Israeli Politicians Don’t Need to Give Speeches in English

The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich visited the U.S. last week, where he was given the cold shoulder both by the Biden administration and by some Jewish organizations. Setting aside these particular controversies, Yaakov Katz turns instead to one aspect of Smotrich’s trip that has received considerable attention in Hebrew-language media:

In a video circulating all over the Internet, Smotrich is seen giving a speech in what can only be described as broken English. Words are swallowed and sentences are garbled. Some of the words he can’t even pronounce, trying two or three times to get them right.

Clearly, Smotrich’s English is not at a high level. And what we need to understand is that this is fine. He is an Israeli politician and until now, his roles have all had a domestic focus. He has not needed to speak English publicly.

The question that needs to be asked is why did he even try? Why did Smotrich not speak in Hebrew and have a simultaneous translation. . . . Israeli politicians need to realize that there is nothing wrong with speaking their native and authentic language of Hebrew. That is the language they know and using it is how they can be most articulate. When Angela Merkel used to address the UN, did she speak English or German? When Emmanuel Macron speaks there, he addresses the audience in French, not English. It is the same when it comes to Arab leaders and so many more.

For some reason, Israeli politicians feel the need to try to do something that their foreign counterparts do not. . . . They [should instead] take pride in their native tongue and speak Hebrew without shame.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Bezalel Smotrich, Hebrew, Israel and the Diaspora, U.S.-Israel relationship

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