The Israel Defense Forces are indispensable to the security of the Jewish State and of the Middle East.

But mandatory army service also plays an essential domestic function within Israeli civic culture. It's the great equalizer, absorbing

secular Ashkenazim, traditionalist Mizrahim, the national religious, men, women,

Ethiopians, Russians. It's a formative institution where all of these identities make room

in the citizen-soldier's soul for yet another, a national Israeli identity, one that's

acquired through sacrifice and service, and the willingness, if called upon, to give up your

life that the nation might live. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

It's that latter civic function of the IDF that we'll look at in today's conversation.

I'm speaking with my friend, the Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, and our discussion is focused on a large subpopulation within Israel

that historically has not served in the IDF, and very consciously so.

It has, moreover, traditionally eschewed identification

with the Jewish state, and that is Israel's Haredi population. Israel's founding prime

minister, David Ben-Gurion, famously gave official exemption to Haredim from otherwise

compulsory national service. Now, seven decades on, Rabbi Pfeffer believes that the

Haredi community has a moral obligation to ask itself if that exemption is just. Rabbi

Pfeffer asks that question from within. He is himself a Haredi Dayan, a communal halakhic

deciscer, as well as the editor of Tzalik Iyun, an intellectual journal of

Charedi ideas. If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts,

Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you'll leave us a five-star review to help us grow this

community of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other

podcast episodes at podcast at tikfafund.org. And of course, if you want to learn more about our work

at Tikva, you can visit our website, Tikvafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here now is

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