ARCHIVES: Rav Zevin on Yeshiva Draft
R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin (1890-1978) was universally recognized as one of the giants of Talmudic and halakhic scholarship. His iconoclastic combination of Haredi bone fides and Religious Zionism have made him the subject of great interest and no small amount of censorship.
The intrepid scholar, Prof. Marc B. Shapiro has discussed this in various posts to the SeforimBlog, as well as in passing in his important book Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History (Littman Library, 2015).
With the Jewish world’s ongoing wrestling with the exemption of Haredim from military service, R. Zevin’s 1948 essay “Regarding the Drafting of Yeshiva Students” has resurfaced as an object of interest. When originally published, the essay was signed with the pseudonym “One of the Rabbis.” Even after appearing posthumously with authorship attributed to R. Zevin, some maintained he could not have written it. Shapiro, with the assistance of David Eisen, has conclusively put that rumor to rest.
In 1985 TRADITION published a translation of the essay by David Wachsman. The questions R. Zevin opens with are as germane today as they were at the founding of the State of Israel:
His disassembling of pseudo-halakhic arguments on behalf of the blanket exemption rings equally true today:
Read “R. Shelomo Yosef Zevin on the Drafting of Yeshiva Students” (TRADITION, Fall 1985).