who dies because of his Judaism is not holy, and the tradition that sees him as holy is a mistaken tradition. I discussed this at length in a chapter of the second book in the trilogy.

MK, with all due respect, I’m not going to address the collection of nonsense you wrote. It’s simply insulting to the intelligence.

Rabbi Michi, I did not present my remarks as fact but as arguments. I would really be happy to know why I’m wrong, and I would be glad to hear a refutation of my claims (these are arguments I hear all the time).
To dismiss it as “a collection of nonsense” is not a response to my arguments.
Thanks in advance.

Section D is complete nonsense. Most of the soldiers in Gaza are reservists. Rabbi Schreiber has no idea how easy it is to dodge reserve duty. There are soldiers who were discharged over silly things. Anyone can do something stupid and they won’t be called up again.
There are soldiers who came back from abroad just in order to fight.
And in general, getting out of combat service, or not being drafted into combat service, is also pretty easy, and even dodging service altogether is not a big problem these days.

There are words of nonsense at such a level that it is simply insulting to respond to them. If you can’t understand that on your own, it won’t help if I explain it to you.

As a Haredi (sociologically) who thinks independently and identifies with the Haredi outlook only partially, I’ll contribute a few comments to the discussion.
A. Schreiber is an obnoxious provocateur. In his lectures he always likes to argue the opposite of what everyone thinks and present irritating claims against the other side. He’s a kind of genius with severe Asperger’s syndrome, a sort of Haredi Yeshayahu Leibowitz. He’s the sort of person who likes to walk around with a sharpened needle and prick anything that strikes him as a balloon with a little air in it.
B. Conceptually he represents the fanatical stream of the Haredi world, convinced that there are one or two exclusive values and beyond that there is nothing. (By the way, this kind of thinking exists among radicals in every society, from Samaria to Tel Aviv, from Alabama to California.) In my estimation this is a not-insignificant segment of Haredi society, but my impression is that most of the public is not there, even if a large part of it suffers from blind thinking. There are many who are short-sighted in vision and thought, but not obnoxious and ungrateful. Everyone I know was deeply horrified by these vile remarks, though they are on the more open side (intellectually, not religiously).
C. The Haredi public is in a bit of a conceptual bind, because on the one hand it feels dependent on the state and the army, and on the other hand it is educated to oppose them. Some deal with the problem by totally denying that dependence on the state, and some by inventing excuses of the sort “we too protect spiritually,” even though when it comes to elections or to the city charity fund, no one would accept the excuse that learning one page of Talmud is more useful than voting at the ballot box or donating 180 shekels to the “ninth hour on the ninth day” fundraising campaign, and so on.
D. As I understand it, the real reason for opposing military service is based on two principles: 1. fear of the secularism of the army. 2. the desire to build a strong Torah world.
The fear of secularism is a very well-founded fear, and an honest person—whatever his opinions—cannot deny it. In principle, the problem could be solved through cooperation by the army, but I find it hard to see that happening now. There would be world war from progressive organizations trying to impose their religion on the army. If a few thousand hardalnikim who insist on avoiding women singing and mixed service are seen as a grave threat, what shall we say about Haredim who might demand approval from the Council of Torah Sages before every military action…
The desire to build a Torah world exists mainly in the Lithuanian public, which is obsessively locked into the “nothing but Torah” approach. In recent years there is growing awareness of the irritating fact that a substantial part of the yeshiva world simply is not suited for that, but the difficulty of climbing down from the tree is great. It will happen, but it will take more time.
E. In my opinion there is no way to solve the Haredi-state problem through coercion, and that would not be fair either. What is needed is simply insistence on separating religion and state, and that anyone who wants to avoid military service or work should pay his share of the expenses of the public purse. If he doesn’t pay, he doesn’t receive. In short—capitalism. Socialist policy can work in a homogeneous society, not in a multi-colored society like Israeli society (or American society).

I’d be glad to hear Rabbi Michi’s opinion and that of the other readers.

Listen, Aharon. You write amazingly.
I agree with every word. You just gave me a great argument with that point that in the next elections I’ll tell everyone I’m learning in a fast of silence instead of going to vote.

Who are you? What do you do in life?

If you’re interested, I made a video about Schreiber’s crazy speech. One quarter funny. Three quarters nerves.

In my opinion, Rabbi Schreiber’s psychological profile is not hard to decipher: this is a man who is biologically an adult, but in the persona of the smart-aleck first-grade child who wants to stand out by pulling stunts that no child in the class does. The man is trying to present us with a false image of someone who can decipher, in reality and in the world around us, an additional dimension that no one but him notices. His drives are no more than childish, stinking pride, the kind one can also spot and identify among distinguished professors in academia, who are driven by the same impulses.

Well, I see that everyone here is simply terrifyingly emotional…
I understand the stormy emotions in Aharon and Zevulun, but note that you did not address Rabbi Schreiber’s arguments at all. Some of the claims Aharon raised are of a completely different kind and do not touch Rabbi Schreiber’s claims.
By the way, I would note that Michi Abraham also answered here with claims that reflect that they come from an emotional place, since in my humble opinion his answers are weaker than usual.

Let me sharpen the background to Rabbi Schreiber’s remarks and his claims briefly.
A. One has to understand the Haredi point of view: the fact is that a state was created not as the initiative of the Haredi public but of the general public, which saw it as necessary. From the Haredi public’s point of view, we would have remained in exile living in America, in the Land of Israel under Arab rule, and in other countries—there is no problem with that, because in terms of loss of life, since the establishment of the state there have been many more losses of life. (And please don’t challenge me from the Holocaust and the like, because those are entirely exceptional events. Under normal conditions there is no loss of life like in the Land of Israel.) Therefore the Haredi is basically saying: you established a state and want to fight, and therefore you want to draft me? That’s your problem. You want me to feel gratitude toward you? From my perspective, “close down” the state. Just as when someone goes around getting into fights in the street with passersby because he sees importance in that, and then claims that if you don’t help him you’re insolent, and that because of him you benefit by not having passersby near you, you should feel gratitude to him… Who asked you to do that?
B. Rabbi Schreiber’s main claim is one intended to let the air out of the balloon of “gratitude” that people have started inflating here. After all, gratitude is owed to everyone—garbage workers, soldiers, and many others. Rabbi Schreiber argues that just as you don’t make a big deal out of that, don’t make a big deal out of this either. (Not that he has a problem with it, but his problem is what motive is suddenly beating in your heart to produce this feeling…) Likewise regarding sharing in the suffering with the families of the hostages and so on—he is saying to the public: after all, you are not really partners in the suffering of all sorts of people who suffer, and you do not help those whom you could help—so why have you awakened here? Bottom line: there is a feeling of inferiority here, and in addition populism spreading among his audience, and he is calling attention to that. Completely understandable!
C. Regarding the soldiers, in general the claim is very simple and was raised here: the soldier is not coming to save Rabbi Schreiber and his audience. If it were only that public, the soldier would not go out to battle at all.

That’s all. Simple and clear. I don’t agree with everything he said, but in most of what he said he is very coherent and logical. Of course, unfortunately everyone here—including Rabbi Michi—made a great noise and tumult out of emotional anger, not because reason was speaking through them…

The attempts to provide pathetic explanations for stupid statements
are even more annoying than the original.
Anyone who knows, knows that there’s some obsession and addiction
to saying the sharp statement that nobody has yet dared to say.
So there, he said it…
I have a certain inclination to judge favorably,
that in order to save Torah scholars from drawing close to the Zionist idea in its secular form,
there is a need for crazy extremism toward the other side.
But someone who stays on that same edge and tries to explain how it is the straight path and the royal road
is not on the right track.

I don’t understand how a person who defines himself as religious/Haredi can declare that he would have preferred to remain in exile. Even if there was once a dispute about Zionism, is there any doubt in the world that the ideal is to be in the Holy Land? The matter is explicit from the Bible all the way to Nachmanides and the Vilna Gaon. (I’m not entering the halakhic discussion or the words of Tosafot in Ketubot. I’m speaking about the basic matter that was clear to every Jew in every generation.)

Regarding Rabbi Schreiber himself, a wonderful post was published by someone who knows him very well and describes very well where he is coming from. There is also a bit of judging him favorably there. However, since in parts of the post he finds a point of similarity in personality between him and Rabbi Michi, and since this is the Rabbi’s own site, I won’t post it without his permission.
If he approves, I’d be happy to post the wonderful post here; it’s simply a fascinating document.

You can simply post a link… I’d be glad to see it.
By the way, I find myself identifying with what Moshe Yazdi wrote here.

Dear Moshe Yazdi!
Are you serious???
What are these arguments???

Your condescension is exploding. You write here with confidence as though you are the only balanced and wise person around. And you write nonsense that no one even has the energy to answer.

A.

Quote:
“You established a state and want to fight, and therefore you want to draft me? That’s your problem. You want me to feel gratitude toward you? From my perspective, ‘close down’ the state.”

Did most of the Jewish people want the establishment of the state?
Yes!
Was its purpose to benefit the Jewish people?
Yes!
Today does the Haredi benefit from a state that protects him here in the Land of Israel? Not in Europe. Here.
Answer:
Most of the time, yes! That is the aspiration!

What do you mean, “close down the state”?!
Is that possible?! Even if Ben-Gurion made a mistake, now we are all here????
You live here and enjoy life at a very high standard. You enjoy the independence of a people in its land.
Contribute!!!

B.
What is this nonsense about gratitude to a garbage worker????
A garbage worker works for pay, for himself. He deserves modest thanks. Manners.

A person like Aner Shapira, who volunteered with no obligation or reward in order to save lives, and died for Jews he did not know—that demands gratitude on a tremendous level that cannot be described. It’s insane that this even needs to be said.

The soldiers volunteer!!!! Many of them volunteer for life-risking roles!!! They do not do this because they are obligated. They want to protect the Jewish people. Listen to them talk. Open the news…
You have to be so sealed-off to seriously ask what the difference is between them and a garbage worker.

Regarding the suffering of the hostages’ families:

Why did we awaken here???
Because it touched us very deeply. That’s why. So what??? We’re human, and some things affect us more and some less. We’ve gotten used to cancer.
So that means the feeling of pain isn’t real???
What kind of nonsense is that???
At most, ask that we also act on behalf of cancer patients.

The massacre is a horrifying event and it triggers a stronger emotion in people. True.
So can one say that this emotion is fake???!!!
How did you reach that insane conclusion???

C. The soldiers, for the most part, sacrifice themselves for Jews—or more accurately, for the residents of the State of Israel whoever they are. One can understand that it’s hard for you to accept that there are secular people willing to die for the entire state, including the Haredim.
You probably aren’t used to thinking about giving that isn’t directed only to your specific community…

Your condescension is so stupid!

Rabbi Michael, please don’t delete this. He deserves that I went after him.

The post is well known. And knowing Rabbi Michi, he’d be happy for it to be posted here:
Still, it may be worth sketching, on the level of personality profile, for those who don’t know, the following outlines:
There is in him a lethal combination of the trollishness of Dov Halbertal, the fanaticism and sharpness of Prof. Leibowitz (Judeo-Nazis Judeo-Nazis Judeo-Nazis—the supreme pleasure of slaughtering sacred cows), the wild mischievousness of a Jerusalem child, extreme rationalism in the style of Rabbi Michi Abraham (in Rabbi Bunim’s eyes the supremacy of intellect means that emotion of any kind is a flawed trait), the bitter mockery of the Novardok school (so-and-so thinks he’s righteous, etc. etc., it’s all delusions and self-love and ego, etc.), and Kotzker-style extremism of bursting balloons. He has a hard time with moralists, with “resolutions,” with spiritual supervisors, with pious affectation, with the liturgical poems on the eve of Yom Kippur (“waste of Torah study”—he sits then and reviews tractate Oholot). In short, he walks around with a huge needle and enjoys pricking anything that seems to him to be a balloon. That’s on the level of traits.

On the level of views, he is an extreme zealot. In that sense he truly does not represent or reflect any social trend, and he is aware of this. He is aware that he operates and functions within the Lithuanian sector while his worldview is to the right of any ordinary Hungarian or Brisker. His father was one of the Tehran Children, and that is a formative family post-trauma. (They proudly tell how when the Ponevezh Rabbi brought Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi for a visit to the yeshiva, and she asked to see his father—Peneh, who had been one of the Tehran Children—the child approached and spat in her face.)

What he did there in those twenty minutes was to mock the audience and show them that he “isn’t buying it.” He explained that from his perspective there is no difference between one car accident and a bus overturning; the difference is quantitative, not qualitative, and that there is no difference, in terms of “empathy for pain,” between terminal wards and people murdered or fallen in war. At the same time he said there is no difference between what happened on Simchat Torah and the six million, and just as “that has no message, so this has no message.” He also got carried away in sermonic twists (after protests and questions from the audience) and explained that fighters serve because they have no other choice, and in that sense they are like doctors who are paid for treatment, plus more nonsense and absurdities.
He is a troll, and mischievous, and a great zealot who apparently feels very well that the public is going through a process that from his point of view is a glorious collapse into the lap of the wicked Zionists.
In that sense there is also something of a backlash here and fear of the collapse of the “nothing but Torah” paradigm (of which he is indeed one of the greatest standard-bearers. His diligence is frightening by any standard; he despises politics of every kind and especially rabbinic politics. He is terrifyingly cynical with regard to almost every phenomenon in the universe except Torah. And there is much reason to suppose that this psychic movement also embodies a kind of self-escape: he is so cynical, and so curious and talented, that the only escape from the possible consequences of that cynicism, talent, and curiosity for his world of values and beliefs is “nothing but Torah” together with absolute cynicism toward anything that is not Torah. In this—namely, a psychic movement of reverse-upon-reverse, coping with a cynical psychological structure and a world devoid of beliefs and sacred cows through complete enslavement to a very narrow slit of a particular worldview, and self-sacrifice for it—he greatly resembles Rabbi Moses Mordechai Schulzinger. And much more could be said.)

And still, what happened there was a display of extreme irresponsibility and above all of lack of control and restraint. He could not overcome his urge for trolling and cleverness. From familiarity with him, it is clear to me that this was not an outburst from some crazed Hungarian rabbi from Edah circles who doesn’t know what is happening around him and feels the need to scream so the club won’t burn down.
Rabbi Bunim is very clever, sophisticated, and sharp. He is very aware of the significance of these remarks, of the Israeli ethos, and of the public sentiment. It was impulsiveness, but not a slip. That is, I do not think he actually believes what he said; it is not that what he truly thinks in his heart accidentally came out. It was an annoying trollish contrarianism of someone who cannot resist passing by some schlemiel and pinching him in the stomach or cheeks. He has allergies to carnivals of every kind.
If the public decides to accept the Sabbath an hour early, he will ask why not start from Tuesday. If there is a campaign around “You shall act according to what they instruct you,” he will say that it refers only to the Great Court in Jerusalem (and if necessary, he will simultaneously sign whatever is needed—render unto Caesar, etc.). If the public thinks that the plain meaning in Rabbi Elchanan, regarding the force of a claim in migo, is X, he will prove that no one ever thought that was the explanation. And if they ask what the explanation is, he will say he has no idea and it also doesn’t interest him, and he will hurl at the questioner whether he already has an explanation for “once he has testified, he cannot retract and testify.” And many more pearls of that sort.

Beyond all this, from his point of view, anything that cannot be analyzed with the tools of lomdus simply does not interest him. In that sense he really is a literary character out of Grade: why chatter about things if you can’t break them apart with lomdus? Every general lecture of his is a stand-up performance made up of ninety percent slaughtering cows (all the accepted foundations in the topic), five percent a new proposal, and the remaining five percent a heartrending admission that in fact all the sages before him meant exactly that.
In this case, apparently there wasn’t enough time for the next ten percent that he is used to…
Anyone used to reading Rabbi Michi Abraham can get some impression of the method.
The autism that is expressed here is the lack of consideration (not of understanding, because he is very intelligent) for the fact that things like this (at any time) are like sword thrusts, and a crazed display of lack of responsibility toward the listeners, not to mention wider circles. First and foremost, it is a crime against those listeners who were present there. (He really is terrifyingly cynical, and responsibility is not the strong side of such types.)

On the personal level—and here the following description often does not fit with the communicative pattern above, but that is the reality—he is a very good man, simply a good man. There is not a gram of pride or condescension in him. He is very caring. He can speak with young boys at eye level, with great patience and humor. In that sense he is much sweeter than many yeshiva heads and spiritual supervisors.
Zero ego. Unusual goodness. And a lot of caring.
He could crucify students with fire and brimstone over their invalid and heretical outlooks (and he relishes the battle), and at the same time, in everything connected to learning and other matters, he treated them with much kindness. I heard from students who called to ask questions during their military service, and he was very matter-of-fact, understood very well the halakhic significance of operational activity (halakhically, he was even more lenient than the prevailing norm in the military rabbinate—and that is not easy—including a good understanding of the “material” according to which a military system and military routine, including aspects of intelligence, etc., are a case of life-endangerment for the many), and he could show genuine interest in what was happening, what the situation was, and such things—while at the same time taking care to sign off with a few hearty and juicy curses against the Zionists and against Balaam’s counsel and against the deity of those who hate licentiousness, and similar gems.

On the human level, there are charming components in him, and he is more of a mensch and more substantive than many well-known yeshiva heads and rabbis who lead the public.
He is a typical Chelmer (even though he spent only a few years of childhood there; his mother, who was ill, was the sister of Rabbi Nachum Rothstein). He has no Lithuanian honorific mannerisms and no social politics. The world divides broadly into two: growth in Torah, and wasting Torah study. Boys who study seriously (it doesn’t matter whether they are “crazy Religious Zionists,” returnees to religion, burned-out high-school kids, and so on), and idlers (it doesn’t matter if they are well-connected, yeshivish, or spiritual supervisors).

Was I surprised yesterday by the remarks? I was very, very surprised. I did not think he was capable of this. It may be that both age and a complex family situation in recent years (health) are taking their toll.
Can one allow him to benefit from the principle of charity—that he meant A and they understood B—or from the “racism of low expectations”? No and no.
He is very smart and very sharp, and should understand very well the significance of his remarks, both at the level of the objective content (shocking) and at the level of the public consequences and educational responsibility. (He does not think of himself as an educator; he thinks education is a kind of manipulation—he entered advanced yeshiva at age 13 and was a “wild man.”) To sum up the character testimony at the sentencing stage, maybe it should also be noted that this is what happens when one grows up in institutions without a guiding female hand. (His mother was sick all through childhood and they rolled from homes to institutions for years, with a father who buried his parents in forests at age eleven and circumcised his little brother with his own hands, and was a Torah addict, so there was not especially active parenting there.)

Do I think he believes what he said? No and no.
I simply don’t buy it.
He is smarter and more sensitive (despite his vigorous denials) than that.
So what is it, then?
Trolling. Craziness. Cynicism.

By the way, for those who know: Rabbi Schulzinger, Rabbi Michi Abraham, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz were all, on a personal level, extraordinarily kind people, while on the public level they were often cynical, trollish, and irresponsible.

Only that in Rabbi Bunim’s case even the mobilization to protect the paradigm is not fully there; in that he differs from Rabbi Moses Mordechai Schulzinger. There is more cynicism, less hashkafah.
He would not be capable of devoting time to “outlook sessions” or talks. (There are talks, but they resemble Orhot Yosher more than the musar genre, and unlike Orhot Yosher, a lot of lomdus seeps in.) Whoever busies himself with hashkafah is suspect in his eyes of wasting Torah study.
And all the “the letter-writer” stuff is only by way of “it is a time to act for the Lord,” and still requires analysis.
The only person from whom I never heard a trace of cynicism on his part was the Hazon Ish, in the sense of “from the altar and upward”—that he is Holy of Holies. Indeed he hardly mentioned him relative to the central place he occupies for him, perhaps for fear of stumbling into cynicism or humor.
By the way, if it helps, one of Rabbi Bunim’s kollel-time idols is Rabbi Yaakov Blau, and ponder this well.
And after all is said and done, love distorts the line, and indeed I have a great weakness for Rabbi Bunim’s Torah. I am not an exaggerator in such matters, and his mastery of all the treasuries of Torah is simply frightening. Boundless dominion. Babylonian Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud, Sifra, Sifrei, Mekhilta, minor tractates, Tosefta and baraitot—one cannot catch him on a responsum of Rashba that doesn’t roll right off his tongue (more than 3,300 of them). There isn’t a passage in the Vilna Gaon that he doesn’t know word for word. Hundreds of little pieces on Parah, Negaim, and Oholot. Beyond that, he is a real lamdan.
He sits and types at lightning speed, without books, compilations of dozens of pages.
In this respect he resembles stories about Rabbi Ovadia (he would shudder).
And it’s not only talent. He doesn’t waste a moment and hardly sleeps, is never at weddings for more than a minute and a half, and is always tired, hoarse, and sooted from chronic lack of sleep.
The only time I saw his eyes white and not full of red woven veins was when he sat shivah and held that he was forbidden to study in-depth even the laws of mourning and Moed Katan because that would make him happy. He sat irritated, like an addict without his drug—but he slept well.
Those last lines are meant to suggest that perhaps one of his motives, too, was the impression that people were slackening from engagement in Torah and talking excessively about the situation, and what a shame that is.

Anything relevant can be posted. No need to ask my permission.

Who wrote this post???

On the one hand, the writer is amazing. Phenomenal.

On the other hand, I always keep my distance from psychologizing.

It finishes a person off based on his traits and weaknesses, not based on what he said.

But who is the writer????

Hello Elhanan, I’m sorry if my response offended you, but I try to be substantive. Note that your response is very emotional. Therefore my main claim is that the opposition to Rabbi Schreiber’s remarks is more emotional than it is based on reason and judgment. (The need to make a mocking video indicates this all the more strongly.) I’ll write you my response to your remarks, and you’ll understand that neither your claims nor those of Rabbi Michi Abraham even get off the ground:

A. The main claim I made, unfortunately, did not receive an answer: the establishment of the state and the dangers that come because of its existence are a pit that the general public dug for itself. Of course most of the Jewish people wanted a state, and the soldier’s aim is to benefit the Jewish people, and the Haredi benefits from the state that protects him. But—and this is a big but!—I am speaking about the Haredi, not about the majority. The Haredi himself did not ask for a state and did not initiate it. He was in the land during many periods of history because that does not depend on a state. The state that arose aroused Arab anger, which required an army to defend us against it. The reason the Haredi now sits here needing protection is that there is a state here that disturbs his ability to live quietly. Do you see the absurdity?
You said Ben-Gurion made a mistake and in practice we are here. That is true. So raise a white flag and remain here under Arab rule, or fly to America and the like—who asked you to establish a state, endanger your life and others, and also establish a military body that endangers itself, and then ask me to join this life-risking party? That seems very strange to me!

B. Regarding gratitude and the comparison to a garbage worker, you wrote that a garbage worker works for pay and deserves thanks, while soldiers sacrifice themselves to be killed.
Answer: Obviously, if a soldier gets into a situation where he may be killed, then perhaps he will do something heroic to try to protect his comrades. But from the outset, soldiers go out to this battle for reasons of need and obligation—as explained in the next section.

C. You claimed that soldiers volunteer for life-risking roles and do not do this because they are obligated. They want to protect the Jewish people.
Answer: We are talking about soldiers with high adrenaline, who love action, care about the homeland, hate Arabs, and also want to protect the residents—all these create in them an urge to fight, and they do not have the fear of death that others have. (Many claim that they wait for these moments, trained for these moments, love battle and action, etc.) You probably do not know this…

D. You return again to the claim that soldiers sacrifice themselves for the residents of the State of Israel whoever they are—that is obviously true, and no one disputes that soldiers are killed in battle in order to protect the State of Israel and its residents. I am only saying that there is no desire here to protect Haredim, but rather the other residents from the general public. Think for yourself: if 90 percent of the public were Haredi, do you really think soldiers from the secular/religious public would go out to fight for them?

Thank you.

Moshe Yazdi criticized the fact that I did not answer Schreiber’s claims. The truth is that he did not raise any logical claim at all, only piles of nonsense, and therefore one should fulfill in his case Solomon’s advice: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly.” But since Moshe Yazdi presented the claims in a more logical and measured way, one should fulfill in his case the opposite advice: “Answer a fool according to his folly” (in the sense of foolish claims, not about the writer).

A. I know the Haredi point of view very well; I grew up on it. The problem is that one day I started thinking about it a little logically, and discovered that it is a ridiculous self-deception. That is because the classic Haredi public did choose to live in the State of Israel, while we all know very well that it would not have chosen to do so had the Land of Israel been under Arab rule. (British colonization in any event would have ended within a few decades, like elsewhere in the world.) Therefore it had a simple choice: either choose to live in Western countries and be rid of military service and of all the annoying connection with the Zionist regime, or live in the Land of Israel and pay the prices included in that, one of which is military service. The Satmar Rebbe chose the first option, and therefore his community truly does not participate in the Zionist state, neither in rights nor in duties. (The few who live in the land have been here since the Turkish period, so they really would have remained under Arab rule.) Since the rest of the Haredi public chose the Land of Israel option, it turns out that it must pay the security price (and the economic price) involved, and therefore all the stories about “as far as we’re concerned you can shut down the state” are nothing but deception.
The real motive for avoiding enlistment is based on the critical need to rebuild the Torah world after the Holocaust, and fear of the influence of the secular army. Personally I think these reasons are completely justified, but even someone who disagrees must admit that they are definitely consistent with the Haredi approach, which cannot be said of the ridiculous excuse “we didn’t want the state.”

B. Schreiber argued something completely different from what was quoted here in his name. He explicitly declared that there is absolutely no obligation of gratitude toward someone who is doing his job. Quite apart from the question of the army and Zionism, this conception contradicts the most basic human and Torah morality. According to his logic there is no need to feel gratitude toward parents, a wife, a rabbi, a doctor, a cook, a teacher, or… garbage workers—in fact, toward no one in the world who is not volunteering outside his role. It is unnecessary to explain the magnitude of the vileness in such an ungrateful worldview. It is hard to believe that someone who learned Torah would think this way, unless he learned not for its own sake, or worse—for the sake of provocation.
The argument of what difference there is between the murdered and abducted and anyone else who suffers is ridiculous. Basic human intuition distinguishes between suffering that comes from human evil and suffering that comes by the hand of Heaven. (See Abravanel on the verse “Let us fall into the hand of the Lord… but let me not fall into the hand of man.”) Likewise everyone understands that the attack was directed at all Jews as such, including Schreiber himself. We are all in the same boat. Likewise with gratitude to soldiers who literally risk their lives—not “self-sacrifice” in the Bnei Brak style of using only a generator, but real self-sacrifice—and do so voluntarily (because they could easily have served in a safer role in the army), which is very different from an ordinary worker receiving fair pay for his work.

C. The argument that the soldiers are not interested in saving Schreiber and his friends may be true of (some of) those serving in Army Radio and Unit 8200, but not of combat soldiers, who tend to have a feeling of broadly Jewish mutual responsibility.

My arguments are substantive, and therefore emotion is in place. It does not diminish their value; our emotion is a natural response to callousness.

A.

If you lived in a Haredi state in Uganda, and the government made a mistake, would you also say then, “that’s your problem”???

No. Why???
Because this is your people. This is your home.

Why doesn’t the Religious Zionist public say: the disengagement is what caused this whole situation, and therefore it’s your problem. ???

Because everyone except you understands that we are all one people and all of us must help protect the state. Even if mistakes were made.

B. Nonsense. It seems you do not know what is happening on the ground.
The soldiers, for the most part, enlist to protect and save the home.

C. Yes. Like me—as a Haredi I too would, if necessary, give my life to save the state even if there were 100 percent secular people here. They are my brothers.

The response above is to Moshe Yazdi.

Aharon, you’re amazing. Who are you?

“From the Haredi perspective, anyone who isn’t Haredi is wicked, and certainly a gentile.”
So our rabbi writes.
Recently Rabbi Yitzhak Pinchas Goldwasser, spiritual supervisor at the Or Israel yeshiva, wrote
the opposite. Quote:
“Among little children in Bnei Brak, every secular person is a gentile. Are we little children?”
Long before the last Simchat Torah day, he wrote about the obligation of gratitude
to IDF soldiers and to all the institutions of the state!
And he added: “They’ll say—the high-schooler is speaking. Let them say it” (15 Menachem Av).

Hello all, I thank you for the substantive responses and therefore I’ll reply and explain why there is no justice whatsoever in your arguments.
I’ll start with Aharon:
A. It is obvious that the Haredim chose to live in the Land of Israel; they did not see any disadvantage in that more than in other places. Haredim were in the land before the establishment of the state and after it. But they did not decide to come to the land because a Jewish state arose, but because it is a state like all other states, and it was also the Land of Israel, so why not… In general one must know: their outlook says something simple—there is no permission for this state to exist, and it arose through transgression, and therefore it can be shut down. Obviously that is less convenient, etc., but from the standpoint of Haredi ideology, you can shut it down literally. From that point on, whatever this state does or whatever happens to us because of it—that is its fault and not ours. From the Haredi point of view, surrender to the Arabs.
B. Regarding comparing soldiers to garbage workers in terms of gratitude, there is no point arguing because it is not essential to the discussion but only a dispute over what Rabbi Schreiber meant. Let’s leave that aside.
C. You said that combat soldiers have a feeling of broadly Jewish mutual responsibility. Interesting fact: how many of them are willing to do something simple like devote themselves to a terminally ill patient whom they are able to help? In my opinion, not many at all. The reason is that one must not forget that many were poisoned with the whole idea of “beating up the Arabs,” so for them this is a kind of pleasure and release. In fact, that is the payment they get for their combat service.
So in fact there is an argument here that there is no self-devotion for the individual, and the proof is from ordinary cases where the soldier is required to devote himself for another person outside the military framework in which he is placed.

I’ll now move to Elhanan:
A. If I lived in a Haredi state, and the government had been established according to my ideology and not against my worldview—then obviously I would support that government and I would bear responsibility for the consequences of establishing it. But here the government arose in sin/transgression/crime, and I (that is, the Haredi public) am not in favor and would not have done this, so what do you want from me as a public—that I participate in the disaster you created against my will? From that standpoint the state is not my body. (The people may be, and even then one must discuss in what way.)
B. Regarding the soldiers, I answered Aharon that most do not enlist purely because they have a value of protecting the Jewish people, but because several accompanying things take the main place. Therefore I say: try neutralizing those surrounding reasons (IDF uniforms, Arab enemy, etc.) and go with a simple case: giving your life for your Haredi fellow from Meah Shearim, with whom I disagree about everything, and you have to choose who will be killed—do you think any of the soldiers not currently on duty would agree to sacrifice himself? I don’t think so.

A.

Do you live here?
Do you benefit from the state’s taxes?
Do you use traffic lights? Roads?
Medicine? Police? All the ongoing operation of a state?

Where does the money for that come from?

The money belongs to the majority of the Jewish citizens here in the state, who are paying for a Jewish state.

Doesn’t suit you? Get up and go to Europe. There are no rights without obligations.

The majority of the Jewish people made a decision: to continue operating the state. The territory is theirs. Therefore its existence is legitimate.

You object? Get up and go.

You can’t even get a driver’s license here without it!

Now imagine you’re an immigrant in Pakistan and the law is to enlist in the army. Then you enlist.

B.
You really remind me of Schreiber! The same logic!
The fact that soldiers wouldn’t act for a terminally ill person means that right now they’re acting for the action?!
Absolutely not!

Everyone connects to a different good deed. And in the matter of the army there is a strong feeling of mutual responsibility. I wish it would be like that for terminally ill people too. That does not undermine in the slightest the value of soldiers who act from within a sense of mission!

C. I absolutely will not leave aside the point of gratitude!
I know very well that this is what Schreiber meant.
And that is exactly my problem—that it is a stupid way of thinking.

B.
It would also be hard for me to give my life for a fanatic Haredi from Meah Shearim who opposes my protecting him.

And when most of the state is not like that, I channel the emotion to protect him even though what I feel for him personally is weaker.

And I relate to him as part of all the state’s citizens.

Then it’s easier to make the effort for him.

I don’t see any problem in that.

I live in a mixed building in Petah Tikva, and I think most of the building would risk their lives to save me.

Maybe one day you too will feel emotions of self-sacrifice.

May we merit it…

K

Why don’t the Haredim move to live under the Palestinian Authority? It’s also the Land of Israel, and also close to Haredi centers. After all, the whole conflict with the Arabs is because of the Zionist state. The answer is clear: today, without the state, all the Jews would be slaughtered. What protects them, with Heaven’s help, is the IDF. What relevance is there to the question of whether 75 years ago it was right or wrong to establish the state? Is there any practical possibility of bringing the British back here, or turning into the 51st state of the USA, as Rabbi Amram Blau proposed?
And what is this Novardok-style hair-splitting over the motives of those who risk their lives for us? Do the managers of the city charity fund have no ulterior motives? Does every one of them run to help a terminally ill patient at the expense of his private affairs? Do all those who spread Torah do so only for the sake of Heaven, with no other motives?
As a mainstream Haredi, I am ashamed and humiliated by these arguments, which are worthy of Rabbi Moshe Shapira’s definition (in another context): “This isn’t even nonsense.”

As a Haredi I feel obligated to respond to Moshe Yazdi’s nonsense—namely, the claim that Schreiber’s words are simply words of reason without emotion. There is no reason in them, only twisted thinking. As for the claim that the Haredim supposedly did not choose the state—it is unbelievable distortion. The descendants of the first Zionists also did not choose the state; they were born in it. The reality now is that there are millions of Jews in a state that no one chose, but was born into. There is no country that will take all the Haredim—not the United States and not anywhere else—so what are the options now in the Land of Israel? Are the Haredim willing to live under Arab rule? Certainly not. Are the Haredim willing that all the secular should leave the country and instead the Haredim should guard the land? Certainly not! So in practice the Haredi Jews owe their lives to the army.
The claim that one should feel gratitude to garbage collectors—yes, if the garbage collectors were risking their lives and limbs so that we could live, certainly! But they are not risking their lives, so what connection is there? It is simply stupidity for its own sake!
The claim that they do it for themselves, that they wouldn’t do it for Haredim, that we are not moved by people who suffer in other ways: first I would stress that this is a universal reaction. In the United States after the Twin Towers disaster, too, all the citizens (including Haredim) reacted this way. So it is incredibly stupid to claim that this has any connection to feelings of inferiority or a particular outlook. The reasons for this universal reaction are many, and here are a few: when there is a national disaster, citizens feel a need to unite for many reasons, one of them being that instinctively we feel that a united state raises the morale of those involved in the war effort. When people publicize themselves as part of a broader system, they can find greater consciousness and greater commitment to cope with hardship and contribute. Likewise, a united state can have a psychological effect on the internal population and on the enemy. It sends a message of strength and resolve, which can affect the feelings of those involved in the conflict and may encourage or prevent enemy attacks. And in a more direct way, united action includes shared closeness among the population. When people present themselves as participating in a shared goal, they can be more willing to suffer hardship and make personal sacrifices to answer the general need.
The reason that all over the world people get emotional over national disasters is not because they love action—what shallowness! There are many reasons for it. One is that such disasters represent a threat to the stability of the state, its security, or its way of life. The emotional impact is not only over the immediate loss, but also over the potential effects on the future of the state. It touches both personal and national pain. By contrast, car accidents, though tragic, have much less sweeping implications. All over the world, healthy people feel gratitude to police officers and soldiers who risk their lives (in the United States Haredim do too). It doesn’t matter whether they do it for the city or for their community; in practice they protect the population at risk to their own lives, and in most cases, to risk one’s life and go into combat, one must join to that both belief in sacrifice and an element of selfless motive. The truth is that they mostly sacrifice themselves for the general concept of the state, which includes all the citizens. We saw that in the Har Nof massacre, soldiers and police officers gave their lives for Haredim. What words of stupidity and ignorance.
I want to stress that all the Haredim in the United States are so ashamed of Schreiber’s remarks and do not feel at all that he represents them.

I want to add and emphasize that all the Haredim I know in the Land of Israel are ashamed of Schreiber’s remarks and do not feel that he represents them.

As far as I know, the essence of the Haredi claim is not connected to all the arguments above, but rather to the Jewish right to the land. The justification for our coming to the land and expelling the Arabs who were here before us is a historical justification: we were here thousands of years before them. The problem is that we too were originally conquerors of the land according to the Torah—except that God gave it to us. If so, the question is: to whom did God give the land? According to the Haredim, the land was given to those who keep the Torah, not to the secular. And if so, the secular person has no right to expel the Arab, and only because of Haredim does the state have a right to exist.
Someone who does not accept the biblical-historical story ought to claim that the Palestinians have the right to the land, as generations of tribes who live in the land. The Jews are descendants of people who lived here two thousand years ago, and it is not clear that on that basis they can expel those who have lived here for thousands of years.
I would be glad if one of the commenters would address this argument.

“Likewise Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda regarding the Romans.”
Could you provide the quote?

I truly wonder how the Rabbi here can even criticize Rashbi, who was a greater man of truth than all his colleagues, and because of this very story merited the revelation of the Zohar. It is really ridiculous to come at him with claims of lack of gratitude toward the barbaric and murderous Romans. It is like German Jews feeling gratitude toward Nazi Germany because it built public buildings…….

To Peli, first of all I don’t understand the claim. Let’s say that the right to live here is really only because of belief in the divine Torah—so what? You are only claiming there is a logical mistake in secular Zionism. What does that have to do with the fact that one must feel gratitude toward the soldiers and the state? What does that have to do with the discussion here? As for your actual point, I don’t understand exactly why you claim they have no right to live here. So what if they don’t believe in it? The fact still remains that the Land of Israel is a gift to the Jewish people as a whole, whether they believe in it or not. If you claim that only through observance of Torah and commandments do we have a right in the Land of Israel, then you are making a religious argument. First of all, not only Haredim observe Torah and commandments; there are lots of Torah-observant people who are not Haredi at all, so what exactly are you asking? Aside from that, even someone not called religious may, in the heavenly reckoning, still be fulfilling commandments with many merits—for example, if he is a soldier risking his life for the Jewish people as a whole. Who knows Heaven’s reckoning? Maybe that is all our merit in the Land of Israel.
It seems that what you really mean to ask is whether there is a secular justification for the state, and the answer is yes. In the early years of Zionism the population was 300,000 people, meaning the land was empty, and there was also no sovereignty of an indigenous nation there. Thus this was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Later, because of the economy and flourishing that Zionism brought here, many Arab immigrants came. The land was supposed to be divided between the two populations. The Arabs rejected the proposal and started a war, and instructed the Arab residents to leave the land until the end of the war, which they lost. So that was their problem, and one we are not supposed to solve. In short, the claim is that we did not take the land from any people. We were a people without a state returning to our natural home, in which there was no people, and those who left mostly left of their own accord.

Let some rat come and bite his grandson, God forbid, and then we’ll hear different tunes about sanitation workers. Just a vile person.

With God’s help, 17 Kislev 5784

On the obligation of gratitude toward IDF soldiers and their greatness—see the words of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in Yitzhak Horowitz’s article, “Righteous Men’s Graves North of the Neighborhood,” on the Behadrei Haredim site, 4 Iyar 5774. And the words of Rabbi Shaul Alter and Rabbi Yitzhak Pinchas Goldwasser (spiritual supervisor of Or Israel yeshiva) in the name of Rabbi Dov Povarsky—in Menachem Rahat’s article, “Gratitude: Supreme Holy Men or Garbage Workers,” on the Arutz 7 site.

As for the argument that there is no need to feel gratitude toward someone who is doing a role he is obligated to do: people customarily say “Yasher koach” to the cantor and the priests, even though it is their duty to do so. And there are many stories about great Torah figures who went out of their way to show gratitude to a tradesman who provided them a service or to a doctor who treated them.

Of course, on the other side as well, one should feel gratitude to those who labor in Torah. If IDF soldiers fight for the existence of our body, then Torah scholars stand guard over the spirit of the Jewish people. And well known are the words of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, who participated in a delegation of yeshiva heads who met with Defense Minister Moshe Dayan about postponing the draft for yeshiva students. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda said: “There are not two sides here. We need a strong army and we need a strong Torah world, and we are sitting here together in order to balance the two tasks.”

With blessings, Fish”l

On Rabbi Bunim Schreiber, his original thinking and broad horizons, alongside his extreme statements—Rabbi Michael Abraham also wrote in column 507, on the gap between ideology and pragmatism.

And regarding “garbage workers” —

Cleaning work is exalted work. The day’s service in the Temple began with removing the ashes from the altar, and this was a service that required priestly garments. The High Priest on Yom Kippur would immerse, sanctify his hands and feet, put on white garments, and enter trembling into the Holy of Holies in order to “remove the pan and the fire shovel.”

And there is the well-known story of a parent who came to the Talmud Torah of Kelm and saw his son sweeping the courtyard, and asked the head of the yeshiva in astonishment: “Is this what I sent my son to yeshiva for?” The Elder of Kelm answered him: “The one who sweeps here is the one who will turn the world over.”

IDF soldiers clean the world of “enemy and avenger,” and Torah scholars polish the spirit of the nation and clarify the good from the bad. Therefore perhaps “great is Torah study more than saving lives,” since Torah not only sustains life and teaches one to “turn from evil,” but also pours content and purpose into life.

With blessings, Fish”l

From the “garbage workers” we can also learn the greatness of work done consistently, day after day, without any halo of glamour. Sisyphean work—for after cleaning, everything gets dirty again, and the next day one must rise early and clean again. But thanks to the constant labor of “invisible” and unregarded workers—we live in a clean and healthy space.

On this year’s Simchat Torah, we witnessed the weakness of the brilliant generals and senior officials. Those who saved the situation were the local police, the emergency squads, and ordinary citizens—those with no halo of an “elite unit.” It was precisely they who saved the situation in the difficult hours.

How much we have to learn from the “garbage workers”! Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out 🙂

With blessings, Fish”l

Things similar to those published in Rabbi Schreiber’s name were heard from Yaron London as well (see column 387: “Reflections Following the Meron Disaster”), and received much understanding from the local master here, and were often heard from London’s fellow-thinkers during the protests against the judicial reform. By some miracle, people from both extremes arrived at the same agreement 🙂 that we are not brothers, and what happens to the other does not concern me.

The terrible disaster on Simchat Torah day, in which our cruel enemies struck everyone indiscriminately, without distinction of sector or outlook, restored us somewhat to the healthy feeling that despite the sharp differences of opinion—we are brothers, limbs of one organism, such that the pain of the other is also our pain, and his joy is our joy. “Who is like Your people Israel, one nation on earth.”

With blessings, Fish”l

To Shmuel Shochat,
Thank you for the response.
As I understood it, there are three claims in your remarks:
A. The subject of gratitude is unrelated to the question of who has a right to live in the land.
B. Even from a religious standpoint, a Jew who does not observe Torah and commandments has a right to live in the land.
D. Even on a secular level we have a right to the land, and according to your words, even without connection to the history of the Jewish people.

I’ll begin with the third claim. I understand that this is a matter of international law, and as far as I know the case of the Land of Israel is a classic case of a land that for thousands of years was a colony of huge empires. As such it was clearly rather neglected, with a minimal number of residents and a mainly rural and agricultural form of settlement. The development boom in the country naturally began with the Zionist awakening and received its main boost in the Balfour Declaration. That is, the moment it became clear that the land was not going to remain a British colony for long and would eventually pass into local hands, it became worthwhile to develop it for the locals.
Clearly, at that time the Arabs had no ability to develop the land. They were ignorant peasants, and the Jews were relatively educated Europeans. But there is no reason whatsoever to think that once the land ceases to be a colony and becomes an independent state, it should not belong to its indigenous people who have been there for a thousand years. Various claims of the sort “they lost in war” or “we developed the country” are simply irrelevant. The very war itself was not justified at all, and of course any development of the land by another people does not turn that people into the owners of it any more than the indigenous people who have lived there for a thousand years. And the numbers in general are just a mockery of the whole thing. What difference does it make whether there were a million Palestinians in the land or 200,000? They are the natives here, and you are the stranger.
Claim B is really a collection of several claims of the type: a secular person can be more religious than a religious person, or there is no connection specifically to Haredim because Torah-observant people also enlist, and so on. These may be correct claims, but that is not the center of gravity of the argument here. The fairly simple question is whether, according to the Bible, the Jews receive the land in exchange for their commitment to keep the commandments fully, and if not they will be expelled from it. The unequivocal answer is yes. This is scattered hundreds of times throughout the Bible, so it follows that a person who, from his point of view, is not committed to keeping all the commandments is not entitled to dwell in the land.
Claim A is a conclusion from the previous two claims: if both are true, then the secular person has no right to live in the land, and only the Torah-observant person does. If so, what makes the secular person justified when he fights for the land is precisely that he is defending the commandment-observer. That of course is not a contradiction to the fact that gratitude is owed, but at least there is no demand here for equality in bearing the burden.
And again, thanks for the response.

With God’s help, 22 Kislev 5784

Several of the heads of the Lithuanian yeshivot—such as Rabbi Binyamin Finkel and Rabbi Chaim Feinstein—adopted a complex position regarding Rabbi Bunim Schreiber’s statements. On the one hand, they stood firmly on the obligation of identification and gratitude toward IDF soldiers; on the other hand, they hold that neither tying fringes for soldiers and visiting the wounded nor enlistment in the army is the proper way to identify with the fighters. Precisely strengthening yeshiva students in diligence in Torah is the greatest contribution to security!

With blessings, Fish”l

Their remarks, and the remarks of other yeshiva heads, are in Moshe Lipshitz’s article, “Holding on to the Yeshivot—the war sharpens zealous trends in the Haredi public,” on the Makor Rishon website. [In my humble opinion the subheading is mistaken. Most of those quoted adopt the complex position: identification and gratitude to the soldiers while focusing on strengthening Torah. Fish”l].

On the trends of enlistment and practical assistance to soldiers—see Moshe Lipshitz’s articles there: “This Time It’s Different—the Haredi Sector Mobilizes for the War Effort,” “In light of the horrifying scenes—young Haredim are interested in enlistment in the IDF, and the approach in the sector is changing.”

And meanwhile typhus is raging in Bnei Brak:
https://bshch.blogspot.com/2023/12/blog-post_3985.html?m=1

The hand of God was also in Schreiber, who opened his mouth wide against IDF soldiers and is now terminally ill. Maybe now Schreiber will understand why he was punished, and that is enough said.