(RNS) — Ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in the Israeli Knesset are moving to pull their support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition over a plan to conscript into the Israel Defense Forces tens of thousands of yeshiva students, who had previously been exempt.
The Knesset is expected to vote Wednesday (June 11) on a motion to dissolve Netanyahu’s government. The Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas party and the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism party have both indicated they will vote in favor of dissolution, stripping Netanyahu’s coalition of 18 of the 61 seats he needs to maintain his government.
“The ultra-Orthodox public feels persecuted by the Likud and (Knesset member Yuli) Edelstein,” Shas spokesperson Asher Medina told Israeli media.
On Thursday, Israel’s attorney general announced that next month, it intends to serve some 54,000 conscription notices to young men from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox sector, known in Hebrew as Haredim.
The plan has widened a long-festering rift in Israeli politics and society.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech in Jerusalem, March 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
For decades, the Haredim have relied on a deal struck between Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and rabbinic leaders during Israel’s war of independence.
Ben-Gurion allowed those enrolled in traditional rabbinic seminaries, known as yeshivas, whose main occupation is Torah study, to be exempted from serving in the Jewish militias that would become the IDF.
The agreement became known as “Torah Umanuto,” meaning “Torah is his job.”
Haredi leaders have argued that, while the IDF provides Israel with physical defense, the yeshiva students’ studies make the country worthy of spiritual defense.
At the time, the exemption only applied to a few hundred students, many of whom were Holocaust survivors. They also represented some of the survivors of the major centers of Jewish learning in Europe that had been destroyed in World War II. Today, however, the Haredim comprise some 13% of Israel’s population, the country’s fastest-growing demographic and tens of thousands of military-age young men.
Haredi leaders have also battled against conscription on the grounds that it would erode their communities and forcibly assimilate them into wider Israeli society.
Israeli police officers disperse ultra-Orthodox Jewish men blocking a highway during a protest against army recruitment in Bnei Brak, Israel, March 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
“According to Torah law, it is strictly forbidden to enlist in the army, which serves as a melting pot for the gravest transgressions and for casting off the yoke” of Torah and mitzvot, declared a ruling published Monday and signed by major Hasidic leaders from a variety of sects.
Nonetheless, their exemption from the same national service that other Israeli Jews, as well as the Druze and Circassian minorities, are expected to perform has been a sore point across both sides of Israel’s political spectrum — especially as the war in Gaza passed its 600th day last week.
“The population in Israel is, for the most part, respectful of those who choose to study Torah. Even the secular recognize that the Torah is part of our national heritage. That being said, there is a rapidly growing resentment toward the Haredi population who are not carrying their share of the burden,” Rabbi Seth Farber, an Orthodox rabbi and an advocate for religious equity in Israel, told RNS.
Farber noted that despite the claims of Haredi leaders, there are ample opportunities to mix a Torah-observant lifestyle with military service.
“There are models such as the ‘hesder’ model that enable citizens to both immerse themselves in Torah study and serve,” he said. “The IDF has also opened (Haredi) exclusive units to ensure that no one has to compromise their lifestyle.”
The exemption for Haredi yeshiva students was formally ended by Israel’s high court last summer, but implementing the new directive has been no easy task. The IDF’s first all-Haredi combat unit, the Hasmonean Brigade, was deployed into Gaza with much fanfare from Israeli media. But in Haredi neighborhoods, demonstrations over the issue have resulted in violent clashes with police, and flyers direct residents to a hotline to call when army officials come to arrest draft dodgers.
A bill backed by Edelstein, chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee, would strengthen sanctions against draft dodgers by removing several of the credits and subsidies that many Haredi families rely on, while also imposing communal punishments — such as loss of funding — on Haredi yeshivas that continue to enroll draft dodgers.
The prospect has kicked off fear of a financial crisis among Haredi institutions. Israeli media reported Monday that the grand rebbe of the Ger Hasidic sect departed to the U.S. on an emergency fundraising trip to secure funds for his institutions should the law pass.
But on Friday, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin suggested the army supports tightening strictures against draft dodgers. “The sanctions the IDF can apply are insufficient,” he said. “We’ll need a more comprehensive and coordinated response.”
While Netanyahu has urged his ministers to find a compromise with the Haredim for the sake of the government, the exasperation with the exemption is such that even those from his own Likud party such as Edelstein have broken ranks over the issue.
At the same time, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee reportedly met with Haredi leaders on Monday, urging them not to destabilize the government while the U.S. is engaged in nuclear talks with Iran.
