Defense Minister Yisrael Katz has instructed the Defense Ministry and the IDF to resolve the ongoing dispute with Chabad and formulate a new plan regulating the status of its talmidei yeshivos, Channel 14 reported.

According to the report, Katz’s directive follows the IDF’s realization that scrapping the “Chabad arrangement” in August 2025 caused significant strategic harm to the military. The IDF lost hundreds of highly motivated, high-quality recruits who had, for years, helped it meet its Chareidi enlistment targets.

Katz’s intervention comes after negotiations between senior IDF officials and Chabad representatives reached an impasse.

Since 2016, the unique “Chabad arrangement” had allowed Chabad talmidei yeshivos to leave Israel for a year of limmud Torah, known as the “Kvutza” year, at the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770, after signing a commitment to enlist in the IDF at the age of 26.

The arrangement expired after the High Court struck down the draft law, and efforts to establish a replacement have repeatedly failed.

According to the COL Chabad news website, the Chabad Rabbinical Court presented the IDF with no fewer than four compromise proposals. However, the IDF rejected each one, citing “legal limitations under the current circumstances.”

Last year, ahead of the summer Bein HaZemanim break, the Chabad Rabbinical Court issued a detailed public letter to parents and Chabad bnei yeshivos across Israel, emphasizing that the tafkid of yeshiva students is to devote themselves to Limmud Torah study, even to the point of mesiras nefesh.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)