HaRav Yigal opens with an amazing story that he heard from an avreich from Petach Tikva who teaches in a Chinuch Atzmai cheder in Herzliya. A large community of French immigrants has developed in Herzliya who choose to send their children to other chadorim which offer a government curriculum of secular studies.

A week ago, an affluent French building contractor came to the Chinuch Atzmai. cheder, asking to enroll his son and another boy from the eighth grade. It is very unusual to accept a new student in the middle of the year, especially to the eighth grade, when only a few months are left until the end of the year. The father was naturally asked why and he replied that he wanted his son to continue on to a regular yeshiva ketana, but his present school does not do this.

"What has made you decide such a thing at this late stage?" the father was asked.

General Zamir met with the Knesset Committee for Foreign Affairs and Security in order to present a report on the progress of the war on all fronts, while repeatedly insisting on the army's need for more soldiers. During the hearing, MK Rabbi Meir Porush asked the Chief of Staff, "In the period of your tenure as head of the Security Ministry and with your backing, a committee was formed under Aluf Shkeidi which recommended administering the topic of mobilizing the draft through negotiation with the chareidi sector while not drafting those who were studying three full shifts daily. Why, then, are you permitting the military police to contend with chareidim in opposition to the recommendations of the Shkeidi committee?"

Zamir refused to answer, and not arbitrarily. Top rabbinical heads of the National Religious stream, including heads of the Hesder institutions which do send their star graduates to fight in the army, have been requesting for a long time to meet with the General. They have serious complaints regarding the army's dealings with the Hesder inductees and its trampling upon all previous agreements, where every promise and guarantee to preserve the basic Jewish values during their military service has been flouted.

The rabbonim of these institutions, who have already called upon their students to refrain from enlisting to certain divisions where many ethical Jewish values are blithely disregarded, are seriously deliberating to forbid their students to enroll to the armored divisions for precisely those reasons. They request meeting with the Chief of Staff in order to present their arguments but the latter simply refuses to meet with them.

The army is not lacking soldiers but is lacking basic Jewish values...

In honor of the seventy-third yahrtzeit of R' Zelig Reuven Bengis (7th of Sivan, 5713 — 21 May 1953). This was first published 33 years ago, in honor of the fortieth yahrtzeit.

There was something about the young visitor which disturbed him. R' Zelig Reuven Bengis, the elderly gaon, who had assumed the position of Ravad of Yerushalayim in 1937 at the age of seventy-five, was accustomed to the steady flow of famous talmidei chachomim and select yeshiva students who loved to ask him their questions, to speak in Torah with him and to draw from his ever-flowing wellsprings of wisdom. The door of his dilapidated house in the Batei Neitin neighborhood of Yerushalayim remained half-open all day, so that callers could enter even without knocking.

Yerushalayim's geonim and brilliant lamdonim knew that in that small abode, they would find the gaon with the beaming countenance, bent over a sefer, studying with the verve and vigor of a youth who was savoring the sweetness of a Talmudic sugya for the first time in his life. They knew, too, that they would be received by the elderly gaon with joy and warmth, as if each caller were an only child, who only occasionally visited his father to speak with him in Torah.

This time, though, an odd scene unfolded. The yeshiva student who had just entered found R' Zelig Reuven engrossed in his studies. As usual, R' Zelig Reuven greeted him pleasantly. Yet something seemed different, nonetheless. At the very onset of the conversation, something about the youth disturbed the gaon. With his keen and brilliant mind, he detected a trace of strangeness in the youth's personality. Perhaps he was struck by the tinge of sternness and the subtle overtones of conceit in the youth's voice.