Q&A: Is There an Obligation for the Haredi Individual to Enlist?
Is There an Obligation for the Haredi Individual to Enlist?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask about the enlistment of Haredim.
I agree that from both a moral and halakhic standpoint there is an obligation to enlist, and I want to ask whether a distinction can be made between the community and the individual.
I have a firstborn son who is 16 and is being educated in a very conservative yeshiva, and he received an order to report.
From his perspective, reporting is completely absurd from a religious standpoint, but also from a social and family standpoint. He will lose everything he has today, and in the future as well (a match…), if he enlists.
I assume that even a secular person who were forced to make such a sacrifice would not enlist.
Do you think that in his situation, he is obligated to enlist?
As his father, am I obligated to influence him to enlist?
Answer
In principle, there is room for considerations of gain and loss, although these losses stem from the desire to belong to such a distorted society, so it is doubtful whether that justifies it. For example, I told several married questioners that in my opinion, if their wives do not agree, they should not enlist, since they married them on that understanding.
Discussion on Answer
How is this connected to commandments? Who was talking about commandments? This is a matter of public life-and-death, and the public decides how to deal with it and how to distribute the burden.
I think that if this were the private problem of one individual who had to pay a heavy price for enlisting, then there would definitely be room to take that into account. But since this is a problem for everyone in the Haredi public, and it is certain that the Haredim need to enlist, then automatically, as long as the price is standard relative to a Haredi person, that does not exempt one from enlistment.
By the way, I am a yeshiva student who is in the same situation, so I am going into a designated track for Haredim in the technological units, where the service is done in civilian clothes in a regular office building and you go home every day, so no one is supposed to know that you are serving.
Why is there room for such considerations? If it’s an obligation, then what room is there for other considerations? Is there an asterisk in the Torah that the commandment is canceled if it isn’t convenient?