In every case, the same principle is being established: when a man’s beliefs collide with a woman’s presence, the woman is the one expected to move.

In the ancient world – as in parts of our own world today – women were often seen as dangerous: seductive, destabilizing, their very presence liable to lead men into forbidden terrain.

One way of dealing with this imagined threat was to erase the woman. Cover her up. Restrict her movement. Keep her at home. Make her less visible in public. That, for example, was common in the Roman world.

But there was another possibility.

In the sermon attributed to Jesus in the Gospel according to Matthew, a man who looks at a woman with lust is told: if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.

The image is extreme, of course, but the principle matters: responsibility for desire lies with the person who desires – not with the woman he is looking at.

That is an enormous moral distinction.

Even if you subscribe to a worldview in which the presence of a woman poses a sexual or religious challenge, dealing with that challenge is your responsibility, not hers. You do not get to turn her into an object to be moved aside so that you can comfortably maintain your way of life.

I, of course, reject the premise altogether. Women are not first and foremost sexual objects, any more than men are. We are human beings – thinking and acting subjects, researchers, soldiers, students, drivers, and doctors.

But I am liberal enough to let you think otherwise.

What I am not prepared to “accommodate” is a situation in which accommodating your beliefs means making me disappear. If looking at me threatens you, look away. If sitting beside me is too enticing, do not sit beside me. If my presence in public threatens your worldview, it is your responsibility to find a way to live with that threat. Stay home. Wear opaque glasses.

Or, in Jesus’s version, pluck out your eyes. But do not demand that I disappear so that you can remain. Avoiding a woman’s handshake because it is more than just a handshake. A woman’s face on a billboard is not just a picture.

Demands that women not teach in a particular classroom, or not serve alongside men, are not a random collection of minor “accommodations” for a religious population.

Turning the language of accommodation around

In every case, the same principle is being established: when a man’s beliefs collide with a woman’s presence, the woman is the one expected to move. And once that principle is accepted, the next demand is never far behind.

If it is legitimate to insist on a male lecturer, why not a male prime minister? If we can create a course of study “free” of women, why not a military unit?

And if a woman’s presence is considered a legitimate reason to refuse to participate in a university program, why should it not also justify refusing to serve alongside her in a Namer, one of the IDF’s armored personnel carriers?

This is precisely how the language of “accommodation” gets turned on its head. Coexistence does not mean one side gets to live according to its beliefs while the other is expected to shrink itself so as not to interfere. Pluralism is not the right to dictate who may be visible in the public sphere.

And liberalism does not require me to tolerate people who demand that I disappear.

Liberalism means accepting, at the deepest level, that people who live differently from me are entitled to a full place in our shared society. A full place. Not behind a partition. Not outside the classroom. And not outside the Namer.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post When women are asked to disappear first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

After three years of war, with many Israelis having served hundreds of days in the reserves and the IDF – especially its regular-service soldiers – under unbearable strain, public tolerance for blanket military exemptions has all but vanished. A large majority of Israelis want Haredi men to serve, and polls show broad support for their conscription even among supporters of the current government.

To preserve his alliance with the Haredi parties while reassuring his own supporters, Netanyahu is now offering a formula: “Haredi men who do not study will be drafted.” In practice, the formula is both morally distorted and fundamentally false. Only a universal service obligation will actually bring large numbers of young men from the community into the IDF. Any politician who promises less is effectively giving up on meaningful enlistment. Throughout its term, the Netanyahu-led government has done almost nothing to advance enlistment from the Haredi community. On the contrary, it has invested enormous effort and political capital in promoting a law that would entrench draft evasion, at the unyielding insistence of the Haredi parties. But elections are approaching, and no one reads polls better than Netanyahu. Given Likud’s weakness and the growing demand – including within his own camp – that the burden be shared more equally, Netanyahu and other coalition figures are changing course: away from an evasion law and toward a new formula – “Those who study will be exempt from service; those who don’t will be drafted.”

For Netanyahu and coalition supporters, many of them traditional or religious, the formula sounds ideal. It lets them have it both ways: protect Torah study while expanding the ranks of those who serve. Problem solved.

Except it isn’t. The formula is a convenient illusion that falls apart on closer inspection.

First, there is no moral justification for exempting every Torah student from service. Torah study is an important value in a Jewish state, but it is not an automatic substitute for military service. One can study and serve. Thousands of religious young men do exactly that. Some spend years in yeshiva, perform meaningful military service, return to their studies, and continue to shoulder the burden in the reserves.

Nor is the formula practical. “Those who don’t study will be drafted” requires the state to decide who is really studying Torah, effectively turning the government into the supervisor of the yeshiva world. How exactly is that supposed to work? Will inspectors roam the yeshivot? Take attendance morning and afternoon? Administer Talmud exams? Check who is working off the books after the afternoon study session? And when a finding like that could mean lost funding and years of military service, what incentive would a yeshiva have to report that one of its students is not really studying?

The answer is obvious. Before long, we will discover that “your people are all righteous.” Everyone will be studying Torah. Even the most notorious yeshiva slacker will suddenly become a full-fledged student. There will be lists, certifications, attendance records, and oversight mechanisms. The state will inspect, the yeshivot will report, politicians will tout “enforcement” – and in the end, almost any young man determined to avoid service will find a way to be classified as a “Torah student.”

Anyone familiar with the state’s dealings with Haredi education has seen how this works. For years, the state has struggled to enforce even basic core-curriculum requirements in institutions it funds. To believe that an airtight oversight system will suddenly materialize when military service is at stake is naïve at best.

And that is precisely why the slogan is dangerous. It offers Israelis – especially right-wing voters who want broader military service but also want to preserve the political “bloc” – a comforting solution. One can say, “I support Haredi enlistment,” while simultaneously backing an arrangement that, in practice, perpetuates draft evasion.

There is only one real solution. The next government must adopt a simple principle: everyone serves. Military service can and should be adapted to the needs of the Haredi community. Appropriate frameworks can be created, and a very small quota of exceptional Torah scholars can be allowed to continue their studies. But they must be the exception. Everyone else must serve.

TOI

The post Netanyahu’s false promise of ‘study or serve’ first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

In pursuit of immediate material goals – budgets, benefits, and discounts – haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political leaders are endangering what they claim to protect above all else: Torah.

The proposed Basic Law: Torah Study would grant constitutional status to Torah study, but in practice it would turn a sacred obligation into a political and legal instrument. That would harm Torah, its students, and the Jewish identity of the State of Israel in both the short and long term.

As the legal and social history of religious legislation shows, such laws rarely produce more Judaism or greater observance. More often, they distance Israelis from Jewish values and degrade religion and halacha (Jewish religious law). It is not too late to prevent the debasement of Torah and those who study it.

Israeli law already contains statutes that enshrine religious commandments. Prominent examples appear in personal status law, where legislation anchors halacha as a binding norm in Israel, and in the Hametz Law, which prohibits the sale of leavened products on Passover. In practice, these laws have not made the commandments more beloved or more widely observed. Many Israelis seek alternatives to marriage through the Rabbinate; the Hametz Law is treated largely as symbolic, with virtually no enforcement; and Shabbat legislation has become a recurring source of resentment rather than reverence.

Such laws rarely deepen Jewish commitment. More often, they make Judaism feel coercive – and therefore alienating – to many Jews in Israel. The proposed Basic Law: Torah Study is unlikely to be any different. It, too, is likely to become less a source of honor than a symbol of coercion, pushing people away from Torah and those who study it rather than elevating them and their learning.

Moreover, like every law in Israel, this law, too, would be interpreted by the legal system and by the High Court of Justice. In order to secure daycare discounts, haredi political leaders would be inviting the very judicial institution they distrust to determine what Torah study is and who counts as a Torah scholar. Instead of leaving such questions to heads of yeshivas, the decision would move into the legal arena. The day is not far off when the High Court would have to decide whether Torah study in a secular beit midrash (study hall), in a university department of Jewish philosophy, or in a Reform beit midrash also falls within the definition of “Torah study.” The likely answer is yes.

No less troubling, the law is expected to turn Torah study into yet another political punching bag in Israel’s culture wars. That is especially painful. When the people of Israel received the Torah at Mount Sinai, the verse says, “Israel encamped there opposite the mountain” in the singular, which Rashi famously explains to mean “as one person, with one heart.”

Torah was what united the Jewish people. So it was throughout the years of exile. Torah and its commandments were the axis around which Jewish communities across the world gathered; Torah bound them together. Basic Law: Torah Study does exactly the opposite. Instead of uniting Jews in Israel around Torah and its study, it turns Torah into another source of polarization and dispute.

Double harm of Torah study

This law, which proposes to recognize Torah study as a value with constitutional status, is shaping up to be one of the most contentious laws advanced here in recent years. Instead of deepening love of Torah, it is producing division and hostility toward Torah and its students.

If such a Basic Law is passed by a single-vote margin, through a divisive political maneuver, it will guarantee that the value of Torah study continues to be debased. It is reasonable to assume that a future government in which the haredi parties lack a veto would repeal this harmful law. Torah and its study would then be harmed twice: first when the law is enacted, turning Torah into a force that divides the people; and again, when the law is repealed.

The alternative is not abandoning the world of Torah. There is a better way to honor Torah study: broad national agreement about responsibility, service, and recognition. Torah students who share in building and defending the country deserve such recognition. But a value that has lived within the people of Israel for 3,000 years does not need the protection of a limitations clause.

On the contrary: subordinating it to the constitutional matrix, where it becomes merely one value alongside Freedom of Occupation and Human Dignity, diminishes it and gravely damages the Jewish-Israeli consensus around it.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Basic Law: Debasing Torah first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

For nearly three years, I have lived in a state of suspended breath. My son has spent the last three months in southern Lebanon, defending our northern borders from Hezbollah. Last Shabbat, one of my students died of his wounds; a drone fragment took his life.

These are not statistics to me. They are the people I love, the people I teach, and the people whose absence leaves a void that can never be filled.

I am one mother and one educator among many who have been carrying the weight of this war on our shoulders. We – the public that serves in the military, drives the economy, and sustains our communities – know that the future of Israel rests on shared commitment. We are a shrinking share of the public, yet we continue to give until we have nothing left to give.

When this war began, there was a brief, powerful moment of unity. We believed that the existential threat would finally force a consensus: that every capable citizen must stand up and contribute to the defense of the state.

But as the war dragged on, it became agonizingly clear that too much of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political leadership has fought to preserve a reality separate from the one borne by the families who serve. Their political priority has not been the manpower crisis at the borders, but the preservation of an exemption system that allows one community to remain detached from the most fundamental civic and military duties, while still benefiting from public funding and state support.

Now, with the advancement of Basic Law: Torah Study, the government is attempting to give constitutional force to this detachment. The proposal would elevate Torah study as a form of national service, using lofty, sacred language to justify an exemption that feels like a slap in the face to those of us who bury our dead. This is not an argument against Torah study, nor against the haredi public. It is an argument against a political arrangement that uses Torah to absolve one part of Israeli society from obligations borne, in blood, by another.

As someone who has dedicated my life to the study and teaching of Torah, Jewish philosophy, and Zionist thought, I reject this legislation not despite my love of Torah but because of it. I teach students, secular and religious, men and women, that Torah study is meant to be a light that informs our actions in the world, not a shield to hide behind. I have never taught that Torah and civic duty are in conflict. They are meant to be the twin pillars of a functioning Jewish society.

Our Sages taught that derech eretz (social and ethical conduct) precedes the Torah. Our Sages warn us: “If there is no Torah, there is no derech eretz; and if there is no derech eretz, there is no Torah” (Ethics of the Fathers 3:17).

These are not two separate domains that can be uncoupled at the convenience of politicians. They are a single moral ecosystem. By pushing this law, the Knesset risks severing the two. It transforms the Torah into an empty vessel, a political tool used to evade the most basic obligation of a citizen: to share the burden of survival. How can Zionist parties, who ask our children to risk their lives on the front lines, support a law that so blatantly disregards the sacrifice of the serving public?

The advancement of this law is not a religious triumph. It is a profound moral abdication. By turning Torah learning into a legal exemption for civic evasion, our leaders are committing a violent divorce between the holiness of our tradition and the fundamental duty of derech eretz. They are signaling that, for some, the preservation of a separate civic arrangement outweighs shared responsibility for the survival of the Jewish state. For those of us on the front lines, burying our students and waiting for our children’s return, the message is clear: While we fight to ensure the state of Israel has a future, our government is dismantling the shared covenant that makes that future worth fighting for.

We are not only losing our youth to the battlefield. We are losing our moral language to a politics that dares to call exemption “service.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Derech eretz lost – Why the proposed Basic Law betrays our sacred covenant first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

After two and a half years of unceasing war, the IDF is short thousands of combat soldiers. It cannot afford to forgo the service of women, whether on the home front or the front line. It cannot afford to forgo the service of religious soldiers in any combat unit. And yet, extremist rabbis are calling for women to be removed from the IDF, or at the very least reassigned to noncombatant roles.

On the other end of the ideological spectrum is the “Tel Aviv faction,” which demands that religious soldiers’ beliefs be ignored and that mixed service for men and women be imposed even in every tank and in every unit.

Both camps may tear the IDF and Israeli society apart. Extremism must not be allowed to win.

Since 1995, when Alice Miller petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice to allow her to try out for the Air Force pilot training program, the IDF has undergone a dramatic transformation in women’s service. The reality of most military roles being closed to women is long gone. Today, the IDF is open to women serving in almost all positions, including in special units, the Armored Corps, and other tactical forces.

This worthy revolution, which gives women full and justified equal opportunity, is not self-evident in the IDF’s diverse landscape. In home-front units, integrating women is generally easier to implement. In tactical and special forces units, the challenge is much greater. Sustained, physically intense service by men and women around the age of 20, involving stints of close and unavoidable contact or shared stays in small, enclosed spaces for days and weeks at a time, is not without challenges.

Even apart from religious concerns, how many men would be pleased to know that their partner was spending long weeks of reserve duty with another man in the intimacy of some remote guard post, and vice versa?

But the deeper challenge lies in the clash between equality at any price and adherence to Jewish law. For observant soldiers, even those accustomed to women’s company in civilian life, serving with women in the same tank or infantry unit can mean a breach, sometimes stark, of halachic boundaries.

This challenge has vexed the IDF and its religious soldiers ever since meaningful integration of women began. As that integration reached combat formations, the challenge intensified. At times, it has resulted in confrontations with rabbis and religious servicemen threatening to refuse to serve in mixed units if the process advanced.

The solution the IDF crafted in 2016, through dialogue and cooperation with rabbis and women’s organizations, was the “Joint Service Order,” an attempt to shape a military space shared by men and women that does not devolve from an asset to a liability. But none of this prevented the latest explosion.

Several days ago, in its ruling in the Kliger case, the High Court elbowed the IDF in the ribs and demanded faster integration of women into the Armored Corps. In response, several rabbis announced that, if this were to happen, they would instruct their students not to serve there. The moderate Tzohar organization joined in, calling on the army and the rabbis to speak out – and was met with a torrent of criticism. Politicians and “online influencers” attacked it for siding with benighted rabbis and daring to oppose the “religion of equality.”

Once again, on the liberal side, too, it became clear that some refuse to acknowledge the other and their values. While every fair-minded jurist – and the court itself – understands that equality is never absolute, they demand equality to the bitter end. Like the extremist rabbis, the “Tel Aviv faction” will not rest until women serve in each and every IDF unit, whatever the cost.

One can only hope that, in this ongoing struggle too, the IDF and Israel’s security will not fall victim to the extremists. As the past has shown, dialogue and the design of orders and spaces that allow everyone to serve are the solution that will enable women and religious soldiers alike to contribute as much as they can to Israel’s security, without violating their values.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post The IDF mixed-gender unit controversy first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

By law, Israeli courts are supposed to close on Shabbat – the Jewish day of rest. Yet last Shabbat, the High Court of Justice heard a petition challenging the cap on the number of participants allowed at a Tel Aviv demonstration.

Explaining the extraordinary step, the court said: “It is clear that this is a matter of pikuah nefesh” – of preserving life. Really? What would have happened had the hearing been postponed until Sunday? The Home Front Command’s limit of 150 participants at the Saturday-night protest would have remained in force. True, in the court’s view, reducing the number of demonstrators (to the same number the Home Front Command set for every other public gathering) amounted to a disproportionate infringement of freedom of expression. But what does that have to do with preserving life?

To the court’s credit, it tried to hold the hearing before Shabbat, but the effort failed because the police dragged their feet (they deny it) and the Home Front Command did not submit its position on Friday. The court also tried to minimize the desecration of Shabbat by holding the hearing by phone rather than in open court. Even so, as a state institution, it should have refrained. Sheltering behind a supposed claim of pikuah nefesh does it no honor. More fundamentally, what the court lacks is not resolve or professionalism but sensitivity and a feel for the society in which it operates. Its latest ruling makes that plain enough.

Still, even those who believe, as I do, that the court erred cannot countenance the unbounded assault loosed upon it, after its decision, by rabbis – including the current and former Sephardi chief rabbis – on the very legitimacy of the institution and its judges.

Rabbi David Yosef, the current chief rabbi, called the judges “impudent” and accused them of lawlessness and of trampling both law and Torah. After declaring the High Court an enemy of Judaism, he announced that “we will fight them with all our might.” His brother, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the former chief rabbi, went further: “infidels,” “haters of Israel,” and finally “wicked men whom the Almighty should destroy – should kill.” Later, he softened the remark, explaining that he was assigning that task to God, not to human beings, since “violence is forbidden.”

These statements should not be brushed off as lip service, as we do, for example, with the extremist rhetoric politicians sling at each other. Rabbi David Yosef is president of the Great Rabbinical Court. He is the equivalent in religious law to Judge Isaac Amit, chief justice of the Supreme Court. In other words, the head of the state’s highest religious judicial body is calling for war against the head of its highest civil judicial body. This declaration of war is not over any concrete dispute. Its purpose is to undermine the legitimacy of a parallel state judicial institution – to challenge its composition, authority, and decisions. Imagine the storm that would be unleashed if Chief Justice Amit had determined that Israel’s chief rabbi was impudent, lawless, and an enemy of the State of Israel.

The chief rabbis’ outburst has deep roots. Their father, the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, along with many other rabbis, held that Israel’s courts are “gentile tribunals.” Decoded, this phrase implies that Jews may not turn to them. It echoes Maimonides and the Shulhan Aruch, “whoever comes before them for judgment is wicked.” This is, to put it mildly, a deeply problematic halachic-cultural position. The ban on litigating before gentile courts was, of course, formulated in exile. How can one ignore the transition from the reality of a Jewish minority community – seeking to differentiate itself from a dominant non-Jewish environment and its value system – to the reality of a sovereign state in which Jews are the overwhelming majority, whose governing norms are enacted by the Knesset, whose judges are mostly Jewish, and whose lecterns bear the blue-and-white flag and the symbol of the menorah? Are these really “gentile tribunals”?

Postponing the High Court hearing would not have created a condition of pikuah nefesh; it would not have endangered a single life. Incendiary calls to war by the heads of the state’s religious judiciary against the heads of its civil judiciary, by contrast, are a national matter of life and death.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post The real life or death matter: The struggle between religious and civil judiciaries first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

While Israelis repeatedly run to shelters and reservists are called up to serve yet again, Shas is busy with what really matters: handing out rabbinic posts to insiders.

In recent weeks and in the weeks ahead, dozens of rabbis are expected to be appointed to local authorities. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the appointees will be Shas men – rabbis with no connection to the character of the locality they will serve or the wishes of its residents. Zionist rabbis who might actually be a good fit are either on reserve duty or simply not to Shas’s liking.

It is bizarre to be dealing with this in the middle of a war. But since the war seems to trouble Shas less than it does everyone else, there is real reason to fear that by the time it ends, it will be too late to stop this.

In Jewish religious thought, the local rabbi – the mara d’atra, the master of the place – is meant to be the community’s spiritual leader, one who enjoys its trust. This means the proper way to choose a rabbi is through the community itself, and the right rabbi for a community reflects its spirit and connects with its people. As things stand, local rabbis too often have little relevance to the residents in the jurisdictions they serve. When they come from a distant cultural and moral universe, their chances of fulfilling the role properly are lower still.

Shas moves to seize control of local rabbinic posts

But Shas does not care. Under the law, every local authority – and there are some 470 of them –is supposed to have its own rabbi. In recent years, mostly for political reasons, almost no rabbis were appointed, leaving roughly 50 local authorities without one. Shas, which controls the Ministry of Religious Services, sees this as a historic opportunity to install its loyalists in these rabbinic vacancies. If it succeeds, it will secure years of influence in these municipalities as rabbis serve without term limits.

It will also be able to show its voters a handsome achievement ahead of the next election. And Shas, being Shas, is pushing ahead with this goal, heedless of values or sentiment. Matan Kahana, the previous minister of religious services, tried to give communities a much greater say in choosing the rabbi who would serve them, but Shas sees these dozens of vacant posts as nothing more than a political opportunity.

So, to control the outcome, former religious services minister, MK Michael Malkieli, changed the regulations governing the composition of the electing body. The result – surprise, surprise – is that Shas will have near-total control over who gets appointed. And the fix is in. Arye Deri’s nephew has been appointed chief rabbi of Beersheba. In Jerusalem, Deri’s brother is expected to get the job, and his son-in-law is slated to become the city rabbi of secular, liberal Herzliya.

And the list goes on. In Hod Hasharon, Rabbi Elharar, who is identified with Shas, was chosen over a Religious Zionist rabbi who is serving in the reserves and is far better suited to the city’s character. The same appears likely in Kiryat Ono, another secular city, where the chief rabbi chosen is not the candidate currently on reserve duty but a Shas-backed haredi rabbi. The next major battle will be over the Tel Aviv rabbinate. As things stand, there is a very real chance that the capital of liberal secularism will once again find itself with a haredi city rabbi.

It must be said plainly that while Shas is leading this blitz of appointments, it has partners in crime. First and foremost, the Religious Zionism party. Although one of the banners it waves is the promotion of Religious Zionist Torah scholars who serve in the military to rabbinic office, in practice, it ceded this arena to Shas long ago. And alongside it – somewhat surprisingly – stand unapologetically liberal parties such as Yesh Atid, which, for the sake of petty local political deals, barter away the appointment of rabbis who actually fit their communities.

A large majority of the public neither wants nor needs an official local rabbi. Perhaps some of these posts should be abolished. But as long as they exist, the appointed rabbis should be those who can genuinely lead the community because their values and outlook align with it.

Shas’s ethical corruption in this matter is, of course, a betrayal of the public-mindedness that ought to govern rabbinic appointments. But the graver sin is against Judaism itself, in whose name it acts. Instead of bringing people closer and sanctifying God’s name, the likely result in many cases will only be more alienation from, and anger toward, Judaism and those who represent it.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Shas fills local rabbi posts with loyalists, sidelining community choice first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

The draft law promoted by MK Boaz Bismuth and the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties is, in essence, a bill to entrench draft evasion and increase subsidies to the Haredi sector. Introducing a full-scale draft-exemption law during wartime is not only a moral disgrace but a knife in the back of those who serve. If the proposed legislation passes, the consequences will be far more disastrous than merely perpetuating the unbearable burden on Israel’s reservists. Israel stands at a historic crossroads: a choice between restoring the Zionist project or continuing to capitulate to the Haredi political leadership – leading, in the not-too-distant future, to Israel’s decline into a third-world state with questionable long-term viability.

Already today, nearly one in three children in Israel’s Hebrew-language public school system is Haredi. In other words, roughly a third of Jewish students in Israel are ultra-Orthodox. Demographic projections indicate that within four decades, a third of all Israelis will be Haredi –without even accounting for the rising number of mostly secular Israelis who are emigrating.

At present, the Haredi community’s economic contribution is negative: the participation of Haredi men in the workforce is low, and the salaries of those who do work are, on average, just 57 percent of what non-Haredi Jewish men earn. They pay significantly lower taxes while receiving far more welfare benefits and subsidies. In economic terms, the monthly fiscal gap between a Haredi household and the average Israeli household amounts to roughly NIS 6,114 ($1,890). The equation is simple: as the relative size of the Haredi population grows, the financial burden it places on the country will increase — until the system collapses under its own weight.

But the economic dimension is only part of the picture. There is also an ideological and civic dimension. The Haredi community lives in a fortified cultural ghetto, detached from – and often hostile to – the core civic values of the Zionist state. Many do not view themselves as part of the collective or as sharing any responsibility for sustaining it. As several Haredi rabbis and political leaders have made clear in recent months, they would prefer to leave the country than shoulder their fair share of the national burden.

But when it comes to political attitudes, the Haredi public is the most hardline in Israel, especially on questions of war, minorities, and national policy – positions that lock Israel into an endless conflict, for which others pay the price in blood. There is also a fundamental security dimension. The debate over Haredi IDF service is no longer just about equality. The war has placed an immense and prolonged strain on Israel’s military manpower. The coming years will require a larger standing army and a much larger reserve force. This will likely mean extending mandatory service for those who already serve, alongside annual reserve duties that routinely exceed 100 days a year. This is an impossible burden – one that fewer and fewer Israelis are willing to bear, especially in light of wholesale Haredi non-service.

The current draft bill does not even pretend to solve this national crisis.

Zionist Israel was built on a shared ethos: participation in the economic, civic, and security burden. A sober look at demographic and social trends shows that unless current patterns change drastically, the number of Israelis carrying that burden will shrink as the burden itself grows. As surveys already show, the willingness of secular, middle-class Israelis – the backbone of Israel’s military and economy – to continue carrying the weight of Haredi non-service is eroding. Many are already contemplating leaving the country.

Zionist Israel will not disappear overnight. In the short term, we will witness a deterioration in public services, a shift in the character of the public sphere, and profound changes in the fabric of Israeli society. But in the longer term, the result may be a fundamental transformation of the state’s identity: no longer a liberal, modern Jewish nation-state, but a more religious and less democratic polity. In the face of constant existential threats that require Israel to maintain close alignment with the West and technological superiority, it is far from clear that such a state could remain viable.

The debate over Haredi conscription has long since ceased to be about fairness or shared sacrifice. It has become a historic moment of reckoning over the very identity of the State of Israel. If the current exemption bill becomes law, it will fortify the Haredi enclave and send Israel hurtling down a steep and dangerous slope – toward the unraveling of the Zionist enterprise as we have known it, and place Israel’s long-term survival in jeopardy.

First published in The Times of Israel

The post The Haredi draft bill will be the end of Zionist Israel first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Who needs enemies when we have one another? That was the question I found myself grappling with on Wednesday after seeing a video of what appeared to be more than 1,000 ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students dancing and chanting: “We do not believe in the regime of the heretics, and we will not appear in their IDF draft centers.”

The chant, which rhymes in Hebrew, is chilling. The video, widely available online, captures the fervor of the moment: hundreds of young men jumping up and down as the head of their yeshiva, Shalom Ber Sorotzkin, runs across a platform at the center of the hall – it was his son’s wedding – singing along and urging his students to join him.

On any day, such a display would be deeply disturbing. Here are about 1,000 ultra-Orthodox men, dodging the IDF draft while openly disparaging the very state that allows them to do so, provides them with welfare services, and offers them a quality of life they would struggle to find elsewhere.

But there is more. These men dancing are Sorotzkin’s students at the yeshiva he runs called Ateret Shlomo. Last year, the yeshiva received NIS 18m. from Israeli taxpayers; in 2023, it received NIS 25m., and in 2022, another NIS 18m. Overall, it has received something like NIS 100m. in the last five years.

Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern recounted on Wednesday how he had attended a meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee the night before. The committee was debating the state budget, which is moving toward a plenum vote later this month.

The committee’s chair, MK Moshe Gafni, was absent since he was at the Sorotzkin wedding. Yet, that did not stop the members from approving scandalous funding proposals for haredi yeshivas and educational institutions, including Ateret Shlomo – the very institution whose students were calling the state a “regime of heretics.”

This is the kind of scenario you can’t make up. Israeli taxpayers are literally funding those working to dismantle the country. Who needs Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iran when we are financing a fifth column from within?

Consider the state budget, which must pass by the end of the month. It includes NIS 1.27 billion designated for yeshivas like Ateret Shlomo. If that isn’t bad enough, an additional NIS 36m. is being allocated – I kid you not – to NGOs that help yeshiva students avoid army service. Again, the state is weakening itself from within.

And this is not an isolated incident. Just last month, Dov Landau, a powerful rabbi within the ultra-Orthodox world and head of the Slobodka Yeshiva, issued a directive to members of United Torah Judaism, the political party for which he serves as a spiritual guide, not to participate in Zionist institutions such as the Jewish Agency for Israel or Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund.

“Zionism is rooted in heresy… and rebellion against divine sovereignty. There is no allowance to participate with them, serve in their institutions, or vote in their elections,” Landau declared.

How much has his yeshiva received from the state? More than NIS 50m. since 2015.

NONE OF this makes sense. Why would a country willingly fund institutions that seek its downfall? The sad answer: politics. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs the haredim in his coalition.

He needs their votes to pass the budget, or else the government will collapse, triggering elections he might lose. If the price for their support is over a billion shekels funneled to institutions that openly call the government a “regime of heretics,” then so be it.

The problem is that Israel can no longer afford this arrangement. The economy is slowing, the deficit is growing, and taxes are rising. Yet instead of integrating the least productive sector of society – the haredim – into the workforce and military, we are bankrolling a way of life that is unsustainable.

Beyond the economic implications, the wedding video raises another urgent issue: manpower. The number of men seen dancing could easily fill two to three IDF battalions, units that are desperately needed. The missions facing the IDF are increasing, yet there is a dire shortage of soldiers.

Reservists who have already served for hundreds of days over the past 18 months are being called up again in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, these young men chant that they will not even show up at the draft center.

The situation is nauseating. It might feel like a fait accompli, but it does not have to be. This can change. But for that to happen, the middle class – those who pay the majority of taxes and serve in the reserves – must take a stand. We must say, “No more.” We cannot continue to shoulder this burden alone. We must refuse to support politicians who sustain this travesty.

Change is possible, but it requires action. Silence will not work. The middle class must mobilize, protest, and demand accountability from elected officials. We must challenge the notion that maintaining power justifies subsidizing those who undermine the state. We must insist that the rules apply to everyone.

There is no justification for a system that allows an entire sector to remain outside the workforce, outside the military, and outside the national effort, all while benefiting from the very state they curse. Israel was built on the idea of shared responsibility. If we want to preserve this country for future generations, we need to restore that principle.

At a time when the country is facing growing security challenges – in the South, the North, and beyond – there is no time to waste. This might have been possible to tolerate before October 7 but definitely not now, at a time when the IDF is missing over 10,000 soldiers to fulfill the missions it already has.

What will happen, for example, if something were to change in Jordan or Egypt and Israel would need to deploy more troops along those borders? Where would they come from?

Israelis must wake up. We must demand that our leaders stop funding those who oppose the state. We must insist that every citizen contribute to the national effort. If we fail to do so, we are not just funding our own destruction – we are accelerating it.

Published by Jerusalem Post

The post The IDF needs soldiers but Israel is paying yeshivas to dodge the draft first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.