For survivors, there can be no doubt about the gratitude to God and the founders of the State for giving them a home. There is a famous story of a Chasidic Rebbe who was assigned by the Nazis to sweep the grounds of his Concentration camp. He vowed that if he survives the Holocaust and moved to Israel, he would sweep the streets there. He survived. And he moved to Israel. And on every Yom Ha’atzmaut, he goes outside and sweeps the streets near his home in Tel Aviv.
Yesterday, I encountered a friend in shul. He is one of the kindest and nicest people you will ever meet. He will give you the shirt off of his back. He is truly a lovely fellow. But when I mentioned to him that we do not say Tachanun on Yom Ha’atzmaut he scoffed. He said that because of what Israel is now doing to the Charedim, we should say Tachanun twice. He was joking of course. But his sentiments were clear. This fellow is too young to be a Holocaust survivor. I don’t know if his parents were.
But his attitude is indicative of a malaise that exists among the right that refuses to recognize the great miracle that is Israel. They see only the bad and they can recite a litany of ills they say the state perpetrated against religious Jews. Like disabusing the Yaldei Teheran and later the Sephardim of religious practices upon immigrating to Israel. And of course now there is the draft – yet another anti Torah measure by an anti religious state.
I am not going to discuss why I believe this perspective is all wrong. I’ve done that in other posts and it is beyond the scope of this post. But I can’t really blame Charedi yeshiva students. This is what they have been indoctrinated with. It is not their fault. It is the fault of their educators. They have been teaching their students for decades about what the secular state of Israel has done to religious Jews. All of it bad. And are blinded to all the good Israel did – and does now.
Even by Charedi standards the good far outweighs the bad. The mere fact that there is more Limud HaTorah now than ever in the history of the State of Israel cannot be ignored or minimized. Israel has for decades been the Charedi world’s largest financial contributor. Does anyone really believe that the flourishing state of Limud haTorah that exists there today would exist if there had been no state? Does anyone for a moment believe that without the modern day infrastructure built by the Israeli government that there would be the kind of numbers in the Yeshiva world that we see now?
And yet they see themselves as succeeding despite the state, not because of it. And therefore feel that instead of being grateful, Israel deserves to be put down and disparaged at every turn. For example – just today I read the following story online. It is taken from Nefesh Harav by Rav Hershel Shachter.
The Agudah had a conference in a hotel in Jerusalem. Several representatives felt uncomfortable that the Israeli flag was flying on the roof of the hotel. It wasn’t possible to ask the hotel to take down the flag and instead they came up with the suggestion to the hotel to add flags from other countries so the Israeli flag would not be alone.
The Israeli press heard about the incident and made fun of the Agudah. In particular they were upset that the British Union flag was chosen. During WWII the British (with the Union Jack on the boat) turned away boats of Jews trying to get to Palestine leading to their death by the Nazis. Now Agudah preferred the Union Jack to the Israeli flag.