Changing stance, key Shas rabbi says Haredim who don’t study full-time can serve in IDF
If the IDF enshrines protections for Haredi soldiers in General Staff orders and they can observe Sabbath, ‘why shouldn’t [they] enlist,’ asks Rabbi Moshe Maya in radio interview
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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"
In what appears to be a dramatic reversal of his position, one of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party’s senior spiritual leaders stated Monday that Haredim who are not enrolled full-time in yeshiva can serve in the IDF on condition that the military obligates itself to allow them to observe their way of life.
Speaking with Radio Kol Hai, Rabbi Moshe Maya, a member of Shas’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, said that “if there is an arrangement whereby someone who enlists would not come to desecrate the Shabbat and would preserve his holiness and purity — why shouldn’t he enlist?”
However, the rabbi stipulated that such arrangements must be anchored in “an official IDF General Staff order” or they are “worthless.”
Last summer, following the High Court of Justice’s ruling ending service exemptions for yeshiva students, Maya took a very different tone, telling Kol Barama Radio that it was “forbidden for those who don’t study to go to the army,” because “those who do will end up violating the Shabbat.”
“If not for the Torah students, there would be many more fatalities,” Maya said at the time. “We pray and shed countless tears for the soldiers, so the hostages return. Our role in the war is to study and study and the Almighty will strike our enemies with softness, weakness and fear.”
Maya’s comments reflected the fear in some Haredi circles that army service, even one adapted to the specific needs of the community, will endanger the community by exposing young men to outside culture and leading them to mix with non-Haredi society.
Both the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism and Sephardic Shas parties have been pushing hard for the passage of legislation enabling most ultra-Orthodox males to continue to avoid military conscription or other national service.
Currently, approximately 80,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service and have not enlisted, generating intense resentment among secular and national-religious Israelis. The IDF has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits, due to the strain on standing and reserve forces amid the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges.
This June, Maya was one of several senior Shas rabbis who signed an open letter expressing opposition to any enlistment compromise that would lead to the conscription of yeshiva students. In the letter, the rabbis declared that it was forbidden for those not in yeshiva to enlist, even into “the so-called ‘ultra-Orthodox’ tracks.”
However, he started softening his position not long after, stating several weeks later that while at the moment no Haredim at all may enlist, “if military frameworks are established with the approval of the rabbis, which will certainly safeguard every Haredi — and we know that this will have legal validity — then only those who do not study at all should be drafted.”
The IDF currently maintains several service tracks for ultra-Orthodox soldiers, including the Netzach Yehuda battalion (also known as Nahal Haredi) and the recently-established Hasmonean Brigade.
Maya’s new position seems to match views previously expressed by Shas ministers, which had subsequently been rejected by the party.
Last April, then-interior minister Moshe Arbel argued that there was no longer a “moral” justification to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who were not studying in a yeshiva from army service.
Arbel’s comments echoed those of his fellow Shas Minister Ya’akov Margi, who told the Kikar Hashabbat website in February 2024 that members of the Haredi community not engaged in full-time Torah study should be drafted “by force.”
This approach appears markedly more moderate than that of Shas spiritual leader and former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who has insisted that it “it is forbidden to go to the army, even for one who is idle” and threatened that if the government arrests yeshiva students for dodging the draft, then the ultra-Orthodox community will be forced to leave Israel.
In the wake of recent IDF enforcement operations against draft dodgers, the Haredi community has declared “war” against conscription, holding regular protests outside of the Beit Lid military prison and blocking roads around the country.
As lawmakers struggle to pass a bill regulating ultra-Orthodox enlistment, Haredi rabbis across the spectrum have sharpened their rhetoric considerably, calling on all members of their respective communities not to respond to conscription orders, regardless of whether or not they learn in yeshiva.
While unlikely, some senior Haredi political and rabbinic figures have indicated that they would be open to compromise on non-learners if the pre-2024 status quo is restored.
Asked if Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of UTJ’s Degel HaTorah faction, opposed the enlistment of Haredim who are not enrolled in yeshiva, a spokesman said that while he does not have an official position, “if things work out legally, then there is something to talk about, so to speak.”
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