The issue of drafting Haredi men to serve in the Israel Defense Forces was temporarily shunted aside due to the launch of the Gaza ceasefire and emotional hostage returns.
But it returned to the headlines in recent weeks with a vengeance. On a single day, Israel saw street protests by Haredi hardliners, threats by Haredi Knesset members to destroy the coalition and a promise by one Knesset minister that his son would opt for a prison cell, where he would continue to learn Torah over any army service.
For many, a recent Israeli High Court ruling that a decades-long yeshivah exemption is no longer valid first drew their attention to the matter. That court decision prompted the government to work on a new law in which only some Haredi young men will be drafted, exempting the rest.
But for families like mine, this issue is always in the “headlines” of our hearts and souls.
The eve of Chanukah was the first yahrzeit of our son-in-law, Naftali, an Israel Defense Forces reserve tank officer killed by a Hamas RPG fire in Shejaiya in the Gaza Strip. The pain and grief have not subsided. Even the bare fact of his death hasn't entirely sunk in. Alongside these emotions, anger at Haredi draft evaders grows with every passing day.
As a people, we are confronting armed forces near our borders and even within our midst. Other enemies are active overseas, embedded within populations where Jews once lived in safety for decades but now face attacks on an unprecedented scale.
It is only natural that the slogan “Together, we will win” now permeates our existence. So, it may seem unreasonable to be incensed at our Haredi brethren in Israel. But there are times when unity, while deeply desirable, is not an option.
Those targeting the Haredi population are a substantial contingent. According to a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute published last month, support for drafting Haredim rose from 67% in January 2024 to now 84.5%.
Many have publicly berated them for their refusal to serve in the IDF and have begged them to reconsider. But that hasn’t produced even a dent in their intransigence. If anything, they have dug their heels in even deeper and grown more outspoken in insisting that they will never take up arms to defend their country.
Neither the horrific loss of lives nor the heavy burden of reserve duty, which the rest of us have endured, has moved them or their leaders.
And lest anyone point to the tiny minority of Haredim who have enlisted, please note that they are just that—a minuscule drop in the bucket, who often suffer censure from their own families and communities.
Here are some recent comments from Haredi “holy” men that set the tone. Most are the same hackneyed excuses we’ve heard for decades. In the context of the past year’s new reality, however, they sound far more scathing and malign.
The American Haredi news site Yeshivah World News reported that religious, heads of yeshivahs and Knesset members from the Degel HaTorah political party gathered on Dec. 4 for “an emergency meeting” regarding the status yeshivah student and the draft.
There, Rabbi Dov Landau, a religious leader, reportedly said that Haredi men “will not enlist in any shape or form, but the unclear situation we are in causes legitimate fear and tension” for the heads of the yeshivas, the students and the families of those who have received a draft order. He went on to say that “unfortunately, the number of b’nei yeshivahs receiving orders is increasing.”
Shortly afterward, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef caused a firestorm when he said that even Haredi men who aren’t learning in yeshiva will not serve in the IDF. “It is forbidden to go to the army, even for one who is idle,” the rabbi said.
The underlying truth is that the Haredis are fine with dumping the burden of defending Israel on the rest of us. Their efforts at a “piety spin” cannot disguise what this is: brazen parasitism.
Many of our heroic soldiers were, and are, religious, God-fearing, devoted Torah-learners. That hasn’t stopped them from taking up arms.
Encountering Haredi men of draft age in various settings can be unsettling. I regularly pass them by when I go to my local swimming pool and gym. “Excuse me,” I am so tempted to say, “but aren’t you supposed to be in the beit midrash [house of religious study]? How do you justify hanging out here, swimming and using the treadmill?”
Even more upsetting is that many of my close relatives—siblings, nephews, cousins—are draft dodgers. They are undoubtedly kind in every other way, and are devoted fathers, husbands and sons. But their embrace of the Haredi platform is an anathema. They never discuss the draft issue, and they rarely mention the war at all. When they do, it is only to bemoan the intrusion of sirens and the lack of Palestinian workers for their businesses. We seem to live on different planets.
As I am certain that our relationship would not survive my broaching this issue, I have never taken that irreversible step.
But this conflict isn’t something peripheral to our lives. It is a festering wound threatening to rip our society asunder.
And so, it was music to my ears to hear that a group of Dati Leumi “national religious” women whose husbands serve in the IDF banded together to pressure the government to impose the draft equally on the entire population.
Penina Pogoda of Alon Shvut, one of the group’s founders, said: “We aren’t interested in imprisoning Haredis or in toppling the government, but we will see to it that it doesn’t pay to dodge the draft ... thanks to our activities, our community leaders understand that what has been, is not what will be.”
To start, they organized a conference in the Knesset in which military spokesmen warned Knesset members that the IDF needs some 15,000 additional draftees in every intake and explained to the legislators how to achieve Haredi enlistment.
Sadly, even the wives of our overburdened reservists are aware that success in enlisting Haredi men is an uphill battle that will be won only in the distant future.
Some of them have circulated calls on social media to pressure the IDF to use the pool of non-Haredi reservists who have been overlooked. They could and should be more easily drafted to relieve those who have already served hundreds of days in this war.
While I understand the motivation behind that, I fear that such a move would divert attention from the fight for an equal draft law. We can’t risk having it shoved onto the back burner again.
In Pogoda’s words, what has been is not what will be. How this change will be achieved—whether by carrot or stick—remains to be seen. Imprisonment, the denial of the right to vote and the cancellation of various financial perks are all options that have been proposed. It’s time we found out which will work.
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'Topics': 'poll,hamas,donald-trump,joe-biden,biden-administration,trump-administration,u-s-israel-relations',
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