You Don’t Have To Be A Zionist… April 30, 2007

to love Israel. Or to support IDF soldiers in their faith or to provide IDF soldiers with a holiday celebration.

The world-renowned kabbalists, Harav Ya’akov Hillel shlit”a and Ha’Rav David Batsri shlit”a will G-d willing, this Sunday, Lag Ba’Omer, be addressing a group of 500 IDF troops in Jerusalem. As the Jerusalem Post tells us:

Rabbi Ya’acov Hillel, head of the Ahavat Shalom Yeshiva and Rabbi David Batzri, head of Yeshivat Hashalom are scheduled to address the soldiers in Jerusalem Sunday on the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who, according to Jewish tradition, authored the Zohar, the basic text of Kabbala.Batzri’s son, Yitzhak, who is also slated to speak before the soldiers, said Kabbalists and soldiers had complementary roles in fighting Israel’s enemies….

Both Batzri and Hillel are students of Rabbi Salman Mutzafi, who was a senior member of the virulently anti-Zionist and now defunct Sephardi Edah Haredit. Like their teacher, neither Batzri nor Hillel vote in Israeli elections.

“We do not want to be participants in a state that passes laws inimical to Judaism,” said Yitzhak Batzri. But Batzri said that defending the Jewish people was a tremendous merit.

“By protecting the Jewish people those soldiers are doing an incredibly important mitzva,” he said. “Only Torah study is more important. But if a Jew is not learning Torah then he is obligated to enlist in the army.”

Exqueeze me? I’m sorry, what did the Rav’s son just say?

“But if a Jew is not learning Torah then he is obligated to enlist in the army.”

GASP!

Whether or not this statement changes an individual’s decision as to whether or not to enlist in IDF service or to remain in learning is irrelevant. Regardless of how the individual Jew or Jewish institution paskens, the statement has been said. By the son of a chacham.

[Said Yitzhak Batzri], “We learn from [the teaching of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel] that in every generation there are two planes of struggle: The primary one is spiritual and the secondary one is material. One takes place in the heavenly realm, the other on the battlefield.”"By protecting the Jewish people those soldiers are doing an incredibly important mitzva,” he said.

L’ma’an ha’Torah, that’s got to have some validity.

And keep in mind, these are gedolei Yisra’el, great Rabbis of Israel, who learned under anti-Zionists. And here they are, telling IDF soldiers that they’re doing a mitzva. Just for saving lives and defending lives of Jewish people.

You don’t have to be a Zionist — you don’t even have to support the medinah or vote in elections — to support Jews, Israel, or even, apparently, IDF personnel. So, hopefully, once and for all, this will end the “oh, you don’t consider yourself Zionist? So you think Israel should be destroyed and millions of Jews killed?” question.

And again, this has nothing to do with the ins and outs of Zionism or how “right” it is (or whether or not it is right, or what it even consists of in 2007). It just needs to be delineated: there’s such a thing as “Zionism” and such a thing as “supporting Israel” (and/or “supporting Jews”). Let’s delineate the two and enable ourselves to, like Offspring, keep them separated in our minds.