I posted a few days ago about an article in YNet about the draft and Charedim. Today another Charedi wrote an even stupider article on this topic. The article is all about how hard it is to be a Yeshiva bochur and what they give up. He then says, after all that "burn 3 years in the army"?
Again, this article is just going to inflame and anger secular Israelis. To say that because they give up, TV, movies, sex before marriage and going out, they deserve special treatment is idiotic for a number of reasons. As many of the commenters on YNet said, this is a lifestyle choice. Just because you choose this lifestyle doesn't mean that you should be exempted from serving the nation. No one else gets to make a lifestyle choice and exempt themselves from the army. There are also many chilonim who serve in the army 3 years and then go to University, also studying hard and working long hours to pay for their education. In addition, they are doing this by choice. Last but not least, anyone who has been around the yeshiva world, walks around Charedi neighborhoods etc. sees with their own eyes that many yeshiva bochurs don't give up so much, don't learn so many hours and enjoy life. The number of people learning 18 hours a day is quite small. This line of reasoning will not convince a single chiloni.
More importantly, this whole article is based on a false premise that learning Torah is not enjoyable and that the ben torah is giving up עולם הזה. This is simply not true, learning Torah is supposed to be the greatest pleasure a person can have, R' Aharon Kotler once commented to a rich donor, you will get the reward for all of the Torah learning that you support in עולם הבא but I pity you for your עולם הזה. If this is the case then the ben torah is not giving anything up he is doing the most enjoyable thing in life.
3 comments:
> No one else gets to make a lifestyle choice and exempt themselves from the army.
Sure they do. How about post-Zionist conscientious objectors?
> a false premise that learning Torah is not enjoyable
He's following the Chazon Ish's shita that being a frum Jew is supposed to be hard and make you miserable. If you enjoy it, you're doing something wrong.
Look, self-righteousness dims insight. This writer, and too many in the Chareidi community, can't conceive that there are worldviews different than their own. The girl in shorts walking down the street? It never occurs to them that she knows nothing about halacha. They really think she's davka rebelling against God and inciting them by dressing that way, not that she's responding to the hot weather by dressing coolly.
So when it comes to the army it's the same thing. It isn't about sharing the burden. It's that the chilonim are davka obsessed with destroying them and that's the real reason they want a universal draft.
As a rule, to be persuasive requires you to try to see things from the other's viewpoint and address precisely what they are really thinking. I imagine that because thinking like a secular or a mizrachi is forbidden, most such writers are not trained to think like their antagonists for the sake of argument. The few who do, like Jonathan Rosenblum, occasionally get a nice base hit.
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