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Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch: “Audacity to Ask Us to Enter the Army" | WATCH
Senior rabbinic leaders, heads of yeshivot and a large crowd gathered for a reception honoring two yeshiva students who were released from military prison, where they had been incarcerated for the “offense” of studying Torah. The peak of the event was an unusual and dramatic address by yeshiva head Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, who explained in his own words why military service is forbidden.
Senior Torah leaders, led by Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, Rabbi Dov Landau and Rabbi Avraham Salim, gathered Sunday night before a large crowd to welcome Yitzhak Revivo of Yeshivat Rabbeinu Chaim Ozer and Yair Saada of Yeshivat Kissei Rahamim. The two students had been imprisoned in a military facility for studying Torah and were recently released.
The event, organized by Ashkenazi and Sephardi advocacy groups, reached its climax with an extraordinary and forceful speech by Rabbi Hirsch, focused on the prohibition against entering the army.
JFeed presents the full transcript of his remarks:
“Today is, in one sense, a day of joy. A joy that young men were arrested for studying Torah — arrested for that, and we can say the merit is that they were arrested for that. The arrest itself is difficult, but now that these two have been released, for them it is a day of joy.
“On the other hand, it is a day of pain. A day of pain that our fellow Jews do not understand a simple thing. The simple thing is that it is audacity to ask someone to enter the army, where, God forbid, his level of spirituality can decline and not only can decline, it will certainly decline. It is audacity to ask such a thing.
“It is forbidden for anyone to enter, and it is audacity on their part to ask. There is no such thing as asking a person to lower his spiritual level.
“I have heard people from the general public ask: ‘Why not? Why not sacrifice? We also sacrifice, let them sacrifice their spirituality.’ Anyone who says this does not understand what spirituality is, what the purpose of creation is, what the Master of the World is. It is absolute nonsense to say such a thing. It is audacity to ask a person to descend from his spiritual level and all the more so when it comes to the world of yeshivot, Heaven forbid, as it says: ‘So that the land not vomit you out.’
“This is like a parable of a king’s son who was fed something repulsive, which his body could not tolerate and expelled. So too, the Land of Israel does not sustain transgressors. The question is asked: Why is there a state at all? And there is only one answer, because of those who study Torah. Torah scholars are what sustain this entire state. And it is audacity and foolishness to ask otherwise. Therefore, it is simple that all the great Torah authorities of the past and present prohibit, and certainly prohibit, entering the army.
“I want to add one more point that the secular world should think about: Why, in 1948, were the nations willing, given their numbers at the time, to agree to give the Land of Israel to the Jews? For one reason only, because Jews were there throughout all generations.
“In the year 500 [by their count] there was a great destruction. The final destruction came centuries earlier, but there was a destruction of Jerusalem, of the entire community there, when Catholics took control and caused further devastation, and the yeshivot were abolished.
“And what happened after that? Throughout all generations, for more than a thousand years, it was only Torah Jews who came to the Land of Israel, to weep over the destruction and to study Torah. They left everything they had in exile and ascended to the Land of Israel to learn Torah. As a result, Jews were always in the Land of Israel. Hundreds upon hundreds of years, more than a thousand years, we alone were there. Torah is the reason there is a state at all, and therefore the nations gave it to us. What greater audacity is there than to fail to recognize the stature of Torah?
“May the Holy One, blessed be He, grant that they understand this and recognize the primacy of Torah study, that it is forbidden to enter any place where spirituality may decline. It is forbidden to enter.”