Knesset panel advances quasi-constitutional bill enshrining Torah study as national value

By Ariela Karmel

You will receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

You will no longer receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

9 July 2026, 8:31 pm

1 Edit

Ariela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.

Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky (right) attends a meeting of the Special Committee for the Communications Bill at the Knesset, December 23, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Knesset House Committee votes 6-4 to advance a controversial quasi-constitutional Basic Law bill enshrining Torah study as a national value.

The bill will now move to the plenum for its final votes, which are expected to take place next week. It is being advanced amid a fierce debate over whether Haredi yeshiva students should continue to receive blanket exemptions from Israel’s military draft. Those exemptions were struck down in court in 2024.

Sponsored by ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism lawmakers MKs Moshe Gafni and Yaakov Asher, and backed by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, the measure is intended to shield yeshiva students who evade the draft from sanctions and prosecution. Absent a constitution, Basic Laws in Israel have supreme legal status in the country.

“The Jewish state is restoring the honor of Torah and those who study it to its rightful place,” says Gafni upon the bill’s advancement.

Prior to the vote, coalition whip and committee chair Ofir Katz announced that the Haredi parties agreed to remove a clause from the bill that would have explicitly placed Torah study on par with service in the Israel Defense Forces. Legal officials warned that the clause could have entitled yeshiva students to financial and other benefits equal to or even exceeding those granted to soldiers.

While Shas and the Degel HaTorah faction of United Torah Judaism agreed to remove the clause, UTJ chairman and Agudat Yisrael leader Yitzhak Goldknopf says he was not consulted and opposes the move.

“No one spoke to me about removing it, and I do not agree,” he says. “I ask that the clause remain, and I oppose its removal.”

At the same time, opposition lawmakers and legal advisers argue that removing the clause doesn’t change the purpose of the legislation.

Yesh Atid MK and committee member Naor Shiri argues that even without the clause in question, the bill would make Torah study the only value explicitly enshrined in a Basic Law — as opposed to military service, caring for soldiers with PTSD or other national values — effectively elevating it above all others.

“Priority will have to be given to those who study Torah, while all other values become secondary,” he says. “This law is not [merely] declarative.”

Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky also argues that removing the clause does not necessarily make the bill merely declarative, saying the committee must explain what legal effect recognizing Torah study as a fundamental value is intended to have.

“If, as [Shas] MKs Yossi Taieb and [Yinon] Azoulay argued throughout the discussions, the intention is still to give the court a tool it did not previously have, then deleting the clause changes nothing,” she says.