Ultra-Orthodox Jews vote for nationalism and then refuse to fight. Their growing numbers make this untenable. Outrage is mounting as an April deadline looms.
It will surprise few to learn that the costly war in Gaza is causing political upheavals in Israel. But the main issue is not what most might expect — future arrangements with the Palestinians. Rather, it involves outrage over the ultra-Orthodox population’s widespread refusal to serve in the military. An April deadline looms.
On the big issue you read of in the news, the world appears split. Among those who are not ignorant of the facts, there are legitimate arguments both for saying that after the Oct. 7 massacre Hamas must be crushed at any cost, and for believing that Israel has gone too far or gone about it the wrong way. The critics are louder, but polls suggest that in the US at least support for Israel remains quite strong.
But even critics of Israel might be interested in the kerfuffle over draft avoidance by the ultra-Orthodox, who are known in Israel as Haredim (and in the US, somewhat incorrectly, as Hassidim). With seven children on average, this community has grown into a separate sect accounting for a sixth of Jewish Israelis where devotion to a fundamentalist version of the Jewish religion trumps all and modernity is kept at bay.
In the early days of the state, the Haredim were given a quota of several hundred Torah sages who would be exempt from the draft, informally – to preserve scholarly religious learning after its decimation during the Holocaust. Nationalist Menachem Begin came to power in 1977 with a parliament majority dependent on Haredi politicians, and promptly extended the exemption to anyone studying in yeshivas, the Jewish seminaries. Thus began one of the current era’s spectacular scams; it is, in my book, interesting on a global level, because it attaches to everything from economics to demographics to theology to ethics to the most rank of political shenanigans.
It’s a major question facing many nations: What do do with fundamentalists? In parts of the Arab world violent variants have devastatingly run riot; in other parts they have been altogether banned, yielding police states. In Europe, such radicalism is widely accepted on the basis of liberal freedoms; that has a way of backfiring. In the US, Evangelical Christians and the liberal coasts might as well inhabit separate countries.
I have been debating the Haredi issue with religious Jewish figures for years (see a recent effort on these very pages). For a long time, change seemed hopeless. And then came the longest war Israel has known since the founding one, in 1948.
When so many are sacrificing their lives, and when the burden on the serving public is increasing to levels that are physically and economically debilitating, the fact that so many avoid conscription is creating uncontainable rage.
An April deadline looms for drafting them like everyone else or passing legislation formally exempting them. Public anger at the Oct. 7 debacle is such that mass protests against the government are already primed to return to the streets; if the government chooses the latter path on the Haredi draft issue (here’s an analysis of the proposed law), the level of anger could become politically untenable.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s beleaguered coalition, which polls show would lose any new election, depends on the Haredim; expect delay tactics and feverish machinations.
In a major development, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week announced that he would not table the exemption bill promised by Netanyahu to the Haredi parties unless parties representing the center-left agreed — which they would not. The Haredim warned Netanyahu that unless he finds a workaround they will bring down his government. If he tries a workaround, he can expect millions in the streets.
Israel has been at similar junctures before, but this one may be decisive because even without the war context, the growth of the Haredi sector has made the situation unsustainable in every way.
It’s hard to find a parallel in the history of nations for such a situation – a security environment that clearly requires a large standing army, universal conscription enacted in principle, yet such a large group being exempted (and then, of course, there’s the issue of 2 million Arab citizens, exempted as well). Under a certain plausible definition of the situation, it is unprecedented.
All this is even more problematic when demographic trends are considered. Given their extreme fecundity, the ratio of ultra-Orthodox in the population doubles with each generation. Even if the trends change and the ultra-Orthodox will not be the majority in 40 years (and I assess that indeed they won’t, due to attritions as their own situation becomes impossible and the economy cannot support them), it is clear that the community will be large. What can fairly be called a mass draft evasion is absurd.
The argument offered by the community’s leadership is not only that religious study is important, and not only that it is so important it cannot be delayed even for a few years, but that it contributes specifically to security no less than military service (a few strivers even suggest it contributes more). As Israel counts its hundreds and thousands of dead, such audacity boils the blood of not only secular people but religious ones who are not Haredi.
The fact that almost all the Haredim vote, in one way or another, for the right-religious coalition, guaranteeing more occupation in the West Bank and more wars in which their vast majority will not fight, adds a rare extreme of hypocrisy to the mix. It is an insult to intelligence. It is a indeed disgrace to Judaism and a shocking violation of the principle of Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Ba-zeh – the notion of Jewish mutual responsibility.
In practical terms, under the status quo Defense Ministry regulations exempt Haredim for as long as they stay in the yeshivas, which drives many to avoid work as well until they are too old (or have too large families) to be drafted, generally around 30. The Haredi population has so exploded that this is the main factor in a current non-drafting level of 30% among Jewish Israeli men. Among Haredim only, the latest available figures show that about 10% do serve.
Because of this incentive structure, the problem becomes deeper still – not only the evasion of military service but also the low participation in the workforce. Only about half of Haredi men work, and a significant number of these work in sometimes fictitious jobs in the vast bureaucracy of heavily subsidized religious services in the country. Often that’s a modest livelihood – and the whole setup both guarantees Haredi poverty and presents a growing burden on the truly working public.
Last but far from least, the labor situation is not only because of the crazy mechanism that incentivizes draft evasion. It’s also a consequence of an independent educational system that does not prepare students for a modern labor market. At this point, and with all due respect to religious studies, it is simply devastating that so many Israelis do not study math, and science in high school.
It is hard to see how Israel can allow this rickety edifice to stand. The economy will collapse. Society will disintegrate. There will, quite possibly, be violence. Secular people will start dodging the draft as well. Startup Nation will be as dust in the wind.
There’s not much to discuss with the Haredi leadership – they are cynics and petty politicians, and that includes many of their revered rabbis. They fear that education, service and labor will lead to dropouts from the sector, and they’re right. The fact that this is what Haredi youth themselves would choose only proves how necessary it is. No functional society can survive with such a large and growing proportion of people devoting their whole lives to some religion, and depending on handouts.
So what should modern Israel so? Give up and become a Jewish Iran? Put faith in the Almighty? Quietly try to convince the Haredim one by one, taking comfort in the modest results? There isn’t time.
In the past, much credence was given to the self-defeating narrative that the situation cannot be changed by coercion. Why can a secular person be coerced? Most soldiers were at least implicitly coerced; had they resisted, they would have seen the prisons from the inside. Of course it can be coerced. It just wouldn’t be pleasant. The Haredim would raise hell and often choose prison — until they stopped.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a more efficient method. Not by coercion – by budgeting.
Liberals all over the world have a strange tendency to avoid fighting for liberalism, in the name of freedom and a limitless tolerance for all sorts of madness. When this contributes to the rise of illiberalism – as is happening in Europe – it is a paradox. Israeli seculars have a further tendency to complicate things with angst, quibbling and introspection. But what Israel needs to do with this disaster is really quite simple.
Schools that do not teach a core curriculum should not receive another shekel from the state. Gradually.
A conscription law should be passed for all, with the Haredim granted a modest quota for Torah sage contributions, as in the early days of the state (and the Arab citizens should for now have the option of national service). Schools that significantly fall short will lose funding. Again, gradually.
Want to preserve the “world of the Torah”? Enjoy – but after the army, like the world of knowledge at the universities. That world also contributes to security. Maybe even more.
If somehow it really doesn’t work, Israel might then consider treating the Haredim the same way as the secular, meaning imprisonment for draft evasion. But it will work.
For all this to happen, the right wing cannot be in power. The right will never do any of this because it needs the Haredim for any majority in the Knesset, and therefore it is subject to blackmail. The right has never once had a majority without the ultra-Orthodox. Every victory of the right in the elections – after which they formed some coalition which has sometimes been different – was defined by a simple equation: a majority for Likud plus extreme right plus national-religious plus Haredim. A loss to the right was defined by a majority for everyone else. A two-party system of sorts.
Therefore, it is for Israel nothing short of a national imperative that the right be removed from power in the next election and that the forces that replace it insist on the above plan. Core curriculum and a resolution of the draft evasion – or loss of funding. Along the way such an outcome will lead to saner policies on the Palestinian issue as well, and the chances for regional peace would vastly increase.
Problems that seem unsolvable are sometimes solved quite quickly when the mind is focused. Disasters can focus the mind, and Israel is experiencing (along with the Palestinians) a disaster. Perhaps other epiphanies will come as well. On the Palestinian side as well.
