By Joseph Marshall
Last week in Montreal, hundreds of black-coated men stood outside the Israeli Consulate. Their signs were simple: “Torah first, draft last.” “We will not be soldiers.” The air was tense but calm, a mix of prayer and protest. The demonstration came in response to Israel’s decision to end decades of exemptions for Haredi men from military service. For the religious community, it was a call to defend their way of life. For others, it was a sign that Israel’s long argument over equality in service had finally reached its boiling point.
The story began in 1948, when Israel was barely a few months old and surrounded by enemies. Every man and woman was expected to serve. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, faced a difficult choice. The Holocaust had destroyed the great yeshivas of Europe. The few scholars who remained in the Land of Israel were viewed as the last bearers of a fragile tradition. Leaders of Agudat Yisrael asked Ben Gurion to spare a few hundred young men so that Torah study could continue.
Ben Gurion agreed. He exempted about 400 students, calling it a temporary measure for those who studied full time. In a 1951 letter to IDF Chief of Staff Yigael Yadin, he invoked Section 12 of the Defense Service Law, which allowed exemptions at the defense minister’s discretion. The arrangement was clear and limited. Those who studied full time could defer service, but only while they were actually learning. It was not meant to grow or last forever.
What began as a narrow exception soon became routine. The number of students grew, the population of the Haredi community expanded, and so did political influence. Religious parties like Agudat Yisrael and later Shas became key partners in coalition governments, using their leverage to preserve and expand the exemption. The arrangement gained a name: “Torato Umanuto,” meaning “his Torah is his profession.”
By the 1990s, resentment was widespread. Secular Israelis saw their children sent to the army year after year while entire Haredi neighborhoods remained exempt. In 1998 the Supreme Court ruled that the defense minister’s discretion could no longer justify so many exemptions and demanded a proper law. The Tal Committee was formed, chaired by Justice Zvi Tal. It proposed that students defer service until age 22, then choose between military service, civilian service, or continued study. In 2002 the Knesset passed the Tal Law to formalize the arrangement.
The law did little. Few Haredi men enlisted. Critics said it deepened inequality instead of fixing it. In 2012 the Supreme Court struck it down, leaving the government scrambling again. Each attempt to create a new system failed under political pressure. The country grew more divided between those who saw the arrangement as unjust and those who saw it as sacred.
In June 2024 the Supreme Court ruled that without a valid law there could be no exemption. It ordered the government to start drafting yeshiva students and to cut funding to any institution that refused to cooperate. Within weeks, the army began sending draft notices. For the first time in generations, many religious young men faced the prospect of service.
To the Haredi community, the ruling was a blow to their identity. They believe Torah study protects the Jewish people just as soldiers protect the borders. They fear conscription will erode their faith and isolate their institutions. To secular Israelis, it was a long-awaited correction. A country at war, they argue, cannot afford separate rules for separate citizens.
The political fallout was swift. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, reliant on Haredi parties, began to shake. Street protests erupted across Israel, some in support of the ruling, others against it. The debate became less about law and more about what kind of country Israel wants to be.
More than seventy years after Ben Gurion exempted 400 scholars to preserve Jewish learning, that small decision still shapes the nation. What began as an act of compassion turned into a defining test of fairness, faith, and national identity. And as the protests in Montreal showed, the argument is no longer confined to Israel. It belongs to every Jewish community wrestling with the same question: how to balance devotion to Torah with duty to the state.
