An Israeli General, a Saudi Scholar, and Shiite Clerics Walk into an Indian City . . .

Shiites, many of whom live in the city of Lucknow, make up 18 percent of India’s Muslim population. Shimon Shapira, a retired IDF general, recounts his experience at a conference there hosted by Amir Khan, a leader of the Indian Shiite community and a local noble:

The meeting in Shiite Lucknow with Saudi Sunnis from Mecca and Medina stimulated a delicate dialogue with restrained tension. [Khan] expressed his opinion that all religious extremism in Islam in this era began with the disintegration of the Ottoman empire and the creation of the Saudi Arabian kingdom. He contended that the Saudis supported Islamic movements that became extremist and violent over the years.

Anwar Majed Eshki, the chief Saudi guest, respectfully contended that as a devoted Muslim, he saw great importance in bridging the Islamic sects. Indeed, he believed that the presence of Jewish guests from Israel was evidence of a huge advancement in the mutual understanding necessary for solving the many problems in the Middle East. One morning, Sunnis and Shiites gathered as one for a joint morning prayer, without allowing the religious differences between Sunnis and Shiites to interfere. The commitment to Allah dominated all differences at that moment. It’s also worth noting that Eshki visited Jerusalem this year and led Muslim prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Read more at Weekly Standard

More about: India, Islam, Muslim-Jewish relations, Religion & Holidays, Shiites, Sunnis

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