The Knesset House Committee voted 6-4 on Thursday evening to advance a Basic Law bill enshrining Torah study as a national value, sending it to the plenum for final votes expected next week.

The bill, sponsored by United Torah Judaism MKs Moshe Gafni and Yaakov Asher and backed by Shas, is being advanced as the battle continues over whether bnei yeshiva should continue receiving blanket exemptions from military service after those exemptions were struck down in court in 2024. The measure is intended to protect yeshiva students who evade the draft from sanctions and prosecution.

Before the vote, coalition whip and committee chairman Ofir Katz announced that the Chareidi parties had agreed to remove a clause that would have explicitly placed Torah study on par with service in the IDF. Legal officials warned that the clause could have entitled yeshiva students to financial and other benefits equal to, or even greater than, those granted to soldiers.

While Shas and the Degel HaTorah faction of UTJ agreed to remove the clause, UTJ chairman and Agudas Yisrael leader Yitzchak Goldknopf said he had not been consulted and opposed the move. “No one spoke to me about removing it, and I do not agree,” Goldknopf said. “I ask that the clause remain, and I oppose its removal.”

Opposition lawmakers and legal advisers argued that removing the clause does not change the purpose of the legislation. Yesh Atid MK Naor Shiri said that even without it, the bill would make Torah study the only value explicitly enshrined in a Basic Law, rather than military service, care for soldiers suffering from PTSD, or other national values. Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky also argued that removing the clause does not necessarily make the bill merely declarative, and said the committee must explain what legal effect recognizing Torah study as a fundamental value is meant to have.

“The Jewish state is restoring the honor of Torah and those who study it to its rightful place,” Gafni said after the committee advanced the bill.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)