A time to lower the temperature

What price Jewish brotherhood?

It was a rare commodity at the quinquennial WZC which I attended last month as a delegate. And it is scarcely visible amid the ongoing Charedi draft debate, an issue which I would like to address here from both sides of the divide.

There needs to be a drastic lowering of the temperature, a willingness of each side to understand where the other is coming from and to compromise.

It does not help when chiloni (secular) activists call yeshivah students “parasites feeding off the state”. It is utterly beyond the pale when a prominent chiloni declares, “Charedim who refuse to serve don’t deserve to live!”

But it is also indefensible when a Charedi radical declares, “I would rather die than serve in the IDF!” and when Charedi spokesmen provocatively declare “It’s the yeshivahs, not the IDF, that is keeping Israel safe.”