Episode 11 - Chareidim and the Army (Pt. 10): Halacha and the Chain of Command

One of the under-appreciated concerns - sometimes articulated, often unconscious - held by Chareidim with respect to army service, is the concept of “chain of command.” For a young man whose guiding force in life is G-d, the Torah and rabbinnic authority, submission to faceless officers high up the IDF’s ladder can seem sacrilegious.This is compounded when considering possible halachic matters of life and death: who is authorizing actions that place soldiers’, and others’, lives at risk? Are these decisions guided by Torah principles in any sense?Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Brody, founder of Ematai, and author of the recently-released instant-classic Ethics of our Fighters, joins us to explore these vexing issues.

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The real fear of haredi rabbis is not that their young people will stop being religious. Rather it is that their young people will actually BECOME religious. Finally they will be exposed to religious soldiers whose avodat Hashem is not the reflexive behavior of people cowed, browbeaten and, at times actually beaten into submission by by their rebbes or roshei yeshiva. The haredi rabbonim are terrified that their spiritual prisoners will be living, fighting, davening with truly religious men, people whose love of Torah and observance is not the result of haredi fear, i.e. fear of man rather than fear of G-d; in other words real men who do not maintain their observance out of fear of social ostracism, or being cut off by their parents, or being beaten by the Gerer Rebbe's secret police. And they will see how one can be a true Torah Jew by fulfilling the mitzvah of defending our People, by working for an honest living, and by being liberated from the fear-driven darkness of haredi obedience into the light filled life of behira hofshit, of choosing to be a Jew in every sense o the world. And the rabbonim know that once the floodgates are open there goes their power base and their business.