Response to Allegations of Sinaat Charedim by the Dati Leumi

From an IDF combat soldier

After a long hiatus, I received an email from the soldier who has contributed several other posts about the war. See the previous one here.

A certain blogger has taken the position that hatred of charedim is widespread in the dati leumi community. He has reiterated this argument in a recent blog post followed by posting many talkbacks which he believes demonstrates that this hatred is widespread. 

In order to better understand some of the issues involved, we need to take a moment for a brief overview of what exactly the dati leumi community is. The notion of dati leumi is strictly an Israeli phenomenon. In pre Holocaust Europe and the current day Anglo world there was/is a movement that identifies with Zionism. This movement was generally known by the name Mizrachi, but in many places is simply a generic support for Zionism and the state of Israel without adherence to a particular political ideology. This widespread support for the state of Israel is present even among many who are not ideologically aligned with Zionism. All of these non-israeli movements, ranging from the ideological Mizrachi to the sympathy for the people of Israel among those who are not an ideological agreement with Zionism, have nothing to do with the concept of dati leumi.

Dati leumi society is made up of those who are both religious and broadly speaking nationalists. However, there is a great divide in that society between those whose primary identity is secular nationalists, but who are also incidentally religious in their private practice, versus those who are primarily religious in their identity but see nationalism as an expression of their religiosity. Of course individuals rarely fit strictly into one category or another, but when speaking in broad generalizations that is an accurate depiction of those who can fall under the broader heading of dati leumi. Historically, the first group was numerically larger and politically more powerful than the second group. But over the last number of years, that has been shifting. The first group is still more numerous, but their children are often heavily influenced by the second group. The second group also tends to have larger families, as well as greater success in maintaining fidelity among their children, so they are growing at a more rapid rate. 

Among those who are often broadly generalized as the left wing of the dati leumi community, disdain and later even hatred for the Charedi community is a common phenomenon. This has nothing to do with the current war or even with the draft in general. This disdain and hatred actually predates the founding of the state. It has to do with fundamental issues of identity. As a group, they see themselves as Israelis who have a personal affiliation with religion. Very similar to the famous notion of being a German or a Frenchman of the Hebraic persuasion, that existed long before the Zionist movement gained widespread acceptance. To such a person the existence of a Charedi is threatening, it undermines his sense of self. It is everything that he is running away from. It is therefore easy to understand why such people would identify with secular Israel and disdain charedi Israel. Nonetheless, it pays to keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the current situation. To such people, the purpose of drafting Charedim is to integrate them into the larger and presumably more powerful secular society into which they themselves have been integrated. Any draft that would allow Charedim to remain culturally and religiously unchanged (even if such a thing were possible) would have failed in its primary purpose in their eyes. 

There is another group whose primary identity is religious, but sees themselves as acting out a religious imperative in their support for the state of Israel. By definition, this group is Messianic, because they see the state of Israel as being an expression of Jewish religiosity, and more than likely the prelude to the longer awaited Jewish Messiah. Although they are ardent and sincere in their support for the Zionist state, and although they serve in the military in disproportionate numbers to their overall population, that in no way affects their respect for and love of Charedim. They respect the widespread Torah scholarship that characterizes much of the Charedi community, they respect the Charedi Gedolim for their wisdom and piety. In many ways they try to model themselves after the Charedim. This includes accepting the necessity of maintaining a certain amount of distance from those who have separated themselves from the Jewish people by abandoning Judaism in favor of nationalism. Although there is no absolute divide between these two groups within the dati leumi world, in general the first group tries to integrate as much as they can into secular society as a matter of principle, and in doing so fails to maintain the fidelity of their children, with rates of abandoning Judaism ranging from 1/3 to 1/2 of each generation. On the other hand the second group, because they have at least in part adopted the separation from those who abandoned the Jewish people advocated by the Charedim, have succeeded in maintaining much greater fidelity among their children, with a dropout rate of around 20%. While this is still higher than the Charedi dropout rate of 10%, it is a massive improvement over a 50% dropout rate. These two groups have very different attitudes towards respect for Torah scholarship, daat Torah, and how careful one must be in regard to keeping the mitzvot. They follow different rabbis and vote for different political leaders. 

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As pointed out above, disdain for Charedim is wide spread among the first group, but nearly completely absent from the second group. What is interesting and significant is that the blogger in question belongs to neither of these groups. Neither of these groups would have any idea who he is, or any interest in his ideology. This is not simply a language barrier, it is a cultural barrier. Their formative experiences have to do with the building of the state, with service in the military, with being educated in certain yeshivot and premilitary academies, and in the case of the second group, growing up in the world of the settlements. These are all experiences that our blogger never took part in, and doesn't really understand. He has some relatives who are peripherally part of those societies, and tries to bask in what he sees as their reflected glory, in order to consider himself one of them. He is not, he doesn't understand them, and they would not understand him. He is a westernized Anglo, who never served in the Israeli army, and never studied in the institutions that they consider important. 

The society that he belongs to is that of the English speaking, westernized, olim. Many of these people formed a strong attachment to the state of Israel and the people of Israel when that was a fundamental aspect of their Jewish identity living in the modern Orthodox westernized world. Many of them are sincere and well-meaning people, but they are not intellectuals and they have no deep or meaningful understanding of what the ideological issues are. Like new immigrants in countries around the world, they don't really get it but they hope that their children will. And in most cases their children will in fact get it. Some will move to the right and become more Charedi, while most will move to the left and become more attached to Zionism while becoming less attached to Judaism. Their parents will not understand what happened to them, how their attachment to Zionism could lead them away from Judaism, when to the parents it was their attachment to Zionism that brought them closer to Judaism. It is among these essentially clueless Anglo immigrants that the anger and hatred of our blogger can find purchase. It is a sad phenomenon indeed. 

While neither our blogger nor those who are sympathetic to him are likely to have sufficient knowledge of history to realize this, the arguments he makes are essentially an attempt to re-litigate the haskalah. His appeals to patriotism, to sharing the burden of the nation that hosts one, are almost verbatim the same appeals that were made by prominent Maskilim during the heyday of the Haskalah. Because he has not read the authors that were popular then, he doesn't realize how similar he sounds. Perhaps he really believes that the Haskalah was really right all along. Being respected and accepted by ones non-jewish, or in this case secular, co-nationalists is more important than ones fidelity to Hashem. Perhaps he truly believes that it was merely an accident of History that the Haskalah lost the first time around, and he truly believes that if he gets the chance to do it over again this time the Haskalah will prevail. 

In any case, the fundamental point that I wanted to make is that neither he nor his Anglo friends that wrote to him in support of his hatred, in any way represent the dati leumi community. They are a tiny bubble that knows very little of the Israeli experience from either the perspective of the seculars, the charidim, or the dati leumi. They are new immigrants that have the good fortune to have the economic means not to have to struggle in their new environment, but they are not part of that society. Their children will be, and their children will not look at all like they do. 

There is however one point that legitimately upsets many within this Anglo bubble. It is the fact that those who have children serving in combat, are living with a permanent state of anxiety that is hard to appreciate if one hasn't been there. If one lacks sufficient background in Judaism to understand that the safety of their children relies upon the merit of the Jewish people, something which is primarily generated by the Jews dedication to Hashem and his Torah, they will fail to appreciate to what extent the very lives of their children depend upon the Bnei Hayeshivot. All the more so for those who have actually lost children or siblings in this current war. The State of Israel has never before fought a war that has gone on for this long, and it has created a situation in which many individuals and groups in society feel alienated from those who are not going through what they are going through. This is not necessarily a moral failing, and it certainly does not represent a lack of caring. It is simply a fact of life that only a very few rare great individuals are able to truly feel another's pain when they are not going through the same process. It's part of human nature. And so at a certain level there is a cost to not participate in the physical defense of the country. Unfortunately, at times such a cost must be born because the moral imperative to preserve Judaism takes precedence over such considerations. But we should not forget that although keeping the Bneu Hayeshivot busy with their primary task of becoming the Torah educated next generation that will be able to carry on Judaism, nonetheless we should also recognize the legitimacy of the frustration of those who feel that their suffering is not being sufficiently recognized and valued in the Charedi world. Sometimes in order to do the right thing, it is necessary to make certain moral sacrifices. And while we must not change anything, it does behoove us to recognize this fact. 

While the above perspective may be relevant to some of the anger and frustration of those who are essentially good people, but nonetheless struck out with statements of sinat chinam in talkbacks on the aforementioned blog, this is not relevant to the blogger himself. He himself has never been in combat, and none of his children are in combat. He is simply manipulating the emotions of people who lack the intellectual background to understand the issues, in favor of his pet issue.