Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks on the Haredi draft crisis do not reflect the position of those actually working to integrate Haredi men into the IDF, Rabbi Yonatan Reiss, founder of the Hedvata network of Haredi hesder yeshivas, said Sunday in an interview with ynet.
Reiss was responding after Netanyahu said at a press conference Saturday that heads of Haredi hesder yeshivas had warned him that “Torah students are being arrested inside the yeshivas.” Netanyahu said he had received a message that “when you send people into the yeshivas, take Torah students out and send them to prison, no one enlists.”
But no known case has been reported of a draft dodger being arrested inside a yeshiva, and the Haredi hesder yeshivas did not make such a claim in their letter to Netanyahu.
“I assume the prime minister received his message from Goldknopf,” Reiss told ynet, referring to United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf. “We delivered a completely different message, the same message we have been voicing for three years. Unfortunately, not only did they not listen to us, but every time we tried to advance a move, the cabinet secretary stopped it again.”
The comments come as the government advances a move to freeze arrests of Haredi draft dodgers, and after Netanyahu argued that arrests of Torah students harm efforts to enlist Haredim. Reiss said the focus on arrests misses the central problem: the lack of suitable frameworks that would allow young Haredi men who want to enlist to do so without abandoning their identity and way of life.
“As a Haredi person, I believe a Jewish state must make room for the world of Torah,” Reiss said. “Arrests serve no one, not secular Israelis, not Arabs and certainly not Haredim. Soldiers on the battlefield will not come out of arrests, even if in the end you manage to break one or two people.”
According to Reiss, after the October 7 attack, the government should have turned Haredi enlistment into a national project, not through coercion and arrests, but by creating dedicated frameworks.
“If the Israeli government had dealt with Haredi enlistment since then through a serious government decision, as it has done in the past in other areas, and had called on entrepreneurs to establish frameworks, not rabbis but entrepreneurs, we would already be seeing imaginary numbers,” he said. “There are many Haredim who want to integrate. They simply do not have the bridge.”
Reiss said that was also the message sent to Netanyahu in the letter. “We told him: Stop dealing with arrests. It does not help. Start dealing with Haredi enlistment.”
He sharply criticized Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, whom he accused of repeatedly blocking government initiatives meant to expand Haredi enlistment tracks.
“Over the past two years, he has stopped government decisions more than twice that Yuli Edelstein and others wanted to promote, following pressure from the Haredi leadership,” Reiss claimed.
Knesset Member and United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf. 'I assume Netanyahu got the message from him. Ours is the complete opposite'
(Photo: Idan Blumhof)
According to Reiss, the government has only a short window of opportunity left.
“Now the government has a final opportunity in the coming weeks,” he said. “If it wants to advance a law, it must at the same time bring a government decision dealing with Haredi enlistment and reach out to Haredi entrepreneurs. If calls for proposals are published, more entrepreneurs will emerge, more hesder yeshivas and more tracks. Today all of this is being done with very limited resources.”
The Haredi hesder yeshiva track is designed for Haredi men aged 17 to 20 who want to combine Torah study, military service and professional training while maintaining a Haredi way of life. It includes religious studies alongside academic studies or practical engineering training, followed by two years of military service in dedicated frameworks.
Those frameworks include the Hasmonean Brigade, the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, Haredi companies in the Givati and Paratroopers brigades, and technological units such as 8200, Matzpen and Ofek.
After completing their service, many graduates go on to serve as officers and professionals in the IDF, and later integrate into high-tech, engineering, security and management positions in the workforce.
There are currently about 10 Haredi hesder yeshivas operating, with additional yeshivas in the process of being established. According to the network’s figures, more than 1,000 students are enrolled in the track, and the completion rate for studies, military service and employment integration stands at more than 80%.
Reiss said the Hedvata network has grown significantly in recent years.
“We started nine years ago with only six students, and today we are approaching 400,” he said.
A new Haredi hesder yeshiva is expected to open soon in the Jordan Valley, he added.
“It will operate like a regular yeshiva, with a full study hall, while at the same time the students will hold a line in the Jordan Valley, perform guard duty and serve as an emergency response squad, according to the needs of the army,” Reiss said. “That is real news.”
Reiss stressed that the key is not coercion but a long educational process that recognizes the complexity of Haredi society.
“There are many Haredi boys who do not find themselves in yeshivas, alongside masses of genuine Torah students,” he said. “Everyone knows there are also those who are there without really fitting in. But thinking that someone who is not studying will simply enlist in the army is like thinking that a teenager from Ramat Aviv who failed his matriculation exams will go study in a Haredi yeshiva. It simply does not work that way.”
A young man raised in the Haredi education system, Reiss said, needs a framework that allows a gradual transition into Israeli society and military service.
“If the state does not build him a real educational bridge from the Haredi world into integration in the state, through connection and not assimilation, nothing will change,” he said. “We will continue standing in the same place for decades.”
Reiss said Haredi hesder yeshivas prove that a different approach is possible.
“They create the right educational process and offer a real alternative for boys who do not find themselves in the regular yeshiva track,” he said. “If the state adopts this model, this issue can be solved once and for all.”