My Moroccan-born husband grew up in an immigrant neighborhood in Eretz Yisrael.

The neighborhood consisted of lots of Moroccans, plus a generous handful of Bucharians, and one Danish family who, for some reason, ended up there after making aliyah.

My husband attended the local mamlachti-dati (government religious) school along with the rest of the neighborhood. And he was one of the very good boys, in that he was shomer negiah and always wore his kippah & tzitzit, even when playing basketball, plus he always went happily to shul with his father for all the tefillot & voluntarily attended shiurim at night.

(There are more good things to say about my husband, but to head off any ayin hara, we'll stop here.)

Anyway, he'd gotten into Gemara in his teens. And though he always dreamed of joining the army, he decided to go to yeshivah instead. (For more on that story, please see God Helps: A True Story.)

I asked him how that was viewed in his neighborhood, seeing as everyone went to the army and while people had started off as religious, the secularization process went quickly and intensively.

"It was fine," said my husband. He explained that for all its social problems, it was still a traditional community. Therefore, even the more secular-seeming people still held Torah study in high esteem. 

And even though the useless jobnik positions were less back then, people still didn't attack my husband about why their sons had to risk their lives while my husband sat in yeshivah.

They intuitively understood the value of Torah study.

The point here is that, yet again, your average Jew in Eretz Yisrael is not innately offended by yeshivah bochurim not "sharing the burden" of army service.

That unforgiving outrage & seething resentment comes from somewhere else.

Since Shevet Levi in Tanach, the Jewish people have always had Jews who sat and learned continuously.

Mishnah Avot states that the world - not just the Jewish world, but the entire world - stands on 3 things:

1. the Torah
2. the avodah (tefillah & serving Hashem, service in the Beit Hamikdash)
3. gemilut chessedim (acts of loving-kindness)

That's our base and for EVERYONE'S sake, it cannot be weakened.

​(And if you examine these 3 pillars, you'll see they're all linked. In other words, you can't have one - or two - without the other.)

And many, if not most, Jews sense this.

So where is the venom coming from? Where is this seething rip-their-eyes-out resentment coming from?

It's being aggressively imposed upon the innocent Jewish people by media incitement and by those with political agendas.

Ani shalom v'ki adaber hema l'milchamah - I am peace; but when I speak, they are for war." (Tehillim 120:7)

Or, as Rashi interprets it:
"I am at peace with them, but when I speak peacefully with them, they come to wage war with me." 

Before I continue writing about my son’s experiences in the IDF, I wanted to publicize an issue that I think many Anglos aren’t aware of it because, again, I never saw it covered in any media and socially, Anglos who join the IDF tend to go into combat and other essential units.

Whether you encounter this particular mentality within Israeli society depends on what circles you’re in and whether you yourself possess a mentality that allows you to recognize the dynamic when you see it.
 
So this is what it is:
 
Many (probably even most) Israelis are brought up with the idea that IDF service IN AND OF ITSELF is an all-important & VITAL contribution.

Yes: Vital. Absolutely Essential!
 
It does not matter whether you only served 3 days a week or every other week (AKA shavua-shavua, which for guys equals 1.5 years of service, not 3).
 
It does not matter the sheer uselessness of your role. (Some army duties are made up out of thin air simply to fulfill the demand.)
 
It doesn’t matter if you served as, say, a jeep mechanic (which you chose, not out of Zionist idealism, but in order to get a head start on the vocation you’re aiming for after your reluctant army service ends), and while yes, of course an army needs expert jeep mechanics, they don’t need SO MANY.

In other words, the actual job is important but you personally are expendable. The IDF has a surplus of jeep mechanics. Yet despite that, you have made an all-important contribution to your country and shared the burden -  unlike those parasitic yeshivah bums. [sarc]
 
It doesn’t matter if you are recruited into a role which you PHYSICALLY CANNOT perform, such as an 18-year-old Moroccan pixie from Dimona assigned to the fire brigade when she lacks the upper body strength to manage the high-powered fire hose.

And because even 2 girls together are not strong enough to handle the hose, they need a male colleague to join them in order for the girls to simply pass the test.

How on earth is this kind of assignment remotely rational or productive?

(Just for knowing, fire fighters serve in the IAF [Israeli Air Force] as part of the on-call emergency team at the runway for incoming fighter jets. Part of the fire-training is sawing through the window of the cockpit of a burning plane to extract the pilot. This needs to be done carefully so as not to decapitate the pilot in the process. Do I really need to explain that most teenage girls not only lack the basic physical strength for such maneuvers, but lack even the potential of gaining the necessary muscle unless they take steroids? I guess I do, because the army has girls serving in the IAF fire brigade! Someone should really tell the fellows in the top-brass…)

It doesn’t matter if you spent a massive part of your “army” service noshing on American candy bars while watching American sitcoms in an air-conditioned room on an IDF base (which does nothing to protect us from our enemies, unless of course, ISIS savages faint at the smell of chocolate-peanut breath and the sound of scripted punchlines).
 
The fact that you are officially enlisted in the IDF means that you are paying your dues to society.

So according to this mentality, it doesn’t matter WHAT you do in the army, nor how useless or useful your particular role is in the army.
 
Just the barebones fact that you are enlisted awards you with social credit.
 
To be clear: I’m NOT talking about combat and essential military non-combat duties.
 
I appreciate combat soldiers and all the non-combat yet essential military personnel working for our national security.

Just for knowing, when I pass through a checkpoint, whether at a mall or the Kotel or anywhere else, I tell the soldier or security guard, "Hashem yishmor otcha, tizkeh l'mitzvot - May Hashem protect you & and may you continue to merit doing mitzvot."

So while I write against the forced draft for females & yeshivah bachurs, it's not from a lack of appreciation for what effective IDF positions do.

I fully realize that many soldiers (and police & security guards for that matter) are prepared to suffer trauma, injury, and even death (chas v'shalom) so that I and everyone else in the country can live here.

However, hungover kvetchy moppers are not anywhere in the same league—which Israelis acknowledge. But what many Israelis don’t acknowledge is that the hungover kvetchy moppers and the pixie fire girls DON’T CONTRIBUTE AT ALL IN ANY WAY. Their service was meaningless. It was nothing.
 
Many Israelis cannot emotionally face this fact.

Furthermore, this is the attitude expressed by many Israelis:

“Paying your debt to society.”

I’m not saying that Israelis use this exact term. But many express that attitude when talking about their army service.
 
That’s how many Israelis see their army service.

And again, they see army service this way even if they did nothing useful for 2 or 3 years. They paid their debt to society. They shared their part of the burden.
 
If you’re American, you’re probably familiar with that phrase being utilized to describe the purpose of prison (which is also an absurd concept. How does sitting in a cell pay any kind of debt to society?).
 
In contrast to what you generally see on English-language Jewish media, which focuses on combat soldiers (who are of course going to be more enthusiastic and idealistic about their service), the non-essential jobnik Israelis actively pursue the least demanding & fulfilling roles in the army.

They don’t want to be there and focus on getting through the army in the least demanding way possible.

Also, because I initially started out in Israel among the dati-leumi crowd, which tends to be more idealistic and patriotic, I rarely encountered the other Israelis who think army service is just something of a drag that you need to get through in order to earn basic worth as a citizen—AND feel superior to non-serving charedim….EVEN IF YOU AREN’T JEWISH and the despised charedim are fully shomer Torah & mitzvot.
 
And this is a HUGE thing that needs attention.
 
Because of this mentality (“Army service over all”), this means that a non-Jewish Ukranian thug officially enlisted in the IDF (even if he does nothing) has social worth while someone on the level of Rav Kanievsky is considered a parasite, chas v’shalom.

The same is true of the daughter of a Jewish father and the non-Jewish woman he brought over from Russia or Thailand or England.

Her army service grants her social & cultural superiority over a non-serving Torah Jew.
 
That’s right—in Eretz Yisrael, where Jews & Torah are more important than anything else.
 
To repeat: A non-Jew of Jew-hating lineage (i.e., many Ukrainians) can acquire cultural & social superiority over fully shomer Torah & mitzvot Jews (including tzaddikim) simply by waving the magic wand of army “service.”
 
Do you think that’s a coincidence of propaganda?

​I don’t. Definitely not.
 
Let’s go on.

The thing is, if you bring up to your average Israeli any kind of judgment with regard to army service (“But why is a girl who sits in her office all day watching pirated movies on her cell phone and doing literally nothing else for her entire service—except showing the base an American movie one night—considered as having shared the burden? Why is her army “service” so important?”), they either get stunned speechless or angry.
 
(This is why I never bring this up to non-charedi Israelis. Actually, that's not completely true. I did bring it up twice as you'll soon see. Once, very carefully; and another time, quite by accident, which I kind of regretted later.)

Disturbingly, many Israelis never considered the VALUE of their service.

Why should meaningfulness or military usefulness be important to a tiny nation surrounded by some of the most vicious & savage terrorists on the planet?
 
Are we living in the Middle East or in Candy Land?

Quite frankly, some of us are concerned about massive armies of bloodthirsty Jew-haters on every border—and the fifth column WITHIN our borders.

​Can't we focus on that?
 
Yet certain types of Israelis never consider the concept of military usefulness. (That’s scary because it’s such an obvious lack of logic that the only reason for this can be brainwashing and propaganda.)
 
And they can get angry because they don’t appreciate the idea that all their “suffering” (i.e., undergoing basic training for nothing, then carrying out boring & meaningless roles) was for naught.

Or because something on which they hang their “rights” as a citizen is actually meaningless in the scheme of things—if you look at the whole situation from a purely rational point of view.

Especially with non-Jewish Russian soldiers or the non-Jewish children of Israeli intermarriage, they get their socially inferred "superiority" over fully Torah Jews simply because of their army enlistment. Ta-dah!
 
The dati-leumi are more aware of this contradiction, partly because their girls tend to do sherut leumi rather than the army, and so they’re already aware of the reasons why not EVERYONE needs to be in the army.

Yet in my early years in Eretz Yisrael, I only occasionally ran into this attitude of reluctant service.

It generally came from secular girls who complained about how meaningless & frustrating their service felt, stupid regulations and capricious commanding officers, and in the case of guard duty—fear of having to actually use their weapon and training.
 
As the wife (who is now fully frum and a really lovely person) of my husband’s brother told me, “When I was out there guarding the base, I was so scared! I kept hoping that nothing would ever happen because despite my training, I really didn’t feel up to actually fighting. I decided to myself that if worse came to worse, I would just let the male soldiers handle it.”

She looked at me. “I really don’t think that girls are cut out for this kind of thing. Do you?”
 
Obviously, she couldn’t say that during her service because a guard cannot have a preset plan to duck out during an attack.

(And it actually happened at one base, when a male soldier turned tail under a surprise attack, which led to several deaths on base.)

​But my sister-in-law was genuinely frightened at the prospect of a machine gun battle. She’s a quiet, gentle, lovely soul and not cut out for gun battles. And that was her enforced, reluctant, share-the-burden service to her country (which again, wasn't real service; she didn't do anything).
 
Another secular Israel girl told me, “We carried Uzis—with no bullets! The boys got M-16s with ammunition, but the girls got empty Uzis that we HAD to carry around all the time! What for? It was so stupid!”
 
(FYI: My son claims this is no longer true, that there is no longer a gender split over who gets the Uzis and who gets the M-16s, and also girl-soldiers no longer go about with empty rifles.)
 
But later, as a young married woman accompanying my husband in kiruv, I was exposed to the completely brainwashed Israelis, as you’ll see from the following examples...

Here’s an example of just how deep this irrational mentality goes:
 
During our early years of marriage, my husband (who learned in kollel full-time) worked part-time alongside secular mildly Leftist Israeli university students who all wore long hair pulled back in ponytails.

​During free moments, these young men enjoyed interacting with my husband via chatting or short ‘n’ friendly religious debates.
 
Accompanying my husband, I mostly just listened.
 
Yet curious to the extent of the insistence on the overriding importance of army service for all no matter what, I ended up asking one of the guys about his thoughts on the issue while my husband was nearby.
 
This university student was a particularly nice and intelligent guy.
 
First, I acknowledged the importance of combat soldiers and any other role necessary for security—whether it was the cook who fed the soldiers or the guy sitting behind a computer in Intelligence.
 
Soldiers need to eat. And technology plays a huge role in security these days.
 
I also emphasized that I was not looking to argue or criticize, but simply wanted to understand out of genuine curiosity.
 
Then I presented him with a theoretical (yet actual) situation in which an Israeli serves a non-essential army position, then immediately leaves the country to settle in Europe or North America, and never contributes in any way to the State of Israel.
 
Then I contrasted that to a guy (frum, of course) who never serves in the IDF, but pays taxes, gets married and raises a family in Israel (contributing to the population). As a consumer and a citizen, he contributes naturally to the Israeli economy and society in a positive way. He gives tzedakah to help his fellow poor.
 
Then I asked the big questions:
​

• Who really made a contribution to Israeli society, to Medinat Yisrael? ​
• And is it okay that the second guy never served in the army?

 
To his credit, the university student spent several moments giving the questions serious thought.
 
He even paused in his pondering to reassure me that he definitely understood where I was coming from and that he understood and even appreciated the point (which, because of all the propaganda—my word, not his—he’d never considered).
 
Then he continued to mull it over.

​Interestingly, his facial expressions and the way he made fists showed that he was actually wrestling with the question.
 
But finally, he shook his head and said, “I see what you’re saying—I definitely understand and think you have a point, but”—he grimaced and shook his head—“but I just”—he shook his head again and knocked his fists against the desk. “I just think that”—he took a deep breath—“at least the first guy did army service. At least he did that.”
 
“Even though he ultimately contributed nothing to the country?” I said.
 
He winced and held up his hands, shaking his head, “I know…I understand the point—and it’s a good question! But I just can’t—” His hands fell with a smack on the desktop and he looked me in the eye. “At least he did his army service.”
 
“So he contributed more than the other guy who didn’t do the army?” I said.
 
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”
 
I thanked him very nicely and told him how much I appreciated his time & honesty, then turned back to where my husband was talking to someone else.

​I was sad because the university student was a nice and intelligent person and he was willing to listen to an opposing idea. And he DID get it, but simply could not overcome his programming.
 
But it taught me a big lesson.

​The dedication to the idea of "army service for all" is deep-seated to the point of irrationality. 

​Later, I read an article regarding a male Israeli singer who objected to a young female singer winning an award for her music.
 
“She never served in the IDF!” he protested. “How can we grant an award to someone who doesn’t even fulfill the basic obligation of every Israeli citizen?”
 
The article grew even more ridiculous and perplexing as it revealed that his oh-so heilige army service consisted of the army choir. And that would have been her army service, too.
 
If you haven’t seen the girls of the IDF choir, this oh-so vital military service consists of them singing while swinging their hips and ponytails and wearing an IDF uniform shirt that’s unbuttoned too low. (Actually, I think their performances are even more daring and competitive now.)
 
And then of course, religious male soldiers are raked across the coals because they don’t want to watch their sisters objectifying themselves. Such fanatics!
 
Anyway, this male singer was outraged that she hadn’t served in this all-important military position—how disloyal and unpatriotic, shirking her military duty when EVERYONE ELSE serves their time! How dare she receive an award!
 
Anyway…

What clinched it for me was a run-in with a young Israeli baalat teshuvah-in-progress, whom I met at a Shabbaton where my husband was working.
 
This young woman became convinced of the truth of Torah and took upon herself Torah and mitzvot, plus attended classes and read books—but she was agonizingly conflicted.
 
She approached me, then started asking me about some standard issues that people have when making the BT transition. And she was asking in an increasingly angsty manner.
 
And I empathized with her, having gone through it myself. So I just calmly answered her issues as best I could.
 
But she grew increasingly overwrought and I thought that maybe I wasn’t expressing myself coherently enough (Hebrew being my second language and all), so I pleasantly suggested that she ask the people whose classes she attended back home. They’d heard these questions repeatedly and have no problem discussing these issues.
 
“I did ask them!” she insisted. “But I just…”
 
And then she kept expressing her conflict over it all.
 
That’s when I understood she was in the very normal transition stage of teshuvah.

This stage pops up again and again throughout life each time you need to cross another bridge in your lifelong journey of continuous self-transformation.
 
(I always really hate this stage because it feels like a hermit crab without its shell, but it’s a normal & necessary part of the teshuvah process. Please see What's Stopping You from Making Real Change? for more.)
 
Basically, her head is in one place (what the rabbis explained to her) while her heart is in another place (what she still feels is correct).
 
In other words: inner conflict. Yuck.
 
So I realized I couldn’t help her more than her rabbis and rebbetzins already were. You can’t hand people their Yiddishkeit, hashkafah, and emuna on a silver platter.

​After all is said & done, we all have to work for it and that’s just the reality of the process.
 
So I just remained sympathetic, but didn’t say much because transition is a really angsty place to be, and empathy and patience is often the only way to respond. Ultimately, they need to work through it themselves somehow.
 
But she pressed on, this time about army service.
 
“Everyone in my family goes into the armored corps!” she said. “My parents, my uncles, my siblings, my cousins—everyone! It’s our family tradition! Yet I’m the only who’s not. And they keep asking me, they keep pressuring me about it—‘You need to participate too! You also need to give to your country! Why can’t you keep Shabbat & kosher in the armored corps?' ”
 
Now, this is very normal albeit distressing. Israeli baalei teshuvah who still live at home can go through heck with their families.

​I learned of this distressing dynamic when I encountered the Neve girls in the Israeli section. I noticed that many of them looked stoic and even miserable, but I didn’t understand why. They seemed very committed to Yiddishkeit, so why were they so unhappy?
 
Then one day, when a friend & I expressed our friendly envy of the Israeli girls who already knew Hebrew (obviously) and therefore, had a much easier time learning Chumash and the like, one Israeli girl suddenly blurted out with great bitterness, “Well, you Americans are so lucky! You don’t know what it’s like for us. We’re here in Neve for the week and get all this inspiration and support, but every Shabbat, we have to go back to our families and deal with keeping Shabbos & kashrut in a secular home, plus being argued with and attacked for all our frumkeit and new hashkafot! But YOU never have to deal with THAT on a regular basis! You're spoiled!”
 
And she was right.

We Anglos have the opportunity to ensconce ourselves within a BT seminary or yeshivah without being forced into the old environment every week, not to mention the unwanted confrontations with disapproving family members and “friends.”
 
These young Israeli baalei teshuvah can have a very, very hard time.
 
So it apparently was with this the young woman I encountered at the Shabbaton.
 
And as I tried gently answering her, she kept cutting me off, repeating the same questions, and getting more overwrought.
 
But one thing didn’t make sense to me at that time.
 
Why was it so important for her, as a girl, to go into the armored corps with the tanks and all that?

Why was that such an issue? (Remember, at that time, I still hadn’t realized how deep the propaganda went in the minds of secular Israelis.)
 
So I said, “Wait a minute. I don’t understand something. You’re saying how important to your family it is for you to join the tankistim, but why?”
 
And her eyes popped wide open, her mouth shut, and she straightened up. And she didn’t say a word.
 
Because she didn’t respond, I thought maybe I hadn't been clear, so I decided to ask in another way: “I mean, girls don’t actually go in the tanks, right?”
 
A laugh burst out of her. “Oh no, not at all!” she said. “Of course girls don’t go out to battle!” She kept laughing and rolling her eyes.
 
“Okay,” I said, pleasantly. “So what would you be doing there?”
 
She gave a short incredulous laugh. “I would be serving!”
 
“Okay,” I said. “But doing what?”

I honestly wanted to know.

Because she and her family were obviously so overwrought about her not enlisting in the armored corps, I was trying to figure out WHY her enlistment was of such vital importance to them. I felt I was missing some vital piece of information.
 
Now she started stammering and just kept repeating how everyone in her family served in the armored corps and that this was just what her family did and she was letting everyone down by not serving.
 
And I was becoming increasingly bewildered. So I kept probing for the reason why her service was so essential.

​I mean, what was she, as a girl, going to be doing for the armored corps that was so vital to the military capabilities of the IDF?
 
She frowned and wrinkled her nose at me and gave me a crooked smile. “Well, I don’t KNOW,” she said, “because I haven’t actually enlisted, so I don’t KNOW what they would assign me.”
 
Wanting to be helpful, I prompted her: “Well, what did your sisters and female cousins do in the armored corps?”
 
She started stammering out answers again, like all sorts of stam busywork that her female relatives carried out.
 
“But what did that DO for the military effort?” I said. “I mean, how did that help the armored corps exactly?”
 
Finally, she pulled up and stared out me with a slightly opened mouth and wide eyes.
 
I realized I’d crossed some kind of line, but wasn’t sure what.
 
“I honestly wish to understand,” I tried to explain. “That’s why I keep asking. I’m honestly trying to understand why a girl serving in the armored corps is so important.”
 
Then she stared at me one moment more, turned around, and left.
 
And she avoided me for the rest of Shabbat.
 
I felt really bad at the time because I felt like I’d pushed her over some kind of edge. I’d engaged in a confrontation without even realizing it. And I wasn’t looking to break or crush anyone.

I tried to make it up to her by being really nice and non-threatening during the rest of Shabbat, but every time I approached her, her eyes widened and she took off.

Oh dear.
 
But that & the discussion with the thoughtful university Leftist clinched it for me: There is a cult-like mentality regarding IDF service that overrides all reason and logic.

To further hammer home this point, Ynet military correspondent Yossi Yehoshua has publicly stated on Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) that there is currently a surplus of IDF soldiers and that in only 2 more years, that surplus will reach 17,000. (Please see We Don’t Need More Charedi Soldiers for more.)
 
So why all the pressure?
 
Ironically, despite this secular Israeli mentality of “Army Service Over All,” many of those same people don’t care much whether charedim serve.

Because they wish they didn’t have to serve, many of these same people aren’t so upset by charedim avoiding the draft. It makes sense to them. So it depends who. Some resent the seeming unfairness, others are apathetic.

It's a contradiction, no?

Why is there such a contradiction? It's because much of the outrage, resentment, and self-righteousness isn't really real. It's media-created.
 
You have certain Jewish media & politicians whipping people into a frenzy about an issue that, on their own, many actually don’t care much about.
 
Why?
 
There clearly is some kind of an agenda at work here.
 
Why else is such propaganda and brainwashing needed? To what means?
 
The reason why it’s important to know that this mentality exists is because when you read a newspaper article written in self-righteous indignation or when you encounter a fellow Jew condemning charedi avoidance of army service & glorifying female participation ("We don't care about decapitating pilots in burning jets! More grrrl power!"), it’s important to realize the basis for much of this resentment and the feelings of victimhood.

Like, who is really victimized by a yeshivah bachur learning Gemara in yeshivah rather than watching American sitcoms as a "soldier" on an army base?

Some Jewish media sets out to convince people that because charedim do not face an all-out mandatory draft, then non-charedim are being victimized by this fact.
 
(BTW, there are 3000 charedim serving in the IDF right this moment—mostly in combat units.)
 
To sum up:

The self-righteousness, resentment, and feelings of victimhood are mostly not based on logic or reason, but simply a result of media incitement & propaganda INTENDED to whip people’s emotions into the above-mentioned states.  

For more stand-alone posts in this series (for which I haven't yet figured out a title), please see:

• Sharing What Burden Exactly? The Unspoken Elephant in the Room
• What's Happening to the Zionist Dream?
• Have You Ever Wanted to Know What Basic Training is Like for Serious Delinquents & Teenage Ex-Cons? Here's Your Chance!
• The Keleh 6 Mesivta
  

​I’ve been preparing a very long post about my son’s eye-opening experiences in the IDF, but there’s so much to write, it’s overwhelming. So instead, I’ll just present it in gulps as series.
 
(Also, if you don’t like or get tongue-in-cheek humor, you may not like this post.)

​And just in case anyone is wondering:

Because there are 3 participants (the speaker, the listener, and the subject) in a discussion of another person, I got my son’s permission to write about him (although my perceptions of his experience don’t necessarily reflect his perceptions of his experience).

​I feel positively about my son and he feels positively about himself, but as stated, there is one more participant in the discussion and that is YOU, the listener/reader.

Needless to say, no matter how positively I write about my son, someone somewhere can read into it lots of negativity. And is this okay?
 
So I asked a lashon hara expert.
 
So the lashon hara rav said that it is permitted for a number of reasons, one of which is because I’m anonymous. And he said that the 1 or 2 people who know us already know about my son, so it’s not a big deal for them to know more details. 

Finally, again, this post reflects my perceptions of events. My son might have different conclusions about the same event.

Part of the reason why I feel my son’s experiences add to the discussion about the IDF and Israeli society is because he ended up in a non-combat position.

​(He tried very, very hard to get into a combat unit and is actually well-suited to combat, but he was blocked for reasons I’ll explain in another post.)
 
Because I initially came to Israel as dati-leumi and frequently hung out with young Israelis who were after army service (mostly paratroopers and armored corps for boys or sherut leumi for girls), I thought I knew a lot about it from the inside.

I originally looked down on those “parasitical” charedim for not sharing the burden of military service.

​Later, I also heard the charedi side of things, found it compelling, and that’s the community I ultimately settled in.
 
So I felt well-informed, both philosophically and socially.
 
Yet my son’s experiences opened my eyes to so much, some of which I’ll share with you here.

Why do you, most likely an Anglo, need to hear about the non-combat part of the IDF—which is the majority of the IDF?
 
Nearly everything you read in English is about some kind of combat soldier, whether it’s Nachal Charedi or the son of Americans in Golani or Givati, etc.

Seriously.

Every English-language Jewish media outlet (including blogs), whether online or print, whether secular or dati or charedi, only talk about combat soldiers and units.
 
So if that’s all you hear about (and that’s most of what I ever hear about), then you’re automatically getting a skewed view of what’s really going on.
 
For example, as of 2014, the IDF consisted of 176,500 soldiers. Miluim (a reserve unit consisting of male citizens who serve a month of military service each year until middle age) comprise 445,000.
 
Of these, combat soldiers make up 26-30,000.
 
I appreciate these combat soldiers.
 
But what’s everyone else doing?
 
Well, there are certainly non-combat positions essential to national security, like Intelligence, watching security cameras, standing guard, and so on.
 
I appreciate them a lot. Probably you do too.
 
Do you think that’s what the other thousands of soldiers are doing? Essential security tasks?
 
No way.
 
But certain politicians and media must push this idea that every IDF job is essential.
 
And they go to bizarre extremes. 

For example, the IDF choir and dance troupe are considered military service.
 
I’m not joking.
 
Yes, everyone goes through a few weeks of basic training, regardless of what job they’re later assigned. But that doesn’t make them quality soldiers. It doesn’t even mean they are fit for guard duty (even if that’s what a recruit ends up doing).
 
So a girl who enlists to the IDF choir, which once entailed things like unbuttoning her shirt too low and swinging her ponytail and her hips around as she sings, is considered to have “carried” her “fair share of the burden” regarding military service. 
 
This is despite the fact that her performances did NOT make the country safer in any way whatsoever, and if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, her performances actually WEAKEN the Israeli military and increase strict judgment over the Land and the Am in general because as has been pointed out for millennia, Hashem hates pritzut and breaches in tsniut.

Furthermore, some people harshly condemn religious soldiers who choose not to watch their holy sisters objectify themselves in such a manner by quietly leaving & avoiding the whole spectacle.
 
But even non-religious Jews should be able to recognize the utter uselessness of a choir or dance troupe as MILITARY service.

Yet several years ago, when Israel wanted to give a singing award to one of its female pop artists, an older male singer objected because she hadn’t served in the army (meaning in the IDF choir), and therefore had not carried her "share of the military burden," and thus should be disqualified.
 
You have to wonder why some people (often secular Leftists) froth so intensely over the enforcement of even the most meaningless “military” service.
 
Because it is completely irrational to believe that a teenage female singer benefits the security of a country surrounded by some of the most vicious terror groups in the world, it seems there might be some kind of agenda at play here.

​Here are some more examples of useless "military" service:

At a base hosting 300 servicepeople, one girl was in charge of Culture & Recreation.

She sat in her office all the livelong day watching movies and texting on her cell phone while dressed in official IDF uniform.

Only once, during the 6 months my son was there, did she fulfill her duty: She showed them an American movie.
 
Yet in Israeli society and according to some of the more befuddled leaders, this is considered military service and she is commended for upholding her “share of the burden.”

​Culturally, she is considered a worthier citizen than, say, a chareidi woman who is gainfully employed, contributes to increasing the Jewish population on Eretz Hakodesh, and actively participates in the Israeli economy as a consumer. Not to mention all the mitzvot our frum heroine does, which increases merits & sweetens din over the entire Jewish people.

Another IDF serviceman sat in his office all day in some kind of human resources position. Apparently, if one of servicepeople had a problem with something, they could turn to him.

How often do you think a group of only 300 people who went home every week or two needed his services?

Right. Hardly ever.

​Two young men tasked with mopping the outside of the base 3 days a week regularly showed up hungover and spent Day 1 of their heilige military service complaining about how hungover they were.

​They apparently needed to rest more on Day 2. Day 3 saw a cursory cleaning before they went back home. Sometimes, they didn’t even show up on Day 1, serving their oh-so essential military duty only 2 days a week.
 
Yet again, there are many Israelis who consider this “military service” and credit this pair with “sharing the burden,” elevating them to a status far above that of a charedi father who learns Gemara, invests in an apartment in Eretz Yisrael, and contributes in so many ways to Israeli society and the economy.
 
Look, if you consider a few hours of hungover kvetching and half-hearted mopping to be a far more significant contribution to Israeli society (and security!) than shteiging away in front of a Gemara all day, then I’m not sure you & I can have much of a conversation about this.
 
But you probably don’t exalt hungover kvetching & half-hearted mopping because if you did, you would probably avoid reading this kind of blog. Baruch Hashem for that!

Then there was the guy in charge of the on-base store. That was his entire service.
 
Now, we know that soldiers need to replenish supplies.

Even though the non-combat types, like on this base only stay for a week or 2 at a time, people still run out of stuff and need replenishment.

Part of the job was making sure the store was well-stocked with popular American candy bars and candy-covered chocolates.
 
Perhaps there is some deep military secret behind ensuring that every IDF recruit receives his full ration of chalav akum American junkfood that, by the time it gets to the Israel, tastes like its wrapper.

Do I dare question whether this constitutes “sharing the burden”?
 
(No, I didn’t eat it; I’m a chalav-Yisrael-only type of gal. But I’ve eaten American candy bars in Israel before. Let me leave it like this: Just stick with Taami (yum!) and all those guys.)

Then my son came home enthusing about the popular American TV show Friends. I’d heard of it but never seen it (thank God).

​Yet how did my son know about it?
 
Why, he and his fellow Israeli Supermen spent entire days in air-conditioned rooms watching American TV shows on a giant LD screen.
 
You see, dear reader, there exists the unconscionable scandal of yeshivah students who are studiously avoiding the military draft by parasitically shteiging away with Rav Assi and Rebbi Meir, while our boys sit in IDF uniform watching depraved American sitcoms and eating Reese’s Pieces!
 
How long will Israeli society tolerate this vile injustice?

Oh, wait! They’re NOT tolerating this terrible inequality—there are obsessed politicians working in a frenzy to make sure that EVERYONE shares "the burden”! (Although chocolate and TV has never seemed much of a burden to me, personally, but then again, I’m not exactly an anti-Torah Leftist. Anti-Torah Leftists seem to feel differently about things.)
 
In other words: No parasites allowed!
 
Okay. Let’s define that more clearly:

• Learning Gemara – parastical.
• Watching depraved American sitcoms in IDF uniform while eating Reese’s Pieces – doing your civic duty and sharing the military burden.

Got it? Good!
 
Needless to say, fond reader, this is EXACTLY why I made aliyah and supported my son in his IDF service: so that he could become fully acquainted with ALL the degenerate Hollywood programming I’d left far behind! Plus chalav akum candy bars!

Im tirtzu, ein zo agadah!

​But seriously now, not all the recruits were lounging about.

There were 2 dati soldiers who used all that spare time to learn chevrusa together.
 
And this may shock the “share the burden” extremists, but learning Gemara in all your spare time actually does more for Israel’s security and success than Friends and American candy bars.
 
Now, if they had all that spare time and weren’t really serving a role necessary to Israel’s security, then why couldn’t they just be in yeshivah? What is the point?
 
However, I do want to commend them and say that if the IDF was an authentically Jewish army, this is what the soldiers would be doing when not actively engaged in a vital task: learning Torah.

Kol hakavod to these two bachurim.

NOTE: There WERE indeed VITAL military duties carried out on this base. 100%.

​But it sure wasn't everyone.

And that's the whole point of this post.

One of my son's cousins spent his entire military service guarding a weapons storage INSIDE an armored corps base.

Is this necessary or not?

Yes, in-base weapons need guarding. Some soldiers steal things.

But I question whether you need actual soldiers or whether Israel's hi-tech systems would be both cheaper and more effective than a teenage boy.

Literally, I question this. I don't know enough about security system effectiveness and costs to answer this affirmatively.

However, I suspect this is yet another non-essential job available to take in the glut of soldiers not qualified for essential jobs, but I'm honestly not sure and am willing to be corrected by someone who actually knows for sure.

Finally, there is something in the IDF called shavua-shavua (week-week).

​This means that for 1 week, you are on an army base, then the next week you work at a pizza parlor or waiting tables in a restaurant, then the next week you are on base again, then the week after that, you’re back to pizza and waiting tables.

And this continues until you are officially discharged from the IDF.
 
Now, why would the IDF institute something like shavua-shavua?

​Because there are way too many people for certain jobs.

For example, you couldn’t have all the firemen or cooks serving at the same time because there just aren’t enough jobs to go around. Meaning, some parts of the IDF are vastly overstaffed.
 
Having said that, the IDF very recently phased out a lot of shauva-shavua roles, but shavua-shavua still exist for cooks and I can’t remember who else.
 
But the necessity of shavua-shavua is something else to keep in mind when someone starts frothing at the mouth about charedim not “sharing the burden.”

​If there is a glut of soldiers in certain areas, then why are they so obsessed with increasing this glut?

Years ago, a young woman told me of her IDF service, which consisted of her & 4 other girls gazing at the same radar screen on the off-chance that they might spot something suspicious. (Occasionally they did, but it was almost always a false alarm.)

​She was embittered about it because it had been clear to her that while you might need 2 radar-gazers, you certainly do not need 5 per screen.

​And so she spent her service doing this useless busy-work while subjected to standard military discipline if she didn’t do her useless busy-work according to protocol. (Plus, I think there was also lots of coffee-bringing involved.)

Furthermore, when I was a young datia-leumit, I met a young man who explained that his army service consisted of tending fields on a kibbutz. Not GUARDING the fields from marauders, but actually working like a farmer.

I totally did not get this at that time. Completely flummoxed, I kept asking him about it in an effort to clarify. ("But how is that ARMY service? Why did the IDF put you there? Why do they need SOLDIERS to till the fields?")

Realizing how foolish it sounded, he got all sheepish about it, which made me realize I should leave him alone and change the subject. So I did. 

Later, I asked my combat and sherut leumi friends for clarification, but they just laughed, agreeing that it did sound kind of absurd to label farming as military service. And no one was able to explain the rationale behind it.

But the above taught me that parts of the IDF were and are overstaffed, and that they assign people to meaningless duties simply because with a mandatory draft, there is no other choice.
 
But I was really shocked to learn of the amount of “soldiers” serving in useless positions or positions of questionable necessity, and spending a huge chunk of their “service” in vapid recreation.

​The above examples are just a sampling.

As you can see from the above, the basic technical act of IDF enlistment does not in any way guarantee that you end up sharing any kind of burden.

It COULD mean that if you go to a position VITAL for Israel's security.

But for many recruits, the "burden" is largely imaginary. Some recruits aren't doing anything remotely burdensome or even minimally useful. (I'm looking at you, Culture & Recreation Girl!) It's propaganda.

From a purely rational military point of view, it greatly disturbs me that certain officials are so obsessed with enlisting every last 18-year-old in the country, even if it means a waste of funds for completely meaningless duties, when Israel is surrounded on every border by masses of terrorists who are horrifically savage and intent on the genocide of every Jew in Eretz Yisrael.
 
Why are certain politicians and certain military officials so much more obsessed about ensuring that Shmulik from Bnai Brak serves even the most meaningless role (as long as it’s in “official” army capacity) rather than learning Torah or getting a vocation or getting married and raising a family?
 
Why is that more important to them than securing Israeli citizens against war and genocide?
 
Rationally speaking, as political & military leaders in such a dangerous & volatile region, their ONLY focus should be on security.
 
So why the obsession with recruiting every last Tova, Dan, and Hirshy?

Note: For a purely charedi view on the whole topic of mandatory IDF recruitment, you can read how Rav Avigdor Miller answered this question:

How could you say that a person should avoid military service in Israel when there are millions of Jews living there who have to be protected?

It's shocking how current his answer was because he said this in 1978!!!

​After coming to Eretz Yisrael, I met a 30-something French woman living in a dorm at a seminary for French-speaking baalot teshuvah.
 
Born in France to Moroccan parents, she’d grown up in Paris. I liked her from the first. She spoke English and exuded a charismatic combination of iron self-assurance and a cheerful vibrancy.
 
When I asked her how she got to know English so well (nearly all the French I’ve met in Eretz Yisrael don’t seem to know English, so all the communication is in Hebrew), she mentioned that she lived in America for a year.
 
“Where?” I asked.
 
“Beverly Hills,” she said.

​ 
“Oh,” I said.

Beverly Hills is only for the rich and not where your average French mademoiselle would be able to spend a year. “What did you do there?” I asked.
 
She gave me a smile and a shrug. “I just wanted to experience America. I rented an apartment there, bought a Mercedes, and just lived life.”
 
“Okay,” I said. “But what do you do?”

I was intrigued as to what kind of a job she’d snagged to support that lifestyle.
 
Her smile became more self-conscious. “Shopping,” she said. “Mostly shopping. Clubs. I made a lot of friends and we did stuff together. The beach.”
 
Okay, but what job did she have?
 
“I didn’t have a job,” she finally explained with her slight smile. “I was taking a break from my job.”

This just did not compute in my mind.

​“Wait a minute,” I said. “You lived in Beverly Hills for a year with a Mercedes and shopping—just from your savings?”
 
She nodded.
 
“What kind of job did you have before?” I needed to know.
 
In short, she specialized in a niche branch of law, which made her fabulously wealthy.
 
And as I got to know her, I discovered some amazing stuff about her.

​While many of the super-rich spend a lot of time at the office, there is apparently another society of the super-rich who desire to live in a state of permanent relaxation on an island paradise.
 
At first, she enjoyed herself quite a lot.
 
But as time went on, she noticed that many of her colleagues needed to drink or drug themselves in order to deal with the sheer meaninglessness of living in the perfect paradise.

​Others turned to Eastern belief systems and meditation.
 
I’m not sure if she’d even hit 30 at this point, but she realized that she had her whole life ahead of her.
 
And this was it.
 
At one point, one of the men on the island said something to her that for the life of me, I cannot remember. But he basically pointed out that this level of luxury was kind of a curse and that whether people were meditating or partying, it was all sort of pointless.
 
The truth of this struck her smothered pinteleh Yid, and not long after, she decided to leave the island.
 
“I wonder if he ever left?” she mused. “He was also Jewish. I hope he’s religious now.”

​Back in Paris, she met a nice Jewish doctor and they married.

Then she started attending shiurim and decided to become fully mitzvah-observant.

​Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t on-board with that, so after 2 years of marriage, they divorced.
 
“I was sad for a very long time,” she told me with a soft heaviness. “He was a very nice man.”
 
Then she came to the French seminary in Eretz Yisrael, where I met her.
 
I remained gob-smacked by how content she seemed sharing a mediocre dorm room with 2 other French girls—much younger than she, BTW—after all that luxuriant living.
 
She married another French baal teshuvah. The wedding took place in a very normal, not-extravagant Jerusalem hall, then they lived in a small apartment in the middle of Jerusalem.

The rent in that area is pricey, but the apartment was unimpressive and stood in an old dumpy building on a street full of the exhaust and noise of constant traffic.
 
(Okay, and I know this is impolite of me, but I couldn’t help wondering what happened to all her money that she had such a non-opulent wedding and lived in such a plain apartment. I think she decided to put a big chunk of it in savings and live under their means—which was yet another good decision on her part.)
 
I ran into her one day as she stood leaning against the rail on an outside stairway.

Her shoulders sagged and her mouth pouted in the charming way mouths do among the French when they're feeling glum. After greeting her, I asked her what was wrong.
 
Giving me a doleful gaze, she explained that “all the stuff about mitzvot and halachot sounds so inspiring in class, but really, checking rice is very tedious.”
 
Well, yes. It is.
 
Soon enough, she started having one child after the other. She was happy, busy, frazzled, and determined all in one.
 
Then with my own marriage, child-bearing-and-rearing, plus moving around, we lost contact.

But I never lost my respect and admiration for her.
 
I never heard her yearn for any part of her old life.

But did she?

Did she ever look at her life on a particularly vexing and sleep-deprived day and say, “I gave up my Tahitian Paradise for THIS?!!”
 
I have no idea.
 
But the point about her journey is this: She is a regular person who did a very special thing.
 
She gave up Paradise on Earth for a life of Torah and mitzvot in Eretz Yisrael.
 
And as far as I know, she never looked back. (Or if she did, she never complained out loud. Well, not to me, anyway.)
 
Yet there’s another lesson here. 

She didn’t go straight from Paradise Island to full Torah-observance in a crammed in a city apartment with a new husband and 2 kids.
 
It was a journey.
 
In fact, even the decadent life in Beverly Hills wasn’t meaningless enough.

​It was only when she luxuriated in the perfect life of an island paradise among the super-wealthy that she hit rock-bottom, and Hashem sent her the exact words she needed to hear.
 
And then it took another few years to start becoming frum, realize her first husband would not adjust, get divorced, then move to Eretz Yisrael.

​And when she arrived back in Paris after Tahiti, did anyone realize she was on her way to a fully religious life in Eretz Yisrael?
 
No.
 
Did she even realize it herself?
 
No.
 
But she was.
 
And the entire journey of mesirut nefesh started with one step:
 
She left the island.
 
Before anything else, she needed to come to the realization that lounging around in tropical extravagance was not an appropriate way to live the rest of her life.

Then she needed to act on it.
 
And that’s the big special choice (and 3rd lesson) here:

​She chose to leave the island.
 
And making that correct choice led to a series of other correct choices falling into place.
 
I think these stories are so important because while she’s a wonderful person, she is not a tzaddekes. (Most people aren't.) If you knew her, while you’d probably like her, you wouldn’t think she is this incredibly special person capable of such astounding mesirut nefesh (which she herself didn't consider astounding).
 
She struggled with the stresses and tedium of life just like everyone else. She had her ups and downs just like everyone else.
 
She was a wholly regular person.
 
Yet she made this extraordinary decision (which she doesn’t consider extraordinary at all because to her, the truth was fairly straight-forward and she is a decisive proactive person).
 
She left the island.
 
And this shows that anyone is capable of extraordinary acts.
 
You don’t need to be “special” or “great” to do great things.

One alert reader wrote in to point out the correlation between the earthquakes Israel received yesterday and this ridiculous tamei event that is occurring at the same time in Eretz HaKodesh.

To make matters worse, there is the usual absurdity of well-intended yet misguided Jews welcoming a performer who led the way in forging the social acceptance of brazenness, rampant pritzut, gender-morphing, and same-gender-attraction.

​In fact, remembering the performer's influence on the society of my youth (and this performer had a MASSIVE influence on American teens and pre-teens), I firmly believe she shares responsibility for the downward spiral of American society and mores today.

Yet she comes off as heroic because she ignores BDS and comes to shmutz up our Land despite their opposition.

This is when I am SO GRATEFUL for a Torah hashkafah and for all the frum Jews who give shiurim and write articles promoting the authentic Torah view.

Simply put: There are some people who make you just want to beg them to boycott you.

"PLEASE capitulate to BDS!" you want to cry out. "Don't have ANYTHING to do with us! PLEASE boycott us! PLEEEEESE!"

We know that this is a Land that vomits out her inhabitants when they get too far from their Torah roots.

We also know that Hashem brings earthquakes for certain sins.

But seeing as no one here is an Israeli government official, what can we do?

​So based on different shiurim I've heard & sources I've read, the following is good advice:

• Let Hashem hear your protest.

​You don't need to take to the streets. Just standing in your kitchen or waiting at the stoplight in your car, you can say:

"Hashem, I protest this tamei event in Your Precious Land! I totally oppose such tumah shmutzing up the beautiful Inherintance You have so generously bequeathed to us! You don't like it, so I don't like it either!"

(I don't mean you should frighten children or other drivers, but it's very beneficial to find the time to offer up your protest.)

This is especially good because while we need to give the benefit of the doubt (i.e., "They don't know this event is wrong and an awful chilul Hashem"), that never means that the forbidden is permitted or okay. We can say, "These people don't understand, but I do understand. And therefore, I protest on Your Behalf, Hashem. I'm on Your Side."

• Say Tehillim.

Any Tehillim. It always sweetens din. The 10 psalms comprising the Tikkun Haklali are wonderful because a tikkun fixes and rectifies things:
Tikkun Haklali in Hebrew

(For an English translation or an English transliteration, press the "abc" at the center-bottom or the "ת-A" at the bottom right.)

• Do teshuvah.

Ask yourself how you might have possibly contributed to this chilul Hashem. Do you need to strengthen yourself in tsniut? Shemirat einayim? Separating yourself from non-Jewish values, beliefs, or entertainment?

Any step you take toward cleansing out your own spiritual gunk is really, really powerful and good.

You can even take on a kabalah of not doing something beneath your Torah-infused dignity for the duration of this event.

Everything helps. Don't think that you or your actions are too small or insignificant to matter.

You matter.

• Learn more Torah.

This is one of the three pillars of the world, along with prayer and acts of loving-kindness.

And again, even a baby-step in this direction is huge.

Even one more word of Torah is significant.

​You and your Torah-learning matter.

• Tzedakah

Giving money to the poor or to causes that actually help people (i.e., not the local art museum) sweetens din and because one of the words for money is "damim," which means "blood" in plural form, giving tzedakah is like giving of your life - a wonderful atonement that doesn't harm you and benefits the other.
​

• Say Pitum Haketoret

Found in any Orthodox prayerbook, reciting the procedure of the Pitum Haketoret (The Incense Offering) is a wonderful segulah.

Back in the time of the Beit Hamikdash, this procedure carried out by the Cohen protected Yerushalayim from very bad things.

It was a primary counter-agent against spiritual tumah/contamination. It literally cleansed the environment, both physically and spiritually.

Nowadays, reciting this with as much kavanah as you can releases its original protection. 

It also has the power to improve marital harmony, health, and livelihood.

Ideally, it's recited at the beginning of Shacharit (Morning Prayer), at the end of Shacharit, and at the beginning of Mincha (Afternoon Prayer).

If you're not saying it at all, try saying it once in the morning. 

If you're already saying it once or twice a day, then for this duration, try saying it 2 or 3 times a day.

If you are already saying it 3 times a day (and if you're a minyan man, then you probably already are), then try adding extra kavanah to it.

For more information (and there is a lot more to know about this), please read:
http://www.jewishmag.co.il/11mag/mystic/mystic.htm

And here you can see a list of the Kli Yakar's symbolism for various aspects & vessels of the Ketoret ceremony (at the beginning of the post):
Parshat Titzaveh

​There are other things I'm forgetting, but this is what I've remembered for now.

May Hashem have mercy on us all & may we all return to Him with teshuvah from love.

Despite my best efforts to ignore it, Israeli election time is upon us again.

And yet again, despite the wide choice of political parties, I feel there is no one to vote for.

Too bad about Eli Yishai, who is really cut from a different (and much better) cloth of politician.

Anyway, I have one son who makes a decent living and has been offering 200-300 shekels to anyone of us that votes for Likud. 

(Not a snowball's chance on Venus of that happening, my son.)

My other kids are in institutions and belong to a society that all benefits from Shas.

The majority of the Sefardi Gedolei Hador say to vote for Shas.

So I considered going with a minority daas Torah which says, don't participate in anything run by this Erev Rav government -- meaning, don't vote at all.

The truth is that whether you vote or not, it doesn't matter. Hashem runs everything and the heart of the ruler is in His Hands. So I don't really sweat elections too much.

Yet when I mistakenly blurted this out to my family, I was met with scandalized faces.

Then my offspring rose up against me (not in a bad way) using their best lomdus-attack skills (though not in a chutzpadik way), awakening me to the realization that I might be setting a bad example by not voting at all when the Gedolim they listen to have said to vote.

My Moroccan-Israeli husband was more good-humored and gentler about encouraging me to vote for Shas. But like me, he also believes in Hashem too solidly to get really worked up about politics.

Then a man who once tutored one of my sons in Gemara called up and made a special plea for us to vote for Shas because Shas pays for him to tutor and all the help he's able to grant struggling 8th-grade boys comes from Shas.

That kind of pre-election plea never happened to us before, so I took it as personal direction from Shamayim.

So if you see a frum lady with sagging shoulders and a grim face dragging herself to the polls on Tuesday, that's me. (Or at least, someone who maybe feels like me...)

But if you want to know what's REALLY in my heart, you can read this Q&A from Toras Avigdor:

Political parties aside, just as one example: Are you a frum housewife?

​And even if you're not a frum housewife ;-), do any of the following apply to you?:

Do you do your best to love the Am that Hashem loves?

Are you sincerely trying to internalize wholehearted Jewish emuna?

Then you're doing more for Am Yisrael & Eretz Yisrael than any politician or political party.

You'll be written up in Eliyahu Hanavi's book and affirmed with Hashem's Stamp.

​Why? Because you are the only real "party" there is.

But the other point I wanted to make is about the bumbling, fumbling awkwardness that sometimes accompanies ruchniut (spirituality).
 
For example, being fruitful and multiplying is a very spiritual activity.

Yet mothers of small children know that you can’t always be polished no matter how hard you try. Maybe you’ve got baby spit-up on your navy skirt and you don’t even notice.
 
Maybe you didn’t even see the person who just said hi to you because you’re trying to cross the street while pushing a double stroller with two other kids holding onto the sides and all your frantic head-twisting to keep track of everyone—plus the wind—just nudged your hair-covering over one of your eyes. 
 
Sometimes, before you know Hebrew or understand how a frum prayer service works, you get lost in the davening. You’re on the wrong page, you don’t stand up with everyone on time or else you stand at the wrong times, and so on.
 
And this is all SO NORMAL.
 
Sure, I could’ve described the above story as follows:
One morning, the young woman sitting next to me on the bus held up her siddur and invited me to say Amen to her brachot. Of course, I gladly complied—and so did the woman sitting behind us.
 
It felt so good to be in this warm nest of brachot and to bond with perfect strangers because after all, we really are one family.
 
Only in Israel!
 
And there would be nothing wrong with writing the above.

In fact, writers edit out the "static" all the time—not to deceive the reader (the warm fuzzy familial feelings are totally real)—but to make smoother reading for the reader. Otherwise, it’s like reading something transcribed from a stutterer.
 
But I decided to write it up exactly how it played out, with all the fumbles and bumbles, because that’s all part of authentic ruchnius.

You can be clumsy and awkward in mitzvot, yet feel really good all at the same time.

And that's because you ARE doing something really good—even if you're fumbling with it.
 
Those two women on the bus put me in such a good mood, despite all the awkward bits of it.
 
It felt really good, we all accomplished something spiritual we wouldn’t have otherwise, we bonded, and…
 
…it was good in Hashem's Eyes.

While I don't know the whole spiritual message behind the bus-overturn tragedy that happened on the Modiin-Jerusalem 443 route, I do want to point out something else.

While we need to pray for and assist the survivors and mourn those who died, it's also important to realize something revealed by my son:

Many people meant to be on that bus ended up missing it.

​And it wasn't their fault.

Two boys who learn in my son's yeshivah intended to take that bus. Familiar with that bus's timetable, they stopped in at a nearby grocery store to pick up some nosh when the bus suddenly sped by. 

In fact, several other potential passengers were in that same store and also shocked that the bus came early and didn't stop.

(In routes between cities, buses don't come as often and a missed bus is a huge inconvenience to the potential passengers -- something the drivers are aware of, making them more likely to wait for a person running after them and yelling, "Wait!")

This missed bus was their salvation, as they found out later.

It reminds me of similar incident that happened around the time of suicide-bombings on the buses in Tel Aviv & Yerushalayim.

An American girl was attending Tel Aviv University's one-year program for English-speakers.

When the crowded bus pulled up at the stop where she waited, she tried to get on, but the driver started yelling at her, "There's no room! Get off! Wait for the next bus!"

Startled, she protested that there was room as she was already inside the bus.

But the driver kept yelling at her and with a final shout of "There's no place for you here!", he shoved her off the bus.

Living in Eretz Yisrael for 25 years, I've never seen a bus driver do that.

Then the bus continued along its route and...

...exploded.

That's why, indeed, there was no place for her on the bus.

It wasn't her time yet and it wasn't her way to go either.

(BTW, she didn't leave her dorm for a month after that.)

So while we need to remember & be sensitive to the pain of the victims of this tragedy and the pain of their families, and to help them and daven for them any way we can, we should also remember that nothing is truly an accident.

And we should ask Hashem what message He wants us to understand from this.

Hopefully, we won't need to suffer anymore tragedies and the Geula will come already, b'ezrat Hashem.

Please see Neshama's blog for a list of names for davening:
Route 443 Accident Victims Need Your Prayers

Also, Hamodia included these names:
Chemdatia Ditza bat Rivka
Tamar bat Rivka
Moshe ben Chana Hendel

May everyone have a refuah shlaima of the nefesh & guf b'toch sha'ar cholei Yisrael.

A summary of events follows (the REAL events, not El Al’s fairy tale of the monstrous penguins)...
 
Here are 4 eyewitness testimonies:

What Really Happened on Flight 002
Yaakov "Ketzaleh" Katz is an Israeli hero.

​While I’m not one of his voters (he’s in the religious Zionist camp while I’m in the charedi one), I have profound respect for the kind of Jew who, as he’s lying wounded on the battleground and almost completely split in two, cares only for his secular comrade’s spiritual progress.
 
(Please see HERE for that whole story.)
 
That’s my kind of Jew!
 
And I’ll certainly believe him over El Al’s Facebook page any day.
 
A Few Thoughts From a Passenger on El Al Flight 002
A very level-headed & convincing account of events.

FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT: El Al Fiasco Ends in Display of Achdus, Kiddush Hashem on Shabbos in Athens
​I think his point about it all maybe being Hashem's way of getting funding for a mikveh is a good one.
 
El-Al Sponsered Shabbos of Unity (also an eyewitness report)
Omigosh, you mean it was some secular people yelling at some of the shomrei Shabbat, and not the other way around?
 
Could it be? But secular Israelis NEVER raise their voice to one another. Hmm…I’ll have to get back to you on this one. (Just kidding.)
 
No, but seriously. It seems that regardless of the passenger’s religious observance, nearly all the Jews on the plane were behaving with achdut and helpfulness.
 
And as many others pointed out, it wasn’t a secular-religious issue as portrayed in the media.
 
I totally agree with Ben Chafetz, that the fiasco could’ve been reported in a very positive way -- to El-Al's benefit.
 
From a religious point of view, it was more of a success than a failure (although I'm very sorry for the inconvenience & stress everyone experienced before & after this amazing Shabbat):
​

• Dozens of different types of Jews being mosser nefesh for Shabbat.
• Wonderful achdus and achvah.
• Monstrous penguins—oops! I mean charedim—and other types of religious Jews sharing their mehadrin meals with their secular brothers and sisters who didn’t receive any food at all.
• Chabad does it again! With only a few hours to prepare for hundreds of people in all different situations (mothers with small children, Chassidic businessmen, rabbis, people with medical issues, etc.), the Hendels merited enormous success & blessing.
• All culminating in an unforgettable Shabbat and a particularly stunning kiddush Hashem.

 
After reading this, I actually felt bad for the committed Sabbath-transgressors who went on to catch another flight on a different airline for Shabbat.

For sure, the frum Jews enjoyed their weekend much more on both the physical and the spiritual levels.

May we all merit to join together in such achdut & chessed around a mitzvah.

​One morning, I was davening as usual. But between prayers, I would drift off into daydreaming.
 
Wasting that time meant that davening stretched a lot longer than necessary—and for no good reason.
 
Furthermore, I knew that for Shemoneh Esrei (the Standing Silent Prayer), I needed to change into more appropriate clothes.
 
One should daven Shemoneh Esrei dressed as one would to open the door to someone—and not in a nightgown (albeit a very tsnius nightgown).
 
So I consciously realized that I needed to change, but decided to daven Shemoneh Esrei anyway because I didn’t feel like wasting any more time and to just jump into Shemoneh Esrei.
 
I just started Shemoneh Esrei when the phone rang.
 
How frustrating! If only I’d gotten a rein on my daydreaming before, I’d have davened surrounded by quiet and be finished already, able to answer—rather than trying to daven while distracted by the phone.
 
A minute after the phone stopped ringing, I heard a knock on the door—more distraction. Was it connected to the ringing phone?
 
And I still couldn’t answer.
 
Yet because in Eretz Yisrael, most Jews feel like family with each other, my dear beloved brother the postman opened the door a crack and said, “Oops, sorry,” laid a package on the cabinet near the door, then closed the door and left.
 
I admit it caused me a fit of giggles as I stood before my Creator.
 
It also caused me strong feelings of shame as a strange man saw me in my nightgown (although there wasn’t anything to see because it’s very modest, but still; it’s not appropriate).
 
What was Hashem trying to tell me?
 
It wasn’t hard to figure out.
 
Number 1:
Had I focused on davening with zerizut (not davening fast, but commit to davening without getting distracted between sections), I would’ve been able to daven in peace and then able to answer the phone and the door.
 
Hashem gave me the quiet space in which to daven, but I didn’t make good use of His Generosity.
 
Number 2:
​I really need to be dressed appropriately—at least how I would dress to answer the door—when I’m davening Shemoneh Esrei. Had I been dressed appropriately, I never would’ve been embarrassed or ashamed when being seen by my dear beloved brother the postman.
 
So I’ve been trying to apply these newfound lessons to my morning davening...

​...except for the times when I forget. ;-)