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4 hours ago
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
OUR RABI & TZAHAL - ISRAEL DEFENCE FORCE -PART Q
Posted by Mordechai Friedfertig at 2:00 PM
remplaza_fecha('31 December 2008');
31
Dec
2008
Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah Ha-Cohain KookOur Rabbi related: "A student of our Yeshiva approached me. I said to him: 'At first I did not recognize you.' He was wearing the army uniform. You know that I relate to this uniform in holiness. A lovely and precious man, full of G-d-fearing and holiness was approaching, and he was wearing an army uniform. At that occurrence I mentioned what I said at one wedding [of Ha-Rav She’ar Yashuv Cohain], when the groom came dressed in an army uniform. There were some who were pointing one that it is inappropriate for a groom to stand under the chuppah with an army uniform. In Yerushalayim, the Holy City, it was customary that they came with Shabbat clothing, holy clothing, like a streimel. I will tell you the truth. The holiness of the streimel - I do not know if it is one-hundred percent clear. It was made holy after the fact. Many righteous and holy Geonim (great rabbis) certainly wore it. There is certainly so much trembling of holiness before them, and we are dirt under the souls of their feet, and on account of this fact, the streimel was made holy. Also Yiddish, the language of Exile, was made holy because of its great use in words of holiness. But from the outset - it is not so certain. In comparison, the holiness of the army uniform in Israel is fundamental, essentially holiness. This is the holiness of accessories of a mitzvah, from every perspective, of all of the tanks, the holiness of our tanks will appear tomorrow [in the military parade of Yom Ha-Atzmaut]." (Sichot Rabbenu, Yom Ha-Atzmaut 5727, Mizmor 19 of Medinat Yisrael, pg. 76 #11).
It once happened that our Rabbi sat next to a taxi driver who was wearing a Tzahal uniform, and our Rabbi was tapping on his leg during the entire trip. Before he got out the driver turned in surprise to the student who was escorting Ha-Rav and asked why the Rabbi was acting this way. The student responded that this was on account of our Rabbi's great love of the holy Tzahal uniform.
Our Rabbi was teaching a class and a student, who was on leave from the army, was standing next to him. During the entire time, our Rabbi rested his hand on the student's arm. At the end of the class, another student asked about this. Our Rabbi explained: "It is simple. He was wearing a Tzahal uniform and I was touching holiness the entire time." (Ha-Rav Yehoshua Zuckerman – Iturei Yeryshalayim #6)
taken from : Torat HaRav Aviner
HILCHOT TZAVA - HALACHOT OF THE ARMY
Posted by Mordechai Friedfertig at 5:36 AM
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31
Dec
2008
A soldier/cohain who killed an enemyQuestion: Can a soldier/cohain who kills an enemy still say the "Birkat Cohain" (In the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 128:35, Rav Yosef Karo rules that a cohain who killed another person may not recite this blessing)?Answer: Certainly. He is not a murderer but, on the contrary, a rescuer of Jews (see Shut Yechaveh Da'at 2:14).
A soldier who did not davenQuestion: If a soldier did not daven because of a military operation or guard duty, should he do "tashlumim" (one who misses davening the Shemoneh Esrei due to circumstances beyond his control can compensate for the missed Shemoneh Esrei by davening a second Shemoneh Esrei during the next davening)?Answer: There is no need. One who is involved in a mitzvah is exempt from another mitzvah.
A soldier mistakenly killedQuestion: Is a soldier who is mistakenly killed by another soldier who thought he was a terrorist considered to have been killed "al Kiddush Hashem" (sanctifying Hashem's Name)?
Answer: Yes, since there are errors within the framework of Tzahal's activities and this is taken into consideration by the military. This is also the ruling for someone who is killed in training exercises, since the exercises also contain a level of deterrence.
Freezing semen before being draftedQuestion: Is it permissible to freeze semen before being drafted into the army or is it wantonly destroying one's seed?Answer: It is not wantonly destroying seed since the purpose is to produce offspring. However, we do not act in this way since if a child is born from a soldier who is killed, he will be fatherless. This would also cause a weakened sense of military courage."Get Milchama" – A wartime divorceQuestion: We learn in the Book of Shmuel (2 11) that anyone who went to war in King David's army wrote a divorce for his wife to avoid her becoming an "Agunah" (a wife unable to remarry) in case he went missing in battle. Why don't we act this way during our time?
Answer: The truth is that Rabbis did do this various times, including when Jews served in non-Jewish armies, but they ceased doing so when they saw that it broke the soldiers' spirit. By the way, the Ba'al Ha-Turim says that Moshe Rabbenu already acted this way, and King David learned it from him (See Ba'al Ha-Turim to Bamidbar 31:21).
An order to evacuate
Question: I understand the need to obey military orders in order to prevent a breakdown in the army and a crisis, but I simply am unable to evacuate my brothers. I have served in the reserves for over a year and am loyal to the State and army, but I am unable to fulfill this command. I can refrain for participating with any excuse, but I see an importance in my commanders knowing that in my view it is impossible to be involved in this sin. What should I do?
Answer: If you are unable, then you are unable, Baruch Hashem. Although they say in the army: "There is no such thing as unable, there is only 'I don't want to,'" this is not always true. Occasionally, a soldier is truly unable. A soldier is sometimes unable to shoot, because he simply does not have a weapon, and sometimes a soldier is unable because he does not have motivation. Motivation is essentially built upon the soldiers’ world of ideals. Napoleon said: motivation is three times greater than a weapon. If I had to evacuate my brothers, I would either faint on the spot or feel sick, lacking any ability to perform it. I have seen nurses faint in a hospital from what they saw. But waving the flag of refusal as an instrument to influence the political process is a very distant path. It is not possible that soldiers, with all their value and importance, can alone decide the political process. It must be decided by the entire Nation.
An aliyah to the Torah on a fast day for a soldier who ateQuestion: Can a soldier who must eat in order to perform his duty on a fast day receive an aliyah to the Torah?
Answer: There are arguments either way, and everyone should act in a manner which seems proper to him.
taken from:Torat HaRav Aviner
WHAT WE TEACH OUR CHILDREN - 2
What we Teach Our Children - 2
Following my earlier post with this title, which mentioned that my son is preparing to go to war, Faux Ibrahim responded in an accusatory tone:
In this case also. It just so happens that my laptop contains something I wrote seven years ago that relates head on to Faux-Ibrahim's question; the son in the story was Meir, Achikam's older brother.
I dare Faux-Ibrahim or anyone else to show me parents anywhere in the world, and anytime in history, who do or did as good a job of preparing their sons to be moral warriors. The story of Meir and I in December 2001 is highly unusual - everywhere except in Israel. Here, it's banal. The only advantage I can claim over all the other fathers around here is that my ability to write English is better than most, Hebrew being their language.
taken from :Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations(http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
If your son was ordered to shoot a bound and blindfolded prisoner in the foot, what do you think he would do?Ibrahim is the false name chosen by a Lefty fellow from Rosario, Argentina, who realizes that his obsession with Israel's wrongdoing and mostly with what he perceives as its wrongdoing, must be cast as coming from an Arab; otherwise the only explanation can be that he's an antisemite. Like many of his fellow antisemites, most of what he has to say is foolish, silly, or otherwise unserious; the main reason to give him any attention at all is not for the content of his rants but for insights into his impulses and rationalizations. Still, as some readers will have noticed, from time to time I use him as a useful foil.
And, perhaps more importantly, what do you think he should do?
In this case also. It just so happens that my laptop contains something I wrote seven years ago that relates head on to Faux-Ibrahim's question; the son in the story was Meir, Achikam's older brother.
I dare Faux-Ibrahim or anyone else to show me parents anywhere in the world, and anytime in history, who do or did as good a job of preparing their sons to be moral warriors. The story of Meir and I in December 2001 is highly unusual - everywhere except in Israel. Here, it's banal. The only advantage I can claim over all the other fathers around here is that my ability to write English is better than most, Hebrew being their language.
taken from :Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations(http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
THE DEMON HISTORY BEQUEATHS US
History matters. Not because people know about it, think about it, and learn its lessons so as not to repeat its mistakes. As a general rule people don't know history, they often don't think, and learning from history is an extremely rare art.
History matters because it forms the world we live in even when we never give it a thought; it informs our understanding of the world, our decisions and our actions. This is not necessarily bad, though the founders of rational thought did think we should develop the ability to question our inheritance and form our own opinions of it. They were only partially successful, and the counter forces often seem stronger, three or four centuries later.
The pathologies of the progressive intellectuals of rich and pampered Western Europe are so well known I'll merely run by them for a moment, by way of context for a pathology I've written less about. The gang I sometime call the Guardianistas (not my invention, of course) have three major pathologies. First, they're so stricken with guilt for the colonial, or imperial, past of their nations (UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Iberia, and, with a stretch, Italy) that they think colonialism is the arch-template for understanding the relationships between national groups, always and everywhere, and that the top dogs of colonialism are mostly dogs, simply because they were on top: it's an understanding of the world that starts from the need to condemn and the need to exonerate, and thinks in theoretical categories which may be useful for understanding what goes on or went on, but often isn't. I suppose this categorizing imperative comes from Marxism, unless it's the other way around and they used to flock to Marxism because it categorized people so comfortingly.
The second pathology is hatred of the Jews. This emotion is so deeply embedded in Western culture, so central to it, that a concerted and conscious effort is required to extirpate it. Some individuals were always immune, others learned to resist, and the example of both groups condemns the rest by demonstrating that it is possible, and those who don't free themselves from the pathology bear responsibility for their choice not to. Hatred of the Jews, alas, is very much alive and thriving, in a variety of versions, in much of what used to be called Christendom, and in large swathes of the Muslim world.
Declaring the Jews, contrary to all evidence, as the worst of colonials, combines the two pathologies beautifully, and oh-so-conveniently. It even adds potency to the hatred of the United States, perceived of, in this scheme, as the largest colonial power enamored with Israel, the worst colonial force.
America is a large place, and there are quite a number of self-hating Americans who have eagerly accepted this mantle, but they are nevertheless a small minority (and they have not just elected a like-minded president, as they fervently hoped). America's history dictates that it's pathologies are different - indeed, the new president stands at their center, and demonstrates that sometimes, at least, America is rather good at facing its demons.
The third pathology of of the Guradianistas, but shared with many others, is the destruction of moral thought.
Actually, however, my intention for this post was to write about the Germans. The Germans don't share the Guardianiasta's pathology, because they have a different history. The antisemitism of their history was far more violent and destructive, for starters, which makes them far more wary. Not necessarily more successful, mind you, on more intelligent, but wary. Discussions of things Jewish in Germany are often stilted, shallow, inhibited and frustrating, because everyone is frightened of saying something wrong; as a German-speaking Jew I've often had the comic experience of being the only one in a room full of intelligent Germans willing to speak his mind - to gasps of astonishment from everyone else.
When it comes to Israel, the German history dictates that German positions be measured, and indeed German diplomacy traditionally is closer to Israel's positions than just about anyone else in Western Europe. (The Eastern Europeans, with yet another history, do it differently. See the Czech Foreign Minister, for example, earlier today saying simply and out loud that Hamas is to blame for the present round of violence. Czech history expressing itself on matters of the Mideast). Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and present Chancellor Angela Merkl come to mind as impressive examples of this German expression of history.
And yet there is another way to go, too, and it plays out differently when relating to Israel. Perhaps the single most important pathology of post-Nazi Germany is the refusal to countenance warfare of any sort. You can see where this came from. Twice in the 20th century the Germans started major wars so as to achieve the goals they'd set themselves. The first time was a disaster, the second time was calamitious on an epic scale - for the Germans. Then, having achieved none of their goals and all of that destruction, the decades of peace gave them just about everything they'd itended to acquire, or a better version of it they hadn't even thought of. Ergo: War is always bad, it can never achieve anything positive, no warlike action can ever be justified in any way, and idiots who insist on wagnig war in spite of all this are criminals of the worst sort.
Israel insists on waging war from time to time. Do you see where this leads?
For those of you who are germanically-challenged, the article is a silly stirnging together of some of the evidence that Israel's wars haven't yet brought it German-style peace with its neighbors, combined with a scrupulous refusal to see any cases where Israeli use of power has ever achieved anything. It's interesting in that the author has no patience for Hamas, and couches his deliberations, sort of, in the normative German template: if you refrain from violence you'll glean all the benefits we'd like you to have (after all, we're not antisemites, and we're not against Israel; only against its stupidity).
It quite overlooks that Hamas has every intention of achieving all sorts of political goals by the use of violence. Which brings us to the German corollary of the Gurdianista's amalgamation of pathologies, anti-colonialism with hatred of the Jews. Germans such as Mr. Schmitz, writing in the second-most important paper in Germany, applies the "no violence ever" thesis to the Israelis, but not to their enemies (Or, I expect, to the Russians, or the Chinese). One wonders where this selectivity comes from, doesn't one.
As for the pathologies Jews have inherited from their history: tomorrow, perhaps.PS. No, I'm not following the Marxist tradition of explaining people's actions and determining their moral stature by their group. I'm describing common patterns - but individuals are free, and often do, shake them off.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
The Parade of antisemites at The Guardian includes an article by one Ed Husain. He trots out all the usual claptrap about how Palestinian hatred is all Israel's fault; given his elevated status of Person of (light) Color at a newspaper where skin color confers moral stature, he admonishes his readers that actually, they, the descendants of imperialism, are the true culprits for the mess and must now rectify the damage. So for, so boring. But then he has this magnificent line:
How can the children of Holocaust survivors become such brutal killers? And during the Sabbath?
taken from: Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
IN ISRAEL, HOSPITALITY REPLACES THE NEED FOR REFUGEE CAMPS
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3646534,00.html
For those who don’t speak Hebrew well, my summary:
In most countries, in a time of war which forces a population to be displaced, you get a refugee problem.
In Israel, when rockets force the southern population to be displaced, you get an overflow of hospitality from the rest of the country.
Truly inspiring.
taken from : Tzipiyah.com
MAY HE BLESS THE FIGHTERS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENCE FORCE
-- may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Forces
He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Forces, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God, from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the approach of the Aravah, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.May the Almighty cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighters from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.May He lead our enemies under our soldiers' sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is the Lord your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.Now let us respond: Amen.
taken from B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)
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