To say no

two ways to refuse the military service

As the war rages on, Israel finds itself in need of additional soldiers.

That need awakens the perennial debate about the enlistment of ultra-orthodox men in Israel.

Like any other conversation, this one involves a vocabulary that betrays the perception of its participants.

Hebrew has two words to describe a person who is not joining the military. Each one carries different political baggage. One is used for religious man, the other for secular. One has negative connotations while the other can be interpreted as both negative or positive. Guess which is used when talking about the ultra-orthodox?

S.R.B – to refuse: conscientious objectors

There is a small but growing group of young Israelis who refuse to join the army for ethical reasons. Most members of the public regard them as spoiled lunatics at best, but the word that is used to describe them is sarban, a refusnik, a word that echoes Jewish resistance to conscription in eastern Europe and Russia. The choice of sarban acknowledges that they made a decision based on ideology rather than selfishness. The definition that the army itself gives them recognizes that their refusal to serve for moral reasons. It is far from being an acceptable choice—frowned upon by the public—but at least it comes from a point of view that can be engaged.

Sh.M.T – to let something slide out of use.

Every seven years we are told that the farming lands in the land of Israel should rest, have their own Shabbat. That is sabbatical year, called shmitah in Hebrew, from the stem above. It is a beautiful idea that allows the soil to recover and be left barren, out of use, indifferent to the needs of humans around it.

This is the concept we adapt to describe the avoidance of military service by religious man.

Mishtamet: a person who avoids his duty to join the army for non-ideological reasons. These men believe that by studying the Torah, they are guarding the people of Israel, perhaps not from bullets but from spiritual decay, by ensuring G-d that we are still devoted to him.

There is plenty that can be said about all these choices – the refusing to join the army as well as the decision to go ahead, knowing that the person involved will be sent off to a war that will scar their soul for eternity. By joining the soldier accepts the decision to wage this war.

When my time came to join the army in 1994, I did so. I joined an army that was in the process of pulling out of the West Bank under the Oslo accords. I was in my uniform at the peace rally in which tens of thousands of us cheered Rabin to continue with peace-making, flawed as it might have been. The following week my company was charged with placing the flowers the public brought on Rabin’s coffin. With him, the peace process arguably also perished, and here we are twenty-nine years later, surveying the ruins of those who preferred a different path.

I joined the army because I thought it was my democratic duty, but two of my close friends did not – one for secular moral reasons, the other for religious moral reasons. I struggle with how the same choice is judged so differently based on in which terms the refusal is articulated.