On Feb 7, 2025, Rabbi Eliav Miller, from the organization Lev Shomea, visited Rabbi Dov Lando, Rosh Yeshiva of Slabodka, Bnei Brak, and asked some questions about the current situation with yeshiva bochurim facing forced conscription into the IDF.
Rabbi Miller: But people say it’s only the founders of the Zionist idea who were bad, but today there are many bochurim who see the national religious public with the knitted kippahs who really put their lives on the line, according to their understanding. Some of them are sitting and learning, and at the same time they go and get killed for what they call protecting the people and the land. And there are bochurim who feel like we’re not correct, it’s they who are correct.
Rabbi Lando: So I said, they are getting killed because we don’t study enough Torah, and we need to save them even more. They are being killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah. Anyone who knows the Zionist idea, what it used to be, the Bnei Akiva movement, it still exists, but I don’t wish them any blessings – their slogan was, as I unfortunately know, “No Creator of the world, no Torah, Eretz Yisrael for the people of Israel” – and here they added their own color to the slogan – “ according to the Torah of Israel,” that’s what it is. Today’s secularists already doubt the Jewish right to the land, and they are right on their own terms, because they used to believe the Land of Israel is the pinnacle.
Rabbi Elchanan writes about this already in Ikvesa Demeshicha. Regarding his practical approach he had differences of opinion with the Chazon Ish and that is a different matter, but for the Zionists that is the reality, the Land of Israel for the Jewish people is the basic issue, and people of the past who died many years ago knew it. Didn’t Fishman Maimon say, “It is better for them to go to Shomer Hatzair than to Agudas Yisrael”? You don’t know this, but that is what he said. Ay, it’s all kefirah, all the sins in the world, denial of everything? [So how could Maimon want them to join Shomer Hatzair?] And the Zionist tradition was passed down to them this way. So today it is true, they keep mitzvos…
Rabbi Miller: So a bochur asks: there’s no need for an army?
Rabbi Lando: It’s like the story with the snow with the Chofetz Chaim, where someone said, snow is great because if you freeze in the snow, you can just take some snow and rub your face. [Obviously if not for the snow and cold, you would not need to rub your face.] It’s a well-known story. It’s impossible [to do otherwise] in a situation like this. The Zionists also do a lot of their actions not for saving Jews, but for the honor of the state. They kill people for honor… They accuse each other, but they are all telling the truth. Everyone is telling the truth. It’s not easy to tell this to the bochurim, but this is the way we will be saved.
So what do we do in the current situation? I don’t know what would have happened at the beginning of the state if they had established a UN government here. It would have been an excellent situation. There is a letter from the Brisker Rav from that time, a political letter against Shertok, Sharett, a letter to abroad from 1948. It is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state. If we go back even further, it is possible, as Rabbi Chaim Sonnenfeld did, to respect the Arabs. It would have been quite good if the Arabs had been the rulers here. It would have been the best situation. The Arabs would have ruled, the Jews would have respected them, and not interfered with them, the Jews would have brought money into the country. The Arabs love money.
All this is about the history here in the Yishuv. What does it matter today? Now it’s different. But in the past, everything was that way. That was the policy of Rabbi Chaim Sonnenfeld: to live in peace with the Arabs, and the Arabs respected him very, very much. And how he treated the Arabs, that’s already history from more than 90 years ago. How he writes to the king of Iraq, there’s a letter that he wrote to him. “To his majesty, I wanted to escort you when you returned to your country, but it was Shabbos for us and I couldn’t.” And he signs his name, “Your servant, Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld.” If the Arabs had received such treatment, our situation would have been different. They made the Arabs hate us. The Arabs were never good, but they had to be respected.
He received a medal from the king of Aram [Syria], history shows. Zionism claimed they would save the Jewish people, but they brought physical disasters, not just spiritual ones, to the people of Israel. Never before have the Arabs hated us so much, anywhere in the world. But what is the difference now? What can we do about it? We live among robbers and the robbers are saving us. What can we do? It’s a big problem. So what? They’ll stop [fighting the Arabs] one day? It’s impossible to believe them [the Arabs] anymore. Maybe huge concessions could have been made [for peace]. I don’t know what to say. Politically, I don’t know, and a person shouldn’t talk about a subject he doesn’t know. But there is another approach. You have to tolerate elderly people and spend time listening to them.
I Will Await Him 
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