Parsha Pearls: Parshas Balak

 

Don’t be frumer than the Torah
Natural, But Only With Moshiach
What Pinchas Foresaw
Just Say No to the Army

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When the Satmar Rov lived in Eretz Yisroel in 1946, he was once walking at night from the Montefiore neighborhood where he lived during the summer to the Bayis Vegan neighborhood, to visit the Belzer Rov. It was 1:00 at night, and he was walking with his talmid Reb Chaim Mordechai Steinberg. They passed the Beis Hakerem section, and there they saw on one street a long line of parked cars. “What’s this?” asked the Rebbe. “It’s a nightclub where the Zionist youth are spending the night in dancing and revelry,” said Reb Chaim Mordechai. They walked on, and a while later, they noticed an area in an open field, lit up brightly with electric lights. “What’s over there?” asked the Rebbe. “Just as the Zionists spend their nights at the club, the Arabs have a place over there where they hold parties late at night,” said Reb Chaim Mordechai. The Satmar Rov then commented with a pained expression, quoting Tehillim 106:35: “‘They mingled with the gentiles, and they learned their ways.’ The Arabs never had this kind of culture, but they learned from the ways of the Zionists.” (Peulas Tzaddik Lechaim, p. 67)

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The Shulchan Aruch recognizes that rabbis on a beis din may be influenced by their fear of the people. In Choshen Mishpat 14:1 at the end, the Rema writes, “If the man on trial is wealthy and influential in his city, he must be tried before a beis din in a different city, even if the beis din of his own city is greater.” The Rema thus treats the fear of this influential man like a bribe, which can influence a rabbi to rule the wrong way. It should therefore come as no surprise that many rabbis today feel the pressure of their wealthy and influential congregants and do not speak out against the heresy of our time. (Al Hageulah V’al Hatemurah 117-118).

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Why does Scripture need to tell us that Hashem loves someone who rebukes people to follow Him more than someone like Bilam who flatters them into sinning? Isn’t this obvious? The answer is that the word אחרי (“after Me”) in the posuk has another meaning, as Rashi points out: it means “later on.” Thus the posuk can be translated, “One who rebukes a man will later on find grace more than one who smooths his tongue.” Someone who rebukes the people will be disliked by them at first, whereas they will love the flatterer. But in the end, they will prefer the one giving rebuke, for only truth stands forever, while lies inevitably fall apart.

One of the major justifications given by those religious Jews who advocate participation in the Zionist electoral system is that this is the only way they can guarantee that yeshiva boys will continue to be exempt from the draft. However, haredi representatives in Knesset have always felt forced to take the route of the “one who smoothes his tongue.” To say openly that Torah Jews are opposed to the existence of the state, are opposed to waging wars, and therefore refuse on principle to serve in the army, seemed too difficult for them – it might appear treacherous and endanger their right to serve in the Knesset in the first place. Therefore they chose a smoother, more palatable excuse: “Just as the state needs an army and weapons, it needs the spiritual merit of the Torah learners.”

Today, we see how that falsehood has led Torah Jewry in Eretz Yisroel into an almost irreparable mess. They are suffering from a terrible handicap that no other Jewish community in the world experiences. There is no other country in the world in which 65% (or even close to that) of haredi Jewish men are not working. This phenomenon is only found in the Zionist state, because the state, in effect, does not allow them to work. The only way they can escape conscription into the army (other than by feigning insanity) is by remaining full-time yeshiva students for their entire lives. These men and their wives are struggling to make ends meet. With their large families, their burden is unbearable.

Had they simply told the truth and rejected army service on principle, they would not be suffering today. In most countries (including the one calling itself “Israel”) conscientious objectors are exempt from army service. The state does not force Arabs to serve in the army. Why then should it force service upon haredi anti-Zionist Jews, who are just as opposed to the goals of the state as are the Arabs, if not more?

This is besides the tragedy that the lie that “we want to help the state through the merit of our Torah learning” has been accepted as truth among many of the haredim themselves. As the Nazi propagandist Goebbels said, if a lie is repeated often enough, everyone thinks that it is true, even the liar himself.

It is time for the truth to be told. It may not be comfortable, but we must summon the self-respect and confidence to say a principled “no” to the state and its army. There are some irreligious Jews who are dodging the draft and sometimes sitting in jail for it, because it conflicts with their principles. Do we have less confidence in our Torah principles than they have in the their secular principles? It is only by correcting this problem that the spiritual and physical condition of Torah Jews in Eretz Yisroel can be saved.

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