The question of Haredi military service has a long and intricate history,

along political history, along social history, and along legal history.

It was the subject of a previous episode of this program, broadcast in early July of 2021. In that previous conversation

with the Haredi judge and scholar, the Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, we probed some of that history

and also discussed the religious and social rationale of Haredi separatism. The question of whether

or not Haredim should be required to serve in the IDF or exempt from that requirement,

and whether the State of Israel has an obligation to use the public purse to support Torah study.

Those questions are perennial issues of Israeli politics.

In answer to them, political parties have formed and disbanded, and coalition governments have risen and fallen.

In late February of this year, Israel's defense minister Yoav Galant urged the government

to end draft exemptions for Kharidim. It was then up to the Israeli Supreme Court,

who could have authorized an exemption extension, in effect putting the question into the hands

of Israel's democratically

elected politicians, or the court could decline to extend the exemption, in effect, ending

the decades-long arrangement that allowed Khareem to avoid military and national service that,

for most other Israelis, is compulsory. In late March, about one week ago, the Attorney General declared that the

Israeli government will no longer be permitted to use state funds to support IDF-eligible

Yeshiva students. In times of war, these questions take on a new special intensity,

and for six months now, Israel has been in an intense period of war. That's why this recent decision

is of such moment and such consequence. The October 7th attacks and Israel's war in Gaza have

unified most of the left and most of the right, too, into a very widely shared consensus

view that Haredi exemption is unsustainable, unwise, and unjust.

...