In what appears to be a dramatic reversal of his position, one of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party’s senior spiritual leaders stated Monday that Haredim who are not enrolled full-time in yeshiva can serve in the IDF on condition that the military obligates itself to allow them to observe their way of life.

Speaking with Radio Kol Hai, Rabbi Moshe Maya, a member of Shas’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, said that “if there is an arrangement whereby someone who enlists would not come to desecrate the Shabbat and would preserve his holiness and purity — why shouldn’t he enlist?”

However, the rabbi stipulated that such arrangements must be anchored in “an official IDF General Staff order” or they are “worthless.”

Last summer, following the High Court of Justice’s ruling ending service exemptions for yeshiva students, Maya took a very different tone, telling Kol Barama Radio that it was “forbidden for those who don’t study to go to the army,” because “those who do will end up violating the Shabbat.”

“If not for the Torah students, there would be many more fatalities,” Maya said at the time. “We pray and shed countless tears for the soldiers, so the hostages return. Our role in the war is to study and study and the Almighty will strike our enemies with softness, weakness and fear.”

Maya’s comments reflected the fear in some Haredi circles that army service, even one adapted to the specific needs of the community, will endanger the community by exposing young men to outside culture and leading them to mix with non-Haredi society.

Both the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism and Sephardic Shas parties have been pushing hard for the passage........

© The Times of Israel