Q&A: Torah Protects and Saves the Community
Torah Protects and Saves the Community
Question
If I remember correctly, you wrote that there is no basis for thinking that Torah protects and saves the public as well. But it seems from the Talmud in Makkot 10, in the exposition on the verse “Our feet were standing”: “Who caused our feet to stand firm in battle? The gates of Jerusalem, where they were engaged in Torah.”
And likewise in Sanhedrin 49a: “Rabbi Abba said: Were it not for David, Joab would not have waged war” (there is also a continuation there, that were it not for Joab, David would not have engaged in Torah, but that does not contradict the basic idea that the war also succeeded thanks to David’s Torah).
It דווקא seems that there is a basis for saying that Torah protects and saves the public in war as well, and apparently even brings victory. You can say that the Sages have no authority regarding facts, but still the Haredim can argue that according to the Sages they are in fact partners in the war effort. And so it is hard to say there is no halakhic basis for an exemption, because otherwise you might, Heaven forbid, end up casting aspersions on the early generations, whose view the Haredim rely on.
It still seems to me that there is a flaw in the argument, but I can’t figure out where…
Answer
These sources were brought today in Rabbi Pendel’s demagogic article, but this is nonsense. The claim that we are saved by virtue of Torah says nothing at all about exempting those who study, or about Torah study itself protecting. Anyone who infers from here that when there is danger I should study instead of fight does not know what he is talking about. In general, the Jews are protected by the Holy One, blessed be He, by virtue of the fact that they are bearers of Torah. That has nothing to do with the question of whether a concrete act of study serves as protection for anything. And as is well known, David himself also went out to war.
To take some aggadic midrash and build something halakhic on it is a complete misunderstanding. As I wrote, perhaps next time we should send the president of the Sanhedrin to fight, because there is a midrash about Yair ben Manasseh being equivalent to the majority of the Sanhedrin (which also has to go out to fight). There are clear and simple halakhic sources, and no aggadic midrash changes anything in this matter, even if your understanding of it were correct.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed, it is obvious that you came to your senses. You also came to your senses out of reading comprehension and out of minimal logic. You are completely cured of both. Reading comprehension—because I addressed this question too. True, your remarks may seem to you like a thrilling novelty, but sorry to disappoint you: they are not really that at all. And as for logic, your remarks are utterly devoid of it. I’m not even talking about your detached perception of reality. You live in a bubble, and that isn’t your fault. But even inside that bubble, didn’t you notice that you too are in mortal danger exactly like me? So why does it matter whether the state is this way or that, and whether the people running it are scoundrels like Ben-Gurion or righteous men like Deri and Goldknopf? (Who, by the way, are currently running the country, if you don’t read the newspapers.)
I have to say: with intellectual abilities like these, it seems to me that your “coming to your senses” is a badge of honor for the general education system (which truly does not deserve many badges of honor).
First of all, Torah study is an integral and inseparable part of the defense array of the Jewish people, and therefore to assume that Israel’s defense systems are confined to one front alone—the physical/combat front—is a phenomenon bordering somewhere between ignorance and an intelligence level matching room temperature.
All of Israel’s campaigns include two fronts: (a) a physical front; (b) a spiritual front, and the two depend on each other—neither can succeed without the other.
And just as an aside, Michael, I looked through some of your articles here, and I understand that you have not grasped the mindset of the Torah-observant Jews among the Jewish people (that is, the Haredim). The reason we do not enlist is not only because of our recognition of the protective power provided by Torah study, which has no equal anywhere outside the Haredi yeshivot; rather, the main reason is that we are not part of the accursed Israeli society whose entire aim is to uproot the Jewish identity of the traditional path of our forefathers from the average citizen (I personally am a survivor of the didactic crematoria of the Ministry of Education, until in the army I came to my senses and repented).
Therefore, as long as the security establishment of the Jewish people reflects that wretched man’s saying—Ben-Gurion’s—“A nation builds an army; an army builds a nation,” as long as the spirit of leadership in the IDF and the other security bodies flows from the shallowness of those heretics, we Haredim have no share with them.
And that will also serve, Miki, as an answer to why they do not at least send those who aren’t “really” studying.