Don’t hate! Vote!
How easy it is to get angry at the chareidi (ultra-orthodox) community.
I think my anger began years ago when I heard chareidi politicians defending the exemption of yeshiva students while my sons and the sons of all my friends were drafted and served as combat soldiers. With guile and prevarication, the chareidi defenders of draft dodging explained away the direct calls in the Bible and from famous Jewish commentators on the need for all Jews to take part in the nation’s defense.
My personal anger grew when chareidi mobs prevented me and my wife from attending important and personal family events. Yet I can imagine that my anger was as nothing compared to those in the same traffic who were on the way to visit a sick parent, or who were rushing a sick relative to the hospital.
My anger burned hotter when chareidi youth attacked Israeli soldiers of both sexes who were trying to protect lives and property. Though profoundly ignorant of history (ancient, modern and even Jewish), they called our soldiers “cossacks” and “nazis” and “nukhba,” and also attacked them physically.
I started screaming at the television when chareidi hoodlums rampaged through the streets, destroying property and endangering lives, while demanding the release of draft-dodgers.
But what made my anger really peak was watching the smug, smiling faces of the chareidi politicians when the government gave them the votes to pass their obscene laws: Equating yeshiva shukeling with military defense of the country, and abolishing the arrest of (only) chareidi deserters.
One of them proved his selfishness and ignorance by stating that many of the reservists continue to do combat service because they need the meager military allowance paid to them by the army.
Others had the brazenness to stand up and with smiling faces proudly boast that their eight, nine or ten sons would never serve in the army!
Is that enough to turn your anger into hate?
It is. But don’t let it.
First of all, hate will distort your thinking and lead you to take irrational and extreme actions. You give up control of your mind and body to the object of your hatred. It may feel good to invite hatred in, but you quickly become its slave.
Also, it would be a great mistake to take your anger out at every chareidi person you see on the street, in stores and in public places. The individual chareidim are not your enemies. The old man you see may might be the father of a soldier. The young man may be an actual soldier in a chareidi unit, or working in a laboratory developing hi-tech military capabilities. The father surrounded by six children may by an army chaplain.
I suggest there is a way to avoid hatred towards the chareidim.
On election day, we must vote for parties that pledge, “We will not have the chareidim in our government. Individuals who can serve and refuse to do so will not get an agora from the state – not for children, not for food, not for education, not for housing, nothing.
“If it’s legal to take away their ability to vote or to travel, we will do that too. We will not arrest them nor harass them, but they will be disenfranchised by the state they refuse to serve.”
This should apply to all those who refuse to serve, for whatever reason – not just to chareidim.
If these parties win – and we must make every effort to ensure that they do – there will still be some residual anger towards those who refuse to serve, but it will be tempered by the knowledge that they have been completely detached from benefits provided by the state.
There’s also a positive side. Experience proves that during periods when state assistance to chareidim was denied or decreased, more of them sought employment and enlisted in the military. This should come as no surprise. Enticements and inducements don’t seem to work with this community. Hard economic reality does.
Come election day, turn your anger into voting, not hating.
