Basic Law: Deception

I am a graduate of a Haredi yeshiva. I have deep respect for the Torah and for Torah study, and I believe that Torah study was and remains a foundational asset of the Jewish people, one that preserved it as a people throughout 2,000 years of exile, persecution and pogroms. Precisely for that reason, I think it is forbidden to use the Torah to deceive. Because that, in a single word, is the purpose of the so-called “Basic Law: Torah Study.” Ignore the background noise, go out, think, and ask yourselves: what is the sudden urgency that arose out of nowhere, after 2,000 years of exile plus 80 years of independence, to protect Torah study now and enshrine it in a Basic Law? This is not a public dispute about Torah study itself. Not even a debate about the wording of the law. Since the State of Israel was declared, it and the community of Torah scholars have gotten along very well without such a Basic Law. The Torah existed for thousands of years without it, Torah scholars studied it in synagogues, study halls and kollels for decades upon decades, and no one found any urgent need to anchor Torah study in law, certainly not in a Basic Law.

The answer is simple: the sudden, urgent need arose in the wake of the High Court of Justice ruling that struck down the “Torato Omanuto” arrangement, against the backdrop of the government’s moves to advance a new draft-dodging law. In other words, the real purpose of the Basic Law, approved in its first reading on Wednesday in the Knesset, is not to protect Torah study as a value, not even to protect Torah scholars as a population with unique needs. Its only purpose is to make it harder for the High Court of Justice to strike down the next draft-dodging law. Thus, even if the Basic Law is merely declarative, even if its wording contains not a single word about military service, it will later serve as a highly weighty legal argument: alongside the principle of equality, there will now also stand a Basic Law that grants Torah study constitutional status. This is, plain and simple, an abusive use of the Torah.

Jewish sources teach us a completely different lesson. In Tractate Kiddushin in the Babylonian Talmud, which is studied in yeshivas throughout the day, it is stated explicitly: “Whoever does not teach his son a trade teaches him robbery.” That is, a person who does not educate his son to learn a profession in order to earn a living necessarily condemns him to steal in order to survive. The Sages also taught us, “Love work and hate positions of power” (a saying attributed to Shemaya, president of the Sanhedrin, in Pirkei Avot), and the great Rambam ruled: “Anyone who sets his heart on studying Torah and will not do labor and live off charity, desecrates the Name, disgraces the Torah and extinguishes the light of religion.” A clear, emphatic ruling that requires no explanation.

One cannot use the dignity of the Torah to hide the law’s true purpose. The Torah does not need a Basic Law to exist. It survived exile, decrees, expulsions, pogroms and the Holocaust. It does not need legal protection from the High Court of Justice. Those who need this law are the promoters of the draft-dodging law, and therefore the debate is not between lovers of the Torah and opponents of the Torah. The debate is between those willing to use the Torah to create a “constitutional shield” for a draft-dodging law, and those who believe the Torah is too great to serve as a tool in a political game.

As someone who studied in a Haredi yeshiva, I have difficulty accepting the fact that in the name of the Torah, people seek to advance a law whose purpose is not to strengthen Torah study, but to protect sweeping exemption from military service, and in practice, evasion of national burden-sharing. The Torah demands honesty, demands truth. If the sole purpose is to advance a draft-dodging law, that should be said openly, and the public should be allowed to judge and decide for itself whether to support it or not. But if a Basic Law is enacted whose sole purpose is to make it harder to overturn a draft-dodging law, do not call it “Basic Law: Torah Study.” Call it by its real name: “Basic Law: Deception”.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Re’em Aminach previously served as head of the IDF’s economic division and head of the Budget Department in the Defense Ministry, and is currently a director at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).