‘It could be a civil war’: can Israel persuade the Charedim to enlist?

It’s nightfall in the strictly Orthodox neighbourhood of Mea Shearim, and the streets are ablaze. A man lurches a cardboard box into the bonfire, feeding the flames as crowds watch on. Hundreds blockade a central road in Jerusalem as police yank men away by their ankles. Floating amid the rabble you can read a sign written in red: “We will not enlist in the enemy army.”

Over the past 16 months, while Israel concentrated on defeating Hamas in Gaza, a conflict much closer to home reached boiling point.

As war dragged on following the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Shoah, the long-standing debate surrounding military exemption for the country’s strictly Orthodox minority came to a head.

Charedi men lift an anti-zionist placard during a sit-in to protest a ruling by a top Israeli court that they must be drafted into military service, outside army recruiting office in Kiryat Ono near Tel Aviv on January 28, 2025. (Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, military service has been compulsory for almost all Israeli Jews, bar the Charedim. They instead dedicate themselves to religious study and receive heavy state subsidies to finance an independent education system that eschews science for a focus on the Torah.

But following October 7, the secular mainstream, wearied by elongated reserve duty and the loss of hundreds of soldiers, finally said: “Enough is enough.”

War has triggered a shift within the progressive edges of the Charedim too. The days following Hamas’ onslaught saw more than 2,000 strictly Orthodox Israelis request to volunteer in the IDF, breaking decades of tradition in a bid to help their country in one of the darkest chapters in its history.

In June 2024, in a landmark decision that would alter the fabric of Israel since its founding, nine Supreme Court judges ruled unanimously that young Charedi men must be conscripted into the Israeli military.

By January 5, the first 50 strictly Orthodox soldiers were drafted into the IDF’s new Hasmonean Brigade. Named after the dynasty that arose when the Jews overthrew Hellenistic rule in the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire, the brigade’s enlistees must adhere to a halachic lifestyle (clean speech, keeping beards and sidelocks, and donning Sabbath clothes during Sabbath prayers and meals) while serving.  Synagogues were established at their training base in the Jordan Valley.

But some Charedim are pushing back against the tide of change. Just a few days after the summer ruling, thousands took to the streets of Mea Shearim to pelt stones at the police. Extremists attacked the cars of two strictly Orthodox politicians in Jerusalem who they felt let them down. After court orders to withhold state funds for yeshivahs whose students dodge conscription, Israeli rabbis went to the US to raise $100 million dollars in private funding.

The anger hasn’t subsided. In January, hundreds enacted a sit-in outside an army recruiting office in Kiryat Ono near Tel Aviv. The same day, extremists blocked Shazar Boulevard outside a conference at the Binyanei Ha’Uma in Jerusalem, where the IDF was holding a recruitment event for its Netzach Yehuda religious combat unit. Some used pepper spray to target the police. “We’ll die and won’t enlist,” shouted one. Another yelled “Nazis” at the officers.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men block a road during a protest outside an army recruiting office in the town of Kiryat Ono near Tel Aviv, on January 28, 2025. (Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

Despite the tide of disapproval, there are some pioneers working to inspire change. One of them is Mendel Roth – a Chasidic singer-cum-influencer and the son of the Rebbe of Shomrei Emunim (a devout, insular Chasidic group based in Jerusalem). He went viral after publicly declaring his intention to enlist online.

The day before he signed up, Roth released a new song, I Run to Battle, using his platform to normalise and even celebrate military service in the Charedim. He’s “vlogging” his time in the Hasmonean Brigade, having recently posted a video from his base in the Jordanian valley, declaring: “I am a Jewish soldier in the Jewish army, in the Holy Land.”

If Israel’s mainstream strictly Orthodox continue to reject military service, “there could be a civil war,” warns Rabbi Menachem Bombach, a spokesperson for the progressive Charedim, who campaigns for his community’s integration into secular society.

“I can feel the smell of hate, of desperation, of anger,” he told the JC. If something doesn’t shift, “there will be a terrible fight. A fight between brothers.”

Charedim clash with police during a protest outside a conference of strictly Orthodox soldiers in Jerusalem, January 28, 2025. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90Flash90

Rabbi Bombach is the founder of the Netzach Educational Network of 18 Charedi schools – institutions which combine mainstream education with Torah Studies. His visionary curriculum combines Gemara and Tanach with maths and English, and his students travel the country as part of their education. As a Charedi with two degrees, Rabbi Bombach acts as a bridge within a divided Israel.

While he accepts there’s value in a minority dedicating themselves to full-time Torah study, he thinks most of the Charedim should be fighting, particularly following the national trauma of October 7, which saw 1,200 murdered and 250 taken hostage. “People feel so much anger, and for the right reasons. In every second family, you lost a child. People are injured. It makes everyone crazy.”

 He might have been talking about Uri Keidar, the executive director of Israel Hofsheet, a non-partisan movement that campaigns for a liberalisation of state-religion relations in Israel.

“I’m not sure that I would describe this as integration, I would say that we’re talking about a very basic equality issue,” he said.

Since October 7, Keidar has served for more than 260 days of reserve duty. He has three children: a nine-year-old daughter, and two sons, four and two. “They are all destined to serve in the army. It’s their fate, because they were born to my family. And the idea that there are kids who are born to other families [who] are just let off the hook because they see otherwise is something Israeli society will not accept anymore.”

For Keidar, Israel is at a historic crossroads. “Since October 7, people have a very clear understanding that the future will be different from the past.”

His organisation has been petitioning the High Court, demanding that funding be stopped for yeshivahs for “disengaged” Charedi, which, it argues, encourage draft evasion among the 60,000 eligible strictly Orthodox men.

Shas leader Aryeh Deri is labelled a ‘murder of souls’ for working on a compromise Charedi enlistment bill, in a flyer seen on the ground at a Jerusalem protest on January 28, 2025. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90Flash90

It’s not just civil society that’s at stake in Israel if the Charedim refuse to integrate, however. It’s also the economy. Today, the strictly Orthodox compose 13.5 percent of the total population, but it is projected that one in every three Jewish Israelis will be Charedi by 2050 given the group’s high birth rate. With an employment rate of just 54 per cent, the future prosperity of Israel depends on the next generation of the Charedim to train as physicians, bankers and teachers.

“It’s a very simple mathematic question,” says Rabbi Bombach, and no one else can diagnose the problem better than him. He grew up as a Vizhnitz Chasid within the “high walls” of Mea Shearim, one of the oldest Ashkenazi neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, founded in 1874. He has experienced the cost of being trapped in an insular community resistant to change. “We are our own worst enemies,” he says.

Rabbi Bombach identifies as being from the Jewish “diaspora”, even though he was born in Israel, because of the separatism of his childhood. “I don’t believe in isolation any more.”

He realised how ill-equipped he was to deal with modern society when he was recruited to mentor a 13-year-old Russian immigrant in English and maths, and the young boy knew more than him. Rabbi Bombach could only speak Yiddish; he didn’t learn modern Hebrew until he was 20.

“I never knew why the guy took me for the job. He was a crazy guy, but I was lucky,” he says. “It was a very embarrassing moment — a moment where you feel handicapped. It was terrible. But it was a gift, because I understood that I needed to do everything I could to change.”

He went on to earn his undergraduate degree in education from Moreshet Yaakov College and a master’s in public policy from the Hebrew University.

Another transformative part of his life was when he was recruited to the IDF in 2020 as part of its “Stage B” (Shlav Bet), programme – a special initiative which allows untrained Haredim over the age of 25 to serve. It was a powerful moment when he spent the first two months of war walking proudly in his uniform in Beitar Illit — as a Charedi and an integrated Israeli. Now, he hopes to inspire a new generation of strictly Orthodox soldiers.

A Charedi Jewish man wearing an army helmet and ammunition (Getty Images)[Missing Credit]

“I am a very optimistic person, and I believe in hope,” he says. “For many years, when the Jews were integrated with the rest of the society, many left the community. For the right reasons some leaders understood the only way to protect yourself is to protect the community. But time has changed, and you don’t need to isolate from your brothers and your sisters. It’s a new generation. It’s a new world.”

Since October 7 he has started a campaign with the IDF to get more of the strictly Orthodox to join “Stage B”, called Charedim l’Israel. And it worked. He attracted 5,000 willing candidates, most of whom the IDF had to push away.

In his own high schools following October 7, the doors were thrown opened to evacuees from the Negev. Students welcomed the homeless with open arms. Girls began staffing an online control room to organise accommodation for displaced citizens and some began distributing groceries to families whose fathers were serving on the front-line.

But if Israel is to see integration from the strictly Orthodox cities of Bnai Brak, Beitar, Elad and Kiryat Sefer, change must come from above. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s power depends on the support of two strictly Orthodox parties that oppose their constituents’ conscription, holding back progress.

“He knows the truth, he knows we need fighters, and he knows what’s going on in Israel, but he’s in jail,” says Rabbi Bombach. “He cannot release himself because he needs the Charedim.”

Despite this Bombach is optimistic. One moment of pride was in December, when he stood under the wedding canopy of a Tolneh Hassid, a graduate of Netzach’s Midrasha HaChassidit, and his bride. The groom now serves in an elite combat unit in the IDF and the bride is studying nursing at Netzach’s Ofek Women’s College in Jerusalem. Only time will tell whether the pair are just drops in the ocean or the first ripples of a tidal wave.