The massive protest gathering held Monday night in Bnei Brak continues to generate public debate, as one of its principal organizers, Rav Shabtai Levi, explained the thinking behind the event, rejected attempts to turn it into a political demonstration, addressed the controversy over inflammatory remarks made during the rally, and spoke about what he described as the dangers facing bnei Torah who enter the military system.

In an interview with Yaakov Grodka on Kol Barama’s HaMahadura HaMerkazit, Rav Shabtai Levi, the rav of the Ramat Aharon neighborhood and head of the Halichos Moshe institutions, said the demonstration was organized to express solidarity with bnei Torah who have been arrested over military draft issues.

“We organized this entire protest because the public, and the entire Am Yisroel throughout the country, feels the pain of the bnei Torah,” Rav Levi said. “It is unbelievable that in the Holy Land young men are being arrested, and people cannot walk down the street without fearing that a police vehicle will stop them and hand them over. And for what offense? For learning Torah.”

Rav Levi argued that the military neither needs nor is suited for the chareidi community.

“The framework of the army is not suitable for us, and even the army personnel themselves say this—they do not want us and they have no need for us. After all, of everyone in the army, only about 20 percent are outstanding combat soldiers, while the rest wander around idle in the Kirya. So why do they insist? They intentionally want to assimilate us with them so that the bochur chareidi will ultimately become secular. It will never happen. The Torah of Israel sustains the world. Everyone must know that the true master of this country is not its political leaders but those who learn Torah, because without Torah the world cannot exist.”

Addressing reports that some participants tried to display signs criticizing Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, Rav Levi said he personally ordered the signs removed in order to preserve the gathering’s nonpolitical character.

“We announced from the outset that this rally was completely apolitical,” he said. “It began with mourning over the arrests and the humiliation of Torah. Imagine someone sitting on the floor on Tishah B’Av crying, and another person suddenly starts shouting against the prime minister—is that relevant? Two bochurim met me at one o’clock in the morning and asked why I ordered the signs against Deri removed. I told them, ‘Those signs have nothing to do with this event.’ This place is kodesh kodashim, and you do not bring the mundane into the holy.”

He also defended chareidi elected officials, saying they are working on behalf of the community even if they do not always succeed.

“I do not believe there is a single shaliach tzibbur representing the chareidi public who is not working and fighting for the community. Even if they do not succeed one hundred percent, success comes from Heaven. The fact is that all the members of Knesset and former ministers came personally to support the rally, because in our chareidi world we need only one thing—unity. The secular media behaves like a metzora—it sees a huge white wall and searches only for the tiny black spot. Someone held up a sticker, and we removed it immediately before it developed into something bigger.”

Rav Levi also addressed the controversy surrounding remarks delivered by another speaker during the rally, who used an inflammatory expression directed at the IDF chief of staff. The comments were later condemned by senior Shas leader Rav Moshe Maya.

“That is not a sentence I would have said, and had I known beforehand I would have told him not to say it, because that is not our way,” Rav Levi said. “But out of this enormous rally, to seize on one or two words spoken in the heat of the moment? After all, Maran Rav Ovadia Yosef and Rav Shteinman also spoke very sharply in their time against Lapid because of the decrees. The speaker did not, chas v’shalom, intend to harm the chief of staff personally or call for harm against him. He was protesting the concept of the General Staff—the idea that the military establishment becomes the ultimate authority instead of following Torah and religion. A word like that slipped out, but there is no need to make it into a major story. It is completely insignificant compared to the unity and the Kiddush Hashem that took place there.”

Later in the interview, Rav Levi described what he said are troubling conditions faced by chareidi recruits and detainees in the military system, explaining why, in his view, the traditional approach under which those not learning Torah entered military service is no longer viable.

“Fifty years ago there were not many yeshivos. Someone who was not suited for learning would enlist, and the greatest concern was that he might come out smoking cigarettes,” he said. “Today the situation is completely different. Today, if a bochur goes into the army, he comes out desecrating Shabbos. Why? Because everywhere, including the chareidi units, they forcibly bring in women soldiers. A bochur told me that while serving in a chareidi unit, he refused to look at a female soldier because of tznius, and they punished him with a full day in military detention without food because he ‘refused an order.’ Where has anyone ever heard of such a thing?”

Rav Levi also leveled serious allegations regarding the treatment of chareidi detainees in military prisons.

“A prominent rav told me that, systematically, inside the prison, female guards walk around without proper uniforms and half-dressed in violation of the regulations—and all for one purpose: to secularize the bochurim and make them abandon their beliefs. They place them in situations where they have no choice. That is why I say this: Someone who truly is not learning would be prepared to enlist, but on one condition—that there be a framework established according to the guidance of rabbanim, with the rabbanim responsible for preserving taharas hakodesh, and the army signing on to that arrangement. No rav would oppose such a framework. But the army simply is not willing, because their goal is not recruitment—their goal is to secularize us.”