🔗 Share this article

An impending political storm over enlisting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israel Defense Forces is threatening to undermine the governing coalition and dividing the state.

The public mood on the question has undergone a sea change in Israel in the wake of two years of conflict, and this is now perhaps the most volatile political risk facing Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Legal Struggle

Politicians are currently considering a proposal to terminate the special status awarded to ultra-Orthodox men dedicated to yeshiva learning, created when the State of Israel was established in 1948.

This arrangement was struck down by the nation's top court two decades ago. Temporary arrangements to extend it were finally concluded by the bench last year, pressuring the government to commence conscription of the community.

Roughly 24,000 call-up papers were sent out last year, but just approximately 1,200 Haredi conscripts reported for duty, according to army data shared with lawmakers.

Friction Erupt Into Public View

Strains are boiling over onto the public squares, with elected officials now discussing a new conscription law to force Haredi males into army duty in the same way as other Israeli Jews.

Two representatives were confronted this month by radical elements, who are enraged with parliament's discussion of the proposed law.

And last week, a elite police squad had to assist enforcement personnel who were surrounded by a sizeable mob of community members as they attempted to detain a suspected draft-evader.

Such incidents have prompted the establishment of a new communication network dubbed "Dark Alert" to send out instant alerts through ultra-Orthodox communities and call out activists to block enforcement from taking place.

"This is a Jewish state," said an activist. "It's impossible to battle the Jewish faith in a Jewish country. It is a contradiction."

A World Set Aside

However the shifts sweeping across Israel have not yet breached the walls of the Torah academy in Bnei Brak, an Haredi enclave on the fringes of Tel Aviv.

In the learning space, young students sit in pairs to analyze the Torah, their vividly colored notepads popping against the rows of formal attire and small black kippahs.

"Come at one in the morning, and you will see a significant portion are engaged in learning," the head of the yeshiva, the spiritual guide, said. "Through religious study, we safeguard the military personnel wherever they are. This is how we contribute."

Haredi Jews maintain that continuous prayer and spiritual pursuit guard Israel's armed forces, and are as essential to its military success as its conventional forces. This tenet was acknowledged by previous governments in the earlier decades, he said, but he admitted that public attitudes are shifting.

Increasing Societal Anger

The Haredi community has more than doubled its share of the country's people over the past seven decades, and now constitutes around one in seven. An exemption that started as an deferment for a few hundred Torah scholars turned into, by the onset of the 2023 war, a group of approximately 60,000 men exempt from the conscription.

Polling data indicate backing for drafting the Haredim is growing. A survey in July found that a large majority of secular and traditional Jews - encompassing a significant majority in Netanyahu's own right-wing Likud party - supported consequences for those who declined a enlistment summons, with a firm majority in favor of cutting state subsidies, passports, or the electoral participation.

"It seems to me there are citizens who are part of this country without contributing," one serviceman in Tel Aviv explained.

"I don't think, no matter how devout, [it] should be an justification not to go and serve your nation," added Gabby. "If you're born here, I find it somewhat unreasonable that you want to opt out just to study Torah all day."

Perspectives from Within Bnei Brak

Backing for ending the exemption is also coming from traditional Jews outside the ultra-Orthodox sector, like a Bnei Brak inhabitant, who is a neighbor of the academy and points to observant but non-Haredi Jews who do perform national service while also engaging in religious study.

"I am frustrated that the Haredim don't serve in the army," she said. "It is unjust. I also believe in the Jewish law, but there's a proverb in Jewish tradition - 'The Book and the Sword' – it signifies the scripture and the guns together. That's the way forward, until the days of peace."

Ms Barak runs a modest remembrance site in Bnei Brak to local soldiers, both from all backgrounds, who were lost in conflict. Long columns of images {