Skip to main content

Jewish Humor: Torah Students at War

I've seen in the news a lot lately that Israel is talking about requiring haredi (right wing religious Jews) to serve in the military just like everybody else. Their exemption from the military has been a sore point for secular Jews in Israel, who are the overwhelming majority of the population. The haredi, meanwhile ...

believe that they are providing the best possible service: by studying Torah and observing it, they keep the Creator on Israel's side, which, they say, is much more valuable than anything they could do on the battlefield. It all reminds me of an old joke about students from a Torah academy serving in World War I...

*    *    *    *    *

The story goes that the Russian army in World War I needed some cannon fodder for the front lines, some disposable people who could waste the enemies' time and artillery by getting shot and killed. The Russians hated Jews, so what better to use as cannon fodder than the yeshiva bochers, students from strict Jewish religious schools! 

The Russians at least took the time to teach the yeshiva boys how to load their weapons and fire them. They might use up more of the enemy's time and artillery that way. 

Much to the Russians' surprise, they found that the yeshiva boys were all crack shots! Every one of them hit the target on the bullseye every time! So they moved the targets back farther just to see what the boys could do, and they were still hitting the target reliably! They moved the targets back even farther and the boys were hitting it better than their commander had ever seen! Russia's new secret weapon was a bunch of boys from the Torah Academy!

He took them out onto the battlefield where the enemy was approaching and commanded, "FIRE!", but not one of the boys fired a shot. "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!!! Why aren't you shooting like we taught you???"

One of the boys explained, "There's people out there! Somebody might get hurt!"

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Did Moses know he was a Hebrew?

It seems to be a common notion, perpetuated by movies like Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments  and Disney's Prince of Egypt , that Moses grew up as a high-level member of Pharaoh's household with no idea that he was a Hebrew. But does that notion fit in with what it says in the Bible, or what Jewish tradition teaches about Moses? This week's Torah portion is Shemot, the beginning of the book of Exodus, so it's a good time to examine this question. We actually know very little about Moses' childhood from the Bible. Pharaoh had ordered all male children to be thrown into the Nile River at birth (Ex. 1:22). While that order was in effect, a boy was born to a man of the tribe of Levi and his wife, also of that tribe (Ex. 2:1-2). The parents are later identified (Num. 26:59) as Amram an Yocheved (that "ch" is pronounced like a throat-clearing noise). Yocheved could not bear to throw her beautiful new son to his death, so she hid him away for three mont...
Read more

Being Jewish at Christmas

Last March, I heard a DJ talking about March Madness, the annual insanity surrounding a college basketball tournament. She wasn't interested in it, but everyone in her office was obsessed with it. They had an office pool, a constant barrage of emails and parties to watch every game on TV. The DJ didn't want to be a part of it, but her co-workers pressured her to get involved. They tried to get her to participate in the pool, but she insisted that she didn't even know the names of the teams. Her co-workers assured her that it didn't matter who she bet on, it would be fun to play. They wouldn't take no for an answer. She wasn't trying to spoil their fun, but she wanted to be left alone. As I heard her talk about her frustration, I thought, "Now you know how it feels to be Jewish at Christmas." Think of something that you're not interested in but that everybody else seems to be talking about. Maybe it's a sporting event: March Madness, the Superbo...
15 comments
Read more

Genetic Genealogy and the Ashkenazi Problem

Today is National DNA Day. DNA testing has become increasingly popular for genealogy purposes, and the Jewish community is no exception to this trend. This is clear from this year's IAJGS conference on Jewish Genealogy , which is boasting in-depth DNA workshops and has more than 20 lectures related to DNA on its schedule. But DNA testing for genealogy purposes poses a special problem for Jews, often called the Ashkenazi Problem: Jews tend to marry Jews, and Jews who do not marry Jews tend to drop out of the Jewish community, and we have been doing that for so long in such a small population that we all tend to have a lot of DNA in common. The technical term for this is "endogamy," or in other words, inbreeding.  As a result, one study found that the average Jewish DNA tester matched 54% of all testers with any Jewish heritage! Compare this with gentile testers, who matched less than 1% of all testers with gentile ancestry. But if you are Jewish and interested ...
Post a Comment
Read more