The New Jew

I moved recently from a Dati Leumi (National Religious) neighborhood to a Charedi one. The move was necessary. When I came to Israel, I didn't know that the Modern Orthodox (ie. Dati Leumi) here are often far less religious than than the least observant ones in America. I saw women in baggy pants in Teaneck but mini-skirts? Also, while the American Modern Orthodox are very fixated on college and careers, in Israel it's all about the military. College I can pass off as secular wisdom, depending on what one studies, but all this military stuff is hard for me to absorb into my picture of Jewish life. All Israeli-Palestinian politics aside – and I don't see it as good guy verses bad guy – involvement in the military seems to me to harden young people but not in a good way. They look damaged to me. When I suggest this to Dati Leumi parents they as a rule take great umbrage and proclaim how proud they are of their children for their “military service.” They can be proud all day long. It doesn't mean the kid wasn't damaged. For the Dati Leumi my view is blasphemy, literally. But I see the worship of the military as blasphemy, literally. So that neighborhood wasn't a good fit for me.

The Charedi neighborhood is another world. Kids play outside together. The mothers sit outside watching them. Men hold sefarim as they walk to shul. Interactions with them are much more pleasant than with the typical Israeli. In the DL neighborhood, the streets are much emptier of children. I suppose they were home playing with electronic devices. I was very rarely permitted entry into a DL home but when for various reasons I did enter one, sure enough the children and the parents were on their devices. And that is certainly the case with teenagers and adults on the streets. Right arms seem to all have grown by the portion of the I-phone that sticks out from the hand.

So throughout the move we had to deal with various workmen, most of which seem to be former IDF people. You can always tell by the aggressiveness with which they do everything. We had an appliance repairman who was supposed to look at our AC but first went to our circuit breaker and shut off all the lights in the house. He didn't say he was going to do this. He just did it, at night, as the people in my family were engaged in various activities that depended on the light. It was a little scary and dangerous. 

One workman, an American oleh, who was Orthodox, made some comment about the Peleg demonstrations and mentioned that he was in the military. I started to probe him as I always try to do to learn more about the military. What was it like? Was it anti-religious? Did they try to brainwash you? (I only ask the latter questions of religious people.)

He told me, like many have, that the rough handling of basic training was very hard to take. Lots of screaming and demands to do ridiculously arduous physical tasks. It left him depressed. But he didn't feel that he was brainwashed against religion. He was in a non-religious unit but was able to be religious there for the most part. Note that he has a very strong personality that not every religious kid has. I didn't inquire as to his standards of kashrus or mixing with the opposite sex. The couldn't have been very high as it was a mixed unit. He talked about how he made a kiddush Hashem by studying Torah. Unfortunately, for many people today Torah study has become nearly the entirety of Torah observance.

Then he got to talking about Arabs. About how they all want to kill us, and they only understand violence, and that the Israeli military is so moral and drops leaflets before it bombs apartment buildings, and how Jews never kill anybody.

This got us arguing of course because I don't believe any of that stuff and nobody I have ever met uses facts to prove it, only assertions that seem to me entirely self-serving. For if that's all true, we have every right to be extremely tough with the Arabs. They are trying to kill us right?

And I realized, he was indeed brainwashed. It's not that he received 19^th century style attacks on the Talmud. The brainwashing is in being taught to be a killer. And this is what many gadolim have told us about Nationalism (Zionism). That the haskalah didn't succeed in pulling everyone from Judaism with its attacks on Judaism so Nationalism stepped in to create a new definition of a Jew. With Nationalism you don't have to become a communist or an Xtian, no you can still be a Jew, an even better Jew, one that isn't meek and golus-like.

And that's what I saw in this workman with the long beard. He was aggressive in his style. Our debate was not a debate. It was violence without fists, mostly on his part. He was ferocious. And I imagined how he acted as a soldier. He told me some of it. How Arabs had to learn to obey.

I see why Likud never really considers a state for Palestinians. The military is their avodah. And the Israeli military is all about aggressiveness, striking first, being sneaky, being bold. It's an entire personality type. It's the new Jew. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they had peace.

So they brainwash the soldiers to justify brutality. Every colonial force does this – from Columbus to the Nazis. So you can tell me that the military doesn't obstruct Shabbos observance or Torah study. There's more to Judaism than that. The Gemara in Makkos tells us that all mitzvos are built around faith in Hashem. That's the essence of the mitzvos and of the Jew. We are devoted to Hashem.

The Dati Leumi are dedicated to the army and the state that serves it. Shabbos observance comes along for the ride. The men who founded the state were rebels against Judaism. Bold people by nature. And since they stuck their state in the middle of Arab societies that don't want to be dominated by Westerners, they were able to cajole the rest of us into taking on their style in order to battle the Arabs. We are supposed to be a people of humility, modesty, and compassion. The army creates arrogance, immodesty, and hardheartedness. It is the anti-Jew. I'm not saying that every solder is a stone-faced killer. But I am saying that the army brings them down, makes them more that way than they normally would be. The leaders and the policies are cruel and the soldiers are terribly influenced by it as they carry out orders. Many try to retain their humanity but three years is a long time for a young person to hold up an undeveloped personality against a ferocious owner. And while you are in the military, it owns you. Nationalism doesn't convert the Jew to some other established religion but rather converts the Jewish religion to something that we have no word for really - fascism comes closest. It certainly isn't Torah Judaism. I can see that in the difference between my old neighborhood and my new one.