Av-A Month of Fatherly Mercy

Last week, the chareidi parties fought for the passage of two bills that no one ever thought would be necessary. One was the Basic Law: Torah Study, which was necessitated by judges repeatedly overturning the laws granting draft deferrals to yeshiva bochurim on the grounds that the arrangement violated the principle of equality. Since the judges based their arguments on the Basic Law that enshrines equality as a fundamental value of the state, the new Basic Law introduces another fundamental value—the importance of Torah study—to restore balance. While no one can be certain that this will cause the judges to leave bnei yeshivos alone, it was a form of hishtadlus that needed to be done.

The second law was a bill freezing the arrests of yeshiva bochurim. The chareidi parties hoped that this would provide a reprieve for the country’s bnei Torah; no one imagined that a judge would issue an order suspending the law within hours after it passed. But that is precisely what happened: Justice Grosskopf immediately issued an order freezing the law before it could take effect and declared that the petition against it will be reviewed by a panel of nine justices headed by Noam Sohlberg. (Sadly, we do not have an ounce of faith in Sohlberg.) Everyone hoped that all the bnei Torah in detention would be released as soon as the law was passed; on this past Shabbos alone, 45 bochurim and yungeleit were being held in military prison. Had the law taken effect, it would have removed the cloud of anxiety that hovers over lomdei Torah throughout the country. Of course, we anticipated that petitions against the law would be filed with the Supreme Court, and it seemed obvious that the judges would oppose the law, but most legal experts believed, based on past precedents, that the Supreme Court would not issue a ruling after the Knesset began its recess. That has always been the court’s practice, and everyone believed that it would continue following that policy. The government has always informed the Supreme Court during an election period that it is impossible to pass new legislation until a new Knesset is formed, and therefore any petitions against existing laws should be delayed. The chareidim therefore forged ahead with the new bill on the assumption that it would not be canceled immediately—an assumption that, it seems, was in error.

The 25th Knesset completed its term last Thursday on a disappointing note. Despite all the commitments and promises that were made, a new draft law was not passed. And while there may have been genuine impediments to the law’s passage, that makes little difference to the legions of yeshiva bochurim living in fear of arrest. Just imagine how this chapter in Israeli history will be recorded and read in the future: In the state of the Jews, lomdei Torah were afraid to go on errands or even visit a barbershop. Some of them were robbed or assaulted in broad daylight and fled for their lives rather than calling the police, out of fear that they would fall into the hands of hostile authorities. Who would ever have thought that bnei Torah would be oppressed by a Jewish police force?

The picture right now, unfortunately, is bleak. The Knesset members who visited Prison 10, where yeshiva bochurim are being held, were heartbroken by their plight. Uri Maklev was present for a session of the military court and emerged in a state of despondence. Moshe Abutbul recently played a recording for me of a message he had received from a young wife of a kollel yungerman. “Please, I beg you to help me,” the woman can be heard saying. “I am a young wife with three small children, and my husband was put into military prison yesterday; they want to draft him. I have no one to help me, and I can’t manage anymore. I need him to be home with me. He called me today for the first time, and he was in tears. He told me that they are being abused; he was forced to stand for four hours with a heavy bag on his back, he isn’t given enough food, he sleeps for three hours on a wooden board, and he isn’t allowed to have bedsheets. I can’t continue this way any longer.” The woman can be heard crying on the recording, and we all wept along with her.

I also have a neighbor who was sentenced to an additional 30 days in military prison last week, after completing an initial sentence of 30 days. The length of his sentence is due to the fact that he has been categorized as a draft evader for ten years; he is 28 years old, and it seems that he never properly took care of obtaining an official deferral, even while the legal arrangement was still in place. But while it’s true that he was negligent and he should have attended to his deferral, does that really make him deserving of spending sixty days in jail? According to his parents, he is on the verge of a mental breakdown.

I hope that the law freezing arrests of yeshiva bochurim, if it is allowed to take effect, will also lead to the release of bochurim already behind bars; however, I reviewed the text of the law and found no explicit mention of such a provision. We can only daven that the malicious policies of this state will be curbed by the passage of the two new laws. Meanwhile, thousands of Sanzer chassidim protested outside the military prison last Thursday night, after a member of the chassidus was taken into custody. He has since been released. On Monday, 25,000 Gerrer chassidim protested the arrest of a Gerrer chosid.

It is said that the name of the month of Av is an acronym for the words Elul ba (“Elul is coming”). Forty-five years ago, in the month of Av 5741/1981, the Shefa Chaim of Sanz-Klausenberg declared, “We are now in the month of Av, and I always explain that the name of this month alludes to the compassion of a father (av) for his children. These are days of mercy and kindness toward Bnei Yisroel, just as we saw the demonstration of Hashem’s kindness to His people at the time of the destruction of the Bais Hamikdosh. Even though the people’s actions were lowly and base, Hashem poured out His wrath on the wood and stones of the Bais Hamikdosh rather than on them. During these days, therefore, we see a revelation of Hashem’s mercy for Bnei Yisroel; however, the yetzer hara believes, due to the Divine concealment, that it is a time of judgment. We therefore ask Hashem to reveal His kindness before everyone and to grant us our eternal redemption soon.”

No Faith in Israel’s Judges

There is no doubt about it: We cannot have the slightest faith in the Supreme Court. The judges have already delivered two brutal blows to the religious community, taking the opportunity to attack in every direction at once. In addition to raining economic blows on “draft dodgers,” they also called to ramp up the arrests of lomdei Torah. The judges’ second verdict was signed on 9 Iyar/April 26, 2026, and dealt with petitions based on the court’s previous verdict. The petitioners accused the government of showing contempt for the judges’ earlier verdict by refusing to implement measures against Torah learners; on November 19, the judges had cruelly issued two rulings calling for economic and criminal sanctions against lomdei Torah, and the government hadn’t yet implemented that decision.

Someone might be tempted to make the argument that the judges did nothing wrong, since their duty is merely to make sure the law is obeyed, and they were only calling on the government to comply with its legal obligation to draft young men, regardless of the cost. However, there are several answers to this argument. The first is that there is no such thing as an agenda that should be pursued at any cost; one can never achieve anything with an all-out, no-holds-barred campaign, certainly not regarding an issue as sensitive as the IDF draft. That is even more true when it is an attempt to reverse a longstanding arrangement that has been in effect for over 70 years. In addition, some of the economic sanctions were opposed by professional staff in various government ministries, on the grounds that the measures are unlawful. In some cases, the sanctions were deemed extremely disproportionate. For instance, why should a child be punished by being deprived of subsidized day care because his father learns in kollel? And how will that punishment help promote the draft? Does anyone really believe that kollel yungeleit will join the army in response to the loss of a day care subsidy? The professionals argued vehemently that the sanction would have no such effect and would simply lead the wives of yungeleit to stop working. The judges are supposed to be aware of all these points and to take them into consideration, but they were callously indifferent, insisting on a full-scale war against lomdei Torah regardless of whether it had any chance of achieving their aims.

Regarding the arrests of yeshiva bochurim, the Supreme Court wrote on April 26, “In this context, we were informed both in writing and in the oral discussion that the police are still refraining from arresting draft evaders and deserters in unplanned encounters, despite their authority to do so, and that the police maintain that they do not have the ability to assist the military police in their efforts to arrest deserters and draft evaders. This is despite the fact that to carry out such activities in a civilian setting, the military police require the collaboration of the civilian police. The police explained that this policy—the non-enforcement of the law against draft evaders in chareidi population centers—is based on the fact that such operations are frequently accompanied by widespread public disturbances, and that carrying them out requires additional police manpower. Here, too, we can only state the obvious. It is true that the resources of the police force are not unlimited, and that the police have broad discretion to set priorities for enforcement, while balancing various interests and considerations. At the same time [here the judges quoted a previous ruling of the Supreme Court], ‘The police’s complete abstention from exercising their authority, in essence leaving the authority idle like an unmoved stone, cannot be justified by claims of enforcement priorities. Budgetary constraints or limited resources are not a hook on which every failure can be hung.’ … The police have a duty to assist the army’s enforcement authorities and to begin enforcing the requirement of the draft for the members of the chareidi community as well. This is even more important given the fact that, as noted above, this refers to a widespread, deliberate, and ongoing violation of the law. It is not superfluous to point out that the social message emerging from the failure to act against those who attempt to thwart enforcement with widespread public disturbances is that the offender benefits, which is a message that cannot be tolerated. We cannot accept a situation in which ‘the man of force owns the land’ (Iyov 22:8) and ‘he who is the strongest is victorious.’”

Judge Noam Sohlberg, who wears a yarmulke and wrote the court decision, felt the need to quote pesukim and Talmudic phrases to legitimize his position. But that does nothing to mitigate the anti-religious character of this ruling, which called for economic sanctions to the point of starvation and arrests to be carried out by the police even if they claim that they are both incapable and unwilling to do so. And it has already been proven that the arrests do not promote enlistment; on the contrary, the aggressive policy has the opposite effect. The judges are constantly preaching about the importance of effective steps to increase enlistment, yet they are ordering the government to implement draconian measures that will have no impact other than reducing the enlistment they claim to be seeking to promote. The only logical conclusion is that they aren’t actually interested in increasing enlistment in the IDF; their goal is only to persecute Torah learners. And even when the Knesset passed a law to temporarily halt the arrests in an effort to heal the rift within the nation and to give the government time to pass a draft law that will actually be effective, a judge decided to suspend the law before the ink had even dried. Is it any wonder, then, that the religious community has no faith in the judges?

The Judges’ True Goal Is Anarchy

The government (in its response to the Supreme Court), the officer in the IDF, and the experts on the chareidi draft have all repeatedly stressed the same point: The arrests of bnei Torah are not only failing to increase chareidi enlistment but are actually having the opposite effect. The more arrests, the more reluctance there is among chareidim to show up at induction offices. If the real goal is to increase chareidi enlistment, there should be no arrests at all. The cabinet secretary made this assertion based on the actual numbers, the representatives of the IDF Manpower Directorate made the same statement to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and Yossi Levi, who founded the Netzach Yehuda battalion and is heavily involved in this area, has practically been shouting it from the rooftops. He has begged the army to put an end to the arrests, arguing that all of his hard work has essentially gone down the drain. And while the judges are calling for “effective measures” to increase chareidi conscription, they are causing the exact opposite. There is really only one possible conclusion: The judges aren’t truly interested in drafting chareidim. Their real goal is to destroy the yeshiva world and stifle the “voice of Yaakov”—the sounds of Torah learning throughout the country. In fact, one of the petitioners was caught gloating to a colleague, “We are going to dismantle the Torah world.” This comment shocked and horrified many of the people who heard it, but it seems that his malicious agenda is shared by the judges as well.

Like politicians who are all too eager to exploit tragedies for political gain, the judges made sure to mention the war and its heavy cost in their first ruling. “Difficult times sometimes call for difficult measures,” the judges wrote. “Under these severe and dramatic circumstances, it is necessary to take exceptional steps. The current situation of widespread, deliberate, and ongoing violation of the law, accompanied by such a severe breach of equality, is unacceptable, especially in light of the pressing security need to conscript additional mandatory soldiers, and subsequently reservists as well. This has reached the point of pikuach nefesh.”

This is sheer demagoguery. For one thing, the government has never stopped trying to pass a law granting draft deferrals to yeshiva bochurim. Moreover, experts claim that the yeshiva world is not the solution for the IDF’s manpower shortage. And the statistics show that there are tens of thousands of chilonim who have failed to enlist as well, but that does not bother the judges in the slightest. In their second ruling, the judges expanded the economic sanctions to include additional measures, such as the cancelation of discounts on public transportation, and furiously insisted on the expansion of arrests. One of their demands was for the percentage of arrests of chareidi draft evaders to match the percentage in the secular community. But this should strike everyone as peculiar. Have you heard of a single secular draft evader being arrested? I certainly haven’t. Have the military police conducted proactive arrest operations in secular neighborhoods? Not that I know of….

Netanyahu Against Incitement

Some time ago, at a press conference about the agreement with Lebanon, a reporter asked Prime Minister Netanyahu a question about the draft of yeshiva bochurim. Netanyahu responded vehemently, “You accomplish nothing when the chareidi hesder yeshivos sent me messages that say, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, when you send people into the yeshivos to remove Torah learners and put them in jail, no one will enlist as a result.’ … There is a tremendous response from the chareidi community and a desire to enlist, but when arrests are carried out among people studying Torah, that creates the opposite result…. If I told you that the police were entering yeshivos in some European country and jailing young men who learn Torah, you would be horrified.” Regarding the bill to halt the arrests of yeshiva bochurim, the prime minister said firmly, “The policy of arrests must be stopped. It isn’t achieving the desired result. I would stop the arrests immediately for the purpose of reaching broad agreements. That is what I would seek to do.”

Netanyahu stood his ground even after the bill passed in the Knesset, triggering a massive uproar in the media. Motti Kastel, who has proven to be the most reliable (or perhaps the only reliable one) among the journalists disparaging the chareidi camp, reported the following: “Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu has gone on a forceful offensive against the critics of the law freezing arrests of draft evaders, against the backdrop of the public and legal controversy surrounding the legislation, which was approved by the Knesset and then immediately suspended by an interim order of the Supreme Court pending its decision on the petitions filed against it…. In telephone conversations with the ministers, Netanyahu sounded angry and unequivocal. ‘We have to push back against the false propaganda. This law will cause no harm!’ he insisted. Netanyahu explained that the goal of the law is to increase enlistment without causing unnecessary conflicts with the yeshiva world. ‘We want recruits; we don’t want detainees. The more people are detained, the fewer enlist,’ he said. The prime minister also addressed the argument that the law offers sweeping immunity to yeshiva students, a claim that he countered with a historic comparison: ‘You want to take Torah learners to jail? They did that in Russia, and we cried out against it. The Torah is our Jewish heritage for hundreds of generations. It is the only thing that has preserved the Jewish people.’”

According to Kastel, Netanyahu also expressed outrage over the lies that have been spread concerning the Basic Law: Torah Study. “What do they want?” he demanded. “The law states only that Torah study is a fundamental value of Israeli heritage. What could be wrong with that? That is all that it says!”

Subtle Messaging in the Media

It is important to have a media that reports the news, and it is very problematic when that same media chooses sides. For instance, the constant references to a potential draft law as an “evasion law” is a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate public sentiment by subconsciously influencing the audience. Maariv recently reported on its front page that the Supreme Court froze the “Deserters’ Law,” since calling it the “Arrest Law” might have created sympathy for the detainees. The title of the article itself was even worse: “Supreme Court Halts Law Freezing Arrests of Chareidi Deserters.” And the subliminal messaging isn’t limited to that particular law. Another bill, which would split the position of attorney general in two, has been dubbed by several media outlets “the law to weaken the attorney general,” with the title conjugated in the feminine in a deliberate reference to the current attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara. The law doesn’t actually relate to Baharav-Miara; it would impact any future attorney general. Nevertheless, by linking it to the current holder of the position, the media makes it sound like a petty conspiracy rather than a legitimate legislative measure.

The media has unabashedly aligned itself with one particular side. For instance, after the chief of staff of the IDF wrote a letter (which was bizarre and irrational) against the law freezing arrests of yeshiva bochurim, it was the topic of an article that spanned the entire length of the front page of two different newspapers, both of which framed it as a last-ditch effort to halt a law with disastrous effects. On the day after the Basic Law: Torah Study was passed, two newspapers reported on it with the breathless urgency usually reserved for wars. Yisroel Hayom featured the most malicious headline, and in large print, no less: “Favoring One Person’s Blood Over Another’s.” Yediot Acharonot used its entire front page for the text of the law, a move almost completely unprecedented in the history of Israeli journalism and of this newspaper in particular.

In short, this isn’t journalism; it is one-sided support for a particular camp and agenda.

Bennett’s New Plan: Malign the Chareidim

I will soon write at greater length about political developments and the election campaign; those topics are unavoidable. But for now, without getting into too many details, I would like to say that a person could easily burst with indignation over the falsehood and hypocrisy that permeates Israeli politics. Someone once said that falsehood and arrogance came together and produced politics as their offspring. A look at the current political climate in Israel certainly lends credence to that assumption.

For instance, there is a new political party named B’Yachad, which was formed by an alliance between two politicians: a charlatan (Naftoli Bennett) and a man with no accomplishments at all (Yair Lapid). How could these two possibly receive 15 mandates, which is indicated by some polls? While the joint party originally soared to 20 mandates in the polls and has since been losing ground, I am surprised by the fact that they have any support at all. How is it possible for them to pass the electoral threshold? Lapid has been in politics for 15 years (Yesh Atid was first launched in 2012) and has accomplished nothing throughout that time, and Bennett lied to his voters in the worst possible fashion. He stood before the cameras and pledged that he would not sit with Lapid or Mansour Abbas and would not form a left-wing government, but after receiving six mandates in the election, he broke all those commitments. How can anyone possibly trust him again?

Today, Bennett is trying a new tactic: positioning himself as an enemy of the chareidim. In an interview last week, he declared, “I would like to address the soldiers and to say to them, ‘I see you. Be strong. There are only another 104 days of shame and draft dodging. Reinforcements are on the way, and this awful government is on its way out. Together, we will fix this.’” In another interview, he declared, “These ridiculous laws are transferring tens of billions of shekels to healthy young chareidim. There are 100,000 chareidi youths, and if only 20 percent of them enlisted, we would have no manpower shortage. This is a problem that can be solved. We will abolish the laws of draft evasion and pass a bill that we have prepared: a law for those who serve, which will redirect the money we will save by not funding the draft dodgers to those who do serve, and the reservists above all. A reservist will receive a million shekels for a first apartment and free day care for children from birth through the age of three years. We will shower this handful of people with benefits…. If we bring the chareidim into the work force and the army, we will increase Israel’s GDP by 70 billion shekels every year. The money exists, and that is why I am returning to politics—to repair the country, the economy, and the distorted situation involving our chareidi brothers. That is my mission in life.”

Regarding Betzalel Smotrich, Bennett said, “It is terrible; it’s a disgrace to the expression ‘religious Zionism.’ I grew up with religious Zionism; I grew up in Bnei Akiva, I served in Sayeret Matkal, and my children attended state religious schools. It’s an absolute disgrace. Smotrich is the architect of the draft evasion law. No politician has sacrificed more to transfer billions to chareidi draft evaders than Smotrich has. He should be ashamed. He should go home and clear the playing field. He brings disgrace upon every person who wears a knit yarmulke.” Bennett added, “I am consistently on the political right. I am not the one who surrendered portions of Eretz Yisroel to the enemy or freed thousands of terrorists, and I will not allow us to give up even one centimeter of land.” Amazingly, some people still believe him!

This is merely a sampling of Bennett’s rhetoric. I also have much to say about Gadi Eizenkot, the latest rising star in the polls who has likewise jumped on the bandwagon of anti-chareidi incitement, apparently realizing that it is a path to power. But we will save that for another time.

Tax Authority Chairman’s Brazen Maneuver

As usual, I have much more to write about, but I will have to wrap up this column for now. But before I close the column for this week, I must write briefly about Shai Aharonovich, the director of the Tax Authority.

Last week, tax inspectors visited Bnei Brak, and a riot soon began. The inspectors were pelted with eggs, or possibly yogurts, and bystanders screamed at them. Naturally, they fled from the scene. The same scenario plays out from time to time in Mea Shearim, and while there is nothing acceptable about the crowd’s behavior, the response from the Tax Authority’s director was even worse. He informed the mayor of Bnei Brak that the city would suffer from collective punishment unless the municipality condemned the violence. “Since the city of Bnei Brak hasn’t condemned the violent acts,” Aharonovich wrote, “I have instructed my staff to stop processing claims for compensation due to damages suffered by businesses during Operation Rising Lion and Operation Roaring Lion [the military campaigns against Iran; the Israeli government launched programs offering compensation for businesses whose revenues were impacted by the wars]. The processing will resume only after an unequivocal condemnation is issued and featured in the chareidi press.”

This move on the part of the Tax Authority is completely unethical and presumably illegal as well. But Aharonovich presumably realized that he had gone too far, and he scheduled a meeting with Mayor Chanoch Zeibert of Bnei Brak at the beginning of the week.

Another story that bears mentioning is the fact that Netanyahu’s planned trip to America has been suspended since the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham was postponed. Meanwhile, it was reported that the mayor of New York City has been examining the possibility of arresting Netanyahu if he visits the city. Some say that the mayor is making idle threats, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this led Netanyahu to cancel his trip. Moreover, it is likely that he won’t make the trip to America unless he knows with certainty that he will be able to meet with President Trump, who is very busy with the war against Iran and might not have time for Netanyahu. Then again, perhaps that alone is a reason for the two leaders to meet.

In other Netanyahu-related news, many people ridiculed Sara Netanyahu for her recent request for security for herself and her children even after her husband finishes serving as prime minister. Regarding Binyomin Netanyahu himself, there was no need for a request; every prime minister and defense minister is entitled to a lifelong security detail. Naftoli Bennett, who recently attended a conference in Sun Valley in America, was seen with bodyguards for the same reason. But Sara Netanyahu asked for the same entitlement to be extended to the rest of the Netanyahu family and was mocked for it. Just two days later, the Shin Bet revealed that after the assassinations of senior Iranian officials, a plot was exposed to assassinate a member of the Netanyahu family. While he didn’t identify the exact target, it is widely believed that it was Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son who spends most of his time in Miami.

With that, I will end this week’s column. I wish you all an enjoyable and beneficial vacation, with plenty of opportunities to recharge in advance of the month of Elul. Let us hope that this bein hazemanim vacation will be peaceful and uneventful, without calamities or arrests, and we will hear nothing but good news.