Every evening, Tami switches on the news to see if she can chart where her husband has been that day. The Israeli air force officer been gone for the majority of the war and the couple are both drained.
“It’s tiring, to carry the full house. Every aspect has been on me for almost nine months, plus the anxiety and distress,” Tami said, lamenting over the depleted Shabbat table on Friday nights. “He is very motivated, and we have a strong belief that he must do whatever he can for Israel’s security, but at the same time it is exhausting.”
Tami, whose surname cannot be published for security reasons, is one of hundreds of thousands of partners of reservist soldiers who were called up on October 7, when Israel began its largest mobilisation since 1973 and longest ever war in Gaza. Two of her four daughters are also at varying stages of their military service with the third, 18, set to enlist in the summer.
She says the burden of the war has fallen disproportionately on about 300,000 Israelis who serve in the military and reserves, while a select proportion of the population of 9.4 million have continued their lives almost as if nothing has changed.
That view, shared by a large number of Israelis, has exposed a faultline in Israeli society that could even bring down the government.
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Among those who are not serving are 63,000 men who are enrolled in yeshivas, or religious seminaries, and do not have to join the army. Under a law enacted at the founding of the state, they are permitted to study scripture full-time.
The ultra-Orthodox population, known in Israel as the Haredim, has become the fastest-growing sector of Israeli society due to a high birth rate. Numbering nearly 1.3 million, the Haredim live a reclusive, insular existence with strict adherence to Jewish law, religious duties and customs.
Last weekend a mass protest turned violent after Israel’s high court ruled that the military must start conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews. A panel of nine judges, including religious members, specifically cited Israel’s need for more soldiers to assist in the current war effort as a reason for its unanimous ruling.
“The difficulty in this situation is sharpened given the ongoing war in which the state of Israel finds itself,” Justice Uzi Vogelman wrote.
The army says it needs 5,000 more soldiers. Other estimates double that figure in anticipation of the fighting intensifying further on the northern border with Lebanon, where Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah, a much stronger Iranian proxy than Hamas, has escalated sharply in recent weeks.
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There are religious soldiers already serving in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Most are from the national religious sector, identifiable by their knitted yarmulkes. Many are staunchly Zionist, unlike the ultra-Orthodox community, and believe in Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, including in the occupied West Bank and, for some, the Gaza Strip.
Extremists in their ranks include the politicians Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, both cornerstone members of Binyamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. Smotrich served in the army for a total of 14 months. Ben Gvir was barred over his right-wing views.
Netanyahu relies on both the ultra-Orthodox and the national religious factions to stay in power. The prime minister was already at odds with his military leadership, who have openly advocated for a deal with Hamas in Gaza. Netanyahu’s war cabinet collapsed last month over his refusal to advance a vision for an end to the war in Gaza and the future of the northern front. Now the controversy over Haredi conscription is threatening to tear Netanyahu’s alliance apart.
The court ruling called on the government to recruit all Haredim eligible for military service, and to divert funding from the educational institutions that refuse to comply.
“The government might fall over this issue,” Tami said. “They must find a way to make a law and describe who will go to the army and who will not; the status quo is not possible any more.”
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An alternative conscription plan to avoid antagonising the Haredim would extend mandatory service and raise the age of reserves for those already eligible.
“It will make the burden even heavier,” Tami said. Her husband works in high-tech, a sector which comprises some 20 per cent of the 350,000 reservist soldiers, and she is one of the original petitioners who raised the issue of conscription inequality with the high court last year.
“There are plenty of very religious soldiers who study Torah and serve in the army. There is no real conflict there.”
Yehonatan Steinberger, 40, a Haredi father of six who is part of the Slonim Hassidic community, sees it differently. “I agree that the army needs more soldiers, but it’s a hard question to say where they should come from,” he said. “We serve the country in the burden of national service, not by joining the physical army but by joining the spiritual army of the Torah, through our prayers. Studying Torah adds to the security of the army.”
“The reason I haven’t conscripted is not because of politics, or because I’m lazy, or because I’m afraid, or because I’m a parasite,” he added. “It’s because I live according to my belief. If they cut our funding, we’ll learn how to live without it. If they think we will get up and go after being called up, they are wrong.”
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There are three Haredi-only units in the military, catering for the specific needs of the sect: they are male-only, observe Shabbat and prayer times, and are fully kosher in their diet. Even so, ultra-Orthodox leaders fear that Haredi conscripts will get lost in a secular, unfamiliar world.
“The army doesn’t really permit for a high level of religiosity,” Steinberger said. “Therefore, most religious boys who go to the army come out a lot, lot, lot less religious — or completely secular. A big percentage, we will lose them,” he added.
Moshe Lorber, a Haredi Jew born in Bnei Brak, a religious neighbourhood east of Tel Aviv, presents a cautionary tale.
“I got a call from the army while I was in yeshiva at 19 years old. In my head I thought, I’m anyway working and studying, why not contribute to the state; I’ll get new skills, maybe I’ll get stronger,” Lorber, now 31, said. “One week before I left, my mum said: choose, your home or your army. I went back to recruitment and told them — my parents are throwing me out. The army promised to take care of me.”
He was homeless for the first 11 months of his service, sleeping on couches, park benches and on the army base. Eventually he was offered a house share with other soldiers in Tel Aviv — a city that symbolised hedonism and secularism for the Haredi soldier.
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“After a year, and accumulating a lot of debt, I understood the army was not for me. Even after I was discharged I had no place to sleep … They ruined my life on the one hand — on the other, the media says Haredis aren’t willing to serve. Somebody here is lying,” Lorber said.
He has since set up an organisation to help Haredi soldiers acclimatiseand believes that both the army and the Haredi commmunity need to evolve.
“We’re in a national crisis. The way the demographics are changing, if the Haredis don’t conscript, there’s no army in a few years. And if they want the Haredis to sign up, they need the basic necessities to accommodate them. The army as it stands is not made to conscript us, and those who join fall through the cracks.”
While the high court ordered an end to blanket exemptions, it set no plan, quota or timetable for how to conscript a community so vehemently against joining up. Steinberger says Haredi conscription, at least by force, is never going to work.
“It will be the destruction of Israel if we get to forceful conscription, where the military police come and take children from their seminaries, and start arresting our kids. God forbid. If anyone even thinks about such a tragedy, it can bring about a civil war.”
