Forced conscription of Haredim in Israel will never work

(Ed.note: The IDF has announced that it is extending by four months the active service of the Hesder students who should have been back in Yeshiva by now [the hesder yeshiva program is a five year period during which the boys are supposed to serve in the IDF for 18 months.] As in the haredi sector, many of these boys are masmidim and intend to spend their lives in Torah study or Torah related work, but since there are not enough soldiers to fight this existential milchemet mitzva in which the haredi sector plays a miniscule part, they will be learning in moments snatched while putting their own lives in danger to save all Jewish lives. Yeshiva boys will be on vacation in bein hazmanim which starts in less than two weeks, exacerbating the situation as the dilemma of haredi conscription unfolds.)

Main groupings of Haredim resisting the draft into the IDF

The moment of truth has arrived! Following the ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court and the orders of the Israeli Attorney General, the Israel Defense Forces have issued registration orders for 1,000 Haredim eligible to be drafted into the army, with the goal over the next few months to reach 3000 in two more steps. This is in addition to the 1,200 who join of their own accord every year.. There are reports that in order to reach the goal of 3,000 new Haredi recruits the army will be sending out about 8,000 registration orders knowing that over half will not respond. (The IDF invested much time in deciding where to send the orders and most are being sent to haredim who are working or not learning full time and therefore are not eligible for exemption by law, ed.) There are 63000 Haredi men eligible to be conscripted who have been freed from army service up to now. (Sixty-three thousand makes for a very visible number on Israeli streets, ed.)

The army has stated it cannot absorb huge numbers of Haredim and at the same time accommodate their special religious needs and it is wise enough to realize that it needs committed soldiers, so it has settled for 3000 a year out of that number, which rises yearly.

Meanwhile in the Israeli Haredi world the talk is mainly of refusal to show up at army recruitment offices even if official preliminary call up papers are received by young Haredi men. The approximately 1,300,000 Haredim in Israel are divided into different camps led by different rabbinical authorities. Basically there are about four main groupings of Haredim in Israel under the banner of their political parties and/or communities:

1.) Followers of Degel HaTorah led by their rabbis who head the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah ("Council of Torah Greats") and are part of the United Torah Judaism (Yahadut HaTorah) party in the Knesset and the current Israeli government. They are mostly followers of the Lithuanian yeshiva movements.

2.) Followers of Agudas Yisroel led by their Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah and are part of the United Torah Judaism party in the Knesset and the current Israeli government. They are mostly followers of Hasidic communities.

3.) The followers of Shas (Sefaradim Shomrei Torah) led by their Moetzes Chachamei HaTorah. They are a large party in the Knesset and part of the current Israeli government. They are almost entirely Sephardic Jews.

4.) Followers of the Eidah HaChareidis, a large religious umbrella organization for Haredi groups based in Meah Shearim in Jerusalem that does not sit in the Knesset and refuses to cooperate with or accept funding from the Israeli government. They are very anti-Zionist and there are a few other groups that share their outlook such as the Briskers, the Jerusalem Faction (Peleg Yerushalmi), Satmar, Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok, some Breslov.

So far, three out of the four above groups are adamant that their followers not respond to any army call up registration notices from the IDF, while some of the Hasidic Rebbes of Agudas Yisroel have stated that if any of their followers receive requests for preliminary army registration they should show up but not enlist in the actual army.

This solid wall of resistance by the Haredi world in Israel to the moves by the Supreme Court, the Attorney General and the army of Israel to recruit Haredim into the IDF is frustrating to non-Haredim and requires a deeper explanation.

The differences between a secular and a religious lifestyle

A very religious lifestyle is radically different from a very secular lifestyle because at the center of religious life stand...religion... and restrictions, while at the center of a secular life are openness and freedom to do as one wishes. Extremely religious people cannot be forced to do things that go against their religious beliefs and spiritual mandate, while secular people can do and act in a huge variety of situations, options, opportunities and can adapt to new demands a lot easier than those living according to a rigid religious code and dogma.

Haredim as a religious society are ultra-conservative, more restricted in their choices of lifestyle and work than secular Jews in Israel. Haredim live in an enclosed iron-clad social system that controls every aspect of their lives from cradle to grave and dwell in religious neighborhoods akin to modern Ghettos, , while secular Jews have the freedom to come and go wherever and whenever they want, live anywhere, travel the world, and live life as they choose with a vast array of choices.

Trying to force any group of very religious people to go against the grain of the very religious lifestyle they are born into and live does not work. Unless, of course, it is done at the end of the barrel of a gun as, for example, one looks at how Communism was established in the former Soviet Union or in Red China that forcibly suppressed religion by threat of death that then induced their citizens to abandon religion. As a less extreme example, trying to force Hindus who are vegetarians to suddenly become meat eaters will not work, especially if it is done by force. By their very nature and due to their religion, religious people will stubbornly, vehemently and fanatically fight any attempts at making them go in a different direction that they have been trained in since birth to reject.

Trying to force non-militaristic Haredim steeped in centuries of resistance to army service (as were Jews in galut) to become soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces against their will never work and, on the contrary, will have the reverse effect of infuriating them and making them resist even more any attempts at conscription. Only if they voluntarily agree to enter the Israeli army and serve in it will there be any headway. Religious Zionist Jews freely make the choice to serve in the Israeli army and it is part of their Religious Zionist ideology. They do not have to be forced to serve, they do so with great love for the land and people of Israel, a burning passion and the highest idealism. There is no such parallel for the Haredim who are not inculcated with the same Religious Zionist beliefs from infancy, as they are taught to view the secular state of Israel with great suspicion and some view it with fear bordering on hate.

According to available statistics, there are already about 1,200 young Haredim who report for military service in Israel in recent years. The question is - what type of Haredim are these annual conscripts? Haredi society, for all its monolithic nature, does have various types of families and individuals in spite of the Spartan nature of Haredi life in general in Israel. There are many young people who have abandoned their Haredi lifestyle but are still classed as Haredim because they come from Haredi families. There are those who are called "FBC" "Frum but cool" who look like Haredim from the outside or there are Haredi Olim from America some of whom are closer to the Religious Zionist way of life than to the strict Haredi lifestyle of Haredim in Meah Shearim, as an example, and Hassidim.

Nevertheless, these conscripts from the Haredi world at large no matter how you slice it is an excellent beginning, considering that the Haredi establishment and its leading rabbis and Gedolim (great ones), such as those of the ruling Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah of Agudat Yisrael and of the Degel HaTorah and the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah of the Sephardim and the Shas parties, the ultimate Halakhic (Jewish Law) authorities for most Haredim, do not approve of their yeshiva bochurim (students) actually joining the army. So these 1,200 must be seen as pioneers breaking new ground and be complimented for choosing to do their army service as part of being honest with themselves and not willing to waste their lives just sitting around and doing nothing. Most importantly, they are trail blazers because they are not serving due to force or coercion.

The blunders of the Supreme Court of Israel and the Attorney General

The Supreme Court of Israel has committed a great blunder by ordering the Israeli government and hence the Israel Defense Force, to immediately start conscription of young Haredi men starting with an initial batch of 3,000 recruits over the next few months. The Israeli Supreme Court is guilty of both hubris and ignorance revealed by the way it thinks that by merely issuing a decree, Haredi society will hop to it and do as the Supreme Court instructs. Such foolishness and naivety on public display has not been seen for a long time by an institution that seems deliberately ignorant of the Haredi mentality and society.

To pour salt into raw wounds the Supreme Court and the Israeli Attorney General, who herself seems to live in a sort of legal la-la-land, have ordered that Haredi yeshivas must not receive financial aid from the government if they do not come up with quotas of recruits from their yeshivas. In addition, all sorts of financial assistance to Haredi families must be cut back by reducing the amounts and stipends that needy and disadvantaged Haredi families need to support themselves. This is tantamount to punishing children and hardworking haredi women.

The anti-Zionist haredim view these types of decrees as harking back to the days of the Greek and Roman occupation of Judea in the Land of Israel when they banned the study of Torah on pain of punishment. That is their opinion of the spirit in which the decrees against them are being promulgated and enacted by the Israeli Supreme Court and the Attorney General who they regard as Reshaim (wicked).

For Haredim Torah life and living is the highest sacrifice possible

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting unleashed by the attacks of October 7, 2023 and the ongoing war, paying the ultimate price of being killed in battle to protect the Jews of Israel. This is part of the argument of secular Israelis and the Supreme Court saying that Haredi society must shoulder the burden with them and must provide conscripts to the Israeli army. However, this is the serious crux of the matter for Haredim who as part of a strictly Torah-observant society see themselves as sacrificing their lives to live that Torah-observant life. They especially view the young men who study, or learn in yeshiva as sacrificing their lives for the study of Torah and Talmud on the same level as one sacrifices one's real life for one's country. This view may seem ridiculous to some, but it hits the nail on the head with how Haredim view Torah and Talmudic study.

For a secular-minded person there can be no higher sacrifice than to give one's life for one's country while for a Haredi Torah Jew the greatest sacrifice is when one devotes one's life to full-time Torah study known as Torah Lishma, Torah study for its own sake and for no other purpose since Torah study is regarded as the foundation of the world and that which God regards as the greatest thing that keeps the entire universe in existence. As it states at the beginning of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): "The world stands on three things: On the Torah; on the service/worship [of God], and on acts of loving-kindness"!

This is exemplified in a parable that Rabbi Akiva taught when he was asked why he teaches Torah in public when the Romans had forbidden it. He said such a situation is like a fox that looks into a lake and sees the fish swimming around. Says the fox to the fish, 'come up on dry land where it is safer since there are dangers lurking below.' Replied the fish to the fox, 'fool, at least we can swim in the water, but we cannot exist on dry land and we will be bitten by you and eaten up.' There is a rabbinic interpretation that teaches an even greater depth to this parable: Jews who study and cling to the Torah are more like fish than regular animals that live on dry land. A fish breathes through its gills in the water and cannot exist that way on dry land. A Torah Jew lives and swims in the sea of the Torah, or the Yam HaTalmud, the sea of the Talmud, and is a different species to the other land animals who breathe and function differently.

(The above was actually recognized as valid by many traditional and Religious Zionist Israelis until this war, which is an existential and protracted one, a milchemet mitzva, where all the haredi arguments fall halakhically. The fact that most haredi groups have ignored or denied that difference – add to that the fact that hesder boys have lost a year of yeshiva learning while they have not - is the cause of current resentment on the part of non-haredi religious Israelis, who expected more of their haredi brothers, but it has no bearing on the blind interference of the highhanded Supreme Court ruling, ed.)

Arguments that do not work with Haredim

Some critics of the Haredim point out that the Tanach (Jewish Bible) has ample examples of the the Children of Israel who fought wars such as Moses and Joshue and the Jewish Judges as well as King David and the Jewish Kings who were all men of war and fought their enemies on the battlefields with conscripted soldiers from the Children of Israel. This type of argument does not work with the Haredim for a number of reasons.

One reason is that Haredim do not emphasize the study of the Tanach or of its passages about wars, even wars that deal with the conquest of the Land of Israel freeing it from foreign enemies. Another reason is that Haredim are coming from a completely different direction such as the 2,000 year long exile where Jews do not have armies nor fight wars against their enemies. They trust their rabbinic leaders who are the masters of the Torah to lead them while the nation occupies itself with Torah study and practice of the Mitzvot (commandments). Ultimately, they fully rely on God's good graces to survive all the attacks against them (this, sadly, is historically inaccurate and at this point in history, means relying on the IDF to fight for them).

Complete faith in God, Prayer and Torah study are seen as the miracle weapons to win the fight of Jewish survival. Nothing else can save the Jewish People. So goes the Haredi point of view.

Haredim are not inspired or impressed by stories of Jewish fighters who either succeeded or failed against their enemies such as Joshua, Samson, the Maccabees, Bar Kochba or the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Speak to any Haredi child and you will find that many probably speak Yiddish and not Hebrew and that they have no awareness of the heroism of past Jewish war heroes from the times of the Tanach or from Greek and Roman or modern times when Jewish armies fought foreign aggressors that invaded Judea in the Land of Israel or by the victories of Israel against Arab armies since its founding as a state in 1948.

Haredim only teach their young about great Talmudic and Rabbinic leaders starting with the Talmud that originated in Babylonia, modern day Iraq, and about even the most obscure Hasidic Rebbes and Tzadikim (righteous people) that lived during the times Jews lived in foreign lands such as Spain, Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Russia for Ashkenazim, and of great rabbis and Chachamim (wise men) who lived in Spain, North Africa and the Middle East for Sephardim. For example, great heroes for Ashkenazi Haredim are Rashi, the Tosafists, the Ramo, the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov and the yeshivas of Volozhin and Slabodka, while for Sephardim they glorify the Rambam (Maimonides), Ramban (Nachmanides) and the Ben Ish Chai and the great codifiers of Jewish Law like the Rif (R. Alfasi), Ran (Nissim of Gerona), Ba'al haTurim, Rosh, and the Mechaber who lived in Spain, and North Africa and the Middle East. These are examples of this way of thinking contrary to a modern secularized Westernized Israeli who, most often, has never heard of these great rabbis and many, many more like them stretching to present times.

In other words, Haredim are rooted in the glorious Torah accomplishments, the rabbis and the great works of scholarship the Jewish people created over many centuries of the Galut and not the secular state of Israel. Secular Israelis view the modern state of Israel, since 1948, as the culmination of Jewish history with no need for serious Judaism, and Religious Zionists view the state of Israel as the Atchalta De'Geulah (the beginning of the Redemption) where every Torah commandment has even more special worth because it is kept in the land of Israel. Religious Zionists teach their children to identify with great rabbis and Sages and also with the brave Torah-true fighters in the Tanach as well as the Maccabees, Bar Kochva and others in Jewish history.

In short, Haredim are not Zionists the way secular Israelis are Zionists or in the way Religious Zionists are Zionists. As is well known many Haredim are in fact vocally anti-Zionist. Perhaps this comes as a shock to some readers.

It therefore follows that one cannot force non-Zionists and anti secular-Zionists to jump into the peak of Zionist achievements, after the actual state of Israel itself, which is the Israel Defense Forces, the pride of modern-day Zionism, along with the accomplishment of building up the modern state of Israel. Therefore it is utterly futile for the Supreme Court of the Zionist state of Israel to assume that it can force the sons and daughters of the currently 1,300,000 non-Zionist and even anti-secular Zionist Haredim into the Israeli army, even though only Neturei Karta do not accept government funding. In fact it would be a great foolishness on the part of the Zionist state and the Zionist army to forcibly conscript people who are opposed to the very ideals and ideas and modern Zionist history that it is based upon.

What this all boils down to is that we, the Jewish People desperately need someone with the great wisdom of King Solomon who was a man of peace, unlike his father King David who was a man of war. While Haredim de-emphasize the war-like character of King David they are all familiar with the Book of Psalms (Tehillim) that according to Jewish tradition was authored by King David. And all Haredi Jews, like religious Jews everywhere pray daily and constantly for the Final Redemption of the Jewish People and their ingathering to the Land of Israel and the rebuilding of the third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, may it happen speedily in our days.

Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College–Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim.

He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988–1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994–1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995–2015. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy.

Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at [email protected]

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