Chodesh tov!
In a stunning display of hypocrisy, inconsideration (schools and businesses across Yerushalayim were forced to close early, and thousands upon thousands of Israeli citizens were greatly inconvenienced), vindictiveness ("you push us, we'll push back," a chareidi MK reportedly said about his fellow religious Jews), ingratitude, and baseless hatred, chareidi MKs and community activists organized a mass rally/protest against military/national service today.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time for a full-length post, but I would like to share several important points.
Please click on the following links for details:
1) Serving in the IDF is a mitzvah. Period.
2) Of course, learning Torah is a mitzvah too. But that’s just one of the many reasons that - as Shiputzim family friend David Weinberg explains - the recent spate of attacks on the hesder program is particularly shocking.
3) Much of what is being said about the IDF and religious soldiers can best be described as misrepresentations, slander, and outright lies.
4) As Rav Natan Slifkin writes, many feel that those behind today’s demonstration do not seem to care about Am Yisrael as a whole.
May we all be privileged to remember that
“kol Yisrael areivim zeh l’zeh”
(literally, “all of Israel are guarantors for each other”),
and may we soon enjoy
besurot tovot, yeshu’ot v’nechamot
(good tidings, salvation, and consolation)
for Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, and Torat Yisrael,
speedily and in our days.
!חודש טוב ומבורך
Yet everybody says, "they're just getting together to say Tehillim - how wonderful is that?!" My Sem Girl was there, in fact, and said that very thing. It's nice for her to see huge crowds of Jews, of course, but sad that these are the issues that bring them out en masse.
ReplyDeleteI am seriously confused, though. Maybe because I'm new here, but it's my understanding that the law changed/is changing little, that the IDF has no money for Haredi soldiers anyway, and a million other things that suggest to me and others that nothing really is going to change.
So why the protests???
Tzivia - "So why the protests?"
DeleteGood question! After all, as David Weinberg explains, the law gives the chareidi community everything they could possibly want.