The army must soon begin enlisting ultra-Orthodox men. How will that work?
IDF’s main options include a lottery to draft thousands of yeshiva students from Haredi mainstream, likely sparking major backlash, or to conscript from margins of the community
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
In a straightforward but massively consequential ruling, the High Court of Justice last week ordered the state to begin conscripting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military, after decades in which young men from the community received mass-exemptions from mandatory military service.
Several hours later, the Attorney General’s Office instructed the Defense Ministry to implement the ruling, saying that the defense establishment must “act immediately to carry out the ruling to draft yeshiva students who are are obligated to perform military service”
But what does that mean in practice, and will the army begin sending out thousands of conscription orders this week to Haredi yeshiva students in Bnei Brak, Jerusalem and elsewhere across Israel?
The short answer is likely no, at least not in the immediate future. But the Defense Ministry and Israel Defense Forces will need to begin putting in place a conscription mechanism that can swiftly issue draft notices and begin enlisting some 4,800 ultra-Orthodox conscripts over the coming 12 months.
Asked how it intends to comply with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s orders, the Defense Ministry declined to comment.
The draft pool
In its ruling last week, the High Court stated that since the law allowing for blanket military service exemptions for Haredi yeshiva students expired at the end of June 2023, there is no longer any legal framework for granting those exemptions, and the state must therefore begin drafting those students.
There are currently 63,000 such men who are eligible for army service and now liable to be drafted, according to the court’s ruling and the attorney general’s orders.
But according to Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz, head of the religion and state program at the Israel Democracy Institute, there are another 14,000 young Haredi men who will turn 18 during the course of the current enlistment year, which started in June, and who will become eligible for the draft over the next 12 months.
When put together, there are some 77,000 young Haredi men to whom the IDF could legally send draft orders during the coming year.
The IDF, however, told the attorney general during the High Court proceedings that it could reasonably absorb some 3,000 extra ultra-Orthodox recruits into its ranks in the coming enlistment year, on top of the approximate average of 1,800 who have enlisted each of the last few years.
The attorney general therefore instructed the IDF to begin conscripting 4,800 yeshiva students, though the army must now decide who will receive enlistment orders and who will continue to remain exempt from military duty.
Random selection or a guiding hand?
The army has two main options, the first of which is to conduct a random lottery of those who are draft-eligible and conscript whoever’s number is called.
The alternative, says Ravitsky Tur-Paz, is to draft the lower-hanging fruit — that is, young men from the “modern Haredi” community and those attending “drop-out yeshivas” where little religious studying is actually done.
According to figures from the Israel Democracy Institute, the “modern Haredi” community, including those studying at schools that teach core-curriculum subjects as well as those in immigrant families, comprises between 11 to 15 percent of the ultra-Orthodox public.
This segment of the population is more integrated into Israeli society than the Haredi mainstream and is seen as less hostile to the idea of military service, so the army may find more willing recruits there than in other parts of the community.
Another potential source of conscripts is from the “drop-out yeshivas,” institutions set up by the Haredi community to provide an ultra-Orthodox environment for young men who are not interested in the rigors of perpetual Talmudic study and are considered at risk of leaving the community altogether.
The Israel Democracy Institute estimates that of the 63,000 Haredi seminary students eligible for the draft, some 9,500 attend such yeshivas.
As these yeshivas primarily serve as a framework for keeping such men within Haredi society, it is possible ultra-Orthodox leaders would be willing to let the students there serve in the army, especially if students at mainstream yeshivas are left to their studies.
Although there might be less resistance from the Haredi rabbinical and political leadership to drafting these young men, there are questions over the move’s legality, as the state must act in accordance with administrative law, which includes provisions for the equal application of laws toward all citizens.
The selection of particular men from the Haredi community because their leadership cares less about them would likely not stand up to that standard in the long term.
But Ravitsky Tur-Paz posited that so as long as the state could show that it intends to apply the law for conscription more broadly in the coming years, drafting from among the “drop-out” yeshivas and modern Haredi yeshiva students might pass legal muster in the short term. The army and attorney general have said that the 4,800 to be drafted this year are just the first step in the conscription process, which even the High Court acknowledged would have to be gradual.
The question then becomes to what extent the ultra-Orthodox leadership is willing to resist conscription from even this segment of the community.
According to Yisroel Cohen, a prominent Haredi journalist and commentator, if the army does indeed concentrate on the more marginal segments of yeshiva students, and does not exceed the order for 4,800 conscripts this year, the leadership of the mainstream Haredi community may go along rather than decide on a major societal rebellion.
“If they do something random [like a lottery], then there will be a severe problem,” insisted Cohen. “But the Haredi mainstream is in the middle: It’s prepared to give something [a number of conscripts] which it thinks is significant… If it is from the modern yeshivas and drop-out yeshivas I believe they’ll turn a blind eye, and allow the Defense Ministry and Justice Ministry to fill the quotas from the margins.”
“But if they begin to go into the Haredi mainstream,” he cautioned, “then this could bring about an explosion.”
