February 4, 2005

"Hesder- Creating Heroes in Israel"

Although yeshiva students in Israel are exempt from military service, the students who attend what are known as hesder yeshivot voluntarily serve in the IDF. The word "hesder" translates as agreement, and both the State of Israel and its armed forces have agreed to permit the yeshivot to send their religious Zionist students for training and service as self-contained military units. The bravery of hesder soldiers is legend, and in every one of these yeshivot are memorials to bnei-Torah who have died in defense of Israel.

I have met hesder alumni in Jewish communities throughout the world. These alumni volunteer for programs through Torah Mitzion, an organization that takes them to major Jewish communities in Africa, South America, Europe, and the United States where they serve as kollel members or educators. The young men have successfully brought a love for Torah and Israel to thousands.

I have often visited hesder soldiers in their yeshivot in Israel, but in 1982, I had the chance to see them in the field. I toured southern Lebanon where Israeli forces had crossed the border to fight the PLO terrorizing the settlements and towns of the Upper Galilee. We stopped near an IDF post for lunch. I heard the familiar sounds of a yeshiva beit midrash, and wondered where they were coming from. I turned to my guide, an IDF officer. "Do you hear what I hear?" I asked him. A secularist, he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the woods slightly below. "It’s coming from there."

There, in the thick of Lebanon’s woods, a hesder yeshiva unit had paused to prepare for a shiur given by one of its Roshei-Yeshiva, who was accompanying the unit throughout its movements in Lebanon. Several IDF soldiers with a gun in one hand and photocopied pages of Gemara in the other, approached us. The Rosh Yeshiva and I had met previously, and he asked if I would give the soldiers a Dvar Torah. But as soon as I began, I was overwhelmed. Surrounded by tall cedars and the faces of helmeted young men with their tzizit dangling, I could only manage to whisper, "This is my G-d and I will adore Him." My own experience affected the secular officer who was my guide. When we returned to the car, he put his arm around my shoulder and said, "I understand what we are fighting for."

And now the IDF command has decided to dismantle the hesder program. Why? Because of a former chief rabbi's call to religiously observant soldiers that they disobey when ordered to evacuate settlers from Gaza and elsewhere. The rabbi's call evoked both fear and anger on the part of many Israelis and the majority of Israel's rabbanim.

The order to dismantle the program was a decision made by Orthodox members of the General Command. More than half of today’s IDF School for General Command is religious, as are forty percent of those in Officer Training Schools. So, the move against the hesder units is not anti-religious. It is simply the angry response to the ruling to disobey orders. It is important for those of us who are religious to know this.

In calling for the integration of the hesder unit as small entities into the rest of the IDF, the General Command argues that the yeshiva men will better impact their fellow soldiers if they are spread thinner. But they are wrong. Without hesder units, there will not be hesder yeshivot. And without hesder yeshivot there will not be the voice of Torah in the IDF. That was the voice calling out to my secular guide and me in the thick of Lebanon's woods. And that was the voice creating heroes throughout Jewish history and in the modern IDF.

Edited by Anna Olswanger

Shabbat Shalom