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                  THE IDEOLOGY OF HESDER:
            THE VIEW FROM YESHIVAT HAR ETZION


               by Harav Aharon Lichtenstein

 [This article first appeared in Tradition, 19(3), Fall 1981.]



	Half a dozen years ago, advocacy of the cause of yeshivot 
hesder before the American Jewish public would have seemed 
largely superfluous.  The impact of the Yom Kippur War was 
then still strong, the memory of hesderniks' role within it 
still vivid, the halo of the heroic student-soldier yet fresh.  
The religious community, in particular, took great pride in a 
clearly perceived kiddush Hashem.  Almost everyone had seen 
some striking picture or heard some moving story:  of boys 
(they really were not much more) who had gone into battle 
wearing tefillin; of a group which had stunned its brigadier 
by inquiring, during a nocturnal lull in the Sinai campaign, 
whether and when they would be provided with a lulav and an 
etrog; of another which, after a disheartening day on the 
battlefield, improvised Simhat Torah dancing and hakafot by 
the banks of the Suez Canal.  Almost everyone had read 
comments of leading Israel Defense Forces commanders praising 
the courage and commitment of bnei yeshivot, noting both the 
inspirational qualities which had done so much to boost 
collective morale and their vital role in the forefront of the 
actual fighting.  And there was, of course, the litany of 
suffering, the grim statistics of the yeshivot's highly 
disproportionate casualties, to attest to that role.  Within 
the context of pervasive sadness and pride, the ideological 
presentation of hesder seemed largely unnecessary.  The 
reality spoke for itself.

	Today, thank God, such a presentation is in order.  Time 
has healed many wounds and dimmed many memories.  Above all, 
it has opened fresh vistas and posed new challenges, these 
hopefully unrelated to the battlefront.  We have seen the 
first glimmers of peace; and, for the moment at least, the 
country appears relatively secure.  And as our sense of danger 
is dulled, as our roseate hopes lull us into a sense of 
imagined security, as the perception of just how close Syrian 
armored columns had come to swooping down upon the Galil and 
beyond becomes blurred - hesder and its cause evidently needs, 
if not an advocate, at least an expositor.  This brief essay 
is therefore presented as a modest exposition of the essence 
of hesder and its significance - at least as viewed from the 
perspective of Yeshivat Har Etzion.

	The typical graduate of an Israeli yeshiva high school is 
confronted by one of three options.  He can, like most of his 
peers, enter the army for a three year stint.  Alternatively, 
he can excuse himself from military service on the grounds 
that torato umnuto, "Torah is his vocation," while he attends 
a yeshiva whose students receive the Israeli equivalent of a 
4-D exemption.  Finally, he can enroll in a yeshivat hesder, 
in which case, over roughly the next five years, he will 
pursue a combined program of traditional Torah study with 
service in the Israeli army.  While at the yeshiva, he will 
learn full-time (hesder is not an Israeli R.O.T.C.), but there 
will be two protracted absences from it, one of nine months 
and the other of six months, for training and duty.

	Of these three courses, hesder is, in one sense, perhaps 
the easiest.  Properly speaking, however, it is also the most 
arduous.  The advantages, judged from a student's perspective, 
are fairly clear.  Most obviously, the tour of actual army 
service is shorter.  While a student is tied down by hesder 
for almost five years, he only spends, unless he becomes an 
officer, about sixteen months in uniform.  Most important, 
however, hesder provides a convenient framework for 
discharging two different - and to some extent conflicting - 
obligations.  It enables him, morally and psychologically, to 
salve both his religious and his national conscience by 
sharing in the collective defense burden without cutting 
himself off from the matrix of Torah.  Socially - and this of 
course has religious implications as well - hesder offers him 
a desirable context as, even while in the army, he will often 
be stationed with fellow hesderniks.  And hesder enables him, 
pragmatically, to keep his future academic and vocational 
options open.  Unlike his peers at non-hesder yeshivot, he 
can, upon completing the hesder program, legally pursue any 
course of study and/or employment within the mainstream of 
Israeli society.

	These are legitimate and even important considerations.  
But they are not what hesder, ideally considered, is all 
about.  Properly understood, hesder poses more of a challenge 
than an opportunity; and in order to perceive it at its best 
we need to focus upon difficulty and even tension rather than 
upon convenience.  Optimally, hesder does not merely provide a 
religious cocoon for young men fearful of being contaminated 
by the potentially secularizing influences of general army 
life - although it incidentally serves this need as well.  
Hesder at its finest seeks to attract and develop bnei torah 
who are profoundly motivated by the desire to become serious 
talmidei hachamim but who concurrently feel morally and 
religiously bound to help defend their people and their 
country; who, given the historical exigencies of their time 
and place, regard this dual commitment as both a privilege and 
a duty; who, in comparison with their non-hesder confreres 
love not (to paraphrase Byron's Childe Harold) Torah less but 
Israel more.  It provides a context within which students can 
focus upon enhancing their personal spiritual and intellectual 
growth while yet heeding the call to public service, and it 
thus enables them to maintain an integrated Jewish existence.

	To be sure, the two aspects of hesder, the spiritual and 
the military, are hardly on a par.  The disparity is 
reflected, in part, in the unequal division of time.  
Primarily, however, it concerns the realm of value, within 
which two elements, each indispensable, may yet be variously 
regarded.  When the mishnah states, "If there is no flour, 
there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour," 
it hardly means that both are equally important.  What it does 
mean is that both are, in fact, equally necessary, although, 
axiologically and teleologically, flour exists for the sake of 
Torah and not vice versa.  "Il faut manger pour vivre, il ne 
faut pas vivre pour manger," (One should eat in order to live, 
not live in order to eat), declaims one of Molière's 
characters; and so it is with hesder.  The yeshiva prescribes 
military service as a means to an end.  That end is the 
enrichment of personal and communal spiritual life, the 
realization of that great moral and religious version whose 
fulfillment is our national destiny; and everything else is 
wholly subservient.  No one responsibly connected with any 
yeshivat hesder advocates military service per se.  We avoid 
even the slightest tinge of militarism and we are poles 
removed from Plato's notion that the discipline of army life 
is a necessary ingredient of an ideal education.  No less than 
every Jew, the typical hesdernik yearns for peace, longs for 
the day on which he can divest himself of uniform and uzzi and 
devote his energies to Torah.  in the interim, however, he 
harbors no illusions and he keeps his powder dry and his 
musket ready.

	In one sense, therefore, insofar as army service is alien 
to the ideal Jewish vision, hesder is grounded in necessity 
rather than choice.  It is, if you will, b'diavad, a post 
facto response to a political reality imposed upon us by our 
enemies.  In another sense, however, it is very much 
l'chathillah, a freely willed option grounded in moral and 
halakhic decision.  We - at Yeshivat Har Etzion, at any rate - 
do not advocate hesder as a second-best alternative for those 
unable or unwilling to accept the rigors of single-minded 
Torah study.  We advocate it because we are convinced that, 
given our circumstances - would that they were better - 
military service is a mitzvah, and a most important one at 
that.  Without impugning the patriotism or ethical posture of 
those who think otherwise, we feel that for the overwhelming 
majority of bnei torah defense is a moral imperative.

	Hence, to the extent that the term hesder, "arrangement", 
connotes an accommodation arrived at between conflicting 
sides, it is somewhat of a misnomer.  Hesder is not the result 
of a compromise between the respective positions of roshei 
yeshiva and the Ministry of Defense.  It is rather a 
compromise with reality.  We do occasionally argue with the 
generals over details and they do not always sufficiently 
appreciate the preeminence of the spiritual factor.  The basic 
concern with security, however, is ours no less than theirs.

	Of course, that concern must be balanced against others.  
Knesset Israel needs not only security but spirituality - and 
ultimately, the former for the sake of the latter.  Those who, 
by dint of knowledge and inspiration, are able to preserve and 
enrich our moral vision and spiritual heritage, contribute 
incalculably to the quality of our national life; and this 
must be considered in determining personal and collective 
priorities.  Hence, while we of yeshivot hesder, feel that 
training and subsequent reserve status for men should be 
virtually universal - spiritual specialization being reserved 
at most for a truly elite cadre - the length of post-training 
service should be justifiably briefer than that of those 
unable or unwilling to make a comparable spiritual 
contribution.  The military establishment, I might add, 
generally understands this.  Junior officers, currently 
concerned with keeping good soldiers in their units, sometimes 
complain about what they regard as this inequity.  However, 
higher level commanders, more keenly aware of the total 
picture and the longer term, recognize the value of the 
spiritual aspect of hesder as inspirationally significant, for 
bnei yeshiva as well as their comrades, in the event of war.  
It should be emphasized, however, that from a Torah 
perspective, the justification for abbreviated service does 
not rest solely or even primarily upon the yeshiva's stimulus 
to bravery.  It is grounded, rather, in the intrinsic and 
immeasurable value of Torah per se - indeed, in the faith and 
hope that it moves us towards the realization of the prophetic 
vision, "neither by force nor by might but by my spirit, saith 
the Lord of hosts".

	The case for hesder rests, then, upon several simple 
assumptions.  First, during the formative post-secondary 
years, a ben torah should be firmly rooted in a preeminently 
Torah climate, this being crucially important both for his 
personal spiritual development and for the future of a nation 
in critical need of broadly based spiritual commitment and 
moral leadership.  Second, the defense of Israel is an ethical 
and halakhic imperative - be it because, as we believe, the 
birth of the state was a momentous historical event and its 
preservation of great spiritual significance or because, even 
failing that, the physical survival of its three million plus 
Jewish inhabitants is at stake.  Third, in light of the 
country's current military needs - and these should admittedly 
be reassessed periodically - yeshiva students should 
participate in its defense, both by undergoing basic and 
specialized training, thus becoming part of the reserves 
against the possibility, God forbid, of war, and by performing 
some actual service even during some period of uneasy peace.  
The need for such participation is based upon several factors.  
By far the most important is the fact that in the eventuality 
of war the Israeli army may very well need every qualified 
soldier it can muster.  And lest one think that the number is 
militarily insignificant, let it be noted that, while indeed 
they may not seem all that many, nevertheless the boys 
currently enrolled in hesder, not to mention those who have 
moved on to the reserves, can man over four hundred tanks - 
surely no piddling figure.  This factor relates to training 
more than to peace-time service but with respect to the latter 
as well both common fairness and self-respect dictate that the 
Torah community make some contribution even if it be 
justifiably smaller than others'.  Moreover, the ethical 
moment aside, such a contribution is a matter of self-interest 
as well - and not only because it is, after all, our own home 
that we are defending.  Service enables the religious 
community as a whole to avoid both the reality and the stigma 
of parasitism.  It helps build personal character, on the one 
hand, and open channels of public impact on the other, by 
producing potential leaders attuned to the pulse and the 
experience of their countrymen.  To be sure, the prospect of 
secular criticism should not routinely be the decisive factor 
in determining religious policy.  Nevertheless, it cannot be 
totally ignored.  Hazal, at any rate, did not regard hillul 
Hashem and kiddush Hashem lightly.

	If the rationale underlying hesder is relatively simple, 
its implementation is anything but.  I described it at the 
outset as the most difficult of the options open to a yeshiva 
high school graduate; and, seriously taken, it is precisely 
that.  The difficulty is not incidental.  It is, rather, 
grounded in the very nature and structure of hesder; and it is 
threefold.  First, there is the problem of dual commitment per 
se, the possible loss of motivation and momentum and the 
division of time, energies, and attention inherent in the 
fusion of the study of Torah with any other enterprise, 
academic, vocational, or what have you.  "If I had been 
present at Mount Sinai", said Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, "I would 
have asked of the Merciful One that two mouths should be 
created for every person, one with which to study torah and 
one with which to all his [other] needs" (Yerushalmi, 
Berachot, 1:2).  His wish is deeply shared by hesderniks and 
their masters.

	With reference to hesder, specifically, there is, 
however, an additional problem:  the conflict of values, life 
style, and sensibility between bet midrash and boot camp, 
especially in a predominantly secular army.  The danger is not 
so much that students will lose their faith and become non-
observant.  On this score, yeshivot hesder have a track record 
as least as good as their immediate Eastern European 
predecessors'.  It is, rather, a problem of possible attrition 
- the loss of refinement and the dulling of moral and 
religious sensitivity which may result from exposure to the 
rougher aspects of a possibly dehumanizing and 
despiritualizing existence.  As the Ramban (Devarim, 23:10) 
noted, the qualities of aggressiveness and machismo which are 
so central to military life naturally run counter to the 
Torah's spiritual discipline, and a genuine and conscious 
effort is needed in order to avoid moral corruption and 
spiritual corrosion.

	Probably the greatest difficulty, however, concerns 
neither the practical ramification of the diffusion of effort 
nor the grappling with potentially inimical influences.  It 
concerns the very essence of hesder:  the maintenance of a 
tenuous moral and ideological balance between its two 
components.  At issue is a conflict of loves, not just of 
labors.  At one level, this is simply the problem of religious 
Zionism writ large.  On the other hand, it inculcates 
spiritual perspectives and values which are to serve as the 
basis for a radical critique of a secularly oriented state and 
society.  The problem acquires another dimension however, when 
that loyalty includes the readiness to fight and die.  
Moreover, it involves, at a second level, issues which are 
specifically related to a student-soldier per se.  Like all 
yeshivot, a yeshivat hesder seeks to instill a love for torah 
so profound and so pervasive as to render protracted 
detachment from it painful - and yet it demands precisely such 
an absence.  It advocates patriotic national service even at 
some cost to personal development, and yet prescribes that 
students serve considerably less than their non-yeshiva peers.  
These apparent antinomies are the result of the basic attempt 
to reconcile conflicting claims and duties by striking a 
particular balance:  one which should produce an aspiring 
talmid hacham who also serves rather than a soldier who also 
learns; one which perceives military service as a spiritual 
sacrifice - we don't want students to be indifferent to their 
loss - but which proceeds to demand that sacrifice; one which 
encourages a hesdernik to excel as a soldier while in the army 
but prescribes his return to the bet hamidrash before that 
excellence is fully applied or perhaps even fully attained.  
From the yeshiva's perspectives, these antitheses are fully 
justified.  Indeed, they constitute the very essence of hesder 
as a complex and sensitive balance.  However, preserving that 
balance, with its multiple subtle nuances, entails traversing 
a narrow ridge - and here lies the primary difficulty, 
existential and not just practical, of hesder.  Small wonder 
that many only achieve the balance imperfectly.  It is, 
however, in those who do succeed in attaining the balance and 
who, despite the difficulty, are genuinely at peace with 
themselves, that hesder at its finest can be seen.  And it is 
inspiring to behold.

	These problems are very real.  They pose a formidable 
educational challenge; and while they are by no means 
insuperable - the history of yeshivot hesder can attest to 
that - we ignore them at our peril.  Moreover, it is precisely 
the adherents of hesder, those of us who grapple with its 
sophisticated demands on a regular basis, who are most keenly 
aware of the problems.  Nevertheless - although stateless 
centuries have tended to obscure this fact - hesder has been 
the traditional Jewish way.  This is not the place for the 
exhaustive analysis of proof-texts.  But what were the milieux 
of Moshe Rabbenu, of Yehoshua, of David, of Rabbi Akiva, as 
Hazal conceived and described them, but yeshivot hesder?  
Indeed, on the Ramban's view, the institution can be traced 
back to our very fountainhead.  In explaining why Avimelech 
was so anxious to conclude a treaty with Yitzchak, he 
conjectures that it may have been due to the fact "that 
Avraham was very great and mighty, as he had in his house 
three hundred sword-wielding men and many allies.  And he 
himself was a lion-hearted soldier and he pursued and 
vanquished four very powerful kings.  And when his success 
became evident as being divinely ordained, the Philistine king 
feared him, lest he conquer his kingdom.... And the sons 
emulated the fathers, as Yitzchak was great like his father 
and the king feared lest he fight him should he banish him 
from his land." (Ramban to Bereishit, 26:29).  This account of 
lion-hearted avot and their sword-wielding disciples may fall 
strangely upon some ears.  Although we don't like to admit it, 
our Torah world, too, has its vogues, and, in some circles, 
much of the Ramban on Bereishit - the real Ramban, honestly 
read and unflinchingly understood - is currently passé.  The 
fact, however, remains: the primary tradition is hesder.

	The reason is not hard to find.  The halakhic rationale 
for hesder does not, as some mistakenly assume, rest solely 
upon the mitzvah of waging defensive war.  If that were the 
case, one might conceivably argue that, halakhically, sixteen 
months of army service was too high a price to pay for the 
performance of this single commandment.  The rationale rather 
rests upon a) the simple need for physical survival and b) the 
fact that military service is often the fullest manifestation 
of a far broader value:  g'milut hasadim, the empathetic 
concern for others and action on their behalf.  This element 
defined by Hazal as one of the three cardinal foundations of 
the world, is the basis of Jewish social ethics, and its 
realization, even at some cost to single-minded development of 
torah scholarship, virtually imperative.  The gemara in Avodah 
Zarah is pungently clear on this point:  "Our Rabbis taught: 
When Rabbi Elazar ben Prata and Rabbi Hanina ben Tradion were 
arrested [i.e. by the Romans], Rabbi Elazar ben Prata said to 
Rabbi Hanina ben Tradion, 'Fortunate are you that you have 
been arrested over one matter, woe is to me who have been 
arrested over five matters'.  Rabbi Hanina responded, 
'Fortunate are you that you have been arrested over five 
matters but are to be saved, woe is to me who have been 
arrested over one matter but will not be saved.  For you 
concerned yourself with both Torah and g'milut hasadim whereas 
I concerned myself solely with Torah.'  As Rav Huna stated; 
for Rav Huna said, 'Whoever concerns himself solely with Torah 
is as one who has no God.  As it is written, "And many days 
[passed] for Israel without a true God" (Divrei Hayamim II, 
15:3).  What is [the meaning of] "without a true God"?  That 
one who concerns himself solely with Torah, is as one who has 
no God' (Avodah Zarah, 17b).  The midrash (Kohelet Rabbah, 
7:4) equates the renunciation of g'milut hasadim with 
blasphemy; and the gemara in Rosh Hashanah states that Abbaye 
outlived Rabbah because he engaged in both Torah and g'milut 
hasadim whereas Rabbah had largely confined himself to the 
former.  When, as in contemporary Israel, the greatest single 
hesed one can perform is helping to defend his fellows' very 
lives, the implications for yeshiva education should be 
obvious.

	What is equally obvious is the fact that not everyone 
draws them - and this for one of several reasons.  Some (not 
many, I hope) simply have little if any concern for the state 
of Israel, even entertain the naive notion that, as one rosh 
yeshiva put it, their business could continue as usual with 
Palestinian flags fluttering from the rooftops.  Others feel 
that the spiritual price, personal and communal, is simply too 
high and that first-rate Torah leadership in particular can 
only be developed within the monochromatic contexts of "pure" 
yeshivot.  Still others contend that, from the perspective of 
genuine faith and trust in God, it is the yeshivot which are 
the true guardians of the polity so that any compromise of 
their integrity is a blow at national security.  These 
contentions clearly raise a number of basic moral, halakhic, 
and theological issues with respect to which I obviously 
entertain certain views.  However, I do not wish, at this 
juncture, to polemicize.  These are matters on which honest 
men of Torah can differ seriously out of mutual respect and I 
certainly have no desire to denigrate those who do not 
subscribe to my own positions.  What I do wish to stress 
minimally, however, is the point that, for the aspiring talmid 
hacham, hesder is at least as legitimate a path as any other.  
It is, to my mind, a good deal more; but surely not less.

	In making any assessment, it is important that we 
approach the subject with full awareness of the military 
ramifications - a point not always sufficiently heeded.  The 
story is reliably told of a leading rosh yeshiva who, at the 
height of the controversy over giyus banot, "the drafting of 
women", back in the fifties, attended a wedding near the 
Israeli-Arab border in Jerusalem.  At one point, gunfire was 
suddenly heard and he scurried under a table, exclaiming 
passionately, "Ribbono shel olam, I want to live!  There is 
much torah which I yet wish to learn and create!"  Whereupon a 
rather insensitive observer approached him and asked, "Nu, 
rebbe, was sagt ihr itzer wegen giyus banot?" (Well, rabbi, 
what do you say now about giyus banot?")  And he kept quiet.  
I cite the story not because I favor the induction of women - 
under present circumstances, I very much oppose it - nor to 
impugn the memory of a truly great person, but in order to 
point out that, at a certain distance, one can lose sight of 
the simple truth that a Jewish soul can only exist within a 
Jewish body.

	That nagging truth persists, however, and its 
appreciation is central to the understanding of an institution 
designed to reconcile the conflicting claims of spirituality 
and security, of talmud torah and g'milut hasadim, of personal 
growth and public service.  The present dilemma posed by these 
claims is not of our choosing.  The response, however, is; 
and, in this respect, yeshivot hesder are a conspectus of our 
collective anomaly:  a nation with outstretched palm and 
mailed fist, striving for peace and yet training for war.  For 
the foreseeable future, this is our situation.  While, as 
previously noted, our position appears more promising than in 
the past, we are far from being genuinely secure and can 
hardly afford to weaken our defenses complacently.  Hence, 
within the context of our "station and its duties" (to use F. 
H. Bradley's term), hesder is, for bnei torah, the imperative 
of the moment.  May God grant us a better station.  In the 
meantime, however, if it is to become no worse, we must keep 
both our spirits and our guard up.  Animated by vision and yet 
chary of danger, we, of yeshivot hesder, pray that He may 
grant us the wisdom and the courage to cope with the 
challenges of time.

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