From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Ultra-Orthodox leaders call day of prayer, fasting to protest conscription crackdown
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Ultra-Orthodox leaders are calling for an international day of prayer and fasting on Thursday in response to recent government efforts to conscript ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students and arrest those who spurn government orders to enlist.
Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of Degel HaTorah, one of the factions of the Haredi United Torah Judaism party, issues a public appeal to Jews around the world to treat the day as if it were Yom Kippur Katan, a minor fast day in which worshippers recite prayers usually read on the Jewish Day of Atonement.
In the United States and Europe, Haredi Jews are “preparing to tear open the gates of heaven to overturn the conscription decree that threatens the Torah world,” party newspaper Yated Neeman states on its front page, quoting Lando as saying that “Jews are persecuting Jews because they are learning Torah.”
Ultra-Orthodox newspaper Hamodia, seen as a mouthpiece for UTJ’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction, likewise calls for a “day of prayer, fasting and the cessation of work to cancel the decree of forced conscription and religious persecution.”
Despite the ongoing war in Gaza and the plight of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, the state of Israel has “found the time to persecute Torah students” and “deprive them of their civil rights,” the paper declares.
Haredi men have long received an exemption from Israel’s mandatory military draft. But those exemptions were declared illegal by the High Court of Justice last summer. Lawmakers are now debating legislation to enshrine the exemptions, but in the meantime, Haredi men have been sent draft orders amid what the IDF calls an urgent manpower shortage.
According to the HaMevaser newspaper, which is affiliated with another wing of Agudat Yisrael, prayer rallies are set to be held in Antwerp, London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Miami and elsewhere. The paper says everyone aged 15 and older should fast half a day, while those unable to do so should donate to charity in an effort to appeal to God to “hasten their redemption by cancelling the decree.”
Thursday’s prayer rallies are due to take place a week to the day after Lando and other leading Haredi rabbis gathered in front of Israel’s Beit Lid military prison to pray for draft evaders being held inside.
On Monday, anti-Zionist Hasidic Jews demonstrated against the draft outside the Israeli consulate in Manhattan.
Senior leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community are considering holding demonstrations outside of Israeli embassies around the world to protest the arrest of Haredi draft evaders by the military police, a source with knowledge of the senior rabbis’ thinking told The Times of Israel earlier this month.
The Times of Israel Community.