The Grandfather of Israeli Ultra-Orthodoxy and His Complex Attitude toward Zionism

No figure is more associated with the non-ḥasidic ḥaredi community in Israel than Rabbi Avraham Yeshayah Karelitz, better known by his pen name, the Ḥazon Ish. Born in Russia in 1878 to a rabbinic family, he pursued an ascetic life of study and shunned the spotlight, never assuming any official position. Yet after he left Eastern Europe for the Land of Israel, he became a highly influential figure, whose legendary 1952 meeting with David Ben-Gurion had a lasting impact on religion and government in the Jewish state. Allan Arkush argues that, despite his reputation as a hardliner, Karelitz sought, in his own way, to be a moderate:

Anything but a Zionist, [Karelitz] was nonetheless stirred by the changes wrought by the Balfour Declaration and felt obliged to move to the Holy Land now that it would be feasible for him to devote himself to Torah study there. . . . [When he and his wife did emigrate], they didn’t choose a new home to be near potential customers or to live in proximity to other pious Jews in Jerusalem, since he wanted to settle in the midst of the “wilderness” of the “new yishuv” where he could plant seeds of Torah. . . .

The Ḥaredim with whom the Ḥazon Ish affiliated himself took a very different path from the isolationists who regarded the whole Zionist enterprise as a travesty and strove to minimize their interaction with it. Even though they themselves weren’t Zionists, they lived amicably enough alongside them, participated in the development of the Jewish economy, and even established their own kibbutzim. [Karelitz] slowly became a leader in this community, a favored legal guide. He worked hard to establish and solidify the yeshivas of Bnei Brak and other parts of the country and offered stringent if compassionate advice on how to deal with the halakhic problems arising from agricultural life.

[E]ven after the establishment of the state of Israel by people whom he held in low regard, the Ḥazon Ish remained as convinced as ever that the spiritual strength of the Ḥaredim would ultimately triumph over the coercive power of the secular state.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, David Ben-Gurion, Judaism in Israel, Ultra-Orthodox

 

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