By Faith Alone

"The IDF is the Army of the Jews, not the Tsarist Army that one would find every excuse to evade", said Rav Yehuda Amital, a Shoah survivor and among the first which articulated the need to integrate Torah study with military service.

The pros and cons the Tal Law will never end and most probably the lessons of Tisha B'Av will help maybe some of us to understand what is wrong and where we need to thin twice before launching various accusations. Doesn't make any sense to reproduce the accusations of both sides. What impressed me in the history of Rav Yehuda Amital was his power to support his own ideas regardless of the social consequences, because the Zionist ideas mattered.

„Yeshivot without military service would produce non-Zionist Torah scholars, and the religious Zionist community would remain bereft of spiritual leadership“, he outlined, according to the book. He encouraged the capacity of his talmidim to think by themselves and to respect the diversity of opinions for the sake of Torah, as he did his entire life: “Whenever I feel that I can say something to benefit the Torah, the Jewish people or Eretz Yisrael, I do not hold myself back”. The experience during Shoah left him with a certain understanding of the world: “In Auschwitz, they did not check people’s tzitzit before sending them to the gas chambers; should we check tzitzit before regarding someone as a brother?”

Of course there are outstanding Torah scholars that would be better in yeshivot that in the Army, but the theory and practice need to meet. Plus, if you have the chance of living in Eretz Israel, why not trying to understand what this country is about, and thus to see what does it mean to fight for your country. The road to Eretz Yisrael was not a debate between scholars, but a hard fight and unless you go to see what does it mean to defend your precious land, the Torah knowledge is incomplete.

And what a beautiful book about friendship, Torah study and defense of the country is Haim Sabato’s book Adjusting Sights in the wonderful translation of Hillel Halkin. One day, I would love to learn more about what does it mean to be a religious person and to serve in the Army. Isn’t shameful, disgraceful or impossible.