Purim is a holiday that all Israelis should be able to agree on: recalling a time of extreme danger for the Jewish people and giddily celebrating the demise of the perpetrator with drink, song and costumes.
But, unfortunately, as detailed in Friday’s Jerusalem Post, some of the people who fervently danced and revelled over the weekend at the survival of the Jews in Shushan are just as fervently praying for the demise of the Jewish state.
A video posted online last week showed some 1,000 ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from the Ateret Shlomo Yeshiva dancing and chanting at the wedding of the son of their yeshiva head Shalom Ber Sorotzkin: “We do not believe in the regime of the heretics, and we will not appear in their IDF draft centers.” Sorotzkin himself is seen singing along and cheering his students on.
The 'heretics' fund yeshivas
In 2022, the yeshiva received NIS 18 million ($5m.) from the government budget, paid for by the Israeli taxpayers; in 2023, it received NIS 25m. ($6m.), and last year, another NIS 18m.
The proposed state budget includes NIS 1.27 billion ($350 million) designated for yeshivas like Ateret Shlomo. An additional NIS 36m. is being allocated to NGOs that help yeshiva students avoid army service.
Reaction to the video of the yeshiva students, which has received nearly a million views, was fast and furious.
Yesh Atid initiated a process to revoke funding for Ateret Shlomo and to cancel its charitable tax status. And one of its MKs, kippa-wearing Elazar Stern wrote on X/Twitter: “They don’t believe in the government, but they believe in its money – and in the blood [of fallen soldiers protecting the state].”
Even coalition members, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the National Religious Party condemned the video, calling it “a shame and disgrace.”
Still, the coalition that he’s a member of continues to fund such anti-Zionist organizations that are intent on bringing down the country.
The Knesset Finance Committee on Wednesday approved funding for haredi yeshivas and educational institutions, including Ateret Shlomo – the very institution whose students were calling the state a “regime of heretics.”
Israel has a long-standing tradition of relying on the haredi parties to build a coalition, and it’s not different today. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs their votes to pass the budget, or else the government will collapse, triggering elections he might lose.
The time has come to end this expedient but illogical policy of funneling billions of shekels to parts of the nation that are not taking part in building and defending it.
There is no justification for a system that allows an entire sector to remain outside the workforce, outside the military, and outside the national effort, all while benefiting from the very state they curse. Israel was built on the idea of shared responsibility. If we want to preserve this country for future generations, we need to restore that principle.
In the next three months, the IDF plans to send out 14,000 draft notices to haredim (ultra-Orthodox) in addition to the 10,000 that have already been sent. So far, only 177 have enlisted. The IDF faces a severe shortage of manpower, and seeing the brazen yeshiva students not only refusing to acknowledge their responsibility but denigrating the institution that protects them, along with all Israeli citizens, is obscene.
Especially in the shadow of October 7 and the horrifying casualties the country and the IDF have suffered since, to refuse army service and call soldiers “heretics” is the ultimate display of disloyalty and deceit.
As Herb Keinon wrote in Friday’s Post, for years, a guiding halachic (Jewish legal) principle for Jews in the Diaspora has been not to provoke hostility from surrounding nations or non-Jewish governments when living under their rule.
In Israel, however, this principle does not seem to apply. Few things are more provocative for non-haredim than haredi rabbis and students gleefully rejecting the government and refusing to defend the state – all while taking its money – at a time when others are dying for it.
Hopefully, the video will be a wakeup call for those who still cave in to the heinous blackmail that the haredim have cast over Israel for far too long.
