Heroic text in a post-heroic environment: national liturgy in Mizrahi ultra-Orthodox prayer books

This article seeks to address the adaptation of a heroic text (the prayer for the welfare of Israel’s soldiers) to a social environment (Mizrahi haredi society in Israel) that it critical of its content yet seeks to include the prayer in its canonical texts (in this instance, the prayer book) owing to social and political circumstances. It will argue that the accommodation can be understood within the framework of the discussion of post-heroism in civil‒military relations in Israel, whereby different groups create models or forms of heroism that either compete with or accord with the dominant (national military) model.