For two thousand years, the great tragedy of Jewish history was not only hatred, but helplessness. Jewish blood was cheap because Jewish power was absent. From the massacres of the First Crusade, to the butcheries of the Khmelnytsky Uprising, to the pogroms of Czarist Russia and the furnaces of the Holocaust, the lesson was repeated with merciless cruelty: defenseless Jews were dead Jews. That is why there is something profoundly disturbing—morally and intellectually—about leaders among the Charedim who seem incapable of grasping that without the Israel Defense Forces there would likely be no Israel at all. This is not a secondary political question. It is the central fact of modern Jewish existence.

The psychology of such leadership deserves scrutiny. There is a kind of moral ignorance that grows in sheltered worlds, where dependence on others is mistaken for spiritual superiority. Protected by soldiers, some speak as though soldiers are unnecessary. Living beneath the shield of sacrifice, they convince themselves the shield is incidental. Gratitude gives way to entitlement; realism dissolves into theological fantasy. This is not piety. It is historical amnesia elevated into doctrine.

No serious Jew acquainted with history can indulge the illusion that........

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