by Nochum Weiss
There’s no other way to say it. The Charedi refusal to serve in the army isn’t about Torah. It’s about fear of exposure. Of losing control.
The official line - “we’re protecting Torah” is a non-starter. There’s more Torah study today than at any point in Jewish history. Nobody is threatening the Torah.
What’s being protected is the system of control that depends on isolation.
Because the moment a young man or woman spends time in a mixed environment - hearing other accents, seeing other Jews who live differently but are still committed - the illusion starts to break. In the army, they learn to make decisions, to function without rabbinic oversight, to stand on their own. That independence is dangerous - not because it corrupts, but because it empowers.
And so, they don’t just refuse combat. They refuse any participation¹ - intelligence, logistics, tech, cooking - anything that could integrate them into national life. Because integration means exposure. Exposure means curiosity. And curiosity means the possibility of doubt.
The whole thing is a tantrum frozen in time. In 1948, Ben-Gurion treated it like one. He said fine - let a few hundred boys sit and learn². The child was small then. It was crying, and he figured it would grow up eventually. But it didn’t. It grew older without growing up.
Now the child is a full-grown adult still screaming on the floor, kicking its legs, demanding everyone else stop what they’re doing to accommodate its fear.
You can see it clearly in moments like this confrontation after October 7. A group of reservists met with Rabbi Tzvi Friedman. They spoke about a country in crisis. The house is on fire, they said. Everyone needs to grab a bucket.
Friedman didn’t argue the facts. He said the fire was irrelevant.
“Being in secular Israeli society,” he told them, “is worse than death.”
Separate Charedi units? “The army is one body; its spirit will seep in.”
Zionist culture, he said, “isn’t Judaism.” Hundreds of students had already signed declarations accepting death over enlistment.
When your entire world is built on the belief that isolation equals holiness, exposure feels like extinction. Zionism isn’t the issue - it’s just the symbol for a Jewish life that doesn’t require rabbinic permission to exist.
A faith that collapses the moment it meets the world isn’t faith. It’s fragility disguised as holiness.
And the fragility runs deep. They reject Zionism yet demand its funding. Call others immoral while depending on their labor and taxes. Preach spiritual strength but cannot survive a single draft notice without threatening to unravel.
That’s not holiness. That’s institutionalized weakness.
When yeshiva institutions spoof “Bring Them Home” imagery and protesters co-opt hostage symbols, that weakness turns into moral blindness.
And the rest of Israel keeps feeding it. Billions in funding. Deferments. Deference. All to maintain a fantasy of unity that no longer exists. Because the Charedim don’t see themselves as part of the Jewish people anymore. Not really. Ask them if the Dati Leumi community’s Torah counts. Ask them if the soldiers who pray before battle are serving God.
There’s no fixing this. Not through understanding. Not through appeasement. You can’t reform people who refuse to participate in the same moral universe.
The only real solution is financial. No more double standards. If you want to live outside the state - fine. But then live outside the state. No funding, no subsidies, no stipends for eternal dependency. You can’t take billions from the public purse while rejecting every public duty. Pick a side.
Because this isn’t going to end well. The child is grown now. It’s time to stop pretending the tantrum is sacred.
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