‘After The Rabbi Spoke, My Wife, A Bereaved Mother, Cried For 24 Hours’

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — “It would hurt me if anyone said this but when I hear it from a rabbi, a leader, who represents all of the Jewish nation, it hurts more,” says Rebbetzin Avivit Granot, the wife of Rabbi Tamir Granot who heads Yeshivat Orot Shaul and the mother of Captain Amitai Tzvi who fell in battle on the 15th October. She is referring to the recent statement by Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef that “The tribe of Levi are exempt from army service and cannot be taken under any circumstance. If they force us to go to the army, we will emigrate abroad.”

Rabbi Granot said that he was forced to respond “for the sake of the honor of the Torah and for the sake of my wife’s tears. Your words about conscripting yeshiva students caused her to cry for 24 hours.”

“I ask you, honored rabbi- Did Amitai err? Is he lying under the ground of Mt. Herzl for nothing? Should he and all of his friends lying there with him have stayed in yeshiva and left the Mesirus Nefesh to the secularists? Or should he have gone abroad to study Torah and not enlisted?

“You must ask forgiveness from my wife, and go to Har Herzl and ask forgiveness from Amitai, a yeshiva student and fighter, and from all the Tzadikim and holy people who were Torah scholars and chose to fight, and even those who didn’t study Torah but gave up their lives. Leaving for abroad when there is a Milchemet Mitzvah, a national life threatening emergency? Honored rabbi, are we in Russia? Is this the army of the Tzar? Cantonists? You are the Rishon Letzion, not the Rishon of Brooklyn or of Baghdad. You have a responsibility to the Jewish nation,” Rabbi Tamir concludes.

“When I hear Rabbi Yosef say “If they force us to enlist, I don’t understand- who is forcing? And who is ‘us’? We are one nation,” Avivit adds.

“Knowing that there are those that combine Torah study with army service and contribute in every possible way, the rabbi’s words are untenable. I read in Amitai’s diaries that ‘The army is mine as much as it belongs to the chief of staff.’ He wrote this understanding that everyone has a role. This is the sense of mission with which he enlisted, the emissary of the people of Israel, the feeling that the army is mine, his, ours, there is no ‘them’ and ‘us.’

Amitai studied in yeshiva for three years, completed his army service in a Hesder yeshiva and prepared to continue his studies. But then he got a call: The army needs you in a command position. Amitai was torn because the yeshiva also wanted him to study there, but in the end he felt that he was needed now in the army and could study afterwards. When he fell on the northern border, he was a respected officer and was engaged to be married- Avivit had already bought her dress.

Avivit says that Amitai’s approach was to bring the Torah into the world of activity. “We have a lot to learn from the devotion of those studying Torah but we can’t allow ourselves to stay with a Torah which is just in the Beis Medrash. The Torah must bring us to action, we must be connected to activity. We read in the Torah this week ‘Every man whose heart leads him to give’- What does this mean? Everyone place a hand on their heart and realize that we must be partners in building the home.”