Senior UTJ lawmaker: I pray for IDF soldiers in Gaza ‘but without Torah students we have no future’

Senior United Torah Judaism lawmaker Moshe Gafni seems to signal his party’s unwillingness to reach a compromise on the enlistment of yeshiva students, declaring that “without Torah scholars we have no right to exist in this land.”

Speaking at a cornerstone laying ceremony for an ultra-Orthodox school in the northern city of Tiberias, Gafni appears to minimize the importance of army service vis-a-vis full-time Talmud study.

“Without the Torah scholars we have no right to exist in this land. After two thousand years of exile, the people of Israel returned to being a Jewish nation in their own land and this is in the merit of the Torah scholars who continue the tradition,” he declares.

“I bless the soldiers who risk their lives in Gaza and here on the northern border, I pray with all the people of Israel that they return home safe and sound, but without Torah students we have no future, and therefore we need to preserve them with all possible force.”

His statement comes less than a day after the government requested a half-day extension to the High Court’s deadline for filing a response to petitions demanding that it immediately start conscripting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

Its request appears to indicate that there will be a last-gasp effort to formulate some kind of realistic proposal to show the court by that time, although the coalition has thus far been unable to reach an agreement which would satisfy the court, the ultra-Orthodox and those pushing for universal conscription.

UTJ's Gafni: “I bless the soldiers who risk their lives in Gaza and here on the northern border, I pray with all the people of Israel that they return home safe and sound, but without Torah students we have no future…" pic.twitter.com/o8hc8eO00u

— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) March 28, 2024