How Haredi draft dodgers became a key Israeli election issue

If there's an issue with the potential to stretch Israel to the point of rupture often overlooked, it's this one, the future of the ultra-Orthodox or Haredi community and its relationship with the state. Here, anger from motorists boils over as ultra-Orthodox protesters blocked a major road in Jerusalem recently because military police were trying to arrest Haredi draft dodgers. The issue of the draft has become one of the defining features of the upcoming election. It was pointed to by several parties as one of the most critical issues. Military service is mandatory here for Jewish men and women once they reach the age of 18. Nearly three years for men, two for women. Until recently, the Haredim have enjoyed an exemption dating all the way back to the founding of the state in 1948. It was seen at the time as a way of preserving religious scholarship in the wake of the Holocaust. Two years ago, Israel's Supreme Court removed the exemption, but authorities have struggled to enforce it ever since. Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Netanyahu, seeking another term, has depended on two ultra-Orthodox parties to stay in power for decades. But their support depends on his ability to keep the draft away from them, a much harder sell to the rest of the country in the wake of October 7th, and the burden the wars that followed placed on the military and the families who lost loved ones. I say I used to vote for him. I won't do it anymore. Yonatan Lambert was sent to Gaza. If you decide that you don't want to be part of the army or part of the country, you shouldn't get anything from the country. Many ultra-Orthodox say that to accept conscription would be to accept an erosion of their way of life. Mayor Friedman is saying, as long as the army can't guarantee that those drafted can maintain their ultra-Orthodox identity, then I believe they shouldn't be drafted. It's not just the exemption issue that causes friction between Haredi and non-Haredi Jews. Many Israelis annoyed the Haredim have the power to shut down public transport on Shabbat or enforce segregation between men and women in some neighborhoods. Tamar Herrmann is a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. What about civil marriages that we don't have? What about the subsidies that they get, regardless of the issue of service, okay? Israel funds the seminaries where Haredi men study the Torah full-time. Only about 54% of Haredi men are employed in regular work. They're typically large families, and the child benefits that come with them are seen by critics as a burden on state coffers. And that puts population growth at the sharp end of the debate. The Haredim account for nearly 15% of the population, with an annual growth rate of 4.2%. A new moderate ultra-Orthodox party called Haredi Public is standing in the election. Pledging to help the Haredim adapt to a reality, supporter Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer says, is inevitable. The condition in which just being born into the Haredi space grants you an exemption from IDF service is not one that the rest of Israel is going to put up with. It just can't work. The party also wants subjects like math and science taught in Haredi schools. And in an unprecedented move, it's fielding a female candidate. It's very significant because for the first time ever, certain people of standing in the ultra-Orthodox community challenged openly the old elites of the ultra-Orthodox community. But Pfeffer is urging patience and real understanding of the change being asked of the Haredi. It's a real shift in belonging and identity and what we do and responsibility in internal motion vis-à-vis Israel. It's a big deal. And such shifts, if they're healthy, they don't happen overnight. They take time. They take years. In the meantime, the sense of a fractured society at odds with itself remains, not yet pulled apart, but in need of attention.