9:43 AM
Gil Student
The new issue of The Torah U-Madda Journal is available online. You can download some of the articles discussed in this post and this one. My contribution is here (see this post).
Scariest quote from the entire journal:
Recent studies of twelfth-grade pupils in religious high schools indicate that a large minority looks forward to military service precisely because it presents them with an opportunity to abandon their Orthodox life-style. Thus, of those surveyed in a large poll in 1999, only 52% declared an intention of remaining fully observant. As many as 20% admitted that they had already decided not to do so, in the case of boys by taking the symbolic step of “removing their kippah.”In general, this article ("Dilemmas of Military Service in Israel: The Religious Dimension" by Stuart A. Cohen) is a fascinating discussion of the challenges facing Orthodox Jews in the Israeli army and some solutions that are being used. Altogether, though, it presents a somewhat depressing portrait.
