נמות ולא נתגייס vs נתגייס ונמות

Ain't nobody bringing an Egla Arufa anytime soon

Yesterday, there was a horrible, predictable, tragedy in Yerushalayim:

A Not-Unforseeable Tragedy

Whose Fault is it Really?

Protester run over

Let’s be honest, R Harry. No one will take responsibility. We don’t have an Egla Arufa anymore. Once, someone dying outside a city meant the city elders take responsibility. Now, even when a person dies at a protest, the show must go on.

From Matzav (and I am surprised Bubbies can use ChatGPT):

Dear Matzav Inbox,

I was there tonight at the draft protest in Yerushalayim. I am not repeating rumors, headlines, or social media hysteria. I watched it unfold with my own eyes. I am a chareidi grandmother, and what I saw was shameful, reckless, and utterly leaderless.

Hundreds of boys — children — were running wild in the streets. They were jumping on buses and cars, blocking traffic, and preventing drivers from moving.

There were no parents in sight. No rabbonim. No roshei yeshiva. No adults taking responsibility. No one stopping this disgraceful chaos.

Garbage bins were dragged into the road and set on fire. Plastic sheets were slapped across bus windshields, blinding drivers until they struggled to rip them off. Buses full of chareidi passengers were stuck for twenty minutes or more, held hostage by unsupervised, out-of-control boys who clearly had no idea what they were doing or the danger they were creating.

The bus drivers tried — desperately — to maneuver through the madness without hurting anyone. They were surrounded, harassed, blocked, and endangered. This was not a “peaceful protest.” It was anarchy.

And then the unthinkable happened.

People put themselves in front of a vehicle in a lawless situation that should never have been allowed to develop.

And what happened afterward was perhaps the most horrifying part of all.

After the incident, boys were singing and dancing in the middle of the road. Singing. Dancing. As if nothing had happened. As if a life had not just been lost. It is now past midnight as I write this to you at Matzav News and they are still there. Still no parents. Still no rabbonim. Still no melamdim. Still no adults willing to step in and say: Enough.

If this is what protest looks like, then someone must finally ask the obvious question: Where was the leadership? Who allowed children to be sent into the streets with no supervision, no guidance, and no boundaries? Who thought this was acceptable, let alone justified?

This was not mesirus nefesh. It was abandonment.

Tragedies do not happen in a vacuum. They happen when responsibility is shrugged off, when adults disappear, and when children are left to play with fire — sometimes literally.

If we do not have the courage to tell the truth about what went down tonight, then we will see this again. And next time, the price may be even higher.

Enough with the slogans. Enough with the posturing.

It is time for accountability.

Bella Abraham

A Bubby in Yerushalayim

While this is unlikely to be a real Bubby, the eyewitness account is accurate, and matches video of the scene. And we are lucky only one person died, TBH.

I want to share something on-point I saw from Priveleged Escalation:

This brings to mind the Gemara in Yoma 23a - a story about two Kohanim in the Mikdash who were competing to reach the top of the alter, and one stabbed the other.

The father of the one who was stabbed found his son still convulsing and declared: “May my sons death be an atonement for you, but he is still not yet dead so the knife is pure.”

On that, the Gemara continues, criticizing that reaction: “from this we see, that the purity of the Temple’s vessels was more important to them than human life.”

Tonight, while a teenage boy breathed his last, frum people were still singing, dancing, screaming and lighting fires in the street, all l’sheym shamayim of course. For Taharas HaKodesh!

Maybe it’s time to stop focusing on the “Tahara” of our youth and start focusing a bit more on their well-being.

But hey, נמות ולא נתגייס, no?

I agree with the above 100%.

And more: If some Eitz-supporting gedolim (such as R’ Malkiel) can say the Oct 7th celebrators deserved the tragedy because it was on shabbos with an idol, what does it tell us that both anti-giyus protests ended in tragedy?

Everyone who has read me for a while knows where I stand in regards to drafting these protesters (go for it, IDF!). So it’s time I share something else I strongly believe:

Like at the Second Beis Hamikdash era, its not just the Kohanim/Eitzniks who don’t care about lives. There are other groups as well.

Here is where we get the unsubscribers:

Let’s not pretend for a second that if everyone there would have been told to enlist that that would have been better leadership. In fact, statistically speaking, there would be far more dead teenagers today.

Let’s face it: The Dati Leumi rabbanim telling students to enroll en masse for a failed messianic vision of R Kook are no less dangerous and and no less responsible for youthful deaths than the Badatz ayatollahs telling everyone to protest. The IDF is not a place where people go to chill. It is a place where people go to fight. It is also a place where people go to die. Including many, many, preventable ones.

If adults were making a conscious choice to enlist in the IDF because they want to contribute to society, I would - and do - fully honor those people as heroes. That’s not what is happening. There is a draft. Perhaps a necessary one, but a draft nonetheless. And it is young teenagers who are being drafted, and young teenagers who are being murdered en masse, far more than at any hafgana in recent memory. Or Meron. Or any other similar mass chareidi tragedy.

If the IDF was run fully responsibly, that would be one thing. But its not. We see how the bus systems are run in Israel. We see how the nonexistant safety laws are run. We see how the bureaucracy is run. There is no reason to assume that the army is run any better, and that has left hundreds of frum DL youths dead. An eye-opening book just how badly the army is run was the 188th Crybaby Brigade by Joel Chasnoff. (And of course, the rot starts at the top with Netanyahu, who has never accepted blame for October 7th. The lack of acharayus could make Chareidi askanim green with envy).

Yes, of course, every army will have dead people. It is a tragic fact of having an army. I don’t think that the fact that some of our youth died there, no matter how unfortunate it is, is a sign of irresponsibility. But the fact is that Dati Leumi youth are killed disproportionately. 40 percent of soldiers killed al kiddush Hashem in Gaza were Dati Leumi! Some months, its closer to sixty! The Dati rabbanim sending their own kids out on these ‘patriotic’ combat roles and inspiring them that this is kivush haaretz are causing their own community’s children to disproportionately die! This is a horror show that is barely addressed and is a far bigger lack of responsibility than any Chareidi hafgana. Their own hashkafa is causing them to volunteer for combat roles putting their lives at risk far more than hafganos or Meron!

And what do these Dati rabbanim do? Do they demand accountability from the army that is eating their own children in droves? NO! Instead, they demand that Chareidim send their own children to the battlefields too. At least the Edah and Eitz Ayatollahs don’t demand the Dati Leumi throw their own children in front of buses when one of their own dies!¹

Look, I get that the army is necessary. I support the IDF to the utmost. I think that Chareidim who protest the IDF and belittle its accomplishments are Kafuy Batov. But when one sees that the people who die in the army are disproportionately religious, and the reason for that is a culture that tells them that volunteering on the front lines is a good thing, the conclusion is that the irresponsible culture here is not the Chareidi one.

The army is a necessary evil. I believe in some integration with the secular world, and in Israel that requires being drafted, and the issues with the army aren’t going away overnight. So lets take out the words “IDF” and replace it with “US Army”.

When the USA had a draft, nobody confused patriotism with stupidity. When a frum Jew such as my grandfather was drafted, he enlisted. He didn’t evade. End of story. But he didn’t stupidly volunteer for combat roles, because he knows he is no bigger patriot then the other patriots there. And if he were to notice that Jews were being disproportionately killed, he certainly wouldn’t encourage those Jews who managed to avoid the draft to enlist to make up for them and would protest to the best of his ability to make sure this disparity is fixed - while obviously still appreciating the army and those serving in it. This is not contradictory.

But when it comes to the IDF this obvious logic flies out the window. Look, I get it. I am proud that our boys in uniform our protecting our beautiful Jewish state. But it being a Jewish army should make it more responsible for our soldiers lives. And if frum soldiers are disproportionately the victims, and many deaths in the army are preventable, we should protest that irresponsibility rather than try to get even more soldiers drafted into the army.

Let’s face the facts: Most hesder yeshivos don’t treat the army as a necessary evil of integration and getting a job. They don’t tell their students not to volunteer for combat roles. They don’t tell them “look, we need an army, but we also want you to alive”. Rather, they teach them a hashkafa how the IDF is doing milchamot mitzvot, that when they go to combat against the Arabs they are just like warriors in Tanakh, that kivush haaretz and living in the shtachim are worth a few lives, and how our beautiful state of Israel is just a few gunshots away from Mashiach. Guess what? That hashkafa has resulted in far more preventable Jewish teen deaths than the Chareidim have ever had.

So when you are looking for hashkafos and leadership to blast as irresponsible, yes, the chareidi leadership is extremely irresponsible. I blast it all the time! But the Dati Leumi Messianic hashkafa is even more so, by large multiples, yet for some reason attracts far fewer blog posts.

Yes, you can and you should demand that Chareidim do their fair share in the army. הַאַחֵיכֶם יָבֹאוּ לַמִּלְחָמָה וְאַתֶּם תֵּשְׁבוּ פֹה? But don’t start viewing their hashkafos as murderous. Look in your own backyard first. You need to enlist. You don’t need to sacrifice your children disproportionately to the Moloch of combat service.

And lets face it, the Chareidim don’t see it the IDF as a Jewish army. They view Israel hashkafically as any other country. You can demand that they enlist equally, as a draft is necessary, just like they would be required in any other country with a draft. Shivyon Banetel. But then you need to be honest. You need to make sure that religious and irreligious soldiers are treated equally and are promoted equally. And that’s not what is happening. So promoting the draft is essentially telling religious boys to be disproportionately killed. Yet you never hear all of those concerned for Jewish blood direct their anger at the IDF’s policies nor the rabbanim who promote a hashkafa of a futuristic messianic state. Only the Chareidim are easy targets. Let’s be honest: The Dati Leumi rabbanim who encourage combat roles need to bring an Eglah Arufa just as much as the Edah and Eitz Ayatollahs.

All of us - Chareidim and Dati Leumi, leadership and laypeople - need to start taking life more seriously.

And the way the army is currently run, if it were my child were being drafted, I would do anything to avoid it, because I am a parent first and a patriot second.

Chayi Kodmin.

Related posts:

The true scandal of the WZO affair and Lakewood leadership

1.

And you never see a Chareidi blog blasting the Dati culture whenever one of their kids are kidnapped for hitchhiking in the shtachim. Cultural bashing of responsibility is a one way street.