Failure of Rabbinic Leadership to Reform

Israel has operated in the skies above Tehran. It has struck nuclear facilities near Baghdad and dominated the airspace of its enemies across the region. But according to a newsletter that the Israeli journalist Amit Segal sent out earlier this week, there is one city in the Middle East where the IDF cannot move freely. That city is a fifteen-minute drive from Tel Aviv, and is called Bnei Brak.

On February 15, two female soldiers from the IDF's Education and Youth Corps arrived in this densely populated haredi city for a routine visit to a draftee ahead of his induction. A local resident called a hotline run by the Jerusalem Faction—an anti-conscription group—and falsely reported that military police were distributing draft notices. A mob of hundreds materialized, surrounded the soldiers, chased them through the streets, and forced them to hide until police arrived to rescue them. A patrol car was overturned. A police motorcycle was set on fire. Twenty-six were arrested; most were released by nightfall.

Israeli leaders across the political spectrum condemned the violence as the provocation of extremists. But whether they support the rioters or not, most of the Jews of Bnei Brak see the draft as an existential threat to their way of life. It's just that the extremists are willing to say so with violence.

For the past two years, pressed by the Supreme Court and by growing public resentment, the government has been trying to legislate a resolution to the question of haredi military service. Some 80,000 haredi men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are currently eligible for conscription but have not enlisted. A bill now moving through the Knesset would set enlistment targets, grant continued deferments to full-time yeshiva students, and impose penalties that critics—including the government's own legal advisers — say will produce no meaningful increase in enlistment. The haredi parties have threatened to block the 2026 state budget unless the bill passes. If the budget fails to pass by March 31, the Knesset dissolves and elections are triggered. The country is, in effect, in the middle of a slow-motion constitutional crisis over this question.

Into this moment comes Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer. He is the founding editor of Tzarich Iyun—a journal of haredi thought—and has devoted his public life to arguing that the haredi world must take greater responsibility for the Jewish state, and that it can do so without compromising its fundamental values. In January, following the death of a fourteen-year-old boy struck by a bus at a different protest, Rabbi Pfeffer wrote an essay in Tzarich Iyun called "Idleness, Anger, and the Erosion of the Torah World." In light of what happened this week in Bnei Brak, it deserves a wide hearing.

In this episode, Pfeffer speaks with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver about the conscription crisis and the recent riot.

This episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Richard Moldawsky in memory of Pauline Moldawsky. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.