The Long Shadow of History: Understanding the Haredi Resistance to the Draft
This is one of the most emotionally charged subjects in modern Jewish life. To even say "at the moment" is a misnomer; the tensions created by the Zionism-anti-Zionism and religiosity-secularism divides have been fracturing the Jewish people for over a century. While these frictions are currently at their most acute in decades, they remain, perhaps surprisingly, below their historical peak of violence and vitriol.
At the core of the current crisis is a clash of perspectives: a focus on immediate necessity versus a perspective rooted in historical precedent. The secular/anti-Haredi camp focuses on the current demographic trajectory and the survival of the state. The Haredi camp views the present through the lens of the past. One side asks, "What will we do in twenty or fifty years?" while the other responds, "We remember what they did to us fifty, one hundred, and two hundred years ago!"
This "focal dissonance" has created massive blind spots on both sides. The goal of this article is not to litigate the secular grievances, but rather to shed light on the Haredi psyche—to explain why the community maintains such a fierce, reactionary stance against the draft and cooperation with the Israeli government.
A Stroll Through History
The Jewish people have a long history of internal conflict. From the Hellenizers and the Sadducees to the Karaites and the followers of the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi, the "mainstream" religious community has spent millennia fending off splinter groups that sought to rewrite or nullify the Torah.
When Zionism emerged as a secular political ideology in the late 19th century, it was immediately cataloged by Rabbinic authorities as a "new coat of paint" on an old schismatic idea. It was seen not as a fresh start, but as a new front in the war waged by the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment). As Moses Mendelssohn, the father of the Haskalah, famously advocated:
"Be a Jew at home and a man in the street."
To the traditionalists, this was a recipe for spiritual extinction. Zionism took this a step further. While Reform Judaism sought to turn Jews into "Germans of Mosaic persuasion"—famously declaring that "Berlin is our Jerusalem"—secular Zionism sought to normalize the Jew by giving him a state. Theodore Herzl initially believed the solution to antisemitism was mass conversion to Christianity, before pivoting to a nationalistic solution. He wrote in The Jewish State:
"The Jews who wish for a State shall have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes."
But for the Torah-observant world, the "where" mattered less than the "who." Whether the state was in Uganda, Argentina, or Palestine, if its goal was to replace the "Old Jew" (the Torah scholar) with a "New Hebrew" (the secular laborer), it was viewed as an existential threat.
The Religious Rejection
It is a mischaracterization to claim that all religious Jews rejected Zionism. There were religious Zionists from the beginning. However, the dominant strain of pre-state Zionism was aggressively secular. It didn’t just ignore religion; it often sought to "uproot" it, viewing the pious Jew of the Galut (exile) as weak and outdated.
The tension was exacerbated by the aggressive recruitment of disaffected religious youth into secular socialist and Marxist movements. These movements didn't just offer a different political path; they offered a total abandonment of Jewish law (Halacha). As the Fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, warned:
"Their [the Zionists'] goal is to sever the hearts of the Children of Israel from their Father in Heaven... to replace the Torah with a nationalism that is void of any sanctity."
This ideological clash occasionally turned physical. In Russia and later in Mandate Palestine, brawls broke out. In one instance, Zionist activists—angered by the Fifth Rebbe’s opposition—invaded his vacation home, destroying furniture and terrorizing his family.
Brother Against Brother
The most chilling example of this divide was the 1924 assassination of Jacob Israël de Haan. A brilliant lawyer and diplomat, de Haan had moved from secular socialism back to Haredi Judaism and became a spokesman for the anti-Zionist community in Jerusalem. Fearing he would persuade the British to rescind the Balfour Declaration, the Haganah (the pre-state militia) ordered his execution. On June 30, 1924, as he exited a synagogue, he was shot three times.
His assassin, Avraham Tehomi, later remarked:
"I have done what the Haganah decided had to be done. And nothing was done without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi... I have no regrets because he wanted to destroy our whole idea of Zionism."
This was not an isolated incident of internal Jewish violence. The sinking of the Altalena in 1948—where the nascent IDF fired upon a ship carrying weapons and Irgun fighters—resulted in nineteen dead Jews. Menachem Begin, wanting to avoid a full-scale civil war, ordered his men not to fire back, crying out:
"Do not raise a hand against a brother! Today, every one of us must be prepared to be murdered, but not to murder."
For the Haredi community, these events served as proof that the secular state was not just a different way of being Jewish, but a power structure willing to use violence to suppress the religious "Old World."
Self-Serving, or Serving Selflessly?
Despite this bloody history, the narrative that Haredim have always refused to serve is a historical myth. During the 1948 War of Independence, the Haredi public was highly mobilized.
The Agudat Yisrael party declared it a religious obligation for men to report for national service. In Jerusalem, 370 Yeshiva students formed "Gdud Tuvia," building fortifications under sniper fire. Hasidic Jews from the Gur and Vizhnitz dynasties fought in the Alexandroni and Carmeli brigades.
One of the most famous examples was Rabbi Eliezer Hager, who would later become the Seret-Vizhnitz Rebbe. He fought in the bloody battles for Haifa and was wounded in action.
At the time, the lines were blurred by an existential threat. When the survival of the Jewish people was at stake, even the most anti-Zionist elements found a way to contribute.
The Original Exemption: A Poison Pill
In March 1948, David Ben-Gurion agreed to exempt 400 elite yeshiva students from the draft. He did not do this out of a love for Torah; he did it out of a conviction that Haredi Judaism was a dying relic. He famously remarked:
"It doesn't matter what the Haredim say... the wind of the times will blow them away. In another generation or two, they will disappear."
The exemption was a "gift" to a remnant he expected to vanish. In exchange, the Haredi leadership agreed to stop actively undermining the state’s formation. It was a transactional compromise.
However, the terms of the exemption created a "poison pill." To maintain the deferment, a man had to remain in full-time study. If he left the Yeshiva to work, he was immediately drafted. This created a "society of learners" trapped in poverty—they could not work without losing their exemption, and they could not serve without feeling they were betraying their historical and religious identity.
Conclusion
The Haredi stance today is not merely about "laziness" or "shirking." It is a defensive crouch rooted in a century of perceived existential threats. To the Haredi mind, the secular state is the successor to the Haskalah—an entity that once sought their total assimilation and, at times, used force to achieve its goals.
When modern Israelis demand a draft, the Haredi community doesn't just hear a request for more soldiers; they hear the echoes of Ben-Gurion’s prediction that they will "disappear." Until both sides address this "focal dissonance," the shadow of history will continue to darken the future of the State.
