"None!"

I'm willing to be convinced by a valid halachic argument. I'm not willing to be convinced by cliches, the misreading of sources, or shallow argumentation.

Two nights ago, a student from a local yeshiva called our house; he asked for money so that the institution could meet its budget. After inquiring about the number of students learning in this yeshiva and how long it had been open, my wife Aliza asked how many of its students had joined the army since the yeshiva’s founding. “None!” he answered proudly. In the course of explaining why he and the other students should not be drafted, he reasoned that because they learn for twelve hours a day, they are both working harder, and accomplishing more for the security of the country, than the soldiers who are on the front lines. Aliza didn’t even bother telling him that our son Yaakov, who is serving in the north of Israel, routinely wakes up at 3 or 4 in the morning to begin his day. Given that context, her interlocutor’s boast about learning twelve hours a day is somewhat less impressive; while his claim that he is working harder than our soldiers, who risk life and limb alongside experiencing oppressive heat by day and the cold frost at night, with sleep escaping from their eyes (see Bereshit 31:40) is a perfect example of breathtaking ingratitude alongside ignorant self-congratulation.

(He also tried proving his point by asserting that most of Israel’s wars have begun during bein hazmanim, when the yeshivot are on vacation. One wonders how common this argument is, and - if it has become a real talking point - why almost every yeshiva in Israel will be on bein hazmanim for the next three weeks, rather than insisting that vacation be canceled and the regular yeshiva schedule be maintained. At the very least, if the students genuinely need a vacation and a given yeshiva’s administration authentically believes that study is an indispensable part of the war effort, they should stagger the time off so that the yeshiva is well-populated every day of the year. The fact that this solution is generally ignored can lead an honest person to wonder if the ultra-Orthodox population actually believes its own arguments.)

At least this student’s foolish and arrogant callousness is easy to dismiss. More troubling from an Orthodox perspective is the regular misuse of sources, and the repeated claim that they prove something different from what they actually say.

A typical example of this is the oft-cited Yerushalmi (Chagigah 1:7) which demonstrates that scholars are the true guardians of the city, and the local guards are, at best, secondary to the effort. The problem, of course, is that the Yerushalmi doesn’t say what people presume that it says.

Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai taught: If you see towns that were uprooted from their place in the Land of Israel, know that [the reason is that] they did not contribute to the salaries of teachers of Tanach and Mishnah. What is the textual source of this? [The verse says,] “Why is the land destroyed, torn down like a desert with no passers by? Hashem answered, because they abandoned My Torah.”

Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi sent Rabbi Chiya, Rabbi Asi, and Rabbi Ami to pass through the cities of the Land of Israel in order to establish teachers of Tanach and Mishnah for them. They entered one place and found neither teachers of Tanach nor teachers of Mishnah. They said to [the populace], Bring us the guards of the city, and they brought the watchmen [who stand by the gate]. [The rabbis] said to them, Are these actually the guards of the city?! These are nothing other than the destroyers of the city! So they asked them, Who, then, are the guards of the city? They answered, The teachers of Tanach and Mishnah. That is the meaning of the verse, “If Hashem does not build the house, its builders work for nothing; if Hashem does not guard the city, the guard watches for no reason.”

Only a wanton misreading of this source would indicate that students learning Torah in a Ramat Beit Shemesh yeshiva have any effect on the war effort. First of all, the Yerushalmi is discussing the failure of local communities to pay their teachers - and, according to commentators like the Korban HaEdah, specifically the teachers of children. The entire purpose of the rabbis’ visit to the local town was to encourage them to hire teachers, not to open another kollel or to convince the local populace to spend more time learning Torah. Moreover, the entire episode, along with Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai’s introductory statement, attempts to demonstrate that the presence (and paying) of teachers in a city serves to protect that city - not the Land of Israel in general, and certainly not the wider Jewish population across the globe. Finally, there is every reason to believe that this passage is aggadic rather than halachic in nature - that is, it is not part of the Talmud’s legal writings. Aggadata must be read with extreme care and should be taken very seriously; it should not, however, be used as the basis of legal argumentation.

In sum, the Yerushalmi is probably not meant to serve as a legal argument in the first place - but even if someone insists on understanding it as a practical halachic guide, it asserts that vulnerable cities can protect themselves by hiring and paying teachers who will teach in that same city. Accordingly, if we take the words of the Yerushalmi seriously, cities on the Lebanese and Gaza borders should quickly hire more teachers who will teach Torah to the local children, and the population of Torah observant Jews should eagerly volunteer their services in this regard. Needless to say, this has not happened; I have not heard anyone urging that we implement this Yerushalmi-based solution. Instead, we only hear the refrain that more Torah learning by more people is the answer to Israel’s security needs.

This Yerushalmi, of course, is only one of many texts that are cited (sometimes mistakenly so) to demonstrate that Torah learning, rather than military effort, is the primary way that Israel is protected from its enemies. Other texts may potentially show this more effectively than the Yerushalmi in Chagigah - but we rarely are proffered sophisticated analysis of these sources.

When talmidei chachamim are presented with a halachic question or problem, they typically respond by marshaling all the available halachic sources and then presenting a cogent and well-reasoned argument. To our real regret, not enough scholars have done this when it comes to defending the ultra-Orthodox exemption from the IDF. Rather than offering classic halachic reasoning, too many Chareidi leaders present platitudes and cliches, while citing sources in ways that would never pass muster in an honest halachic dialogue. Aggadata is presented as halacha, while context is frequently ignored.

If the Chareidi leadership wants Israel’s non-Chareidi Orthodox population to respect their anti-army attitude - never mind giving money to the yeshivot which encourage this behavior - they need to present reasoned halachic justifications, rather than pointing to random aggadic sources and insisting that the rest of us trust the Torah intuition of Chareidi gedolim.

Perhaps they have a convincing argument. Until they say what it is, the rest of us have every right to demand more - and to demand that they show some humility instead of proudly advertising that none of a yeshiva’s students had ever joined the IDF.