On a sweltering day in early July, when a cease-fire in Gaza seemed impossibly remote, the funeral procession for Moshe Shmuel Nol, a 21-year-old Israeli soldier killed by Hamas fighters, left from his family’s home in Beit Shemesh, a religious suburb west of Jerusalem. It was the kind of scene that had become routine in Israel over the last two years. Mourners lined the street, Israeli flags held aloft, almost limp in the breezeless air. The bereaved family strode in a silence broken only by muffled sobs. Since Oct. 7, 2023, more than 900 Israeli soldiers have been killed. Military funerals have often been broadcast on television, the eulogies played over the radio, sometimes several in the span of a few hours. Nol was one of five soldiers from his unit buried in two days.
Yet the cortege in Beit Shemesh was also very unlike those to which Israelis have become accustomed. The father who came to bury his son was dressed in the black suit, white shirt and black hat worn by ultra-Orthodox Jews, or as they are known in Hebrew, Haredim — “those who tremble before God.” The grief-stricken mother, her hair covered by a wig, walked behind him, wearing a long-sleeved dress in the punishing sun. Among the mourners were Hasidim in long black coats and black hats, men with beards and curled sidelocks. Video of the procession and funeral spread quickly on social media and in the press.
The Haredim have historically been exempt from Israel’s draft, which is compulsory for most citizens, and over the two years of Israel’s war in Gaza, this became the source of considerable political strife. Ever since the most recent provision extending their exemption expired in 2023, the Haredi political parties — which made up nearly one third of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing right-wing, religious coalition — have pushed to enshrine a new exemption into law, despite widespread opposition. The Haredi parties backed the coalition’s controversial “judicial overhaul,” a sweeping program, unveiled in January 2023, that would strip the country’s judiciary of much of its power and shred Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances. They did so in order to shield any new draft exemption law from judicial review.
But if the images of Haredim standing alongside soldiers in Beit Shemesh suggested that the struggle over ultra-Orthodox conscription was headed toward resolution, it was an illusion. After Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in June of last year that the government’s refusal to draft the Haredim was unconstitutional in the absence of any legal framework to extend their exemption, the defense ministry began to issue draft orders. The Israel Defense Forces say they have so far sent out 80,000; barely 3,000 Haredim have complied.
The fight over the draft exemption has heightened the long-simmering tensions over the place of the Haredim in Israeli society. Many detest what they call the “Orthodox monopoly” — the rabbinate’s authority over matters of birth and death, marriage and divorce. And as the Haredi population has grown, some secular Israelis have begun to fear that they face a demographic eclipse: Today, Haredim account for roughly 14 percent of Israel’s total population and 17 percent of its Jewish population. The mass protests that erupted against the judicial overhaul were driven, at least in part, by the specter of growing religious political power. When the demonstrators chanted “demokratiya,” they meant not just the opposite of dictatorship, but also the opposite of theocracy.
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