Top ultra-Orthodox rabbi orders yeshiva students to ignore IDF conscription orders
In letter published on front page of party newspaper Yated Neeman, Degel HaTorah spiritual leader Rabbi Dov Lando prohibits yeshiva students from reporting to recruiting office
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"
One of the most prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel publicly called on yeshiva students to ignore IDF conscription orders, writing that they “should not report to the recruiting office at all” after receiving summonses.
In an open letter published Friday on the front page of Degel HaTorah mouthpiece Yated Ne’eman, Rabbi Dov Lando — the chairman of the party’s ruling Council of Torah Sages and one of the most prominent rabbinic leaders of the so-called “Lithuanian” stream of ultra-Orthodoxy — issued a series of instructions aimed at minimizing contact between members of his community and the armed forces.
Alongside the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael, Degel Hatorah is one of two factions comprising the coalition’s United Torah Judaism party.
According to Lando, yeshiva students are forbidden from speaking with military representatives. Those who have been declared draft dodgers and are liable to arrest must avoid any contact with the authorities and those looking to travel abroad must first clarify their status with the Vaad HaYeshivot (Yeshiva Committee) — the Haredi community’s primary vehicle for coordination between ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and the Defense Ministry in matters of service deferments.
A recent Times of Israel investigation found that the committee, on whose board Lando sits, has been advising yeshiva students who contact its advice line to “not report under any circumstances and do not cooperate” with the authorities.
Under Israeli law, someone inciting others to evade service during wartime is liable to a prison term of 15 years. The army has stated that it is facing a manpower shortage and currently needs some 12,000 new soldiers — 7,000 of whom would be combat troops.
In his letter, Lando instructed evaders who fail to avoid an encounter with the police to seek advice from Shlomo Brilant, a municipal-level Degel HaTorah politician from Beit Shemesh whose “Lema’ancha” (for your sake) hotline was recently established on Lando’s orders.
In a flyer circulated among Haredi WhatsApp groups last month, Lema’ancha also instructed yeshiva students not to report to the IDF recruitment bureau “for any reason.”
A spokesman for Degel HaTorah leader MK Moshe Gafni did not respond when asked if his party officially endorsed Lando’s instructions.
“The brazen, ongoing declarations by the Haredi leadership are the best proof of fact that they see themselves as being above the law, and with the way they’re being dealt with by Netanyahu and his partners, one can understand how they came to that conclusion,” Uri Keidar, the executive director of the Israel Hofsheet (Be Free Israel) religious pluralism advocacy group told The Times of Israel on Sunday.
“We will continue to fight for an equal shouldering of the burden, alongside the vast majority of patriotic Israel,” he added.
Lando’s letter echoes a previous missive published on the front page of Yated Ne’eman last July, in which he also wrote that yeshiva students should “not show up at [IDF] draft offices at all.”
“The situation at the moment is that the courts have declared war against the Torah world, and it is they who opened a front and came to change an arrangement that has existed for years, ordering the army to start the process of actually recruiting yeshiva members,” he asserted — following a landmark High Court of Justice ruling ending decades of ultra-Orthodox exemptions.
In February, the ultra-Orthodox Kikar HaShabbat website quoted Lando as saying that the Jewish people are protected by the study of yeshiva students and that national-religious Jews who fell in battle “are being killed because we don’t learn enough.”
“They are being killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah,” he argued.
The Haredi community’s leadership is vehemently opposed to young Haredi men serving in the military, fearing they will be secularized.
Since the High Court of Justice’s ruling last June, multiple initiatives affiliated with various Haredi factions have sprung up to guide them through their new post-exemption reality — and encourage them to disregard IDF enlistment orders.
These include an advice line linked to Jerusalem Affairs Minister Meir Porush, which a recent Times of Israel investigation found was counseling callers to “just ignore” summonses to the IDF’s recruitment bureau.
The Times of Israel Community.