Rabbi: IDF beard ban is like Nazi Germany

An influential Israeli rabbi said Sunday that an Israel Defense Forces directive strictly regulating beards among conscripts was reminiscent of Nazi-occupied Europe, where Jewish men were forbidden from growing facial hair. He called on soldiers to refuse orders to shave even if it meant serving time in military prison.

“These are dark days for the IDF,” said Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a leader of the nationalist-Haredi, or Hardal, movement, a fundamentalist offshoot of religious Zionism that embraces ultra-Orthodox religious mores.

In a halachic responsum on the website Srugim, he invoked a “famous picture depicting two Jews, while German soldiers force one of them to shave the other’s beard in front of the amused onlookers.”

The regulations would only grant permission for a beard to soldiers who could prove that they were religious and produce the signed approval of certain high-ranking officers.

“We want to put an end to cases in which soldiers received permission to grow beards for religious reasons, but walked around smoking on Saturdays, or drove,” showing they were not in fact religious, one officer from the Manpower Department told the Ynet news site in July.

Said Aviner, “It doesn’t say anywhere that a nonreligious Jew has to shave, except in Nazi Germany.”

In November, the High Court of Justice turned back petitions against the beard ban, insisting the military’s decision to enforce a clean-shaven look among the troops was legal and reasonable and maintaining that the IDF had to uphold military discipline. The petitioners had claimed that the order was discriminatory and contravened their religious beliefs.

In explaining the new ban in July, officers from the Manpower Department said they were seeking to impose more discipline among soldiers. But Aviner said the claim that “a soldier whose appearance is unkempt won’t function as well” was untrue.

“One can be bearded and neat and beardless and unkempt,” he asserted. “All of the world’s armies feature, as they have in the past, bearded generals and officers, and these have led to victories.”

Aviner said that a soldier ordered to shave his beard should refuse, “even if he will receive one hundred lashes and go to prison” as a result.

The military police has been charged with enforcing the beard ban. Violations could result in fines and other penalties such as confinement to base, but not corporal punishment.

Aviner has in the past made waves with his comments on gender roles, notably in October 2012, when he instructed his followers that women should not engage in politics or run for Knesset because it transgresses Jewish modesty laws.

“Women should not hold senior positions in the Knesset, as it is immodest,” he said at the time, according to the religious news site Kipa. “Public exposure is contrary to the Jewish view of the woman, whereby ‘the king’s daughter is all glorious within.'” He later clairified that he had been speaking of the “ideal” situation rather than everyday reality.