Haredi military service: Change from the bottom up as grassroots support grows - analysis

Significant societal change typically happens in one of two ways: from the top down, driven by leadership, or from the bottom up, sparked by grassroots efforts.

When it comes to ultra-Orthodox (haredi) military service, the change within the haredi community will come from the bottom up.

Nascent signs of this appeared in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, when there were reports of haredi men showing up at induction centers and volunteering for service.

There was a sense that the magnitude of Hamas’s attack and the we-are-all-in-this-together feeling that prevailed at the time would lead to a sea change in haredi attitudes toward the army and—perhaps—an organic end to an issue that has bedeviled the country since its inception: haredi enlistment.

The hope was that, at long last, a solution could be found to this divisive issue that has been a continuous source of friction and animosity between the haredi and the non-haredi public.

That hope, however, proved futile, replaced instead by haredi protesters against induction carrying signs that read, “We would rather die than enlist,” and comments such as these by former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef: “If they force us to go to the army, we will all leave Israel. We will buy tickets and leave.”

Grassroots shift challenges Rabbinic opposition

Haredi rabbis and political leaders, rather than encouraging haredi youth not engaged in full-time Torah study to go into the army during the country’s hour of dire need, manned the barricades and came out aggressively against haredi military service.

The reason became clear: it was less about what ultra-Orthodox leaders have long used as the justification for not going into the army—that yeshiva students are doing as much in protecting the country with their Torah study as soldiers are doing with their rifles—and more about safeguarding the haredi way of life.

It became clear that the opposition stemmed from a long-simmering suspicion that the “Zionists” wanted haredim in the army in order to turn them non-religious and a fear that yeshiva students might enter the army as haredim but would change their lifestyle by the time they came out.

While the haredi rabbinic and political leadership have made clear that they are adamantly against their charges going into the military —war or no war—among the ultra-Orthodox rank and file, there are those who feel uncomfortable with the inequity and even immorality of not taking part in the burden of protecting one’s home and family, and leaving it to others whose backs are breaking from carrying the weight of that burden.

The problem is that even those inside the haredi community who want to serve face a price that their families will have to pay. This price ranges from not being able to get one’s child into a school of choice to not getting a good marriage match (shidduch) for oneself or one’s children. The costs in ultra-Orthodox society are real.

In order for the haredim to go into the army en masse, one thing that needs to change—and which the army is in the process of doing—is that a framework needs to be set up that is separate and completely compatible with the haredi lifestyle.

Such a framework, the Hashmonaim Brigade, is being created, with it slated to be made up of three battalions—two regular army units and a reserve battalion—under the command of Col. Avinoam Emunah. In a clear nod to the distant past, it is set to accept its first recruits on the first day of Hanukkah.

Setting up a formal, separate IDF framework for the haredim is the easy part.

More difficult will be breaking the taboo against IDF service in haredi society. But here, too, some change is afoot.

Mendel Rata, a hasidic composer and singer who is the son of the rebbe of the Shomrei Emunim hassidic sect in Ashdod, decided to enlist and wrote a post earlier this month on Facebook explaining why.

“For an entire year since the war broke out, my heart has been torn and broken again and again, hundreds of times. So many newly bereaved parents, so many soldiers who have returned wounded, tens of thousands of people whose relatives were killed or wounded,” he wrote.

“And within me, the question cries out: How do I continue sitting at home as if nothing is happening? Every few days, I read in the news about more casualties who have fallen or been wounded, God forbid, and I sigh and continue on with my life. There is almost no trace in my immediate environment of all the chaos that has been happening for a whole year throughout the country.”

Rata continued: “For a whole year, I have known at every moment that something is very wrong with my way of life. The blood of my brothers is being spilled like water, and I sit and remain silent.”

Described as a haredi “influencer,” Rata was known—because of his music—as a maverick inside the haredi community even before this post. He has granted numerous interviews since writing that post, and in one of them, he said that what is needed is haredi Nachshonim, alluding to the biblical figure Nahshon, who, according to the Midrash, was the first to jump into the Red Sea before its waters parted during the Exodus from Egypt.

Once a few haredim go into the army as haredim and come out of the army true to their religious lifestyle, then the community will see that this is possible, stigmas will melt, and the doors into the IDF will be pushed open, he said. Rata added that many haredi youth want to take this step but are afraid to do so because of the reaction of their community and the potential costs.

He also said that he was surprised by the positive reception his post garnered, including haredim stopping him on the street in Ashdod and praising him for his decision.

Rata’s decision and post indicate that change is both possible and may be coming, but it is coming from the bottom up. It comes from grassroots figures like Rata, not from the community’s leading rabbis, yeshiva heads, or political leaders, for whom this particular bell has not yet been tolled.