Ten Myths about Charedim and the IDF, Debunked

A handy guide to share

MYTH #1: There are just as many secular draft-dodgers in Tel Aviv as there are charedim who don’t serve.

FACT: The average rate of enlistment for towns without any significant charedi (or Arab) population is between 73-91%. For towns that are overwhelmingly charedi, the rate of enlistment is 9-12%. What about Tel Aviv? In 2019, it was at the lowest end of the range for non-charedi towns. But it was still 73%! Last year, it went up to 82%. That’s nearly ten times the enlistment rate of charedim.

MYTH #2: Drafting charedim is a secular Zionist campaign to erase Torah/ a Leftist campaign to bring down the government.

FACT: Most right-wing national-religious Jews (along with a small number of some charedim who do serve) are very passionate about drafting charedim. This is in part because they believe that it’s the right thing to do from a Torah perspective, but it’s mostly because Israel desperately needs many thousands more soldiers in order to relieve the strain on everyone else and secure the safety of the country. It has nothing to do with one’s views on Zionism or milchemes mitzvah; the fact is that there are seven million Jews in Israel whose lives need protecting, and there are currently not enough people to do it.

MYTH #3: 40% of religious boys who enlist end up leaving religion.

FACT: Any statistics about the general rate of religious attrition in the army are irrelevant, since they are mostly due to boys from minimally religious homes who do not join the army in a religious framework. Charedim who enlist would have the option of doing so in a hesder-type framework, in which army service is sandwiched between yeshiva studies and operates in a strictly religious environment, and in which the religious risks are no more significant than the physical risks that everyone else is expected to take. You don’t get to force everyone else to pay a higher price because you don’t want to pay yours.

MYTH #4: The army doesn’t need more manpower.

FACT: The army desperately needs around twenty thousand more soldiers, especially combat soldiers. This is for two obvious reasons. One is that many thousands of soldiers were killed or injured over the past two years. The other is that we now realize that Hamas and Hezbollah are not deterred by the threat of suffering massive losses, and thus many more soldiers are needed to provide security.

MYTH #5: The army doesn’t want charedim.

FACT: The army obviously prefers non-charedim, who are easier for them to work with, but is ready to accept charedim into special charedi frameworks, and in light of the manpower shortage needs this to happen. Additionally, what’s relevant is not what the army prefers or what is easier for them, but rather what the nation needs. While it’s easier for the army to keep calling up reservists again and again, the reservists need relief; the constant call-ups of older men, who are far less suited to prolonged service, have destroyed studies, careers, family lives, marriages, and led to many cases of severe harm to physical and mental health. The divorce rate among reservists is ten times that of the regular population; the number of people struggling with suicide a hundred times greater.

MYTH #6: Judaism believes that Torah protects, and therefore yeshiva students shouldn’t enlist - they are providing an essential complementary service to the IDF.

FACT: There is not a single source in classical Judaism stating that learning Torah provides protection for others in times of war and thereby replaces physical service for some people. There are merely some sources that are mistranslated that way, which are clarified in R. Moshe Klausner’s work “The Truth Will Be Absent.” More generally, there is no traditional basis in Judaism for saying that spiritual efforts replace material efforts. And charedim themselves do not believe that spiritual efforts replace material efforts in any other area of life. They want just as many doctors and medical services and emergency services as everyone else; they do not rely on their Torah helping. They invest just as much (if not more) efforts into political campaigning. The idea that spiritual efforts replace material efforts for military protection is merely a convenient belief that they don’t want to think too hard about because it enables them to offload the hark work of national defense to others and still feel good about themselves.

MYTH #7: There is no framework in the army capable of absorbing charedim.

FACT: Several charedi frameworks for differing types of army service have been established, including Chashmonaim. These have designated times for study and prayer, high standards of kashrut, no exposure to women, and entirely charedi environments. The fact they might not be 100% to someone’s liking does not mean that they can exempt themselves. Again, you don’t get to force everyone else to pay a higher price because you don’t want to pay yours.

MYTH #8: Charedim don’t enlist because they disagree with some or all of the above.

FACT: The fundamental reason why charedim don’t enlist is not because they believe that Torah protects against military threats, and it’s not because they believe that the army is too spiritually dangerous. It’s because they don’t feel any need to. They feel no sense of civic duty because they don’t identify as part of the wider nation. This is also why the rabbinic and political charedi leadership have shown no concern whatsoever for the suffering of those in the IDF and their families. So why would they take the difficult step of enlistment? This is especially since they suffer no serious consequences for not enlisting. There’s nothing either pulling them towards the army or pushing them to it.

MYTH #9: Change is happening gradually.

FACT: Gradual change has been tried for years and it hasn’t worked. Even the horrors of October 7th and the ensuing two years of war didn’t cause the charedi leadership to wake up and realize that they need to help. The numbers of charedim who enlist are still tiny, just a few thousand on the fringes of charedi society. And Israel doesn’t have time to wait. On the contrary - this may be the very last chance to change things, as with their higher birthrate, charedim will soon be so politically powerful that it will be impossible to force change.

MYTH #10: You can’t force charedim to enlist.

FACT: It’s never even been tried! To be sure, there’s no way to make all 80,000 charedi young men want to serve or to be capable of it. And putting a handful in prison for a few weeks doesn’t accomplish anything. But there is a much simpler method that has never been tried: Cutting off all the various forms of financial support that charedi draft-dodgers receive (and perhaps imposing certain sanctions). This would very likely bring at least 10-20 thousand of the more modern or desperate charedim into the IDF. (And in any case, there is no reason why the rest of the country should bear the additional burden of financially supporting an ever-growing number of charedim who are deliberately uneducated and underemployed, which also poses an existential threat to the country.)

And finally, one bonus myth debunked:

MYTH #11: Likud’s “Bismuth Plan” is the best option and will bring many thousands of charedim into the army.

FACT: The goal of the Bismuth Plan is not to bring charedim into the army, it’s to bring them into the government. And it does so by legislating the army exemption for charedim and thereby immediately freeing up billions in frozen funds, while having no real enforcement mechanism for its tiny target numbers. It’s a political scam.

If you want to try to change the situation, please share this post with others. For more discussion, see the index of posts on this topic at Torah and Army: The Big Index.