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Yoni Goldstein: Israel shouldn’t force ultra-Orthodox to fight. It should encourage them

Israel should encourage voluntary Haredi service while preserving Torah study

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During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion decided to exempt approximately 400 ultra-Orthodox scholars from the nascent Jewish state’s army service. It was an inconsequential number at the moment, in an army that would grow to more than 100,000 soldiers by the end of that year, and the reasoning was logically sound and deeply compassionate. The Holocaust, just three years in the past, had almost completely destroyed the ultra-Orthodox community, its way of life and places of study. Ben-Gurion recognized the need to preserve what remained and to rebuild. It was not only a basic act of humanitarianism, but represented a keen understanding that the ultra-Orthodox had an important, even essential, part to play in the Jewish future — one that Israel must still find a way to preserve without forcing a confrontation that neither side can afford.

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In the intervening years, Israel has struggled with Ben-Gurion’s ultra-Orthodox deal, known as “torato u’manuto,” which translates as “his Torah is his sole occupation.” The first effort to evolve torato u’manuto in the late 1970s, spurred by then-Primer Minister Menachem Begin, removed limitations on ultra-Orthodox deferments, which had been capped for some time at 800. In 1998, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that torato u’manuto was no longer valid, leading to the Knesset’s establishment of the Tal Law in 2002, which granted all yeshiva students exemption from army service.

Yoni Goldstein: Israel shouldn’t force ultra-Orthodox to fight. It should encourage them Back to video

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