A Shanda of Cowards: When Holiness Hides from the Frontlines

As I wait for the descent of the Haredim today to their shanda of a protest in Jerusalem, I keep thinking about a parsha — Parah Adumah, the Red Heifer — that bizarre ritual of purifying those made impure by contact with death.

A priest would burn a red heifer, mix its ashes with water, and sprinkle it on the unclean. The impure became pure; the pure became impure. Which means that in order to perform the ritual, you had to take on another’s impurity. That wasn’t a flaw in the system. It was a necessity — and it taught actual holiness, loving your fellow as yourself.

I once heard a teaching — maybe from the Lubavitcher Rebbe — comparing it to a friend stuck in the mud. From afar you can shout instructions, throw ropes, give advice. None of it works. He’s dying in there. So what do you do? You get your ass down into the mud and pull him out. And yeah, you’ll get covered in mud too. Big deal. You saved your friend.

Am Yisrael right now is mamash stuck in the mud. And this whole Haredi anti-draft welfare state is literally Parah Adumah — absurd and self-contradictory. Holiness that refuses to get dirty while the rest of the nation bleeds is not holiness at all.

If you claim to love Am Yisrael, prove it. Get down in the mud with us. Join the soldiers in Gaza. Join the rest of us. We need you. Either get in — or get out.

There’s no more room for freeloaders — not social, not economic, not moral. Your studies will not stop rockets. Your prayers will not drive ambulances. Your refusal to participate is not holiness; it’s cowardice wearing a kippah.

Army of God?
Army of God, my ass.
It’s a shanda of cowards with delusions of grandeur — living off the state they refuse to acknowledge, chanting verses they refuse to live.

They’re not fighting out of holiness but out of fear — a subculture terrified of dying and fighting as much as of living and assimilating. And we, the rest of Israel, keep enabling it, even though we know that within the next twenty-five years it will become “completely unsustainable.” As if it isn’t already.

Here’s the threshold. הגיע הזמן. Are we going to ignore it and hope it goes away, like the previous generation did, or will we finally have the gall to fix it?

We’re seventy-seven years young. The Silent Generation built the miracle; the millennials must repair it. This is our fourth quarter. We’ve outgrown the scaffolding of a refugee nation. The welfare structures and draft exemptions that made sense in 1948 no longer serve a sovereign people in 2025.

It’s time for these boys to grow up, mature, and realize that in life you often have to do things you don’t want to do, that you’re scared to do. But you do them because it’s the right thing to do — because what matters is being a good person, doing the right thing, and helping your brother out of the mud when he’s fucking dying.

Get in or get out.

But don’t you dare cause any more inconvenience to my actual day — I’m just trying to pick up my kids from school, assholes.