Were there haredi yeshivas during our 40 years in the desert? (Bamidbar)

Do they even bother to read Parshat Bamidbar in haredi yeshivot and synagogues? If so, do they pay attention to what is being read?

The verse לֹֽא־תְבַשֵּׁ֥ל גְּדִ֖י בַּֽחֲלֵ֥ב אִמּֽוֹ “you shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk” appears but seven times in the entire Torah, yet it has yielded untold numbers of volumes and responsa which interpret it beyond its literal meaning. In the yeshivah world, these five words are, to this day, the topic of endless discussion, exegesis, and argument with direct impact on our culinary and dietary behavior.

By, contrast the seven-word phrase מִבֶּ֨ן עֶשְׂרִ֤ים שָׁנָה֙ וָמַ֔עְלָה כׇּל־יֹצֵ֥א צָבָ֖א בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל “from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms” as the definitive clarification of who is eligible to be counted in the Israelite census, is routinely ignored. It is simply not a topic of conversation, let alone interpretation.

That there is no discussion or interpretation is understandable. Because there is no ambiguity whatsoever. The Torah is very clearly using this phrase to define who counts and who doesn’t, who receives a parcel of land in Israel and who does not.

וַיְדַבֵּ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֛ה בְּמִדְבַּ֥ר סִינַ֖י בְּאֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵ֑ד בְּאֶחָד֩ לַחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשֵּׁנִ֜י בַּשָּׁנָ֣ה הַשֵּׁנִ֗ית לְצֵאתָ֛ם מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם לֵאמֹֽר׃

On the first day of the second month, in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt, God spoke to Moshe in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying:

שְׂא֗וּ אֶת־רֹאשׁ֙ כׇּל־עֲדַ֣ת בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֖ם לְבֵ֣ית אֲבֹתָ֑ם בְּמִסְפַּ֣ר שֵׁמ֔וֹת כׇּל־זָכָ֖ר לְגֻלְגְּלֹתָֽם׃

Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (Bamidbar/Numbers 1:1-2)

The Torah then proceeds to define the meaning of “every head”

מִבֶּ֨ן עֶשְׂרִ֤ים שָׁנָה֙ וָמַ֔עְלָה כׇּל־יֹצֵ֥א צָבָ֖א בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל תִּפְקְד֥וּ אֹתָ֛ם לְצִבְאֹתָ֖ם אַתָּ֥ה וְאַהֲרֹֽן׃

You and Aharon shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those who bear arms in Israel. (1:3)

There is neither a need nor room here for interpretation or exegesis. The Torah takes pains to be unambiguous on this point. Indeed, it repeats this definition 15 times just in this chapter alone. It is applied to every tribe except Levi, which is exempted from military service so that they might spend a lifetime doing back-breaking labor connected to the Mishkan (Tabernacle/Temple). Yet, like anyone who did not serve in the military, the Levites received no land in Israel.

One can infer from all this that there must have been males over the age of 20 among the Israelite tribes  – perhaps even a critical mass of such males – who did not meet this criterion. Had there been no such exceptions there would have been no need for the definition.

The fact that the Torah goes to such lengths to drive the point home is evidence that there were shirkers even back then who felt that serving in the military was beneath them, or that they were entitled to exempt themselves from shouldering any responsibility for the nation’s safety and security.

Hence these draft-evaders were literally written out of the pages of Israelite history. They remained nameless. They inherited no land. Their very existence meant nothing to the greater community.

Obviously had there been elections back then, only those who bore arms would have been eligible to vote. Which would make perfect sense. After all, if you have no skin in the game, you have no business making decisions that affect it.

Which then begs the question; how come today we allow those whom the Torah would reject, to not only vote but to hold government positions that have a direct impact on the very security  and viability of our nation?

For clearly, had there been haredi yeshivas and kollels in the Sinai desert they would have been definitively excluded from any public consideration.

Who knows? Maybe there were 80,000 or more young men sitting in air-conditioned tents arguing the finer points of Baba Kama in Horev. After all, if our Patriarchs Yitzhak and Yaakov were ostensibly enrolled in the mythical yeshiva of Shem and Ever. Surely by the time the actual Torah was given, there must have been a Slabodka and a Mir and a Ponovezh in which self-anointed scholars were arguing about what God really meant in His newly-given Torah.

If so, the community clearly allowed them to indulge their pilpulations. And perhaps their parents or fathers-in-law were willing to underwrite the $250 hats and tailored suits, not to mention full room and board.

What the community did NOT grant them was … anything. They could indulge their addiction to Talmud on their own shekel, not on the public’s.

Which, of course, begs the question as to how we, in the Jewish State of Israel, can so blithely ignore the Torah on this critical issue. And how a mass of un-enlisted haredi dependents on Government handouts, justify their outright rejection of the Torah’s definition of who counts. How do they march to the polling stations and vote in elections which the Torah would bar them from. How do they entitle themselves to literally billions in stipends and benefits for which the Torah pointedly makes them ineligible? And, finally, why do we, as a society, ignore the one law of the Torah that every arms-bearing, tax-paying citizen should agree on unanimously?

What most normative Israeli citizens fail to grasp is that haredim, as a rule, do not believe in the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Hence, they do not believe the Torah’s law regarding military service applies in a country that is fundamentally illegitimate. They do not view Israel as a Jewish State. Indeed, their leading nonagenarian sage recently declared his preference for an Arab government.

Haredim do not observe Israel’s national holidays and days of national mourning. They do not include a prayer for the welfare of our soldiers (a fortiori a prayer for the welfare of the State) in their Shabbat synagogue services. In fact, many of them consider Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, a day of fasting and mourning.

What’s more, they consider it legitimate to embezzle the citizenry on the basis of a belief that one may steal from a heathen. This is a minority opinion, at best, and totally rejected by the Rambam/Maimonides. (But, then, it was Rambam who prophesied, definitively, that anyone whose livelihood is derived from Torah learning would end up robbing from others.)

The Ashkenazi haredi political parties are all rooted in the pre-State Agudath Israel movement which was then in lockstep with the diehard Neturei Karta in its rejection of the establishment of a State of Israel prior to the arrival of a Messiah. However, unlike Neturei Karta, which had the integrity to stick to its principles, Agudath Israel saw the opportunity for a feeding frenzy (and military exemption) if it would recognize the State to the extent necessary to dig into its coffers.

What ultimately ensued was a parliamentary system that made it virtually impossible to form a governing coalition without including haredi parties. And the rest is history.

Haredim could flout every law of the land yet enjoy the benefits accorded to productive citizens. What’s more, their political parties would regularly threaten to withhold their vote on important legislation unless additional millions were forked over to haredi interests. Blackmail? Absolutely. But they were blackmailing ‘heathens’ and they choose to believe that this is kosher.

The time has come – indeed it is long overdue – for the State of Israel to legislate according to the Torah on at least this one issue. No one who shirks service should be allowed to vote. No one who has not served is entitled to … anything. As in the Sinai Desert, their presence is to be tolerated but not in any way supported. They may continue to live here, wear their tribal haberdashery, speak Yiddish and contribute nothing to the greater welfare and security of the State. Beyond that… nothing. No funding, no social services, no subsidized education, no free daycare, no discounts on municipal taxes. “Gornisht” as they say in Yiddish.

Once we act it shouldn’t take more than a single generation for normalcy to prevail.