The Underground World of Ultra-Orthodox Quasi-Academics

Among Israel’s Ḥaredim the academic discipline of Jewish studies is generally considered strictly forbidden. Yet a growing group of amateur scholars within this community have become captivated by the field in one way or another, sometimes producing carefully footnoted articles of their own. For the most part, members of this group communicate via online discussion forums, where they engage in passionate arguments, usually anonymously. Yoav Sorek writes:

[This group includes] Ḥasidim and Mitnagdim, the truly God-fearing and those [who feel] trapped in the ḥaredi lifestyle and cut corners [in religious observance], those lacking any academic degree and others who have earned one—sharp and knowledgeable one and all, still faithful to, and actively participating in, the intra-ḥaredi discourse. . . . Nearly every remarkable personality in the field originates in the circles of Ashkenazi religious zealots, yet the scholarly discussion . . . is not private, and sometimes a handful of [non-ḥaredi scholars] participate. . . .

[A] weekly Internet journal popped up several years ago which . . . became an especially favored forum for [ultra-Orthodox] scholars. . . . The journal . . . was, according to its subtitle, “where sages of Israel come to relax.” The publication insisted upon respectful discussion and high-caliber argumentation, but one also could find among the directives to its readers and writers the following note of caution . . . : “Please preserve the low profile of this publication. One can print it for ease of reading but should not show it to just anyone. Wisdom belongs to the discreet.”

Read more at Seforim

More about: Israeli society, Jewish studies, Religion & Holidays, 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