Who Gets Drafted?
On Parshas Bamidbar and exemptions from the army
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
Sefer Bamidbar begins with a census of the Jewish People. This is not the first time the Jewish People were counted. Earlier, in Parshas Ki Sisa, there was also a census.
So why count the Jewish People again?
Rashi explains that God repeatedly counted the Jewish People in order to show his love for them. We count what is beloved.
But does this really explain why the Jewish People are being counted so often? I would understand why Kate McCallister, after losing her son Kevin in two separate movies, would need to constantly count her children, but surely there is another way for God to show how precious each and every member of the Jewish People is.
The Ramban, however, suggests a different reason for the counting: they were preparing for war. As they approached the Land of Israel, the Jewish People were preparing for the wars needed to conquer the land. So Moshe counted all the Jews of military age, those twenty years of age and older.
If, in fact, the point of the census was for military preparation, this may shed light on another anomaly within our parsha, namely the fact that the tribe of Levi was not counted.
As Rambam famously points out, the tribe of Levi was not required to participate in the wars of the Jewish People. They were exempted from the biblical draft. Most famously, Rambam extends this exemption to anyone who chooses to live as if they were a part of the tribe of Levi, by dedicating their entire lives to the study of Torah.
Is the tribe of Levi, in fact, exempt from war? And what was the purpose of this exemption?
To understand this let’s explore the contentious history of Israel’s draft exemption for those studying in yeshiva.
At around 10 AM on October 20th, 1952, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, arrived in Bnei Brak to meet with the leader of the haredi community in Israel, Rav Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, often referred to as the Chazon Ish, the title of his publications. The press was not allowed inside the meeting, though the meeting made headlines in Israeli newspapers. Ben-Gurion had asked for the meeting in the hopes of bridging the divide between the secular (known in Israel as chiloni) and haredi communities within Israel.
What did they discuss at the meeting?
Although there was no press or recording of the meeting, Professor Benjamin Brown, in his incredible Hebrew biography on the Chazon Ish, The Hazon Ish: Halakhist, Believer, and Leader of the Haredi Revolution, did an incredible job reconstructing the details of the meeting based on Ben-Gurion’s diary and the account of Yitzchak Navon, who accompanied Ben-Gurion to the meeting (and later served as President of Israel).
Ben-Gurion’s diary (the originals can be found online) is fairly detailed. As Chen Melul translates in his fascinating article, “When David Ben-Gurion Met the Chazon Ish,” Ben-Gurion described the meeting in his diary as follows:
This morning I went to Bnei Brak for a meeting with the Chazon Ish. The press thought it to be a sensational visit, and I encountered crowds along the way and around his house. A group of his followers waited outside and in the nearby rooms. Yitzhak Navon was the only one who came in with me. I asked him the question to which I have yet to receive a sufficient answer from my observant friends. We are divided in different ways; in the matter at hand we are divided by our views of religious tradition. There are Jews like you and like me, how do we live together? How will we become a unit?
Ben-Gurion pushed the Chazon Ish, “How can we run a country together, would you not admit that love of our fellow Jews should be prioritized?”
The Chazon Ish, however, did not agree that the love of Torah and the love of the Jewish People were competing values. “Love of the Jewish People and love of Torah,” The Chazon Ish explained, “may seem like two separate values, but like all values, they only seem that way—when you look from a higher vantage point you’ll discover they are actually unified: there is no Jewish People without Torah and there is no Torah without the Jewish People.”
For the moment, however, the Chazon Ish, expected some measure of deference from the State that would ensure the preservation of the haredi community in Israel. As Navon later recounted, the Chazon Ish presented a Talmudic analogy. “In halacha,” the Chazon Ish explained, “if there are two camels that are traveling together on the road—one is laden with heavy baggage and the other is not carrying anything, the camel that is carrying baggage should pass first.” The haredi community, explained the Chazon Ish, is carrying Jewish tradition, the 613 commandments, and therefore should be permitted to pass first. I believe however, the Chazon Ish told Ben-Gurion, that one day we will all share the same vision and there will be no questions.
The meeting lasted just under an hour and Ben-Gurion described it as warm without any overt zealotry. The office of the Prime Minister gave a rather muted statement to the press:
PM D. Ben-Gurion met privately with Rabbi A. Y. Karelitz (“The Chazon Ish”) in Bnei Brak yesterday. The purpose of the visit was to exchange general views regarding the following issue: How can observant and non-observant (Jews) live together harmoniously in the State of Israel? The question of recruiting women (to the army) was not discussed and the visit had no relation to current political matters.
This however was not entirely true. As Melul explains:
The prime minister made a gesture towards the ultra-Orthodox community by agreeing to continue the exemption of a limited number of Torah scholars from military service. As early as February 1948, before the State of Israel had even been formally established, a limited number of young ultra-Orthodox men were exempted from being drafted into the armed forces, which were already fighting in what would come to be known as Israel’s War of Independence. On January 9th, 1951, the prime minister ordered the Israeli army’s chief of staff to exempt yeshiva students from regular service. Ben-Gurion’s meeting with the Chazon Ish did not set the ground for the current ultra-Orthdox exemption from military service, but it did give the controversial early arrangement a substantial political boost, and equally significant – symbolic support.
The Chazon Ish was certainly not the only rabbinic voice on the matter, though he undoubtedly held the most influence within the haredi community. In 1948, an anonymous article was published advocating for all yeshiva students to serve in the Israeli army. The article has been attributed to Rav Yosef Shlomo Zevin, whose Zionist leanings were no secret, but more recently Professor Marc Shapiro has questioned whether this article was correctly attributed. As Shlomo Brody points out in his wonderful work, Ethics of Our Fighters, other Rabbis including Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook and Rav Herzog were much more supportive of conscription—even of yeshiva students.
Initially, Ben-Gurion allowed 400 exceptions offered to those studying full-time in yeshiva. This number was eventually doubled in 1975 by then-Minister of Defense Shimon Peres. Only after Likud’s victory in 1977 did Agudath Israel’s party make lifting the draft exemption numbers a condition for them joining Likud’s governing coalition. By 1980 there were almost 10,000 exemptions.
In 1998 a lawsuit, Rubinstein v. Minister of Defense, was brought before Israel’s Supreme Court that challenged whether or not the Defense Minister did indeed have the authority to grant such exemptions. The court ruled that the Defense Minister had no such power to issue blanket exemptions and urged Knesset to propose new legislation.
In response to the court’s ruling, Prime Minister Ehud Barak tasked retired Israeli Supreme Court justice Zvi Tal to convene a commission to propose new legislation. Jay Politzer in his thesis, Peace Makers or Draft Dodgers: Haredi Resistance to Israeli Military Conscription, summarizes the results of the Tal Law that were officially adopted in 2002:
Its report began by recommending that yeshiva student deferrals continue without a ceiling. These deferrals did, however, include a stipulation. Although 18-year-old yeshiva students would remain deferred, the Tal Commission recommended that these students take an optional ‘decision year’ upon reaching the age of 22. During this year, yeshiva students would be free to enter the labor market or enroll in educational or vocational training without fear of being conscripted. After the decision year, yeshiva students could choose from one of three options. First, these haredim could return to their yeshivas and remain deferred. Second, they could enlist in the IDF for a reduced term of service for four months, after which they would serve in the reserves, thus making them eligible to legally pursue employment. Third, they could volunteer for one year of civil service, such as in paramedic and firefighting units or in local departments of social services, which would also permit them to work and free them from the prospects of being drafted.
The proposals of the Tal Law did not succeed. Haredi enlistment did not markedly increase and in 2012 the laws themselves were ruled unconstitutional by Israel’s Supreme Court. Since then this issue has remained in legislative limbo.
As the haredi yeshiva system was debated within Israeli society, a different system for yeshiva learning was championed by the Religious Zionist community known as Hesder (literally arrangement) whereby yeshivas made formal arrangements for the drafting of their students. Rav Yehuda Amital, who later founded Har Etzion, is generally credited with founding the movement. Rav Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht, who studied under the Chazon Ish, created the first Hesder program at Yeshivat Keren B’Yavnah.
In 1981, Rav Ahron Lichtenstein, who served beside Rav Amital as Rosh Yeshiva in Yeshivat Har Etzion wrote an article, “The Ideology of Hesder,” explaining the religious outlook of the movement. Characteristic of Rav Lichtenstein’s general outlook and approach, the article is scholarly and substantive, but never strident or adversarial. He explicitly avoids any polemics with the yeshiva world. “There are matters on which honest men of Torah can differ seriously out of mutual respect,” Rav Lichtenstein writes, “and I certainly have no desire to denigrate those who do not subscribe to my own positions.” Instead, he argues that at the very least "Hesder should be seen as a legitimate path as any other. It is, to my mind, a good deal more, but surely not less.”
In 1991, on Yom Haatzmaut, the State of Israel awarded Rav Goldvicht the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest honor, for his work pioneering the Hesder movement. As a student of the Hazon Ish who dressed in traditional haredi garb, he was an interesting choice to represent the Hesder movement, one that was not lost on others. The citation read in part, “The Hesder Yeshiva movement is an original and creative innovation developed in the newly established State of Israel to replace the centers of Torah learning destroyed during the Holocaust in Europe."
Why was the tribe of Levi not counted?
Rashi provides two reasons:
Given their exalted status, the legion of the King should be counted separately.
Only those who were destined to die in the wilderness were counted. Since the tribe of Levi did not participate in the sin of the Golden Calf, they were spared and therefore not counted.
Neither of these explanations, as Rav Herschel Schachter notes, seems to accord with the Rambam that gives a blanket exclusion for the Tribe of Levi for participating in the wars of the Jewish People.
To Rambam, however, it makes sense why they were not counted—because they were not serving in the army since they dedicated their life to Torah study.
During World War I, British Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz sent a letter to Rav Kook regarding his opinion on conscripting yeshiva students. Rav Kook was vehemently opposed. “No government can remove our sacred duty,” Rav Kook writes (Iggros Ra’aya 3:810). Later Rav Tzvi Yehuda, Rav Kook’s son, clarified to Rav Shaar Yashuv Cohen, brother-in-law of Rav Goren, that he assumed his father’s words would not apply when Jews were fighting for their Jewish homeland.
Still, everyone agrees on the vital importance of continued Torah study for the future of the Jewish People. As Rav Lichtenstein explicitly acknowledges in his article, the question is how many, and from what community. His article ends with a prayer:
May God grant us a better station. In the meantime, however, if it is to become no worse, we must keep both our spirits and our guard up. Animated by vision and yet chary of danger, we, of yeshivot Hesder, pray that He may grant us the wisdom and the courage to cope with the challenges of the time. Fully appreciative of both the price we pay and the value of that which we safeguard in return, we approach our task with responsibility and humility; and, impelled by both commitment to Torah and compassion for our people, we strive to fulfill it with a sense of broader spiritual and historical vision. Standing in tears atop Har Hazeitim, the bleak sight of kol hamekudash mehavero harev yoter mhavero stretching before him, what would the Ramban have given to head a yeshivat Hesder.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
When David Ben-Gurion Met the Chazon Ish, Chen Melul
The Hazon Ish: Halakhist, Believer, and Leader of the Haredi Revolution, Benjamin Brown
R. Shelomo Yosef Zevin on the Drafting of Yeshiva Students, David Wachsman
R. Shlomo Yosef Zevi and the Army, Marc Shapiro
Peace Makers or Draft Dodgers: Haredi Resistance to Israeli Military Conscription, Jay Politzer
Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht and His Unintentional Revolution in Yavneh, Shlomo Abramovich
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Reading Jewish History in the Parsha has been generously sponsored by my dearest friends Janet and Lior Hod and family with immense gratitude to Hashem.
Great post! With the current situation in Israel I've been meaning to look into the history of army exemption - now I don't need to anymore.