The Difference Between a Rabbi and a Politician

by Rabbi Avraham Wasserman, Yeshivat Ramat Gan and Givatayim, Besheva, translated by Hillel Fendel.

Elections for the next Chief Rabbis of Israel, who serve for a ten-year term, are to be held next week. No Chief Rabbi over the past 30 years has had a religious-Zionist outlook, and the religious-Zionist movement set a goal for itself to ensure that one of its leading rabbis be elected for the post of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi. However, a possibly broken promise and a glut of candidates had complicated the matter. Rabbi Wasserman of Givatayim places the issue in Halakhic perspective.

A. The question of who will be the religious-Zionist candidate(s) for Chief Rabbis occupies the thoughts and concerns of many in and out of the religious-Zionist sector. On this matter it would be edifying to cite the distinction formulated by Israel's first Chief Rabbi, Rav Yitzchak Herzog, in defining the desired interface between a rabbi and a politician.

In the early days of the State, an important bill under consideration in the Knesset and the public was the Sabbath Law. The bill was slated to forbid all public transportation in the country, except, for various reasons, in the city of Haifa. One reason for exempting Haifa was because of the many workers in the Shemen factory - which was open on the Sabbath - who needed transportation to and from work.

The rabbis of Haifa were up in arms and demanded that their city be included in the law. However, the Mapai party people refused, and it appeared that the law would be toppled altogether, thus paving the way for public Sabbath transportation throughout the country. Rav Herzog expressed himself on the matter as follows [paraphrased]: "A rabbi has no dispensation whatsoever to concede even the slightest bit on the matter of Sabbath observance, and therefore is not permitted to agree to this law allowing transportation on the Sabbath. However, the religious Knesset Members can be relied upon to legislate the best law possible to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath and its observance under the present conditions." This of course meant that Haifa would be excluded from the ban, while Sabbath in the rest of the country would benefit.

This of course raises a fundamental question: Along the lines of a "Shabbos goy," are the religious MKs to be considered "legislative goyim?" Are there different Halakhic standards for a rabbi and for G-d-fearing politicians?

The answer is that a distinction must be made between a rabbinic statement that sets out the Halakhic principle, and the manner in which this principle is put into practice. A rabbi can never agree to Sabbath desecration, even if he feels that it will save most of the country. This is because his stance represents the Torah position.

However, the function of a Knesset Member is to promote the sanctity of the Sabbath in practice in accordance with the tools, capabilities and conditions he is given and faces. Politics is the art of implementing that which can be implemented, and this is often done via compromise – while leaving the spiritual principle unharmed. (I expand upon this in my book "Your Neighbor as Yourself," pages 229-230.)

B. On the subject of the Chief Rabbinate: There is no way rabbis can make a final ruling on matter currently under consideration, for another reason. It is because each candidate is backed by important rabbis. As such, each candidate is worthy. The politicians, however, must consider the practical considerations of which candidate is most likely to be chosen, and thus they will choose him as the religious-Zionist candidate. The question now before us is how to attain the situation that the new Chief Rabbi will be a great Torah scholar, a man of experience in the Rabbinate and in public leadership, who manifests in his personality and his actions the spiritual and practical conception of HaRav Kook, the founder of Israel's Chief Rabbinate. This conception is "Klal Yisrael"-oriented, as opposed to focusing on one part or another of the populace, and seeks to work with the Divine process of the nation's revival in its Land after two millennia of exile. The results of this conception are clearly manifest in the world of Jewish Law and spiritual influence.

However, the rabbis, having stated the Halakhic principles involved, are less qualified than the politicians in terms of how to achieve this goal. For the politics of the issue are understood primarily by those who engage in it.

This is our opportunity to remind ourselves that yes, our religious-Zionist public and its representatives must be very proactive in promoting its own candidates. We need not be so genteel as to say that we don't want to push and promote our own Torah outlook. If we do so, our own students and yeshivot will not be appropriately represented, and the mosaic of the Rabbinic world will be missing an important shade and tone.

C. During these turbulent times, we must be especially circumspect regarding the Honor of Torah – which is something more fundamental and important than even the study of Torah itself! (See Talmud, Tractate Megillah.) All of the candidates are Torah scholars whom we are obligated to honor and respect.

It is not appropriate for a politician to criticize one of the candidates in the name of the world of Jewish Law and Ethics. The business of politicians is politics, and they are not authorities on Jewish Law and Ethics. This is also true of everyone who is not on the highest level of Torah knowledge.

We must hope and pray for G-d's will to be expressed via the representatives of the electoral body, and may the merit of Rav Kook stand at their side.

From Tactical Success To Strategic Victory

by Emanuel Shilo, editor of the weekly Besheva newspaper, translated by Hillel Fendel.

This article was written just after the brilliant Beeper/pager attacks (for which Israel has not accepted responsibility), and a few days before the Israel Air Force's current massive assault on homes and other buildings in which Hizbullah stored tens of thousands of missiles ready for launching towards Israel. Author Emanuel Shilo, editor of the weekly Besheva newspaper, explains here, before it happened, the strategy and rationale behind the war that Israel has apparently embarked upon against Hizbullah.

--Israel must utilize to its full advantage the substantial damage and upheaval suffered by the terrorist organization Hizbullah and launch an attack that will deal it a fatal blow and enable the residents of the north to return to their homes as soon as possible. This time, a genuine and decisive resolution is needed to the problem of Hizbullah, and not just temporary deterrence.--

This past Tuesday, following the extraordinary, sophisticated, amazing and unprecedented operation of the detonation of thousands of beeper devices in the hands and on the bodies of thousands of Hizbullah terrorists, there were some who complained that the whole thing was a colossal waste.

For if Israel actually carried it out, as Hizbullah claims, how is it possible that Israel would activate such a powerful tool without following it with a large, intensive offensive that would actualize its gains? 

The second round of explosions, a day later, silenced the criticism to a certain degree. It reinforced the sense that there seems to be more here than meets the eye. It also gave us the feeling that the story was not yet over, and that we actually can rely on the mysterious operators of this event and that they know what they are doing. 

But still: We must not allow ourselves to return to our tranquility, blind trust, and complete credit that we tended to grant to the leaders of our security networks before Oct. 7th. The failure of that day was so terrible and so all-encompassing that no tactical success afterwards can exempt us from constant awareness and suspicions. 

Israel is good at military actions in which we take the initiative, whether with our Air Force, special units, or cyber warfare. We are less impressive at being prepared for surprises and deceptions on the part of the enemy, as we learned first-hand both on Yom Kippur in 1973 and on Simchat Torah of 2023. And, as we have seen during the ongoing campaign in Gaza, alongside our brilliant tactical successes, we suffer from the lack of a clear strategic plan for decisive victory.

Over the past several decades, our security establishment has excelled at, and became accustomed to, sending "messages" and "signals" to the enemy – instead of striking him with genuinely decisive blows. We tried to deter instead of defeat. We sought to change his intentions, instead of smashing his capabilities.

If that has changed, the burden of proof is on the leaders of our security establishment. They must show us that they have switched their diskette. Up to now, this does not appear to have been the case. They have brought great tactical successes, but the objectives of the war have not yet been met. It appears that they are seeking not victory, but some kind of arrangement with our enemies that will keep them alive, together with a deal for some – not all! – of our hostages, in exchange for hundreds of terrorists. 

The Israeli public, and especially those who are fighting our wars in the south and north and who have sacrificed so much, expects much more than that. They want the destruction of Hamas! The residents of our north, too, cannot be expected to return to their homes without a mortal blow to Hizbullah, and its distancing far away from our northern border with Lebanon, with a large buffer zone empty of Hizbullah. 

Hizbullah today, hours after the second wave of exploding devices, is reminiscent of the Biblical account of the men of Shechem on the third day of their not-quite-sincere circumcisions: They were "in pain," the Torah tells us, and the sons of Jacob took advantage to wipe out the threat they represented. Today, as well, we need a Shimon and Levi who will take sword in hand and go out to liquidate the enemy. In our current state, even their father Jacob [whose support for the actions of Shimon and Levi was ambivalent] would certainly whole-heartedly support this. 

POSTSCRIPT: As of Monday evening, the situation was that the Israel Air Force had attacked 1,300 targets in southern Lebanon in four waves, mostly residential homes that housed cruise missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers, 1,000-kilogram explosive warhead rockets, and medium-range missiles of ranges between 50 and 200 kilometers. IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said that by hiding its rockets in two-thirds (!) of houses in southern Lebanon, Hizbullah had turned the area into a battle zone. "We face challenging days ahead," Hagari said.