Lawmakers urge new definition of who is Haredi to close draft bill loophole

MKs argue against current method of counting anyone who briefly went to an ultra-Orthodox school, citing study showing most ‘Haredi’ recruits are actually no longer in community

Lawmakers argued over how to legally define who is ultra-Orthodox on Tuesday, wading into a heated debate at the center of efforts by the ruling coalition to pass controversial legislation regulating military conscription in the Haredi community.

According to opposition lawmakers and other critics, a bill recently put forward by the government would enshrine a definition that includes many who are no longer in the ultra-Orthodox community. These people would nonetheless count toward Haredi enlistment quotas, meaning fewer ultra-Orthodox men would actually have to join up.

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted in line with a long-standing status quo exempting the Haredi community from the mandatory draft. Israel’s highest courts have repeatedly struck down the arrangement and demanded that ultra-Orthodox teens be drafted with the rest of the Jewish population, setting off a scramble to legislate a compromise that would set Haredi enlistment quotas and impose sanctions on those refusing to enlist.

A government-backed bill making its way through the Knesset that sets yearly quotas defines ultra-Orthodox as anyone who studied at a Haredi educational institution for at least two years between the ages of 14 and 18.

The bill also grants yearly deferments from enlistment to full-time yeshiva students not engaged in any other vocation, while imposing punitive measures aimed at encouraging them to serve instead. Most sanctions, however, only kick in if enlistment quotas are not reached.

“If we don’t tighten the definitions, we will reach a situation where people who come to the army and are counted toward targets were perhaps once from a Haredi family, but now are not observant of Torah and commandments at all, and that’s problematic,” Likud MK Yuli Edelstein told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Edelstein, who has come out against the bill, formerly headed the panel but was removed from the post over his refusal to advance legislation deemed acceptable by ultra-Orthodox lawmakers.

Committee legal advisor Miri Frenkel Shor recommended that the committee consider amending the definition so that earlier years of study in a Haredi institution not be included, making it less likely that those who left ultra-Orthodox Judaism years earlier — and would likely enlist regardless of a new law — are counted by the army as part of the Haredi cohort.

According to a report released by the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute think tank on Sunday, 55% of Haredi recruits serve in non-Haredi tracks, an indication that the “majority of those counted as ultra-Orthodox in the IDF are not ultra-Orthodox or have since left the Haredi community.”

Speaking with The Times of Israel on Tuesday, IDI researcher Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz, whose husband Moshe Tur-Paz is a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on behalf of opposition faction Yesh Atid, said that under the current definition, someone who studied only one full year at a Haredi school and left several months into their second would be considered Haredi.

“That’s enough to count you as Haredi. Meaning, if you left the religious lifestyle or stopped being Haredi in the middle of 10th grade, it doesn’t matter at all. You arrive at the army no longer Haredi — it doesn’t matter. You serve in a non-Haredi unit — it doesn’t matter,” she said.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, “69% — seven out of ten soldiers counted as Haredi — were not Haredi at the time of enlistment. Either they no longer are, or they never were, because they were actually religious-Zionist,” she added.

Addressing the committee, Yesh Atid MK Meirav Cohen said the IDI’s research showed that use of the definition “does not lead to the actual recruitment of Haredim.”

“When you only take people who have been in a Haredi institution for two years, 70% of them are de facto not Haredi,” she said.

The definition has long been used by the Defense Ministry to determine Haredi enlistment numbers, which it has sought to boost for years, including by creating specialized units catering to the religious needs of the ultra-Orthodox.

A Defense Ministry representative argued that changing the definition would complicate tracking comparisons between years, and said the current rubric “creates balance,” noting that someone who became religious after enlisting would also not be counted as Haredi.

Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, also told the committee that he supported keeping the definition “for continuity” so long as it is determined that the current definition is largely reliable.

Lawmakers opposed to maintaining the current definition noted that Tayeb himself told the committee last week that hundreds of religious-Zionist soldiers had been listed by the IDF as Haredi in 2014.

In 2019, the IDF admitted that it had published inflated numbers of ultra-Orthodox enlistment for years.

During a previous discussion of the issue earlier this year, both Defense Minister Israel Katz and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs argued in favor of maintaining the current definition.