A new IDF combat platoon lets religious women join the fight while keeping the faith

About two years ago, when Adva Bucholtz, 19, started weighing her post-high school options, she was less likely than many of her religious peers to allow the fine print of Orthodox strictures to get in the way of her goals.

As a teenager, Bucholtz challenged traditional Orthodox modesty when she donned a soccer uniform and played before crowds that included men. In 2020, the gifted striker and midfielder joined the capital’s first professional women’s soccer team, Hapoel Jerusalem.

Still, many were caught off guard by her decision to not only choose the army over national service, but to train for a combat role.

Bucholtz, who grew up in the religious West Bank settlement of Neve Daniel and attended an all-girls Orthodox high school, had qualms of her own about joining a coed IDF combat unit.

“It’s pretty unusual for girls from my high school to do combat duty. The message we get at school and in general is that combat service is best left to men,” she said in November, just before enlisting.

When Hamas launched the single most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023, precipitating a hostage crisis and ongoing multi-front war, many young people in Israel were inspired to not only join the war effort, but to also enlist in combat units.

Among them were Bucholtz and other religious females, who since the October 7 attack have signed up for combat roles in what appear to be greater numbers than ever before.

To answer the demand, the army inaugurated its first-ever all-female combat platoon for religious soldiers in November — complete with a female spiritual advisor and an all-female command structure. Forty future female fighters make up the inaugural cohort, many coming from communities where army service, even in non-combat roles, remains largely taboo.

But as the IDF attempts to deal with manpower issues stemming from the ongoing multifront war, boosters say the creation of the platoon is feeding more interest from the largely untapped well of highly motivated Religious Zionist women, as God-fearing females discover they can fight for their country without worrying about compromising their faith.

“Every day I get phone calls from religious girls interested in serving in the new combat unit,” said Rabbi Ohad Teharlev, Dean of Midreshet Lindenbaum, an all-girls post-high school seminary that worked with the IDF to create a platoon that accommodates religious women.

“And there are lots of girls already serving in coed units who want to transfer to the new religious, gender-segregated unit,” added Teharlev, who spoke with The Times of Israel in February.

The IDF did not respond to repeated inquiries by The Times of Israel regarding the newly formed platoon or regarding historical data on the number of religious females serving in combat units.

But according to Ohr Torah Stone, the umbrella organization for Midreshet Lindenbaum and 31 other religious institutions, about 3,500 graduates from national religious all-girls high schools, or 44 percent of the total number of graduates, enlisted in the IDF in 2024.

About 350 of them chose combat units, according to Ohr Torah Stone, which said the figures were based on IDF data.

Those figures are up from 2017, when about 2,700 Orthodox women, or 34% of their cohort in the national religious school system, enlisted in the IDF, according to a 2018 analysis by Idit Shafran Gittleman for the Israel Democracy Institute that cited statistics not made public by the army.

Similar figures were reported for 2021, according to the Ynet news outlet.

The idea for the unit came from the IDF itself, which has been taxed by the multifront war since 2023 and was keen to tap into a vein of highly motivated, idealistic females wanting to serve their country.

“We didn’t approach the IDF, the IDF approached us,” said Rabbi Kenneth Brander, president of Ohr Torah Stone.

Part of the Combat Intelligence Collection Array — under the IDF’s Border Defense Corps — the unit’s female soldiers will receive weapons training largely equivalent to soldiers serving in coed battalions responsible for guarding the Jordanian and Egyptian borders, such as Bardales, Caracal and the Lions of Jordan.

Once trained, the women are slated to be deployed to the same non-belligerent border as the coed units, where they will both guard the frontier and stage ambushes against weapons and drug smugglers, said Teharlev.

The women will be equipped to deal with combat situations when necessary, but will not cross the border, join in ground campaigns or take part in anti-terror raids, the kind of fighting done by soldiers in the Nahal, Givati and Golani infantry brigades, according to Teharlev.

“But they do have the physical ability and the weapons training to respond to terrorists if they need to,” he said.

Doing it for themselves

Israeli regulations require all Jewish men and women to be conscripted into the military for two-to-three years of mandatory military service, albeit with several carve-outs.

Aside from near-blanket exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox, the army also allows women from religious backgrounds to opt out of military service and instead volunteer for one or two years in hospitals, schools or with underserved communities under a program known as National Service.

According to a long-standing arrangement between the IDF and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which is enshrined in law, women who graduate from all-girls religious high schools are automatically eligible for an exemption from IDF service on religious grounds.

Over two decades ago, Teharlev played a key role in bringing religious women into the IDF, creating tracks for them to enlist in non-combat roles, mostly in intelligence and education units.

While the options remain controversial among more conservative religious Zionist communities, Teharlev believes the time is right to take the concept one step further, channeling the fighting ardor of young women like Bucholtz while still allowing them to safeguard their spiritual mores and strictures.

For starters, that means no boys allowed.

“Because of the many gender issues that arise in coed combat units, no respectable rabbi would condone it,” said Teharlev. “Now, with a platoon that adheres to strict gender and religious separation and has ongoing spiritual guidance from a female educator, there is no reason to oppose it.”

The women will pray together and study Torah together, though doing so is not mandatory.

“If you are a religious woman in the framework we created, you are going to be nurtured, we are going to visit you regularly, we are going to make sure you have a spiritual mentor who is female, we are going to make sure all your commanders are women,” said Brander.

While military service for religious females has won purchase in the community in recent decades, many within national religious circles continue to oppose the idea, to say nothing of putting women in combat roles, even with the spiritual guardrails being put in place.

“In the IDF there is no [such] thing as complete [gender] segregation,” said Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a leading Religious Zionist hardliner with considerable influence in the community.

Aviner told The Times of Israel that it was a “bad idea” to allow women to serve in the IDF in any capacity, including in an all-female combat unit.

But to Brander, such an approach ignores what is happening on the ground.

“Whether or not we are involved, religious women are enlisting,” he said. “You can cry about the problem, you can declare that you are opposed to women serving, but I see my responsibility as making sure that we create a halachically sensitive place for these women.”

Aviner, 81, also argued that opening IDF roles to women — regardless of religious orientation — would harm the military as a whole.

“Introducing women into combat units lowers the standards and combat-readiness of the soldiers,” he said, echoing a long- and widely-held contention that continues to be debated in Israel, the US and around the world.

Prof. Yuval Heled, an expert in human physiology and former chief physiologist of the IDF Medical Corps, has in the past criticized the IDF policy of recruiting women to serve in maneuvering infantry or special forces, arguing that from a cost-benefit perspective it’s illogical to take the time and effort to seek out the few women capable of serving in these positions.

However, Heled said that he sees no problem creating an all-female platoon in the Combat Intelligence array.

“The chance of these women encountering face-to-face combat is minimal,” said Heled. “The physical demands are not comparable to infantry, not to mention special forces — they’ll be driving cars and staging ambushes on drug smugglers or monitoring from a distance.”

“They might have to carry some heavy weights but this should not prevent us from recruiting females,” he added. “Females are capable of driving tanks, being fighter pilots or serving in these sorts of semi-combat units and you have the added advantage of recruiting women with very high motivation and a willingness to contribute.”

Bucholtz’s father Yishai, who spoke with The Times of Israel in February, about midway through his daughter’s basic training, said he could tell the training was physically challenging for Adva, but she seemed to be able to handle it. (Bucholtz was not permitted to speak to the press after enlisting, in line with standard IDF protocol.)

“I see her coming home tired. It’s very intense. But there is a good atmosphere and she seems happy,” he said. “Maybe I’m naive, but I have a basic trust in the IDF that they are not making her do things that are inappropriate to a woman’s physiology.”

He added that barring one incident in which Adva and the other women ran and trained in the presence of a male commander, the IDF has kept its promise to maintain strict gender segregation.

“Though I think Adva could have managed in a coed unit, the segregation is good in the sense that there is a common language,” he said. “Women can pray without feeling bad about getting time off while the [non-observant] others have to continue training.”

Teharlev said there were a number of reasons that segregating along both gender and religious lines makes it much easier for religious women to serve.

“Out in the field there is a lack of privacy while dressing and bathing and combat training is much more intense and intimate than working in an office together,” he said.

The new platoon is made up of women from different backgrounds. Some attended a midrasha, a type of yeshiva for women, before enlisting, others began serving in mixed gender combat units and asked to be transferred to a more religious setting, still others enlisted right after high school.

The women in the platoon mostly eschew premarital sex, adopt a more conservative dress code, incorporate prayer and Torah scholarship into their daily schedule, eat only kosher food and keep Shabbat. They feel more comfortable serving with like-minded women.

“I personally think every woman should be in the place that is right for her. And for some that means doing National Service,” said Rabbanit Hila Naor, who will serve as the unit’s spiritual adviser. “But for girls who are up to it and fit the mold, military service, including combat service, is the ultimate way to serve the country right now as we face such huge challenges.”

Naor, 49, served in the IDF’s education division, and today is a sergeant in the reserves. As de facto chaplain, she will be responsible for many of the functions normally performed by a rabbi, including prayer services and weekly Torah classes as part of her reserve duty in the IDF.

Naor prefers to be referred to as rabbanit, a title traditionally reserved for the wives of rabbis but which has increasingly been used to refer to Orthodox women like Naor who have extensive knowledge of Halacha and essentially function as rabbis.

Israel’s Chief Rabbinate does not permit women to be tested for rabbinic ordination, although some streams of Orthodoxy do ordain women.

Naor completed a five-year course of study at the Susie Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halachic Learning, an affiliate institution of Ohr Torah Stone, equivalent to the training needed to pass the ordination tests given by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.

She has worked closely with Teharlev for several years to help prepare religious women both mentally and spiritually for non-combat roles in the IDF and is intimately aware of the challenges faced by religious women who opt to join the IDF.

In her new role as spiritual and halachic advisor to the combat platoon, the sergeant will function as a Combat Intelligence reservist rather than as part of the IDF’s rabbinate, which, like the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, does not recognize women as rabbis.

Naor said it was important that the all-female unit have a woman to provide spiritual guidance as they navigate their new, groundbreaking situation.

“There is something about having a female as spiritual leader that allows the girls serving to feel more comfortable asking questions,” Naor said. “Too often girls think to themselves, ‘I don’t feel right bothering the rabbi about this,’ especially if he is a high-ranking officer and she is a simple soldier.”

“And it’s not only with regard to [women’s health] issues,” she added.

Sidelined no more

The opening of the combat unit is part of an ongoing years-long shift in which women increasingly see themselves as legitimate candidates to contribute to Israel’s fighting forces, and not just in a supporting role, but as equals to men on the front lines of combat.

The army has responded by expanding the options available for women, albeit without the measures introduced by Taharlev aimed at meeting the spiritual needs of religious women.

In November, the IDF launched a pilot program for women to serve in infantry mobility units and there are plans for another pilot program for female soldiers to serve in the Armored Corps in November 2025.

The IDF has also launched a number of new all-female units for women regardless of religious orientation, though gender separation is lax and there is no spiritual or halachic guidance provided for the women. All-female units or teams have been set up within the Combat Intelligence Collection Array and as part of the elite combat engineering unit Yahalom.

In 2022, the army inaugurated an all-female company of tank commanders, following a two-year pilot program. Deployed alongside mixed combat units on the Egyptian border, the female tank operators nonetheless made history on October 7, 2023, when they joined the fight against Hamas-led terrorists massacring Israelis in communities near Gaza, becoming Israel’s first-ever female armored crews to participate in active battle.

Speaking to Channel 12 news weeks later, a commander named Hila downplayed the significance of their gender. “So what? What does it matter? Did the terrorists know there were girls in the tanks? No. You think they saw Michal’s hair sticking out of the helmet? No. Boys, girls — what does it matter?” she said.

Until recently, though, religious women who sought a combat role in the IDF were expected to serve shoulder-to-shoulder with men in a decidedly secular environment where premarital sex was normal while regular prayer and Torah study times were not.

Women who took their commitment to Orthodox religious strictures seriously often opted out.

At the beginning of December, the IDF opened up a special program for religious women aged 26 to 50 with professional backgrounds in nursing, social work, computer programming and other professions who can serve by utilizing their respective expertise.

Many of the approximately 260 women who have enlisted in the new program had avoided military service after high school out of a sense that it was at odds with their religious sensibilities.

In contrast, the army has for decades offered religious men, including the ultra-Orthodox, a variety of frameworks that enable them to balance religious adherence with combat service.

Today, the army is preparing for the possibility of needing to absorb tens of thousands more Haredi conscripts with the expiration of sweeping exemptions from mandatory military service previously enjoyed by the community and a growing public outcry against attempts to legislate new dispensations.

However, there are concerns that drafting masses of Haredi men — who demand strict gender-separation — could be an obstacle to the continued integration of women.

In July, Naamat – The Women’s Movement of Israel and The Israel’s Women’s Network penned an open letter to IDF brass voicing concern that inducting large numbers of Haredi men into the IDF could hurt the professional advancement of women, after Army Radio reported on plans for an all-male brigade to accommodate over a thousand religious soldiers.

Naamat Spokeswoman Carmel Eitan told The Times of Israel that the group had not yet formulated a stance on the newly created all-female platoon.

“We don’t know enough yet,” said Eitan. “We first want to thoroughly understand the consequences and ramifications.”

Naor said there was a tremendous sense of joy at the IDF induction center on November 26, when the women joining the platoon were brought together for the first time to begin serving together.

She praised the IDF for taking steps to make room for women from all walks of life.

“Today, the IDF is trying to make the environment conducive to the integration of female soldiers and to protect women in the IDF,” Naor said. “We don’t live in a segregated world. At university, at work, we mingle with the opposite sex. And even girls who do national service usually are in a gender-mixed situation.

“When religious girls come together as a group they have more power and they protect one another,” she said.

Speaking to The Times of Israel before her induction into combat training, Bucholtz seemed clear-eyed about the challenges and complications that lay ahead for her and the other female religious trailblazers in her cohort.

“But we need soldiers right now, both men and women, particularly in combat, and women have a lot to give.”