Religious Zionism, Women, and the Hamas Kidnapping

Rachelle Fraenkel, whose son Naftali was murdered by Hamas this past summer, has become a living symbol of Israel’s collective feelings during the recent war. In her professional life, she also exemplifies a major transformation within Israel’s religious Zionist community: the unprecedented number of women engaged in traditional Jewish study, especially of the Talmud. Perhaps, writes Beth Kissileff, there is a connection between Fraenkel’s vocation and her newfound role in Israel’s public sphere:

[Fraenkel] brought everything she learned as a scholar and teacher to her unwanted role as a personification of, and spokesperson for, Israeli grief and national unity. This was particularly apparent during her speech to the United Nations in Geneva, which she infused with spiritual and theological meaning, emphasizing her deep understanding of what it means to wait for salvation. She consistently expressed her thanks to those praying around the world for her son’s safe return. . . . The “wisdom and encouragement” Fraenkel exhibited on the public stage was no accident, but something Fraenkel has practiced and taught over many years.

Read more at Tower

More about: Israel, Protective Edge, Religious Zionism, Torah study, Women in Judaism

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society