The Soldiers Question That Changed IDF Prayer Forever - Jeremy Gimpel

was um a question that was asked to one of the greatest rabbis one of the real founders of the hezer movement the religious Zionist movement arguably one of the greatest rabbis of the last generation a brilliant man just a pillar of Torah and of morality um respected by everyone and he really was a leader that raised up a leader of leaders so I would say more than half of the rabbis that are heads of yeshivas in the hezar movement today learned under this Rabbi and his name was uh raron lonstein and one of his students was in the Army and he was working on a tank and he's fixing something and something I don't know he's doing tank I've never worked on a tank before but I imagine that it's not easy and he's covered in oil and he's covered in dirt and it's just like grimy and tank like out in the dirt you know it's just he's clearly not very clean and there is an idea that before you pray to God that you should wash your hands and that you should wear like relatively nice attire you know you shouldn't stand before God in your boxers you know what I mean like you got to like wear something that's respectable you're talking to the king you don't want to wear something that's not appropriate and this Soldier asked R aronstein and he said listen I've been working on a tank for several hours I'm covered in grease I'm covered like my clothes are just so dirty am I allowed to pray the afternoon prayer am I allowed to pray minan now or um should I change my clothes and raron received that question and he thought it was so important that he sent it to his Rabbi R salvic in America who was of the top leaders of American jewelry and RV salivic answered back saying those clothes that you're wearing those are holy garments those are big kadha those are like the garments of the priest you don't need to take those clothes off you're wearing the Soldiers uniform of the army of Israel those are the holiest clothes you could be wearing you pray with those you're doing just fine and I just loved that answer as we're learning about the clothes of the Cohen and then 30 years ago the Jews are like reestablishing our fighting force and reestablishing the Army and we're trying to understand like is this holy is it not holy should Jews be strong in an ideal sense or maybe you know well if we have to be strong and learn how to fight then maybe and there's you know there was a conversation that happened last week what is the ideal Jew so in the land of Israel we're like we got to be mccabes we got to be King David we got to be like Joshua that's the ideal Abraham went out to war the Jews inside the land of Israel are meant to be spiritually strong and physically strong and then when I heard that story one of the fathers of the hezer movement and then salic one of the fathers of American jewry saying the uniform of the IDF those are holy those are holy garments just like the garments of a Cohan you may be filled with grease you can absolutely pray the afternoon prayers in those [Music] clothing