Outside R’ Eichenstein’s yeshivah in Yerushalayim, there was a burglary. In the middle of the night, someone stole a car that was parked outside the yeshivah, getting away with it and the wads of cash that had been stowed away in the glove department. All went lost.
The police department put their elite investigators on the case. The first thing the investigators did was to send their best investigator into the yeshivah to check the surveillance cameras for any clues. Hanging outside the yeshivah building were cameras surveilling the area, and perhaps he’d catch a good view of the robber — of some other helpful evidence.
For this detective, entering the yeshivah building was spilling salt on a wound. He was opposed to everything that yeshivos stood for. His face already said it all from the moment he stepped foot into its four walls. After only a few minutes, the volcano erupted. While he was scanning through the hours of video footage, he voiced his disapproval. “You know that it’s illegal to dodge the army like this. Our people are standing on the front lines fighting for the country, while you are just skirting the problem. That’s wrong!”
His words hung in the air.
The yeshivah students tottered over whether they should respond to his outrage or not. “We could try explaining the truth,” they thought, “but he knows it already, and so telling it to him again isn’t going to help even one iota.” But the talmidim couldn’t just let his bizayon ha’Torah be unopposed. They had to oppose it — and oppose it fittingly.
One of the avreichim heroically pipped up and declared, “Don’t you understand that you are doing this to yourselves?”
“Doing what to ourselves?” the detective questioned.
“The yeshivos are the frontline defenders. Do you not follow the news? Right after the government cut funding to Kollels just before Pesach, you suffered a heavy attack. 400 ballistic missiles rained over your heads. Is that coincidental? Before Rosh Hashanah, the government made another cut, and again Iran showered you with missiles. Don’t you get it? We are the superior guardians.”
The investigator’s face went pale. He wasn’t expecting such proof blindsiding him.
“Not only that,” continued the avreich, “but the cost that the government spent defending itself on that pre-Pesach attack equaled the exact amount of the cut they deprived from the Kollel learners. When they cut the primary defense system, Hashem makes them have to put it into the Iron Dome system — which comes with a price. You see for yourself what we are providing for the country. Do you call that nothing?”
It was now the avreich’s words that thickened the air. The investigator stood there in utter silence. He was speechless. And that was the end of the conversation. The investigator returned back to his work with a lowered head, and as soon as he finished his screenings, he made a beeline out.
The truth was too stinging. It didn’t fit his belief, but we know the truth.
We put armor on the front lines. The more the better. We are the energetic warriors.
