Word: rabbies
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...years after his 10-year term as Israel's chief rabbi, Avraham Shapira was considered a sage by the religious right. Yet for many Israelis, the Talmudic scholar was a hard-line zealot whose theology--that Israel was land given by God to the Jews--anchored the settlers' movement and helped bring about the assassination of peace advocate Yitzhak Rabin. In 2005, despite his call for soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate disputed land or else risk disaster, the "disengagement" succeeded with little violence...
...teacher at the aforementioned school. He was born in Britain, lived most of his life in South America, and had become a nationalized citizen of Korea. He spoke like a rabbi, answering my questions about his life story with more questions (“How does anyone end up anywhere?”). He wore his yarmulke proudly amongst people who did not understand it. And to me, he was like some strange hallucination...
...incident has left lingering doubts over whom soldiers will obey: their commanding officers, or hard-line rabbis who believe it's the destiny of Jews to occupy the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, even if they are now in disputed Palestinian territory? One senior IDF commander complains to TIME: "It seems like every soldier is consulting his own rabbi." The more extremist rabbis, he says, "want to change the system," bringing Israel's vibrant secular society more in line with their orthodox views...
Several refusenik soldiers rang Rabbi Re'em Hacohen, a former teacher of theirs at a yeshiva, or religious seminary, in the West Bank. "They were all loyal and responsible citizens, wracked by the decision whether to obey their superiors," says the rabbi, who urged them to act "with a clear conscience." The rabbi, himself a former soldier, lays blame on the army brass, not the refuseniks: "The army should be used to fight our enemies, not against our own society...
...clear out settlers, looking the other way when they failed to report for duty or called in sick. But this time, senior officers treated the defiance as a clear act of insubordination, a failure to recognize that in the Israeli Defense Force, an officer's orders supersede a rabbi's moral advice...