A plea from the bereaved heart of religious Zionism
Encouraging Israeli leaders to pay condolence visits, the family of Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, 43, a Jerusalem father of eight and much-loved teacher at the Himmelfarb school who was killed fighting in southern Lebanon this weekend, made a highly unusual request: Politicians from across the spectrum would be welcome… provided they paired up, one for one, with somebody from across the aisle.
This request, issued in the spirit of Goldberg’s own efforts to bridge gaps and build bonds within our people, was indeed heeded, with several Knesset members recognizing the importance of the plea and partnering up to attend the shiva.
On Tuesday, his widow Rachel issued a second request — that ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students join the army, even as their political and rabbinical leadership have been doing its utmost to maintain the ultra-Orthodox community’s thoroughly un-Jewish exclusion from military or national service.
Political extortion has enabled this perversion of Jewish values and Orthodox Jewish principles to persist for decades, its disgraceful inequality eating away at Israeli society. But the injustice that sees much of Israel risking life and limb while also financially subsidizing the fastest-growing sector of the populace — which insists on playing no practical role in protecting the country, and in some cases mocks and derides those who do — has never been as divisive and manifestly untenable as it is today, more than a year into a multifront war. What began with the cataclysmic deaths of some 1,200 people in the Hamas invasion continues to exact a terrible price, with some 70 soldiers — including many, many reservists like Goldberg — losing their lives this month alone.
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