You got to believe

Today after shul a Chabad Rabbi from England came up to me and a friend and said what a wonderful shul we have. The Tephila was at a good pace and the people were quite. I told him that he was welcome to come at any time and he responded that he was on a life mission. At first I was not sure what he was saying but he explained that his lifeneeds to be lived in England as the work he is doing is too important to leave. I was told that he works with the drug addicted and the spiritually lost.

I responded by saying that everyone who makes Aliyah sacrifices something but as a Rabbi surely he knows that the place for Jews is in Israel. I said look at Rabbi Riskin, he was doing very important things when he left the USA and started Efrat. Today Efrat has close to ten thousand residents.

This is the background story.The good stuff is coming. But before I continue I just want to say that I think that Aliyah is a very personal decision. It is not for everyone and I do not begrudge anyone who does not make this choice (big talk for someone who has been here a month) , that said I am always in awe ( not the good kind) of people in communal leadership positions who do not see the need to promote Aliyah.

So we continue the conversation and the Rabbi says ' do you know that we have 14 children from our congregation that have gone or are currently in the Israeli army'. He continued, I am not sure if you know but in Chabad we do not say the prayer for the safety of the Israeli soldiers. Yet I felt that since so many of our congregants have a personal connection I had to say something. I contacted the Vaad of Chabad and they said prayer is like pushing the right buttons, who knows if the prayer for the soldiers has the right buttons? but we know David Hamelach did,  so say the first Psalm every day for the Israeli soldiers.

I think to my credit, I did not lose it. I kept cool as this Rabbi was the guest of a man I consider very special. This week I read an article in the Jerusalem Post on how the Hareidim have it wrong halachically. The author wrote that according to almost every source everyone is obligated to fight , including women , when the war is not optional and the nation is in danger. This includes the three exceptions the Torah gives for not fighting and certainly Torah study which is not mentioned at all.

I thought does the author of this article really not know what is going on. The Hareidim don't refuse to fight because they got the halacha wrong, they don't fight because they don't accept that Israel is a Jewish state. The halacha of war only applies in a Jewish State. It has nothing to do with the need for people learning or the fact that exposure to the army is spiritually unhealthy. The issue is they see Israel as any other place , like Poland or Russia where avoiding the draft is of utmost importance. This is why they don't say the prayer for the soldiers. To them Israel has nothing to do with Judaism . You would think they could say a prayer just for the fact that these are Jewish boys and girls risking their own lives for them, but that would be tacit recognition and therefore can't be done.

But all is not lost.   The end of this story is that one day after saying tehilim #1 he noticed a Satmar Hasid in the back of his shul that  he thought looked strangely at the fact that this prayer was being said. He went up to him and the Hasid who said it was the first time he had said a prayer for Israeli solders in a shul and implored the Rabbi to keep doing it. The Rabbi a bit taken aback asked him why. The man responded please do it for me as it is not acceptable where I come from , my grandson is now serving in the Israeli army.