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ADMINISTERED BY
of so many yeshivah students in
Europe a precious few remained to
study Torah, “which is the glory, and
necessity, of our state.”
Leading haredi rabbis, among
them Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya
Karelitz (known as Hazon Ish),
made a similar appeal to Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion, who
accepted these appeals, according
to Lupovitch, because “among other
things, he believed that yeshivah
students studying Torah would
somehow strengthen the morale
and ethos of the new state. He was
also willing because the number of
exemptions at the time was small.”
In the early years of the state,
various versions of the Labor party
headed the Israeli government in
coalition with Zionist religious par-
ties and the government protected
small numbers of yeshivah students.
In 1977, a rightist party took
power in coalition with non-Zionist
religious parties and made many
more students eligible for defer-
ments. In the past 20 years, the poli-
cy has become law while the haredi
population has grown significantly,
so that now tens of thousands defer
conscription indefi-
nitely.
Rabbi Simcha
Tolwin of Aish
HaTorah in Oak
Park defends
the policy:
“Throughout histo-
ry, Klal Yisroel (the
Rabbi Tolwin
Jewish people) rec-
ognized the value
of shevet Levi (the
tribe of Levi), those dedicated to the
study and dissemination of Torah.
This protest is against those who say
that those who study Torah are not
contributing to society. Nothing can
be further than the truth.”
SOCIETAL EFFECTS
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24
June 22 • 2017
jn
Gitelman sees the negative effects
of the exemption on secular Israelis,
who feel they unfairly bear the bur-
den of military service.
“As a consequence of the exemp-
tions,” he says, “haredi men in Israel
have to remain yeshivah students
and so cannot work [at least, legal-
ly]. Haredi society in Israel makes an
ideal of this, according to which, all
men should study Torah full time;
none should work. Haredi men in
the rest of the world — in Monsey,
N.Y., for example, work to support
their families.”
While haredi men generally do not
serve in the IDF, nationalist-religious
men do serve in the IDF. One of the
leading national-
ist religious rabbis
in Israel, former
Detroiter Rabbi
David Bigman,
assesses the conse-
quences of having a
voluntarily unem-
ployed population.
“From the point
Rabbi Bigman
of view of Israeli
society,” he says,
“the burden of the
‘learning’ community, which is sup-
ported by the state and which does
not contribute to the national prod-
uct, is much more serious that the
lack of equality in military service.
“Over the years, more and more
haredim have entered into the labor
market, achieved academic qualifica-
tions that enable joining society, and
been recruited into the IDF [Israel
Defense Forces]. Every time politi-
cians attempt to make political capi-
tal from equalizing military service,
the haredi community reacts severely
and that diminishes progress.”
If nothing is changing, why are
haredi activists protesting now?
A veteran
observer of haredi
culture in Israel,
former Detroiter
Yoel Finkelman
(my son), attri-
butes the protests
to internal haredi
politics, the ten-
Yoel Finkelman
sion between
different haredi
factions. Non-
Zionist haredi yeshivah students
typically register for the draft and
claim deferment as full-time Torah
students. That works for “the more
moderate Bnei Brak branch, which
wants to continue with business as
usual.”
However, according to Finkelman,
the anti-Zionist Lithuanian (anti-
Chasidic) “Jerusalem branch [Peleg
Yerushalmi], led by R. Shmuel
Auerbachian, takes a more militant
stance against the draft, refusing
even to fill out paperwork to get
draft deferments, which led to a
number of arrests.”
Sponsors for the Brooklyn dem-
onstrations include the Central
Rabbinical Congress, an organiza-
tion of the fiercely anti-Zionist
Satmar Chasidic dynasty. •