Thousands are flocking to the grave of a Haredi leader. His former aide says he’d hate it
On the anniversary of Rabbi Elazar Shach’s death, his burial place has become a prayer hub where adherents denounce newly issued military draft orders for Haredim
Mati Wagner is The Times of Israel's religions reporter.
This week, thousands of Haredi Jews are making a pilgrimage to the gravesite of Rabbi Elazar Shach to mark the 23rd anniversary of his death on the 16th day of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan.
But if Shach were alive, he would likely look askance at the crowds thronging to his place of burial.
“Rabbi Shach never visited gravesites,” said Rabbi Refoel Wolff, who served as Shach’s personal aide for over two decades until close to his death at the age of 102 in 2001. “He was against that sort of thing.”
At the cemetery in Bnei Brak, adjacent to the flagship Ponevezh Yeshiva that Shach headed for over four decades, a tent was set up to provide shelter for the many prayer services expected to be conducted at the gravesite.
Kabbalists blew shofars and lit candles during a midnight prayer session on Saturday night.
An ad hoc rabbinic court was established at the gravesite and ruled that as “causing a Jew to sin is worse than murder, we hereby declare no Haredi man will enlist in the army,” according to Kol Hayosher, a WhatsApp-based news outlet.
“Rabbi Shach had many opportunities to visit former teachers of his, such as Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, who are buried here in Israel, but he never did,” said Wolff.
“Rabbi Shach also said that when he was in Vilna before the Holocaust, where the Gaon of Vilna was buried, he never went to visit. And neither did anyone else in Lithuania — it simply was not a practice of the Jews there,” he said. “I personally never visit Rabbi Shach’s grave.”
Shach, who was particularly politically active in the 1980s and 1990s, was perhaps the most dynamic modern leader of the Lithuanian, non-Hasidic, stream of Haredi Judaism.
Shach was instrumental in the creation of Shas in 1984 as a party that represents Sephardic Haredi interests. In 1988, due in part to his opposition to Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad Hasidic group, he broke with Agudat Yisrael and created Degel Hatorah, which represented Lithuanian Haredi interests.
He also supported the establishment of Yated Neeman, a news daily that is the mouthpiece of Degel Hatorah.
In a fiery speech in 1990, he referred to secular kibbutz members as “growers of rabbits and pigs” who did not “know what Yom Kippur is.”
He was bitterly opposed to settlements in the West Bank, which he saw as incitement against Gentiles that endangered Jews, and he supported land-for-peace initiatives.
As thousands of Haredim in Israel mark the anniversary of Shach’s death, public outcry has grown against sweeping exemptions for Haredi soldiers.
Since war erupted in Gaza and later in south Lebanon after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, some 800 IDF soldiers have been killed, over 5,400 injured and 300,000 called up for reserve duty.
But Wolff believes that if Shach were alive today, he would oppose the enlistment of Haredi young men, even those who do not devote most of their waking hours to Torah study.
“The big problem today, beyond the issue of pulling men away from Torah study, is the army is no place for a Haredi young man who is meticulous about adhering to halacha,” Wolff said, using the Hebrew word for Jewish law.
“Even for someone who doesn’t want to learn Torah or has difficulty learning Torah, there is no framework for him in the army. It’s not just about learning, it’s a question of whether he will remain a Jew fully committed to his Judaism,” he said.
At the same time, Wolff said that he has a letter from Shach in which Shach states that any yeshiva student caught with a driver’s license would be removed from the list of Torah students eligible to receive an exemption from the IDF.
“He felt that driving is dangerous and that if you can drive a car it will take you to places that are spiritually dangerous,” Wolff said.
About 66,000 Haredi men aged 18 to 24 currently have exemptions from military service, claiming they devote most of their waking hours to Torah study.
According to officials in Netzah Yehudah, an organization that helps military-age Haredi men make the transition to IDF service, at least a third of those with exemptions are not learning in yeshiva.
On Sunday, coinciding with the anniversary of Shach’s death, the IDF began sending 7,000 draft orders to Haredi men, after the Supreme Court ruled that it was no longer legal to issue sweeping exemptions for the Haredi community.
Demonstrations broke out in Bnei Brak and other cities with large Haredi populations and crowds of demonstrators blocked roads in protest against the issuing of the draft orders.
However, Wolff said that Shach opposed demonstrations too.
“He claimed they were not effective, they were not educational for the Haredi youth and he also felt it was incitement against secular Jews that aroused resentment.”
