Someone usually comes along with a fresh twist only when you think nothing can surprise you again in Jewish politics.
This day it was Yitzhak Yosef, one of Israel’s two main priests. He had a straightforward response in response to disputes over whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be expelled from the defense or allowed to continue to examine religious texts full-time.
” If they force us to go to the military, we’ll all get abroad”, he declared on March 9, 2024.
Conscription weight against ultra-Orthodox people is not fresh.
However, this declaration is fresh in its force, particularly given that it is in the middle of a conflict. Additionally, Yosef is never a strange priest. He is the brother of Ovadia Yosef, who was the Shas Party’s spiritual leader and a key member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing and spiritual governing coalition.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who adhere to the strictest rules regarding Israeli law and make up around 14 % of the population, have been excluded from military service ever since the state of Israel’s founding in 1948. Among all other Israeli citizens, from the liberal to the current Catholic, men are required to function 32 months, and women 24, plus stockpile duty.
In 2017, the government’s Supreme Court ruled against the deductions, but they have continued through a series of legislative alternatives. The most recent is scheduled to expire at the end of March 2024, but another Israelis ‘ animosity toward the ultra-Orthodox deduction is at a great.
As a writer, I see the conscription argument as more than a political problems for Israel’s authorities. The question is so delicate because it opens up important issues about the unity of Israeli society in general, and of the extremely- Catholic, or” Haredi”, voter’s attitude toward the Jewish state in particular.
It also demonstrates how complicated a nation is, which is not as readily understood as many of its supporters and detractors believe.
Preliminary bargain
Generally, Orthodox Jews struggled to support the idea of a Hebrew condition. They prayed for decades to restore the church and returning to Jerusalem, but they also considered a particular position, one that would be established by the Messiah. Any other kind of Israeli independence, they believed, had been heresy.
Theodor Herzl, the architect of current social Israel in the late 1800s, wore a long beard and sported a prophetic appearance. He lit a Christmas trees with his family, which was incredibly liberal and assimilated. The Orthodox were unrepentant about Herzl’s effort to encourage more German Zionists to immigrate to the Holy Land.
However, there was always a majority of Catholic people who shared the view that the Hebrew people may have a right to establish a republic political position in the land of Israel. Saving life is more important than other laws, according to the Talmud, the main authority on Israeli law, and Zionism saved Zionists from pogroms and another anti-Jewish atrocities in Europe.
During the Holocaust, the vast majority of attentive Zionists in Eastern Europe were murdered. In the fresh state of Israel, many individuals who had recently opposed Zionism sought shelter afterwards.
On the day of Israel’s freedom, David Ben- Gurion, the excellent minister of the state- to- remain, entered an agreement with the leaders of the two camps of Catholic Jews.
The Haredim, or ultra- Orthodox, still refused to recognize the legitimacy of a secular Jewish state. The so- called national religious camp, on the other hand, embraced it.
The new state, among other concessions, gave an exemption to young Haredi Jews who wanted to study religious texts full-time rather than enlist in the army. That hardly seemed consequential, as the young men in question numbered only a few hundred.
Shifting views
During the Six- Day War of 1967, Israel captured the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem as well as the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Since then, the national religious camp, once a moderate force, has developed into the spearhead of the right- wing settler movement.
National religious Israelis today are Zionists because of messianism, unlike the first generations of Orthodox Zionists. Israel, they believe, will help bring about the messianic age. Therefore, right- wing religious Zionists – like Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers Itamar Ben- Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – are enthusiastic proponents of army service.
Not so the Haredim, the ultra- Orthodox.
To be clear, Haredi Jews are very diverse. Families with roots in all over the world, from Poland and Romania to Morocco and Iraq, are included in this group. It includes people who support Israel’s existence, and opponents who burn the flag on Independence Day. Men who enter the workforce and those who devote their lives to religious study are included.
The state provides funding for their education, but the majority of Haredim who live in Israel are not Zionists. Anything else– secular education, army service, and often paid work – is seen as a distraction.
More than half of Haredi Jews have enlisted involuntarily since the most recent Israel-Hamas conflict started, and a minority of them have already. But they have no legal obligation to do so, nor do Israel’s Arab citizens.
Growing Haredi sector
As ultra-Orthodox political parties turned out to be much-needed partners, Israel’s governments have continued to tolerate this situation.
Yet legal and popular opposition has increased.
The defense minister was asked to find ways to draft Haredi Jews after the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that they were not entitled to be exempt from military service. A center-right government under Netanyahu passed a law in 2014 that mandated that 60 % of Haredi men serve in three years. But the 2015 elections brought Haredi parties back in power, and implementation was effectively abandoned.
As their population grows, the Haredi parties have grown more powerful since then. However, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the government must either draft Haredim by the end of March 2024 or that the legislature must pass a new law to make up for them.
Seven in 10 Israeli Jews oppose the blanket exemption, meaning another exemption might jeopardize Netanyahu’s government. Plans to double the reservists ‘ duty to 42 days a year during emergencies and increase the men’s military service to three years are raising people’s frustration.
If the Haredim were still a small section of society as they were in 1948, none of this would matter. Today, however, ultra- Orthodox women have 6.5 children on average, compared with 2.5 among other Jewish Israeli women, and 1 in 4 young children are ultra- Orthodox.
It is obvious how Israeli society has changed as a result. If the trend continues, Israel will become a very different, very religious society – one that can hardly survive economically.
On average, a non- Haredi household pays nine times more income tax than a Haredi one, while the latter receives over 50 % more state support. Most Haredim would have a hard time finding well-paying jobs, especially since their state-subsidized private schools do n’t teach a lot of secular subjects.
This for Israeli society implies further division and a deterioration of the economy, to mention the army.
But, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak says, this will never happen. In his and other Haredim’s eyes, Israel’s soldiers succeed only because religious Jews study and pray for them.
” They need to understand that without the Torah, without the yeshivas, there’d be nothing, no success for the army”, he said.
Michael Brenner is Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies at American University and Professor of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.