One of my favorite TV shows is Shababnikim. It tells the story of four young Israeli haredim in their early to mid-20s who don’t quite fit into the standard mold of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.
In the first episode, Avinoam, the leader of the crew, on a shopping excursion for Nespresso coffee capsules in Jerusalem’s swanky Mamilla Mall, explains that haredim “are the story” now. Avinoam is not content with the traditional place of the haredim on the sidelines of Israeli society, cloistered in haredi neighborhoods, praying and studying. He also lacks zitzfleish (Yiddish for “the ability to sit still”). Avinoam sees himself and haredim as taking front and center in Israeli society.
The problem, of course, is that his ambition is impossible. Haredim can never be the “story” if they absent themselves from it by not joining Israel’s military. I imagine that there is no country in the Western world that has its military more wrapped up in its culture than Israel, and I know that there has never been a time in Jewish history when the Jewish people had an army that so defined what it means to be Jewish.
Why the haredi draft issue isn't about fairness
The problem of the haredi draft exemption used to be one of fairness. It was simply unfair that the haredi community took nearly 30% of the social welfare budgets but only contributed 4% of the taxes. It was unfair that the average non-haredi Jewish family paid NIS 6,000 more each month in taxes than they received in government services, while the average haredi family received over NIS 4,000 more in services than they contributed. It was outrageous that only secular and National-Religious Jews sent their sons and daughters for years in the army and, in some cases, had to mourn and bury them while a whole other population sat on the sidelines.
But if it was just a question of what was fair, we could remain silent. When the question was what we could afford, we could remain generous. But this is no longer the case. Israel needs manpower. Desperately. We simply do not have enough soldiers to man the borders, the bases, or the missions. Our reservists are being called up for 200 to 300 days at a time due to the war. This burden could be dramatically reduced, even cut in half, if the 80,000 haredi men of draft age were to join the ranks.
Even after the war, the IDF will be unable to maintain the heightened level of readiness and security that the country needs to stay safe. The strain on personnel and resources is simply unsustainable.
In the past, the strategy of the Jews was to get out of the way of the gentiles. Zionism was the conscious decision of the Jewish people to enter back into history. Haredim who want to stay out of history cannot be the story.
Turning Vilna into the Jerusalem of Lithuania created a virtual Land of Israel. Absent a homeland, the Torah became our refuge. It wasn’t just a survival strategy, but by turning inwards and cultivating Torah-learning, it allowed Judaism to thrive in the worst of circumstances. But the strategy of turning Jerusalem into the Lithuania of Israel is a recipe for stagnation and suffocation.
The haredi population don’t realize that we actually want them to be with us. They think we want to make them “like us,” but that is simply not true.
I SELFISHLY want the haredim to thrive as haredim. I have written before about how I owe my Judaism and my Jewish children to the haredi education I received. I would not be in the position I am now to write these lines if not for the strong haredi influence on me by the rabbis who lovingly taught me Torah.
The Jewish people has always been tribal, and each tribe has contributed something special and unique to our DNA as Jews. The haredi dedication to Torah learning and hessed is not just to be admired but emulated.
We believe that there is a role for haredim to play in Israel as haredim. The recent formation of haredi units in the IDF is but a drop in the bucket, but they are proof of our ability to integrate haredim into Israeli society as haredim and their ability to maintain their identity. It is because we believe in their human capital that we are fighting to integrate them.
There was a certain point in human history where we humans evolved and diverged enough from our primate cousins to become something different. I fear that this war is going to make Israeli Jews evolve into something different from Diaspora Judaism. Yes, there were previous wars that Israel fought while the Diaspora stayed home in the “safety of the exile,” and they did not participate, even if they did root for Israel. But those wars took place more than 50 years ago, and the number of Jews who lived in Israel at the time represented a minority of the Jewish people.
Today, the Jewish population in Israel is larger than ever before and now makes up the overwhelming majority of actively engaged Jews worldwide. In contrast, much of Diaspora Judaism is increasingly shaped by Jews who, even when Orthodox in practice, primarily identify as Americans, Brits, or Canadians. For them, Judaism is their religion and not their identity.
Israeli Jews, on the other hand, are shaping a form of Judaism that is not only rooted in tradition but also deeply connected to the experience of fighting an existential war for the past 20 months. What this generation of Israeli Jews is creating is nothing short of remarkable. We are mining the old sources and creating an incredible yield of music, theater, film, art, and literature.
The war has left a deep change in consciousness, not just because of what was lost but because of what we discovered about ourselves. Because Diaspora Jews did not experience this war, and because haredi Jews purposefully absented themselves from it, they will not be part of the transformation that is taking place.
This will no doubt lead to a new and different Jewish people.
The haredi community, although they live in Israel, are apart from Israel and not a part of it. The haredim, too, will be destined to the same fate as Diaspora Judaism and become not just irrelevant in the eyes of most Israelis but scorned. Not for being haredi, God forbid, but for choosing to literally separate themselves from the Jewish people.
The anathema we have built into us Jews of a poresh min hatzibbur, “one who disconnects himself or herself from the community,” is what will lead to our disconnecting from the haredi public. Their belief that we are a mere religion satisfied with the keeping of the commandments, no matter how scrupulously, robs them, and eventually the rest of the Jewish people, of what it really means to be a Jew in the 21st century. Here in Israel, it is not enough to ask if our chicken is kosher but rather, are our economic policies kosher? Are our labor laws kosher? In Israel, we have rescued Judaism from the four amot [units of measurement] of Halacha alone and expanded it to truly become fully “our lives and the length of our days.”
“Shema Yisrael,” the call to Jewish peoplehood, precedes the “Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” When the haredi population are able to do this, when they are ready to say, “Your people are my people” and shoulder the burdens of the nationhood, then, and only then, can they truly say, “Your God is my God.” And only then will they not just dwell in the Land of Israel but take an active role in the “story of Israel.” ■
The writer has a doctorate in Jewish philosophy and teaches in post-high school yeshivot and midrashot in Jerusalem.