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‘Ask NOT what the country can do for your Yeshiva students,
Ask what your Yeshiva students can do for the country’
Hesder Yeshiva
As a fresh-faced youngster just out of high school, with no religious background, I was excited to take a deep dive into my Jewish identity, while also learning about Israel. Following others on a similar path, I spent my gap year at a Hesder Yeshiva in Israel. The Hesder program was set up in 1954 as a framework for young religious Zionist men to engage in their military service while also studying Torah. By the time I enrolled, it was a well-established and respected network.
The program is based on the recognition of a religious requirement to defend the country, thus also caring for your fellow citizens’ welfare. It was so successful that in 1991 the program received the Israel Prize for social contribution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israel_Prize_recipients
I was in the foreign students’ class. We were not there to enlist but to pay fees and help defray the Yeshiva’s day-to-day costs.
The atmosphere was, understandably, Zionist in orientation, both politically and religiously. It was all new to me, and I drank in everything I was told and observed. I was excited to be part of such a positive force in Israel.
It was the time of the Lebanon war, and all but the foreign students were periodically disappearing for military service. I chirped away to one of my Israeli study partners, telling him about the beauty of Australia. He was a sombre fellow and at first I didn’t know why.
“Have you been to Australia? I asked him.
“No”.
“Have you been abroad at all?”, I pressed.
“Yes”.
“Oh cool. Where?” I was pleased he had gotten to experience a world outside the one I was learning about in Jerusalem.
“Lebanon”, he answered curtly.
That’s a funny place to vacation, I thought. But then I realised why he answered without a smile. He had seen it from the inside of a tank.
On weekends, during my gap year, I would leave the Yeshiva and spend weekends with family members who lived in a village in the mountains. The bus from Jerusalem would drop passengers off by the side of the road, where we hitched a ride or waited for the local bus up to the village. Skinny as a rake and with adolescent acne, I waited in the intense heat by the tall, yellow grass behind the stop. Looking definitively uncool I wore a long-sleeved, button-up shirt. Tzitzit dangled from under my belt. I sported a crocheted kippa on my head.
On one particular day, three other people meandered over to wait for a bus. A large, middle-aged woman carried her shopping in disposable plastic bags, while a sloppily dressed man next to her held aloft a cigarette in nicotine-stained fingers. I was happy to chat. As I was clearly a foreigner, the woman asked what I was doing in Israel. I’m studying in Yeshiva, I told her proudly. Where I came from, that was considered laudable.
Boy, was I in for a shock. The woman started screaming and berating me.
“How dare you! You scum-sucking parasite! Our boys are dying in the army while you live off state funding. You should be ashamed!” She spat at me while attacking me with a stream of insults.
My Hebrew was good, but not sufficient to meet her tirade. I was unaware of the military exemption for Haredi Yeshiva students, or even that such Yeshivas existed. I stood there dumbfounded, innocent of the schism in Israeli society over the issue. Later, I related the story to my cousins who tried to explain, but I was too naive, and I just didn’t get it.
https://en.idi.org.il/articles/6526
Haredi Yeshiva
In the early days of the state, Ben Gurion agreed to provide a military exemption for ultra-orthodox students – capped at 400 – as a gesture to a group that did not believe in a secular Jewish State, but for whom maintaining its Jewish identity was paramount. This was seen as especially important following the recent destruction of Jewish life in Europe.
The cap was lifted under Menachem Begin in 1977 in exchange for political alliances. Over time the Haredi community grew significantly, and today those registered under this exemption number in the vicinity of 65,000.
Various attempts to more equitably regulate this exemption, such as חוק טל (the Tal Law), were ultimately unsuccessful.
But there is no greater motivation for development than necessity. Since 2023, the issue of military exemption for Haredi students has been a very real and genuine concern. Fighting a long-lasting existential war on numerous fronts, the IDF simply does not have enough manpower. Reservists – religious and secular - are being called to serve for more and more periods, shouldering more than their fair share of the burden. Most are now holding guns in Gaza for their fifth tour. Attempts have been made to extend the mandatory service period of recruits.
Some reservists have served for almost the entire two years since current hostilities began. In previous blogs I have described the financial, emotional, and family tolls this is taking on men and women who are serving and all members of their extended families. On the other hand, Haredi students (and those who have managed to register as such, despite spending their days working) not only receive government grants, funding and discounts, but they insist on an exemption from military service.
I will add that municipal taxes are significantly higher in Jerusalem than in other cities due in part to low socio-economic discounts /exemptions of such taxes by the sizeable ultra-orthodox population. That hits me directly in my hip pocket.
https://jerusaleminstitute.org.il/en/blog/fight-for-your-right-to-pay-tax/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Last year, while driving, I was scanning through radio broadcasts when I came across a Haredi station. A guest rabbi spoke squarely to his listeners. We all know he said, that some of you are registered as students but you actually go out to work. Then you ask for a certificate that you’ve been studying. The Yeshiva administrator knows you haven’t been attending, and it puts him in a difficult position. When I heard this said out loud, my jaw dropped.
Iran’s proxies, who are waging a violent campaign against Israel, have proven their intention, time and again, of genocide against Israel. To my understanding, physically saving ourselves is a religious obligation that supersedes observing the commandments, including the stringent laws of Shabbat.
(See, inter alia, Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Shabbat 2:25, and Talmud Yoma 85b).
So when Haredi students unilaterally and cynically claim that their contribution to the good fight is different in nature and form from the rest of society, one has to ask whether they see themselves as part of the society at all. And accordingly, whether they are entitled to the support and protection of such society.
I should note that a comparatively small number of Haredi soldiers do exist and serve proudly in the military. I know some, and they are delightful and dignified men. There are even Haredi army units. I am sure they get a lot of pushback from their communities.
https://nahalharedi.org/units/netzach-yehuda-kfir/
Government Interest
When Bibi won the last round of national elections before October 7, he did so by allying with the Haredi parties. Despite being in a government tasked with looking after all the people, those parties’ agenda clearly included maintaining the military exemption for their Yeshiva students. Since October 7 that has become a major windfall. While the exemption has not been extended, most such students, following their leaders’ advice, ignore their draft orders - at the expense of the rest of the population.
How can they look Israeli servicemen in the face? It can only be because they condescendingly see themselves as better.
It has been decades since I was mistakenly targeted as a Haredi draft dodger and incurred the wrath of a salt-of-the-earth Israeli couple. And only now do I get it.
Trying to hold his Government together, Bibi has been making efforts to reinstitute the military exemption, including getting his detractors (such as the attorney general) out of the way and removing the powers of the court system itself. This political battle has been reaching a crescendo. Over the last few days, Bibi’s Haredi allies have been threatening to bolt the coalition if this issue does not progress in their favour.
This may cause Bibi’s whole deck of cards to fall.
Is that likely?
Against all odds, the current Prime Minister has remained in power despite ongoing criminal investigations, prosecutions, and the slaughter of constituents on his watch. A public figure needs to be pretty wily to survive all that. Add to that his government’s imposition of a special tax on all civil service employees to help pay for the current war, while prices at the supermarket still keep rising and proposals have even been made to increase the remuneration of MKs.
https://rifkalebowitz.com/2025-brings-wave-of-price-increases-for-israeli-households/
Bibi has a dedicated support base, but the tide against him is growing, especially with his inability for almost two years to resolve the Gaza hostilities and retrieve all our hostages held there. (To be clear, I cannot know whether anyone else in his position would have been more successful). And all this in the face of a continuing list of casualties and injuries suffered by those brave men and women who do not evade the draft and willingly serve their country.
If the Haredim are unable to ensure their members’ exemption from service, then they might leave the coalition as threatened, and Bibi’s kingdom may crumble. (Talk has recently surfaced about a new Bennet era).
This puts pressure on Bibi to acquiesce to Haredi demands. But if he is unsuccessful and the government falls as a result, the Haredim may lose other financial benefits that they have worked to achieve.
Bibi will be looking to leverage that fact to keep them on board. If he is successful in that, it would mean kicking the can of exemption down the road.
That can has been shaken violently as of late. Will it explode?
I suspect the coalition will find an arrangement to keep the Government in power. Others disagree with me and think the current administration has reached a tipping point.
Like every other aspect of our lives over the last two years, we can only wait and see.
2 comments:
We can do more than "just wait and see". Join the demonstrations demanding accountability and sharing the burden equally. Be proactive. Passivity plays into the hands of our evil and self centred leaders.
Well written. I didn't realise the nuances on the issue. It's changed my perspective.
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