Halachot and Customs
National Service: Is It Permitted or Forbidden
Question
With Hashem's help, hello and blessings, honored rabbi.
I wanted to ask about national service. I have seen that many rabbis forbid it, so, thank G-d, I understood, and I am no longer interested in it, even without having seen the reason. Even so, my friends and my sister do not agree with the matter, because there is an organization for national service for haredi women, and these women are careful with themselves and combine a midrasha with it, and they follow all the rules of halacha and do not serve in mixed places where there is concern about transgressing the boundaries of halacha, and the like. Because of this, they asked why there is a general prohibition on national service?! In addition, they said that if they do not serve, they will be denied many things, such as a reduction in mortgages, reductions in studies, and the like. So I answered them as you answered me previously, that in this year if they work, it will balance out with the money, such as the discounts, but they claimed that there are many workplaces that do not accept someone who did not serve in national service, and unfortunately that is true. Is there a leniency that allows one to do national service? Although I know that it is forbidden, truly we keep Torah according to all its laws and commandments, thank G-d, of course we still have room to grow. In addition, we want to feel that we have contributed something to the state. I would appreciate an answer that explains this to me and does not answer me in one word. Sorry for the impudence; truly, it does not come from a place of impudence but from deep understanding.
Thank you very much.
Answer
Hello and blessings,
We have already written at length about the prohibitions in the matter, and we will write again briefly.
The Sages forbade sounding the shofar on Shabbat lest there be one Jew who does not know how to sound it well and will carry the shofar on Shabbat, and therefore they suspended the mitzvah of sounding the shofar, which, as is known, sweetens the judgments and brings the attribute of mercy upon all of the Jewish people, because one act of desecrating Shabbat by one Jew spoils more than all the shofars of the Jewish people.
National service is for the most part corrupted, and many girls fall there spiritually and come to repeated desecration of Shabbat, whether because of the place where they serve or because of the companions in the apartments and more and more. Therefore the leading rabbis of the previous generation forbade it completely, among them HaGaon Rav Mordechai Eliyahu and HaGaon Rav Ovadia Yosef. Furthermore, even if at present the girls are placed in a good location, they are subject to the decisions of the civilian service administration, and the conditions can change at any moment for the worse, and the vast majority of the girls will not leave the service. We have already seen this many times, that any place that is somewhat like the army and the like, where a person is not under his own authority, the conditions change, such as haredi soldiers who were forced to hear women singing, improper kashrut, and more and more. Only in a completely civilian setting, where a person is under his own authority at all times, can one work in a kosher and modest place and, knowing that if conditions worsen one can always resign. It is difficult to rely on girls to leave national service when the spiritual conditions deteriorate in the middle, and to forgo all the gains that the girl intends to earn at the end of the year.
There is no benefit to the state from national service; the treasury opposes it because it loses money on the girls, and the matters were explained at length in the past. Those who benefit are a few activists of the dati leumi sector, whose goal is much gain and a little corrupt ideology, so that the girls will feel that they are national and, as it were, contributing to the homeland.
See the admission of the party itself here
I hope the matter is clear.
With blessings,
Binyamin Shmueli
