Episode 21: Why won’t Haredim serve in the IDF? A deep dive with Shmuel Rosner

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

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4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Haredi Israelis make up some 13% of the population but have extremely low rates of workforce participation and military service. The growing welfare subsidies that sustain their communities have increasingly become a source of tensions and frustration for other Israelis, and the multi-front war that began on October 7 has now made their exemptions from military service a major political issue. Israel needs more workers, less welfare spending and many more soldiers to thrive in the future. Can the Haredi community change? What happens if it doesn't?

We spoke with Shmuel Rosner, senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and veteran journalist and analyst. Rosner has studied the Haredi community and the policy debates on these questions. He's the editor and publisher of the political website The Madad, themadad.com, which we recommend for, among other things, its aggregation of polling and political writing from across the spectrum of Israeli media.

This episode was sponsored by Julie and Frank Cohen because they believe this podcast is a way to teach our story, and because understanding our past and present is key to building a better future.

Julie and Frank have asked to dedicate this episode to someone we lost on October 7.

Today we remember Yochai Azulay, 28, from Holon, was murdered while trying to flee the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival on October 7. Born in Tel Aviv, Yohai grew up in a traditionally religious family and spent much of his time devoted to exploring his roots and his connection to Judaism. He served in the Kfir Brigade during his mandatory military service, and after his release, he toured around South America. After his return, Yohai soon met his girlfriend, Noa, and the pair were planning a future together.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody. Welcome to Ask Kaviv Anything.
0:08.7	We're going to do one of those episodes where we take a deep dive into an issue that is front and center in the Jewish world, certainly front and center on Israelis' minds.
0:18.9	And that is the Qaridi community, sometimes called ultra-Orthodox.
0:23.1	I know quite a few Jardim that object to the idea of ultra-orthodox,
0:27.0	as though there's a spectrum of orthodox and then ultra-orthodox.
0:30.1	They're just what they are.
0:31.0	They're not a comparison to someone else, but extremely so.
0:41.7	And this Chahidi community is extraordinarily diverse. It doesn't always look it on TV, but it in fact is the Lithuanian communities,
0:47.9	the Hasidic communities. There's a huge gap there in how they learn and how they live in their
0:53.3	mystical theologies and all of that.
0:55.1	It's a different place. They vote differently. They think differently. But nevertheless, as a
1:00.0	community, in many, many ways they act as one. And certainly they think of themselves. There
1:04.6	is a coherent Haredi identity. The Israelis have been at a war now in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, the Seven Front War, for well over 600 days.
1:17.5	And over the course of that war, we have discovered that we don't have enough fighting men.
1:23.5	And that has created huge new pressure, a huge new demand on the Choyedi community to stop doing something that it has been doing roughly since the 60s, 70s, which is explicitly and purposefully choose not to serve in the Israeli military.
1:39.3	This is very frustrating if you are, like my brother-in-law, a soldier in the paratroopers in the
1:45.9	reserves, who left your job in high tech in Tel Aviv, and was in Gaza when your first child
1:51.7	was born, and was in Lebanon when your first child celebrated her first birthday. And in fact,
1:57.4	in order to push back Israel's enemies, had to give 300 days over the course of the last 600.
2:04.3	And there are people in this country who sat around for those 600 days, went to work, raised a family.
2:10.4	They're not literally sitting in the streets.
2:13.3	But they're not sacrificing.
	...

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