The issue of conscription of Haredi young men into the IDF and the wholesale exemptions offered to that demographic has been a contentious issue for many decades. In October 1948, six months after the establishment of Israel, the number of full-time yeshiva students who received a formal exemption was tiny, 400 a year, and did not make a great impact on the critical ability of the IDF to staff its ranks nor create great cleavage in Israel society. Indeed, a number of young Haredi scholars at the time, such as Rav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l, who would later go on to serve as the leading light in the Haredi community, actually served for a period in the IDF during the early months of the War of Independence in 1948. This was done with the encouragement of the leading roshei yeshiva of the time such as Rav Kahanamen, zt”l.
As decades passed and the Haredi community exploded in numbers and grew in its political influence through its political parties helping to form governing coalitions, the facts on the ground changed and the numbers exempted grew. After the 1977 election of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, z”l, caps on the number of exemptions were removed, and in recent years the number has ballooned to above 60,000 a year.
The wholesale exemption has become especially fraught over the last nearly 10 months since Oct. 7, with the existential war that Israel has been fighting on many fronts. The heavy losses of precious men and women of the IDF, especially in the religious-Zionist world, far exceeding their percentage of the population, the lengthy tours of reserve duty that never seem to end, and the manpower shortage to fight a long, protracted war, have brought all these tensions to a head.
In general, my practice has been to refrain from commenting publicly on internal Israeli issues related to security matters and issues of war and peace. However, it is certainly fair game and appropriate for us as American Jews to evaluate and comment on the positions and statements taken by American Jewish organizations on Israeli matters and policies.
Two weeks ago, Agudath Israel of America, the venerable Haredi advocacy organization, issued a blistering attack on efforts by various Israeli politicians and the Israeli Supreme Court to draft young Haredi yeshiva students into the IDF during these last months of Israel’s battle against Hamas terrorists and its leaders. In its statement, the Agudah wrote:
“Policy-makers, with malicious intent, aim to disrupt the sanctity of Torah scholars, requiring the students of our holy yeshivos to abandon their study benches in the beis medrash and enlist in the military. They scheme with various tricks, and their hand is still outstretched, poised to persist. Moreover, decrees are being issued against young children learning Torah, both in Eretz Yisroel and in the Diaspora. All of this is reminiscent of the decree of burning the Torah.” (My bolds.)
The statement goes on to explain that they see these “evil decrees” as specifically equivalent to the burning of the Talmud and other holy books in the streets of Paris in the Middle Ages by our antisemitic enemies. This statement joins a number of statements issued earlier this year by Agudath Israel of America that condemned any attempts to draft yeshiva students to the army as “waging war against the Torah and the Giver of the Torah.”
As the Modern Orthodox International Rabbinic Fellowship put it so well in its reaction to this statement:
“In addition to its factual inaccuracy and total obliviousness to the contemporary reality and challenges faced by the Jewish people in the Jewish state, and its misreading of Jewish law and tradition, this rhetoric is simply unacceptable. It desecrates the name of God and the good name of God’s holy Torah and widens the fissures in the Jewish people. Whatever one’s political perspective on this contentious issue, we express our total rejection of the use of such language which is out of the pale and dishonors Jewish history and sacrifice.”
There is much room for discussion about how to go forward on integrating the growing Haredi population in Israel into the ranks of the IDF and the Israeli economy. Most of the people are driven by concern for Am Yisrael and its future. Physical coercion and jailing people will probably not work and will cause more alienation and frustration on all sides. But there are other ways and other paths to explore. An excellent piece was recently published in “Tradition on Line” by Rabbi Dr. Tamir Granot, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Orot Shaul in Petach Tikva, who lost his son, Amitai, in battle in the early days of the war: traditiononline.org/a-way-forward-on-haredi-draft
Discussion and dialogue, appreciation of the motives of your ideological opponents as well as sense of the urgency of the hour in Jewish history are sorely demanded. Invective and misuse of Jewish history and memory, however, are not the path that leads out of this conundrum or sanctifies God’s name and brings Kevod HaTorah.
