Israel clinched a deal on Wednesday to abolish wholesale exemptions from military service for Jewish seminary students, ended a brief crisis that divided the ruling coalition parties. The issue of “sharing the national burden” is at the heart of heated debate over privileges the ultra-Orthodox minority has enjoyed for decades, and a government-appointed committee had…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main coalition partner threatened to quit on Monday unless bickering ministers agreed to a proposal to end wholesale military draft exemptions for Jewish seminary students. A government-appointed committee failed on Sunday to finalise a draft law that limits the number of those exempted from compulsory army service each year to…
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested in Jerusalem on Thursday against plans to enlist men from their community into the military, a proposal supported by the secular majority pushing for a more equal share of the burden on Israeli society. A sea of black coats – the traditional attire of ultra-Orthodox men – engulfed Jerusalem streets…
A member of the Knesset Finance Committee criticized an Israeli clothing chain for hiring supermodel Bar Refaeli to represent it since she dodged military service. Elazar Stern of the Hatnuah Party berated Fox clothing chain CEO Harel Wizel during a Knesset Finance Committee meeting on April 21, during a debate on a proposal to reduce…
Dressed in black pants and a white shirt, with an army-issued gun slung over his shoulder and a gun barrel that lines up with his tzitzit, Yehuda does not look like a typical Haredi youth. It’s also true that nice Haredi boys don’t order hard liquor in Jerusalem cafes at midnight. So the 19-year-old asks…
Although there has never been much sympathy for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community in any part of the country’s secular society, suddenly this has changed. As the prospects improve for a Netanyahu-Lapid-Bennett (or Likud-Yesh Atid-Habayit Hayehudi) coalition whose first project will making military service compulsory for the Haredi youth that has until now been exempt from it,…
Israel’s recent election was dominated by discusion of how to integrate ultra-Orthodox young men into the military. But Israelis are now facing up to the possibility that in practical terms, nothing will change on this front during the new Knesset session. In the months leading up to the election, as calls grew for an end…
The senior rabbi of the Lithuanian haredi Orthodox, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, has announced that yeshiva students should not agree to enlist in National Service. The rabbi’s decision, quoted Monday in the haredi daily newspaper Yated Ne’eman, comes a day after Israel’s Cabinet approved a temporary law that would allow yeshiva students to perform national…
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