Grapevine September 25, 2021: In their fathers' footsteps

• Author: GREER FAY CASHMAN
• Published date: 25 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

If there is any brinkmanship related to the presidential visits to the chief rabbis, it's that Herzog is the grandson of the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel. On the other hand, after serving seven years in office, he must step down. Unlike his father, he cannot serve ten years, due to a change in the law, but the chief rabbis are still permitted to serve for 10 years, and still have just under two years to go before completing their service. While visiting each rabbi, Herzog met members of their families and some of their neighbors, and discussed aspects of Torah.

■ IN TSARIST times, ultra-Orthodox Jews inflicted physical damage upon themselves to escape being drafted into the Russian army, or simply ran away, it wasn't so much that they feared the hardships military service as such, but that they and their families were afraid that being away from home for many years would erode their observance of Jewish law, and eventually rob them of their Jewish identity. In too many cases, where young Jews were unable to evade the army, such fears were realized. While many might excuse the avoidance of ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the Tsarist army, and later the Red Army (which proved to be more difficult), there are fewer excuses for them to evade service in the IDF, and fewer still for them to violate regulations in Israel and other countries on issues related to the spread of virus infections, which have resulted in so many fatalities around the world. Not only are such a people a danger to themselves, their families, their communities and whichever human environment in whi

ch they move, but they also indirectly incite antisemitism, because their flouting of the rules leads to media attention, which in turn leads to reactions on social media platforms and subsequently to antisemitic incidents – some of them extremely violent.

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Among the places where this has been seen is Australia, where photographs of mounted police in neighborhoods with large haredi communities have been published in the general press and shown on television.

Philip Dalidakis, a former minister in the Victorian state government, who has a Greek father and a Jewish mother, and regards himself as Jewish, wrote the following on Plus 61J Media, an online news service that covers Australia, Israel and the Jewish World: "The growing sentiment among some...