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March 25, 2005/Adar II 14 5765, Volume 57, No. 30
Orthodox protest to withdrawal varies
DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TEL AVIV -At Orthodox synagogues across Israel and the territories, a short prayer is being recited against the planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a portion of the northern West Bank.
The prayer asks for divine blessing for those "sons who are living selflessly and with perseverance in all parts of Judea, Samaria and Gaza," asking to "uplift their spirits and strengthen their heart" as they stand up against those who would wish them harm.
For many Orthodox Jews in Israel, the prayer taps into a deeply personal issue. Many of the Jewish settlers themselves are Orthodox. And many Orthodox Jews who live within the Green Line, Israel's pre-1967 borders, have relatives and friends who are settlers.
Across Israel's Orthodox spectrum, the majority of voices are solidly against the withdrawal plan. What varies is the degree of resistance that leading Orthodox figures are supporting.
Many Orthodox rabbis maintain that Israelis now are living in messianic times and so should be promoting Jewish expansion in biblical Israel aggressively. Those rabbis see Gaza as a biblical birthright, promised to the Jews by God.
However, many scholars say that during biblical times Gaza was part of the land promised to the Jews but never was part of the land actually conquered and inhabited by them. Questions of Israel's historical ties to Gaza aside, there are top Israeli rabbis, both within Israel proper and in the territories, who are calling for restraint and a focus on Jewish unity.
Members of Israel's national religious community are split on whether or not to disobey orders.
"I have spoken very clearly. I think that this kind of insubordination is intolerable in these circumstances. I think those soldiers there should obey" orders, said Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, the co-head of Yeshiva Har Etzion in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut.
Most religious lawmakers are against disengagement but have also been careful not to call for violence as a means of protest.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, like Lichtenstein and other rabbis, has warned of the dangers to Israeli society that could grow out of rabbis advising soldiers to refuse orders.
"I am unalterably opposed to those rabbinic voices which call upon the soldiers of the IDF to refuse to obey military orders of evacuation claiming that such orders are against absolute Torah law," Riskin wrote recently in the Jerusalem Post. "I humbly insist that such is not the case, that Torah law grants the right to a sovereign State of Israel to determine its borders, and that a call to refusal on religious grounds is tantamount to a call to civil war. The State of Israel can withstand the evacuation of settlers from Gaza; it cannot withstand a civil war."
Daniel Tropper, the founder of the Gesher Foundation, an Israeli organization that seeks to bridge the gaps between the secular and religious in Israel, said that because so many Orthodox Jews in Israel have ties to the settlements, the idea of disengagement is especially difficult for them to accept.
"While Zionism is very much weakened in the secular world, it is still very strong in the religious world, so dismantling settlements is very, very painful," Tropper said.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the chief rabbis of the Beit El settlement and the head of the Ateret HaCohanim yeshiva in Jerusalem's Old City, is against the idea of any kind of evacuation of Jews, but said that an internecine conflict should be avoided at all costs.
"I don't want a civil war, but to do protests is OK," Aviner said. "I don't want even one person to die here."
His opinions are sharply different from those held by Rabbi Zalman Melamed, the other chief rabbi at Beit El. Melamed, like Aviner, is a major halachic figure, who has publicly and repeatedly called on soldiers not to take part in anything related to the disengagement. His stance has received much support.
Lichtenstein, meanwhile, tries to give voice to the conflict facing the country and the Orthodox.
"From a national standpoint the country is undergoing surgery," he said. "That is always painful - but the question is what is going to be gained at the other end."
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