Not all things are compatible, and there comes a time when choices must be made.

Not all of Israel’s internal news makes it to the foreign press. The IDF is having a bit of trouble, beyond Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, etc. Like the US, it has decided to put women soldiers into combat. In the past, such a move would have been considered ridiculous and ill-considered. But today, women are in all branches of the armed services. I don’t recall how many articles spoke of the female Israeli Air Force officers who helped bomb Iran. The kerfuffle is not that women are going into tanks; for decades, women have been tank instructors for the IDF’s armor divisions. No, the issue is the response from the religious Zionist camp. Their rabbis are opposed to the move, and though they send their students to the army, they are telling them to avoid the Armored Corps. This is not the ultra-orthodox, but rather the Orthodox Zionist (often referred to as “knit kippah”) wing, which is super pro-IDF. Their rabbis do not accept guys and gals in the tight spaces of a tank and have expressed their displeasure. About 200 female IDF officers have expressed their support for the move. As they say, stay tuned for further details.

The story of who sits in Israel’s Merkava tanks is played out in countries throughout the world: what happens when competing ideologies or worldviews clash? Can there be a compromise not liked by either side but nominally acceptable to both? Will one side win out, to its joy and the consternation of its vanquished foe? Jews rarely express their religious activities outdoors. Public candle lighting during Chanukah is one exception. Jews do not go outside of their synagogues to pray on the local soccer field or on a major thoroughfare. One cannot say the same of certain Muslim groups in the US and Europe. When they pray in large urban spaces, they do so not because of any lack of mosques or space in the same. They........

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