They were spared from the bloody Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and they are exempt from military service. Yet some Orthodox Jews have chosen to renounce that controversial privilege and join the Israeli army.
Dozens gathered outside a recruitment office in Tel Aviv this week, responding to an appeal by the army to all those who may have skills useful in the war against Hamas. The army said that, in the end, 120 had enrolled and would be assigned to support missions, nursing or driving.
Journalists have not been permitted by Israeli authorities to speak with the new recruits.
The number may be modest, but the symbolism is nevertheless strong. Under an agreement that dates to the foundation of Israel in 1948, Jewish men who choose to study the Torah full time in a yeshiva are granted an annual deferment from military service until the age of 26, at which point they become exempt.
That allows about 12,000 young men a year, according to a recent army report, to avoid obligatory national service that would otherwise last 32 months as well as the reserve duty for which discharged citizens are liable until the age of 40.
Religious women are automatically exempted from the 24-month conscription imposed on secular Israeli women. There were few, if any, members of the Haredi community — the Hebrew name for the Orthodox, meaning “those who tremble” at the word of God — among the 1,400 killed by Hamas on Oct. 7.
The all-night rave and the secular kibbutzim around Gaza where the Islamist militants killed hundreds of civilians, were not places where Orthodox Jews were likely to spend time.
Nor, because of their exemptions, were Haredi Jews likely to have been among those soldiers killed fighting to regain control from Hamas.
Instead, the Orthodox are active in charitable associations and, in particular, Zaka, an NGO that works to identify bodies and ensure proper Jewish burials. Among those few Haredi Jews who do join the military, many serve in a unit that specializes in body retrievals.
With the Israeli army likely to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, following on from its relentless aerial bombardment that the Hamas-run health ministry says has killed more than 5,000 people, mostly civilians, the decades-old debate about Haredi military exemptions has gained a new urgency.
The spiritual leaders of Orthodox Judaism, who account for about 12 percent of the Israeli population, have called for a redoubling of prayers and a strengthening of religious practice.
Before the war started, a bill was due to be debated in the Israeli parliament on continuing the deferments for Haredi Jews.
The two Orthodox parties that were members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-war government — they provided 18 of 120 MPs — supported his controversial judicial reforms in exchange for support on the law. There have been calls, albeit rare ones, from within the Orthodox community to join the army and participate in the war effort in uniform.
Raphael Kreuzer, a rabbi from a modernizing stream of Haredi Judaism, caused waves by calling for yeshiva students to enroll in the military. “It is about our people, it is about us and we must act,” he said, adding that students should demand that their rabbis “be part of the defense of their land.”
“To say that tomorrow, all the yeshiva students will join the army, no, I don’t think that’s possible, but this is a real war... It is a religious duty to serve and protect your country,” MP for the Sephardic Orthodox Shas party Yosef Taieb told AFP.
“Everyone in their own way must help the army and the country to win this war,” said Taieb, a former combat soldier. Such views, though, are far from universal in the Haredi community.
Images have spread widely on social media of a senior officer who had visited a yeshiva to urge students to put aside their books and enlist only to have rabbis and pupils try to silence him. “I will continue to do so until 10,000 yeshiva students enlist,” the officer, Erez Eshel, wrote in the right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon. The army offers multiple options to religious Jews, allowing them to do military service without abandoning their way of life.
Nevertheless, only a few hundred are willing to take the risk of being ostracized by their communities. And the vast majority of Haredi leaders remain hostile to any attempts to enroll their youngsters. One rabbi even criticized the secular victims of Hamas the army is seeking to avenge. Yaakov-Tzvi Boshkovski called the desert rave on the Jewish sabbath, at which Hamas killed 260 people, “a provocation in the face of the divine.”
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry gives it a strategic advantage, but that advantage would be threatened as the US seeks to end Taiwan’s monopoly in the industry and as China grows more assertive, analysts said at a security dialogue last week. While the semiconductor industry is Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” its dominance has been seen by some in the US as “a monopoly,” South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University academic Kwon Seok-joon said at an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition, Taiwan lacks sufficient energy sources and is vulnerable to natural disasters and geopolitical threats from China, he said.
After reading the article by Hideki Nagayama [English version on same page] published in the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) on Wednesday, I decided to write this article in hopes of ever so slightly easing my depression. In August, I visited the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, to attend a seminar. While there, I had the chance to look at the museum’s collections. I felt extreme annoyance at seeing that the museum had classified Taiwanese indigenous peoples as part of China’s ethnic minorities. I kept thinking about how I could make this known, but after returning
What value does the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hold in Taiwan? One might say that it is to defend — or at the very least, maintain — truly “blue” qualities. To be truly “blue” — without impurities, rejecting any “red” influence — is to uphold the ideology consistent with that on which the Republic of China (ROC) was established. The KMT would likely not object to this notion. However, if the current generation of KMT political elites do not understand what it means to be “blue” — or even light blue — their knowledge and bravery are far too lacking
Taipei’s population is estimated to drop below 2.5 million by the end of this month — the only city among the nation’s six special municipalities that has more people moving out than moving in this year. A city that is classified as a special municipality can have three deputy mayors if it has a population of more than 2.5 million people, Article 55 of the Local Government Act (地方制度法) states. To counter the capital’s shrinking population, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) held a cross-departmental population policy committee meeting on Wednesday last week to discuss possible solutions. According to Taipei City Government data, Taipei’s