Rishon LeTzion Rav Yitzchak Yosef warned Thursday that the Chareidi community faces a difficult battle following the upcoming elections over the status of yeshiva bochurim, saying Shas will need significant political strength to address the draft issue and protect the Torah world.
Rav Yosef delivered the remarks at Shas’s first election gathering, attended by hundreds of party representatives from communities across Israel. His comments placed the draft controversy at the center of the party’s emerging election campaign.
“After the elections, we will have battles,” Rav Yosef said. “It will be very difficult. The entire issue of the drafting of yeshiva bochurim is something that touches everyone’s soul. Maran, my father, gave his life for the yeshiva bochurim. Reb Aryeh heard Maran crying over the yeshiva bochurim.”
Rav Yosef said the election results will determine how much political leverage Shas has when the time comes to address the status of yeshiva bochurim.
“After the elections, we will have to come and fix this issue. How will we fix it if we do not have power? We must have power.”
The Rishon LeTzion also pointed to religious issues being raised by other political parties, including proposals for civil marriage and public transportation on Shabbos, arguing that Shas needs sufficient political strength to fight those initiatives.
“There are all kinds of parties today making all kinds of declarations — civil marriage and traveling on Shabbos, nonsense that they are talking about — but we need to have power.”
At the same time, Rav Yosef emphasized that the Chareidi community’s focus on yeshiva bochurim and the Torah world should not be interpreted as a lack of concern for other Jews, including IDF soldiers.
“I want to say one more thing. We speak a great deal about yeshiva bochurim, about the Torah world, and that is how it should be; it comes first and foremost. But we must know that we love all of Am Yisroel, including the soldiers.”
Rav Yosef recalled that following the outbreak of the most recent war, he asked that arrangements be made for him to visit military installations and meet soldiers serving in different branches of the IDF.
“When the last war broke out,” Rav Yosef said, “I asked them to arrange for me to visit all the bases — in the air, at sea and on land. I blessed the soldiers. There was tremendous emotion.”
Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, meanwhile, used his address at the gathering to level serious accusations against left-wing organizations, claiming that enormous sums of money are being invested in efforts to suppress Chareidi voter turnout and weaken parties representing religious and traditional voters.
“They invested billions in campaigns through nonprofit organizations, with the goal of stopping and harming all the parties that have a tradition.
“They activated people from within the Chareidi community with very large amounts of money from the left, money whose entire purpose is to bring down the right-wing bloc. Once again, there is a campaign and large sums of money aimed at suppressing the vote, with the goal of harming the Chareidi parties. It is all under a Chareidi guise.
“Chareidi slogans, but the money is the same money,” Deri charged. “It is all from the left, through nonprofit organizations. They destroyed the Chareidi community. They harmed education. They harmed daycare centers. We must not fall into the trap they are setting for us.”
{Matzav.com}
