In defense of hesder yeshivas

Since the program is under attack in the Knesset, I want to sing the praises of the religious Zionist "hesder" track, which combines yeshiva study with shortened military service over five years.

While numbering only about 750 young men a year, hesder yeshivas made have over the past 40 years a disproportionate contribution to the development of Torah and academic leadership in this country. They also contribute an oversize share to IDF combat units.

Hesder men are considered highly motivated and disciplined soldiers. They serve longer and more consistently in the reserves than other soldiers. They have proved themselves in combat in all recent conflicts, in Lebanon and Gaza. And unfortunately, higher-than-average percentages of hesder soldiers fell in these conflicts too.

I remember being awakened in the early morning during the First Lebanon War by my roommate in the Har Etzion hesder yeshiva, because he and others were being called up to join their military unit and fight the war. (Etched in my memory is their scrambling in the dark in pajamas towards the one yeshiva pay phone to call their mothers, before heading north to the front). Not all my classmates returned. I doubt that many of the acrimonious haredi politicians who this week decided to savage the hesder yeshivas ever have had such an ennobling and humbling experience.

Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, dean of the Har Etzion hesder yeshiva (who is to receive this year's Israel Prize for Torah scholarship), wrote 30 years ago: "Hesder at its finest seeks to attract and develop men who are profoundly motivated by the desire to become serious Torah scholars but who concurrently feel morally and religiously bound to help defend their people and their country; who, given the historical exigencies of their time and place, regard this dual commitment as both a privilege and a duty; who, in comparison with their non-hesder confreres love not Torah less but Israel more.

"It provides a context within which students can focus upon enhancing their personal spiritual and intellectual growth while yet heeding the call to public service. It thus enables them to maintain an integrated Jewish existence, despite the conflict of values, lifestyle, and sensibility between 'beit midrash' [Torah study hall] and boot camp, especially in a predominantly secular army.

"The Halachic rationale for hesder rests upon the simple need for physical survival and the fact that military service is often the fullest manifestation of 'gemilut hasadim,' the empathetic concern for others and action on their behalf, which is one of the three cardinal foundations of the world, and is the basis of Jewish social ethics. Its realization, even at some cost to single-minded development of Torah scholarship, is virtually imperative. In contemporary Israel, the greatest single 'hesed' [good deed] one can perform is helping to defend his fellows' very lives. And it is inspiring to behold."

But, all of a sudden, numerous articles in the papers this week have outrageously portrayed hesder boys as slackers, cheats and fat cats. Haredi MKs are behind this vile campaign to malign and clip the hesder yeshivas. They are out to exact retribution on Naftali Bennett's religious Zionist Habayit Hayehudi party for partnering with Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party and threatening to draft haredim. So in pure payback mode, haredi politicians have stoked the current spate of negative press stories about the hesder boys.

The haredi chutzpah here is threefold.

First, the haredim are enormously ungrateful for the fantastic deal that Bennett and his deputy Ayelet Shaked have crafted for them. Anybody who looks closely into the details of the Shaked legislation knows that the bill won't really draft haredim to the military. The bill is designed primarily to free them from being locked by law into the yeshiva world, and prod them to get a professional education and go to work -- for their own good and that of the country.

The much-ballyhooed "military draft" plan involves little change in the non-conscription reality for haredim.

From now to 2017, it gives a blanket and permanent exemption from military service to all haredi men. That's 27,000 men, currently aged 21 and over, who will never serve in the Israel army, along with 7,000 additional boys who will turn 18 each year between now and 2017. Beginning in 2017, certain quotas of haredim have to be drafted, but these quotas are set so low and the definition of "haredi" is set so malleably, that the quotas will easily be filled with young men who anyway are on the margins of religious society. The massive bulk of haredi youth will continue to escape army and national service of any type.

This new setup is wrong for Israel in so many ways, and it essentially pulls the rug out from under the positive trend toward haredi integration in the army that has been underway for several years.

But it is certainly a victory for the haredim, even if they're not letting on how pleased they are.

You might ask: If the new deal is so beneficial to them, why is the haredi leadership so vociferously trotting out its anger? And the answer is because haredi yeshiva deans fear that under the new arrangements massive numbers of yeshiva boys and kollel men will leave those institutions, not for the army, but for the working world.

The bottom line is that from the haredi perspective, Bennett and Shaked, and the religious Zionist world they represent, should be blessed, not battered. Revving up a nasty campaign against the hesder yeshivas is simply base ungratefulness. And being unthankful is a biblically proscribed sin, as is the taking of revenge.

That's two "aveirot mideoraita," two major offenses that violate Torah law, that have been committed by haredi politicians.

Second, in attempting to besmirch the hesder yeshiva program by feeding stories about weak attendance and leaking reports about lack supervision at some hesder institutions, the haredim are being hypocritical. Who knows more about false attendance records and double- and triple-timing kollel men than the haredi yeshiva world? Who knows more about keeping weak boys who show no promise inside yeshivas for years on end without purpose than the haredi yeshiva world?

The cynical and vengeful haredi politicians should be reminded what Brig. Gen. Gadi Agmon of the IDF Planning Directorate told the Shaked Committee. He testified that ultra-Orthodox yeshiva leaders were regularly signing fraudulent yeshiva student attendance records to protect haredi men from military service. "We know that there are thousands of haredim registered in yeshivas to avoid the draft, but who in fact are working and not studying," he said.

Third, the very fact that the hesder yeshivas are being discussed in the same breath and the same context as the drafting of haredim is intolerable. Yes, there is room to critique and improve the hesder yeshivas (in terms of service length and quality control within the yeshivas). But that's a wholly different discussion. Broaching it in the current context is sheer gall and ingratitude.

How dare haredim seek to divert the discussion from their own draft-dodging ways to criticism of the hesder yeshiva men, who have made a historic contribution to the IDF and to communities all over Israel? How dare the haredim disparage the hesder boys, who generally learn Torah at an outstanding level and serve the army and the state with distinction?

Let's see haredi boys serve 16 months of combat duty, plus years more of active reserve duty, and remain upstandingly devoted to Torah, as the hesder soldiers are, before haredi politicians open their mouths in denigration of the hesder program.

I only wish that haredi boys could be exposed to the scholarship and critical thinking in Torah that hesder boys get. I only wish that haredi yeshivas should churn out the brilliant and broad-minded Torah publications of the scope and caliber produced by hesder yeshivas.

So haredi politicians should clam up. Their impudence in revving up the attack on the hesder program is simply nauseating. Had haredi leaders been smarter, they would have long ago founded their own hesder-like yeshiva/army combination programs, and saved themselves and the country a lot of hatred and heartache.

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