About F%$#ing Time

The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that Heredim must be conscripted like the rest of the Jewish citizens of Israel* (Heredim [יהדות חֲרֵדִית], literally fearful ones, are extreme ultra-Orthodox Jews)

The law has always said that they should serve like everyone else, and so has Torah,  but generations of spineless politicians have allowed them to defer service until they age out of the draft.

Considering the enormous state subsidies that they receive, this is a good thing.

As an added bonus, this may be the thing that finally drives Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) from office:

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza.

In a unanimous decision, a panel of nine judges held that there was no legal basis for the longstanding military exemption given to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s mandatory draft laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.

In a country where military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, both men and women, the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox has long prompted resentment. But anger over the group’s special treatment has grown as the war in Gaza has stretched into its ninth month, requiring tens of thousands of reservists to serve multiple tours and costing the lives of hundreds of soldiers. 

………

The decision threatened to widen one of the most painful divisions in Israeli society, pitting secular Jews against the ultra-Orthodox, who say their religious study is as essential and protective as the military. It also exposed the fault lines in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose their constituents’ conscription, even as other Israelis are killed and wounded in Gaza.

Israeli courts have ruled against the exemption before, including Supreme Court decisions in 1998, 2012 and 2017. The top court has repeatedly warned the government that to continue the policy, it must be written into law — though that law would be subject to constitutional challenges, as previous ones were — while also giving the government time to hammer out legislation.

………

But for seven years, since the last law was struck down, successive Israeli governments have dragged their feet in drafting new legislation. In 2023, the law finally reached its expiration date, leading the Israeli government to order the military simply not to draft the ultra-Orthodox while lawmakers worked on an exemption.

………

Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel’s attorney general, in a letter to government officials on Tuesday, said the military had committed to draft at least 3,000 ultra-Orthodox religious students — out of more than 60,000 of draft age — during the coming year. The letter noted that the number would come nowhere near to bridging the gap in military service between the ultra-Orthodox community and other Israeli Jews.

Instead, the ruling included a means of pressuring the ultra-Orthodox to accept the court’s judgment: the suspension of millions of dollars in government subsidies given to religious schools, or yeshivas, that previously supported the exempted students, striking a blow to revered institutions at the heart of the ultra-Orthodox community.

Pirkei Avot 4:5 notes, "On studying Torah, Rabbi Zadok said: do not make them a crown for self-exaltation, nor a spade with which to dig." 

We should now add to that, "Nor a way to dodge the draft or a way to live on the public dole."

There are already significant numbers of Heredim who volunteer to serve in the IDF, so accommodating their religious observance in the context of military is a problem which is already solved. 

^*It should be noted that the Druze in Israel petitioned for, and got, the right to be conscripted as well.