The Jewish War for Freedom That Would Go Unrivaled for 1,800 Years

In 132 CE—a half-century after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and the end of Judean independence—Shimon Bar Kokhba led a revolt in the Land of Israel that lasted for some three years, in which his followers managed to take and hold territory and mint their own coins. According to the ancient historian Cassius Dio, the Romans were only able to suppress the revolt by assembling a force of 50,000 legionaries—more than three times the size of the insurgent army. No Jewish army would again fight for the Jewish homeland until 1947. Henry Abramson explains what we know about this episode, and its legacy. (Video, 21 minutes.)

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More about: Ancient Israel, Ancient Rome, Archaeology, Jewish history, Simon bar Kokhba

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.

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More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society