What Is the Heter to Serve in the IDF?
In this week’s Torah class we learned two more chapters from Yirmiya, focusing on a powerful Abarbanel about the real purpose of the Babylonian exile, the real purpose of the second Beis Hamikdash, why Hashem didn’t fully restore everything from the first Beis Hamikdash, the clearly stated formula for redemption, how false prophets helped torpedo the redemption, and how this has everything to do with the modern State of Israel.
Naturally, I learned nothing of this in yeshiva and neither did you, even though it’s right in the open and so fundamental. The class is embedded above and on Rumble here.
There’s so much hate-bait these days over IDF service (from a lashon of servitude). Manpower shortage! Sharing the burden! Contributing to society! Making sacrifices! National obligations! Caring about your fellow Jews! Milchemes Mitzvah!
Jews are conveniently being baited to hate each other over IDF service so they won’t hate the ones pulling their strings and causing them all the suffering in the first place. Why hate the people who brought you October 7 and made the IDF stand down, for example, when you can hate yeshiva students who refuse draft orders from the same people who brought you October 7 and made the IDF stand down?
Works like a charm every time.
Lost in all the brouhaha, finger-pointing, melodramatic language, and talking points (dutifully prepackaged by establishment influencers) is a simple question no one seems to be asking.
Everyone is so busy fighting over the presumed default obligation for everyone to “serve”, unless they are such an exemplary Torah scholar that they merit an exemption (if even then), or whether exemptions for yeshiva students should be liberally granted, or how severely “draft dodgers” should be punished, and how much we may and should hate them, that they have forgotten to answer the most basic of questions.
The new battleground over mixed gender units — because we’ve become desensitized enough to the atrocity of women fighting in an army that dares refer to itself as Jewish, even if they aren’t sleeping in tanks with men — has made it even easier for Religious Zionists, those most willing of sacrificial lambs, to further pretend the most essential question isn’t even a question at all.
What heter is there for anyone to “serve” in the IDF? Before you rail about it being a mitzvah, let alone the greatest of all mitzvos, how is it even permitted?
I’m not talking about women “serving” in the IDF — halacha strictly forbids it, even though fake-religious loudmouths cherry-pick a single line from Chazal about a bride leaving the wedding canopy during a milchemes mitzvah, take it literally in a way exactly zero classical poskim understood it, practically apply it in a way exactly zero Jewish armies historically ever applied it, and then pretend the halacha is obviously on their side, as if the Rambam would send his own wife and daughter to the IDF.
To borrow a line from Chazal, whoever taught them how to read didn’t teach them how to learn.
No, anyone who celebrates women in the IDF is a spiritually diseased person, a total disgrace to the Jewish people. I’m not talking about the heter for that. It’s a non-starter.
I’m talking about “charedi” yeshiva students who aren’t really sitting and learning as much as they claim, or who clearly won’t amount to much in terms of Torah scholars.
I’m talking about Religious Zionists who believe serving in the IDF is the most essential Jewish act, to the point that those who don’t serve aren’t really part of the Jewish people, and are less Jewish than gentiles who do serve in the IDF.
I’m even talking about secular Jews.
What heter is there for any of them to “serve” in the IDF?
Before you go wax melodramatic about what a mitzvah it is, you need to establish that it is even permissible. The Dati Leumi world skipped this essential step.
What heter is there to join an army that calls itself Jewish, yet tramples all over the Torah, and whose leadership is decidedly secular, even anti-religious?
What heter is there to join an army whose ideology is kefira and has made no secret of its intention to indoctrinate its subjects with kefira?
What heter is there to join an army that conscripts people against their will (a form of kidnapping and trafficking) and forces them to fight a war they do not necessarily support?
What heter is there to join an army that shows wanton disregard for the physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing of its soldiers, and has a long history of treating them with various forms of abuse?
What heter is there to join an army that sends soldiers into death traps under false pretenses, with dubious objectives, fighting endless wars over the same buildings and tunnels, with no intention of achieving a decisive victory?
What heter is there to join an army that did everything wrong in just the perfect way to allow October 7 to happen (surely not on purpose…), then ordered soldiers to stand down, then prosecuted those who went in on their own to rescue Jews from slaughter?
Honestly, how could one’s love and devotion for such an army remain completely unchanged by this?
What heter is there to join an army that, if they didn’t do this on purpose, is incompetent beyond comparison?
What heter is there to join an army that gets 20,000 soldiers maimed and killed in little Gaza in less than two years, without achieving anything remotely worth the staggering cost, then has the chutzpah to rail about a manpower shortage . . . of roughly the same number of soldiers they got maimed and killed, and, instead of holding accountable those responsible, demands yeshivas serve up fresh meat for the grinder, or else?
What heter is there to join an army that is rampant with Shabbos desecration and immorality — which drives away Hashem’s protection and directly endangers everyone — even if accommodations are made for religious people who are willing to insist on it, fight the system, and go to jail over it if necessary?
What heter is there to join an army that facilitates the transfer of money, weapons, and critical resources to the very people they send you to fight?
How does all this add up to a milchemes mitzvah?
Why doesn’t this even bother you much at all?
I’ve never heard a Religious Zionist even grapple with these questions, let alone thoughtfully answer them. This cannot be excused.
If you claim to be a religious person — not a secular nationalist — you must provide a serious, thoughtful answer to these questions based on firm Torah ground. A throwaway line doesn’t cut it. An emotional argument doesn’t cut it.
Furthermore, you cannot claim that the heter — nay, the mitzvah — to join the IDF is so clear and so obvious that anyone who disagrees is ignorant or disingenuous. The Torah-based argument in favor of your position is flimsy at best. Conversely, the Torah-based argument against your position is easy to make. It requires no mental gymnastics, no cherry-picking and massaging of sources, no primitive emotional appeals (gaslighting), no straw men, no games, no shtick.
Indeed, the overwhelming position of our greatest Torah scholars from the beginning of the Zionist movement until today were against participation in the Zionist’s army in principle, even if some of them felt compelled to give a bit of ground under exceptional circumstances. If one has the temerity to disagree with them, he had best be humble, respectful, and check himself a thousand times before speaking. At best he is a lightweight, and he should know that.
The fact one decides to join the IDF in spite of the serious reasons against it doesn’t give him the right to blaspheme all those who draw different, entirely reasonable conclusions. They don’t have to suffer more and die more just because you made a yoizel out of the state and the IDF.
So before you say another word against your fellow Jew who doesn’t “serve” in the IDF, or before you spend another moment celebrating those who do, please calmly and respectfully explain, in substantive Torah terms, why it’s even allowed. Your entire ideology depends on it.
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As I noted in my open letter to the Dati Leumi community, I was not indoctrinated with my current views about the Erev Rav state and the IDF. On the contrary, most of the educational institutions I attended were very pro-state and pro-IDF. I even spent a year in Gush, a premier hesder yeshiva. I admired Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l and had great respect for those who were joining the army. I heard their best sales pitch, saw the best of what they have to offer, and appreciated their idealism.
At the same time, I always stood apart and retained the right to think for myself. I recognized the flaws in their ideology, the readiness to compromise so much for the sake of serving the state, the laxity with so much of halacha even when serving the state couldn’t be offered as an excuse, the cold intellectualism that lacked authenticity and spiritual connection, the severe lack of reverence for Chazal (often reaching the level of a superiority complex and blatant kefira), the knee-jerk impulse to be the opposite of whatever the Charedim were, the hypocrisy, the pressure to mindlessly conform (ironically one of the main things they bashed Charedim for), the way so many of my peers in yeshiva became so secular so quickly, and more.
I said Hallel on Yom Ha’atzmaut (without a bracha), but I never got into the day, didn’t care for the festivities, and hated so much about what the State of Israel did. I admired those who were willing to fight for our land and our people (or at least believed that’s what they were doing), but there was no way I was joining the IDF. I wasn’t prepared to just follow orders, and I wasn’t willing to die for Israeli leaders and their agenda, under false pretenses of sacrificing for something so much greater.
That was when I was much younger and knew far less than I know now. I could circulate comfortably in Dati Leumi communities, but I never really fit in, because, as I now fully understand, Religious Zionism is an un-Jewish cult in which demonstrating unconditional love for a secular state and serving in the IDF are the highest religious principles, and dying in the IDF is the most sacred religious act.
As Rav Elchonon Wasserman put it best even before the state was founded, Zionism is avoda zara and Religious Zionism is avoda zara b’shituf — serving idolatry together with (ostensibly) serving Hashem as well.
I still love my Religious Zionist relatives, friends, and fellow Jews, and pray for their welfare, but it is my duty to speak the truth and urge them to do teshuva.
You’ve sacrificed enough for this cult. You’ve lost enough bodies and souls, for so little in return. You’ve compromised enough on the rest of the Torah for the sake of a fantasy. You’ve repeated the same experiment over and over again, with consistently disappointing results.
When will you finally say “Enough!”?
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