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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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How a Jewish play from 1908 enshrined the idea of America as a cultural ‘melting pot’
It’s long been unfashionable to refer to the United States as a “melting pot.” Identity politics and multiculturalism have undermined the ideal of an assimilation so complete that it obliterates ethnic distinctions. Now the persistence of difference is hailed, at least in some quarters, as enriching rather than estranging, even if the associated metaphors — “salad bowl,” “kaleidoscope,” “mosaic” — lack poetic vigor.
The first reference to the U.S. as a melting pot is said to date to J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s 1782 Letters from an American Framer, in which he wrote: “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.” Similar notions surfaced in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James and the historian Frederick Jackson Turner. But it was Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play, The Melting Pot, that injected that industrial metaphor into the national consciousness.
Set in New York City, the play is a love story between a musically gifted Russian Jewish immigrant of Sephardic extraction and a gentile settlement house worker from the pogrom-wracked city that he fled. Its backdrop is the turmoil of an early 20th-century America trying to make sense of massive waves of Eastern European, and particularly Jewish, immigration. The playwright was an English Jew, a disillusioned Zionist who had begun looking to the U.S. as the promised land.
After its debut in Washington, where it was praised by President Theodore Roosevelt, The Melting Pot moved to Broadway in 1909 and has since enjoyed occasional revivals. Crescendoing debates around immigration, antisemitism and who deserves to be an American seem to lend it renewed currency.
So, at least, was the reasoning of Jesse Bernstein, producing artistic director of Philadelphia’s Theatre Ariel, whose focus is Jewish-themed work. Bernstein adapted and directed Zangwill’s play, and has teamed with the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective, which produces rarely seen classics, to mount it. Their streamlined, modern-dress version, part of the America250 celebration, opened Wednesday at Philadelphia’s historic Arch Street Meeting House.
Bernstein said in an interview that he pruned as much as half an hour from the original (it now runs about 95 intermission-less minutes) with an ear to modern sensibilities. He also has made some additions that undercut the play’s triumphalism. The Melting Pot nonetheless remains an odd fusion of melodrama and polemic, interesting mostly as an historical curiosity.
Bernstein’s direction does the piece no favors with a stiff, presentational style, in which characters frequently address the audience rather than one another. On the other hand, when they turn away, the meeting house’s unfavorable acoustics make them more difficult, sometimes impossible, to hear. Offstage characters sit in chairs behind the action awaiting their cues. Meghan Jones’s spare set, representing both the Quixano family home and different locations within the settlement house, is draped with oriental rugs and strewn with steamer trunks and valises.
The protagonist, David Quixano, played with endearing sensitivity by Adam Galloway, survived the infamous 1903 Kishinev pogrom, in which all his immediate family were murdered and he himself was shot and left for dead. After that trauma, America has become both his dream and his salvation. In New York, he lives with his cynical uncle, Mendel, also a musician; his Yiddish-speaking grandmother; and an Irish American housemaid, Kathleen (Jessy Gruver), who wrestles comically with Jewish customs and dietary laws.
Through a violin concert, David meets and falls for the lovely Vera (Lexi Thammavong), a former Russian “revolutionist” who now combats poverty through settlement house work. David is composing an American symphony that will convey his rapturous views of his adopted homeland. He finds a ready admirer in the German conductor Herr Pappelmeister (Adam Pelta-Pauls, speaking convincing German).
Standing in David’s way, personally and professionally, are two villains — the wealthy, unscrupulous nativist Quincy Davenport (Eli Lynn), a married man who lusts after Vera, and Vera’s estranged father, Baron Ravendal (Brian McCann), a reactionary Russian military commander who turns up unexpectedly. McCann brings a strangely mannered intensity to a role that is already a caricature.
Zangwill’s characters represent a spectrum of early 20th-century attitudes. Ravendal and Davenport, brutal in different ways, both give free rein to their antisemitism. Frau Quixano (played by a bewigged McCann) and Mendel Quixano (J Hernandez, appropriately world-weary) reflect the resistance of older immigrants to assimilation — and especially to its culmination in interfaith romance.
The Melting Pot is deadly serious at times, larded with apocalyptic symbolism and images of Jewish suffering. But it also has its share of comedy, including the maid Kathleen’s gradual embrace of Jewish traditions and some playful digs directed at critics.
It is up to David, the musical prodigy, to articulate the famous message at the play’s core. Early on, he declares his fealty to a new American ideal:
America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! …A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American. The real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you — he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.
David returns repeatedly to this soaring rhetoric, lauding American greatness born of industrial-grade homogenization, and seeking to embody it in his symphony.
The original play ended exuberantly, with both love and David’s melting pot vision of “the glory of America” conquering all. Bernstein’s adaptation, with its insistence on relevance, duly complicates that vision. He wraps the action with supporting characters challenging David’s view of American harmony, and with the future of the betrothed couple clouded in doubt.
The Melting Pot runs at the Arch Street Meeting House, 320 Arch St., Philadelphia, through Nov. 8.
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‘I wanna blow up a synagogue’: Online posts lead to hate crime charge against Utah man
(JTA) — A Utah man accused of possessing explosive devices, searching online for nearby synagogues and making online threats to kill Jews is due in court Friday to face charges including attempting to commit a hate crime.
A federal grand jury indicted Skyler AJ Rose, 22, on Wednesday, the Department of Justice said in a release.
Rose allegedly made threats on social media, including “I wanna blow up a synagogue,” leading the FBI to join the Ogden City Police Department in a search of his home, where they allegedly discovered six pipe bombs, two rifles and ammunition.
A review of a cellphone seized from the home allegedly showed that Rose had searched online for a nearby synagogue, according to the Department of Justice.
The charges Rose faces include possession of an unregistered destructive device, threats to kill and injure people and to destroy a building, and attempting to commit a hate crime.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Will this election end the battle over drafting Haredi men into the Israeli army?
(JTA) — Whether to extend military conscription to haredi men, a longstanding question fueling political tensions in Israel, has boiled over since Hamas launched the current war with Israel with its deadly raids on Oct. 7, 2023.
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers and reservists battled on Israel’s southern and northern fronts and the manpower needs, especially in combat units, increased dramatically. Reservists served for extended periods and many of those serving in the standing army were forced to remain for an extra four months or longer – at an enormous price to soldiers’ families and to Israel’s economy. For the ultra-Orthodox, the Torah study that young men carry out in place of military service provides an important spiritual defense for the Jewish state. Community leaders are extremely fearful that young men will be unable to practice or outright abandon a haredi lifestyle as a result of army service with secular and modern Orthodox Jews.
In some parts of the country, families continue to bury their dead from the battlefield, while in others Haredi protestors block roads and tussle with police to avoid the draft. The preferred political solution of kicking the can down the road on this deeply divisive issue – which has lingered in legislative limbo for decades – might finally come to an end with the Oct. 27 elections.
Which Israelis are currently drafted to the army, and what are their conditions of service?
Most Jewish Israeli men and women are subject to compulsory service at age 18. Men currently serve 32 months, and women generally serve 24, although some roles require longer service. Conscripts are generally allowed to defer service for a year or two in order to attend pre-military programs. Exemptions for service may apply for medical, religious, family or other legally recognized reasons. Druze and Circassian men are generally drafted, while Israeli Arabs are generally not. Conscripts who ignore draft orders are subject to sanctions that can ultimately lead to imprisonment.
Upon completion of compulsory service, most soldiers are placed in reserve units, and are called up periodically for training and for active duty in wartime. Reserve duty is generally mandatory until age 40 for non-officers and 45 for officers. Enforcement of a call up order for reserve duty is traditionally less severe than enforcement of compulsory service; sanctions against reservists who avoid call ups are rare.
Following the outbreak of war on Oct. 7, hundreds of thousands of reservists were called up for extended periods. Between the outbreak of war and the end of 2025, some 28% of male reservists and 20% of female reservists served for over 150 days. Current IDF policy allows for up to 55 days of reserve duty per year for combat soldiers, compared to a cap of 54 days over three years (18 days per year on average) prior to the war.
Are Haredim legally exempt from IDF service?
No. Historically, a small number of full-time haredi yeshiva students were allowed to defer service until they aged out of eligibility, amounting to a de-facto exemption. As the share of Haredim in the population grew, so did legal challenges to their exemption, on grounds of inequality. Since June 2023, there are no longer any legal exemptions in place for haredim, and all haredi men face the same legal requirement to enlist as non-haredim.
What is the mainstream haredi approach to IDF service?
Haredim generally oppose IDF service, although recently some small groups of modernizing haredim appear more open to it. Haredi officials and spiritual leaders argue the Torah study that young men carry out in place of military service provides an important spiritual defense for the Jewish state. At the same time, haredi community leaders view the IDF as a bastion of secularism and are fearful that haredi men will not be able to maintain their lifestyle during service.
Historically, how did the draft exemption for Haredi men begin?
In 1948, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion agreed to exempt about 400 yeshiva students so Torah scholarship could be rebuilt after the Holocaust. The arrangement expanded gradually, as the military and political leadership tolerated the arrangement for practical and coalition-building reasons. In 1977, Menachem Begin’s government removed important limits on the haredi exemption. As a result, the number of draft-age Haredi men outside the army grew from roughly 7,000 in the late 1970s to tens of thousands by the 2020s.
When did opposition to the exemption first arise?
Opposition grew sharply in the 1980s and 1990s as the haredi IDF exemption grew significantly. Legal challenges to the exemption were initially rebuffed by the court, but were eventually successful, as the Supreme Court in 1998 first deemed the exemption illegal, and ruled that such an exemption needed to be anchored in legislation that met constitutional standards of equality.
Following the 1998 ruling, how did ensuing coalitions deal with this issue?
The two decades following the 1998 ruling saw various legislative and policy proposals aimed at increasing haredi enlistment. Two laws passed, in 2002 and 2014, but both were eventually struck down by the court on grounds of inequality, as they still enabled widespread haredi exemptions. The second law was struck down in 2017, but the court approved numerous extension requests by the government for the provisions of the law to continue to apply until it could come up with a new law. This left the de-facto exemption in place until the law finally expired in June 2023.
Why did coalitions keep trying to exempt significant numbers of haredim instead of drafting them?
First, haredi parties wield significant political power. In recent decades they have usually occupied 15-20 seats in the 120-member Israeli Knesset, and since 2009 have been part of Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc, save for two years (2013-2015). Governments have been wary of enlisting haredim en masse so as not to lose the support of haredi politicians.
Second, the IDF has not always been keen on drafting haredim. Haredim require special accommodations in terms of Kashrut and mixed-gender military bases. Haredim also go through an autonomous education system and special efforts are required to instill in them the motivation and sense of duty that are prevalent in general Israeli society.
So have any haredim served in the IDF in recent decades?
Yes, some specific programs have opened up for haredim, mainly in technology-oriented units. The numbers of annual haredi draftees has fluctuated, but in the years leading up to the expiration of the draft law the average was slightly over 1,000.
What changed in the IDF’s perspective and the perspective of the general public after Oct. 7?
The mass call-up of reservists for extended periods of time brought many Israelis to experience the inequality between them and the haredi public first hand. In addition, the expansion of the war to numerous fronts and new security requirements led to a manpower shortage in the IDF, especially of combat soldiers. Officials have described the shortfall as a national-security issue, and the roughly 100,000 Haredi men aged 18 to 29 are viewed as the only large available pool of potential combat recruits. Researchers have also pointed out that without a new policy the inequality in Israeli society will continue to grow – by 2050 over 40% of the 18-year-old potential male Jewish recruits will be haredi.
What was the outgoing Netanyahu government’s policy after Oct. 7?
The government did not implement significant policy changes to begin drafting haredim in significant numbers, and refrained from instituting sanctions that could have increased the price of draft evasion. The government’s inaction was challenged in court, and the Supreme Court ruled in June 2024 that barring a new law, the continued exemption was illegal. However, the government has continued to push back on attempts by the Attorney General, who leads Israel’s law enforcement apparatus, to abide by the ruling and begin taking measures to increase haredi draft numbers. The government argued in its defense that it was working on a new law which required time.
Did the government pass a new law?
No. The Netanyahu government attempted to pass a new law that would have incrementally increased haredi draft numbers while enabling the majority of haredim to remain exempt. The attempts failed due to push back from legal authorities, the political opposition, the general public, and a number of politicians from within the coalition. Instead, in July 2026, in the final weeks of parliamentary activity prior to the election recess, the Netanyahu-led coalition passed a law to freeze enforcement against haredi draft evaders until after the election. On September 3rd, the Supreme Court struck down this law as well.
So haredi draft numbers have remained at pre-war levels?
No. In order to abide by the 2024 Supreme Court ruling and the Attorney General’s interpretation of that ruling, government officials working within the different ministries removed certain subsidies and privileges from draft evaders, and the police and IDF gradually increased their enforcement efforts. The number of haredi draftees rose as a result. Between July 2025 and the end of June 2026, some 4,298 haredim enlisted, as opposed to 2,811 haredim in the parallel period in 2024-25.
How have haredi rabbis, politicians and the general public responded to growing demands that they enlist?
Leading rabbis affiliated with the three main haredi parties – the non Hasidic Degel Hatorah party, the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael party and the Sephardic Shas party – forcefully opposed IDF service, with some explicitly calling on young haredi men to ignore draft orders should they receive them. Politicians from the three parties also voiced strong opposition to a large increase in haredi draftees, and were willing only to consider minor increases.
A large majority of haredim who received draft orders ignored them, and approximately 90,000 haredi men are legally considered draft evaders, with levels of severity increasing the longer they ignore the orders. Some arrests of draft evaders were met by mass protests and disturbances, including in recent weeks. Some more modernized haredim have increasingly expressed a willingness to serve. These views are represented in two new haredi parties participating in the current election, called Hakahal (roughly translated as “the community”) and Hatzibur Haharedi (“the haredi public”).
Is the haredi draft issue prominent in the election campaigns?
Yes. In a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a proposition that the next government should draft haredim equally received the most support among a series of propositions. Nearly all of the Zionist opposition parties have made their intention to increase the haredi draft a prominent part of their campaigns. Some opposition party leaders have attempted to frame the election as a choice between the “draft evasion bloc” and the “bloc that serves.” On the other hand, some haredi rabbis and party leaders have expressed their disappointment with Netanyahu’s failure to manufacture a new exemption, and have stated that they no longer view themselves as part of the Netanyahu bloc. However, they have not stated support for any other candidate and are likely to side with Netanyahu again if he is able to form a new government.
What are the most likely scenarios after the next government is formed?
Three outcomes are plausible:
- A compromise: full-time Torah scholars receive a narrow exemption, while others perform military or civilian service under threat of sanctions.
- Continued stalemate: the government delays enforcement, leading to further court battles and coalition crises.
- Broad enforcement: a government less dependent on haredi parties implements substantially wider enlistment.
The first scenario is probably the most politically workable, but the details will determine whether the courts accept it.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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