The coalition is fast-tracking the “Basic Law: Torah Study” – and calling it “historic.” But the truth is closer to hysterical – and it’s a sad statement as to how low Israeli politics and the legislative process have stooped.
No one disputes that “Torah study is a foundational value in the heritage of the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” as the bill’s text states. That was never in question, and it doesn’t need a law to say so, let alone a Basic Law.
What’s really happening is a payoff to the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political parties, against the will of an overwhelming majority of Israelis and in direct defiance of the Supreme Court, which ruled that yeshiva students can not be exempted from drafting to the IDF.
But this government couldn’t care less about the dire security needs, the principle of equality, or what the Supreme Court has to say about it. Instead, they’re busy intimidating judges and pushing legislation to weaken judicial independence and tighten political control over judicial appointments. To paraphrase what Minister Miri Regev once remarked: “Who needs courts if we can’t control them?”
Public opinion is harder to ignore, especially with elections approaching. Roughly 65% of Likud’s own voters oppose haredi draft dodging, and more than half say it could change their vote. So the bill’s drafters engaged in doublespeak.
The bill is being rammed through because the haredi parties have realized that other avenues to ensure continued draft dodging have so far failed. The bill now before the Knesset was even rerouted around the committee that would normally handle it, whose Religious Zionist chairman, MK Simcha Rothman, wanted nothing to do with legislation his own party considers loathsome.
An earlier draft spoke of yeshiva students having “rights and obligations as those who perform meaningful service” – code, transparent to anyone paying attention, for “they don’t have to serve.” When that wording sparked outrage even within Likud and the religious-Zionist camp, it was blurred further.
But the more vague language hasn’t masked the bill’s real intent. Its own explanatory notes still say plainly that the law exists to override the Supreme Court’s ruling on equal conscription – even as the operative text now claims the goal is merely “a just balance with other foundational values of the state.”
That’s a cynical dodge, one that strays not just from honest lawmaking but from Judaism’s own values. Moreover, key officials of the Finance Ministry and the Construction and Housing Ministry have already pointed out that, if passed, the bill may have far-reaching financial ramifications amounting to hundreds of millions beyond the draft.
There is a Talmudic admonition that I find relevant now: “Who is to say your blood is redder than his?” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 74a). Jewish tradition holds that, in an obligatory war of survival, everyone goes out to fight – “even the bridegroom from his chamber, and the bride from her wedding canopy.”
Its core demand is “justice, justice shall you pursue” – not a mass exemption for one sector of the Jewish population, secured through political power and dressed up as piety, while others risk their lives in their place.
Needing to find a just balance
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once maligned another sector of Israel’s Jewish population for having “forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” He’d do well to look in a mirror – and bring one for the haredim, too.
The bill needs to clear back-to-back Knesset sessions before summer recess, for one reason: to keep Netanyahu in power. It’s designed to give constitutional cover to the open-ended draft dodging of hundreds of thousands of yeshiva students, without saying so outright – because even the politicians cutting this deal know there are limits to how openly they can defy the public.
And the price Netanyahu and the Likud are willing to pay doesn’t stop there: a companion bill would bar the army and police from arresting yeshiva students who evade the draft outright – a law unlikely to survive Supreme Court review, but useful for haredi political leaders’ standing within their own constituency. In exchange, the haredi parties will back further legislation to advance the government’s judicial overhaul. For them, the end justifies any means.
At the bill’s first committee hearing, Degel Hatorah party leader MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni – one of the bill’s authors – said it’s time for Israel to recognize Torah study as a “supreme value.” Apparently, even “foundational value,” the language of the bill, isn’t enough for him.
What he doesn’t see is that his legislative extortion is backfiring. He and his allies – the same people blocking Israel’s highways and insisting that yeshiva study, not soldiers’ courage and sacrifices, wins Israel’s wars – are desecrating God’s name, demeaning the Torah, and burning through whatever sympathy remains for their cause.
Let’s hope that when it comes to a vote, this shameful, dangerous bill fails to find a majority. And if it does pass, let’s hope that Israel’s Supreme Court reads “a just balance” the way Jewish tradition intends it: rooted in equality – not in trading political power for other people’s blood.
The writer is one of Israel’s most prominent advocates for religious freedom. He currently serves as president and CEO of Hiddush – For Religious Freedom and Equality.