The Long Brief: From Deferment to Duty

Universal service as Jewish law and state law—no monopolies, no theatrics, just headcount. Equality with kippot.

Today Jerusalem’s main arteries will be clogged with banners, black coats, and blue uniforms—each side sure the other is desecrating something sacred. One yells equality. The other yells Torah. Both believe they’re defending Israel’s soul. They’re right, but only halfway.

This fight was never about the draft alone. It’s about a monopoly on virtue. For too long, one sector claimed the mantle of holiness while others carried the stretcher. That bargain worked when Israel was young and small. It collapses when the country bleeds on three fronts and its tax base buckles under stipends and slogans.

What’s needed now is a clean covenant: every capable citizen serves, every true scholar learns, and neither lives off the other’s piety. Service is avodat kodesh. Torah is avodat kodesh. Neither excuses the absence of the other.

The law outlined below is a serious framework that treats both as sacred obligations, not bargaining chips. It restores order, not punishment. And it replaces a generation of political blackmail with a simple moral math: contribution equals legitimacy.

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Equality and Conscience: Israel’s Draft Reckoning

Israel is out of runway. The court erased the blanket deferment and restored the plain meaning of the law: equal duty for all. The army, after a bruising war, needs bodies in specific places and soon. The political system must now close the gap between legality and reality without breaking either community or force design. That requires a settlement with disciplined architecture.

The settlement starts with a universal obligation. Every 18-year-old serves. The tracks differ, the duty does not. One path is the IDF. The other is a civilian national service with real jobs, real hours, and the same benefits. No second-class track. No games or “optics.”

Religious freedom is not a courtesy here—though it is a design constraint. In uniform, no one must be compelled to violate Shabbat, kashrut, modesty, or other community norms. Haredi cohorts should be able to train, live, and work in male-only frameworks where required. Schedules need to protect prayer and set daily time for Torah study. In civilian service, roles should be local and halachically safe by default.

Exemption narrows to its original intent. Torato Omanuto (closely: the Torah is his profession) becomes a capped, verified route for a small elite of demonstrable scholars. Entry is earned, time-bound, and reviewed. Attendance audited. Abuse ends. Torah greatness is honored without gutting national duty. The beit midrash keeps its best and everyone serves according to his capacity.

There is a constitutional answer to a moral problem with operational stakes. We can honor equality before the law and freedom of observance in the same statute. And we can and must give the Haredi public a path to contribute without surrendering who they are.

A settlement would release the coalition from permanent crisis and replace improvisation with a durable framework. The country gets stronger. The rhetoric gets quieter. That would be new.