MARTYRDOM, JEWISH STYLE ...
By Zachary Goelman • February 3, 2009
Defense Forces reservists Shamir Yeger and Gal Einav authored a short, plaintive letter published online describing the overbearing religious indoctrination of their unit in the hours before the soldiers entered combat in Gaza last month.
“Along with a rifle and a protective vest we also received books of Psalms, copies of the traveler’s prayer, and Kabbalah books handed out by black-clad individuals inside and outside the base who appeared to take an active part in the enlistment process,” it reads. “Yet the truly great shock hit us during a short break in a training session: A friendly looking man wearing a uniform and officer’s ranks stood at the center of our platoon and proceeded to lecture about “Jewish fighting spirit” before we head into battle.”
Yeger and Einav, proud of their Israeli convictions, didn’t hesitate when they received the call to arms to “pulverize Hamas.” This was the “the real thing; no longer a mission to accompany yeshiva students heading out to the springs of Mount Hebron or securing eccentrics in Samaria.”
Confident in the calm manner of combat troops, assured by the comraderie of their fellow soldiers, Yeger and Einav describe their unit “operating like a well-oiled machine, and we felt that this time around there was somebody to count on. Yet regrettably, soon after, we were also asked to rely on a much more abstract entity – our Father in the heavens.”
Rabbis from the Lubavitch sect “walked around with no interruption near coded maps and classified satellite photos.” Bible lessons were delivered by IDF Chief Rabbi Avichai Rontzki.
“Ironically,” Yeger and Einav write, “Rontzki chose to mention the story of Hannah and her seven sons on the very day where a Palestinian home, with children inside it, was destroyed. The particularly unpleasant grand finale came from the battalion’s rabbi, who spoke to us following the ceasefire declaration and opened with the story of the Binding of Isaac, telling us about Abraham who chose to sacrifice his only son, just like we are willing to sacrifice ourselves.”
The messsage of sacrifice chafed these reservist most when they received care-packages from the home front with messages exhorting the soldiers to “die for Kiddush HaShem.”
Beyond these calls to martyrdom, so characteristic of archaic religious practice worldwide, the writers’ main objection remains the sheer impropriety of religious messages and symbolism among public sector personnel. Soldiers’ religious practices were once private matters, the authors assert.
Some might argue that there’s nothing wrong with well-meaning old-time religious support. By this rationale, these same rabbis and religious officials ought to receive unfettered access to the public education system (even more than they currently do). On the face of it, the religious penetration described by these two reservists is of a level greater than the encroachment of Christian fundamentalism into the U.S. Air Force Academy, where religious officers enjoined cadets to attend chapel services, and the army sponsored viewings of “The Passion of the Christ.”
In the U.S., the experiment of mixing religion into the military led to episodes of anti-Semitic discrimination, and the Air Force ended the program after it was named in a law suit as documented by the newspapers and in the film “Constantine’s Sword.”
In Israel, however, complaints about religion saturating the armed forces aren’t likely to provoke the same outrage. Reader responses to the letter by Yeger and Einav were mixed. The first comment, titled “ungratefull [sic]“, by a poster called Moish, decried the writers as “clearly a angry spoiled anti religious guy who hates aniting that otter solders appreciate whit eni religious connection [sic].”
The second reply, titled “totally on target,” sympathised with Yeger and Einav, writing, “when being asked to defend my country, I am willing to sacrifice my life to protect the freedoms my family and country should enjoy. To be forcibly subjected to religious dogma as a secular Jew is disheartening at best scary at worst.”
This voice of secular, patriotic Israelis calling for the simple distinction between synagogue and state security isn’t the vitriol of the erstwile Shinui party attacking the religious establishment.
But while there may be soldiers — and Israelis — in total agreement with the notion that god should be politely gagged in public and his proselytizing emissaries be at least as restricted as the country’s press in their access to elements of state security, Yeger and Einav must also know that their complaint is a straggler from a previous generation, an older conversation, all but over in the Israeli public.
With conscription rates dropping annually, especially among secular Jews, and a simultaneous increase in the country’s religious population, Yeger and Einav are part of a shrinking minority. No doubt they know many who ducked their conscription call. If they have draft-age children, they’ve certainly heard them discuss the myriad ways of obtaining a deferral.
This trend is reversed in the dati-le’umi sector, the category of Israeli Jews broadly classified as “national religious.” In one way or another the men and women woven from this cloth see military and national service as a form of religious duty, and their ranks in uniform and civil society will increase in the coming decades. Coupled with the consistent growth of ultra-orthodox families, secular Israel may be in the final throws of its götterdämmerung.
Trends indicate that if the voice of secular objection isn’t silenced, it may simply be neutered. In the absence of a nation-wide momentum led by a figure like the late Tommy Lapid, Israel may never see a secular resurgence in population or in ideals.
The letter may be the clarion call of one side in the founding, confounding dispute over the meaning of that notion, “a Jewish democratic state.”
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