In two unusually harsh letters issued Wednesday, 97-year-old Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, the head of the Edah HaChareidis, lashed out at Israeli authorities over the recent arrests of ultra-Orthodox draft evaders. The letters came amid a wave of enforcement actions by police and military police against Haredi draft refusers.
In a letter sent to a mass protest in Jerusalem, Sternbuch called the current enforcement period “severe persecution” and attacked the government and army. He wrote, “There is no day whose curse is not greater than the previous one, and the authorities of evil continue in their wickedness to act to change and corrupt the religious public.” He also referred to the 48 yeshiva students now held in military prison, writing that “the precious children of Zion are being put under lock and bar, and even those who go out to protest against them are being beaten with terrible cruelty.”
In a second letter, addressed to thousands of married yeshiva students and yeshiva students in Israel and abroad, Sternbuch drew a direct connection between efforts to draft Haredim and the biblical command to wage war against Amalek, portrayed in Jewish tradition as the ultimate enemy. He said that when “the sword of the wicked” is raised against the halls of Torah and the yeshivas in the Holy Land, with the aim of uprooting and cutting off Jews from Torah study, the power of those who persecute Torah, whom he described as part of the “Erev Rav” and “from the side of Amalek,” will weaken.
Unlike the street protests of recent weeks, Sternbuch urged followers to fight back through what he called an internal spiritual struggle. He said the way to weaken the state authorities and cancel the “draft decree” is not violence, but by increasing uninterrupted study hours in yeshivas and kollels.
