Integrate haredim into workforce
Op-ed: Government needs to start offering the ultra-religious the carrot more, not the stick. Let them work so they'll get out of their close-knit environment of rabbis and political figures
The attempt to forcefully enlist thousands of haredim to the IDF is like trying to feed the State's chief rabbis a plate of shrimps topped off with a glass of milk. In the coming year, as well as in the coming years, there is no chance that this will happen. Haredim will not enlist – they will continue to saddle the benches of the yeshivot instead of looking like saddles on a sow in the army.
The IDF wants everyone in the country to play its part – but first it needs to understand the world of the haredim, to study them, to live with them in order to understand that the likelihood is low.
They're happy in their world. For haredim, students and rabbis, diving into the sea of the Talmud and the Bible is a type of self-sacrifice. Those who were educated on the legends of Elazar the Maccabi, who committed a Kamikaze suicide attack thinking he was killing the Greek king Antiochus, or Hanna and her seven sons who committed suicide by martyrdom for not bowing down to idolatry – only those can understand the significance of the haredim's version of Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God's name). By studying the Torah they are sanctifying God's name, demonstrating religious determination against the flaccidity of secularism.
The haredi community is also celebrating its community, and the numbers speak for themselves. First prime minister David Ben-Gurion let 400 prodigy scholars learn Torah and not enlist, and now the number has turned into tens of thousands. The haredi rabbis won't give up on them – and according to their theory the tens of thousands of students will be jailed and dependent on their political parties. This way they can hold them on a tight leash, because they are their battalions to receive money – for votes in elections and of course for the studies themselves.
Therefore, we've been hearing more and more within the army and the government that the haredim need to be given the carrot more, and not the stick – to offer them to get out and start working. This way, in a couple years they'll get out of their close-knit environment of rabbis and political figures.
The proposal to enlist them at the age of 24, when most of them already have families, will cost the State a load of money, and the IDF itself will go out of its mind when each one comes with his specific demands for kashrut and other religious details. The sad conclusion is: The IDF doesn't need to enlist them, but it is almost mandatory that everything is done to integrate them in the workforce.
And in the meantime, we can all argue on the matter.
