When Words Fail

The events of the last few weeks, months and year have left me speechless. Finding the words to describe the unimaginable chaos and pain wrought by this war, and the ensuing disillusionment from our leaders is testing the limits of my vocabulary.

Hans Christian Anderson famously said, “where words fail, music speaks”. What are the words and music to soldiers’ deaths? At the end of Sukkot, only 3 weeks ago, 890 soldiers had been killed in this war and the numbers subsequently grown. Nearly half  of those soldiers never got to see the age of 21. What are the words and music to that? The sounds of parents’ kaddish for their children? The wails from their funerals? The cries of the 56 children who became orphans during that holiday alone?

What is the music for the tens of thousands called up to serve, and serve, and serve again in round after round of miluim? Is it the sounds of wives and mothers crying, having to do it all alone?

What is the music for the soldiers who are fighting nonstop, with no break? The army desperately needs more soldiers. We are at war on seven fronts.

Words and music may fail but what is easy to hear is the silence from the politicians who should be most involved in relieving that burden on those who serve.

Anyone taking just a casual look at the soldiers killed and fighting will notice a disproportionate amount from the National Religious world. Yet the politicians who supposedly represent that world – my world – are doing nothing to widen the ranks of those who serve. Instead, they serve up silence or more accurately, empty platitudes. All while they work in the halls of power to maintain the status quo under which 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men don’t enlist.

Why are the only politicians stating the obvious about the injustice and the impracticality of maintaining this broken status quo from the opposition? As the Haredim scream “we would rather die than be drafted”, it is Opposition Leader Yair Lapid pointing out to them the obvious: ‘No, you won’t die. But our soldiers will.’

The political party bearing the name Religious Zionism is actively working to keep one set of religious Israelis out of the war, while sending their own community to war again, and again, and again. In doing so, they undermine our community’s values by essentially legitimizing the ultra-Orthodox leadership’s claims that it’s antisemitism to draft Haredim. That it’s an attack on Torah to be drafted. That it’s an attack on religion and indeed, a sin to draft. The Religious Zionist party’s politicians should be the first to point out that all this is fundamentally not true. After all it is the Religious Zionist community that serves while keeping Shabbat, keeping Kashrut, and studying Torah. But so far, it is only Religious Zionist politicians from the opposition who’ve served proudly that are actually fighting back against this injustice, like Yesh Atid’s MK Moshe Turpaz, or MK Matan Kahana.

Instead of rebutting the ultra-Orthodox claims and demanding they draft, Religious Zionism’s self-proclaimed political leaders – from the party that bears our community’s name – are going along with the ultra-Orthodox leadership. Both in the budget process, and in supporting the firing of Defense Minister Gallant because he insisted on drafting more ultra-Orthodox Israelis to help relieve the burden on reservists. And every time, it is our community that pays the price. In blood, sweat, money and tears.

What is the music to all that? To the sacrifice of our boys. To the insults to our faith and practice. To the denial of the practical reality of Israel’s security needs. To the continued ignoring of the enlisting population that is actually paying the price? Someone tell me what the music is because words have long since failed.