Draft Laws on Haredi Exemptions, a Victory for Evasion Over Zionism
Puli Bronstein argues that the daycare law and the Basic Law on Torah Study reflect a worldview that deepens inequality in bearing the burden, דווקא after the war, and calls for advancing Haredi pathways into service, education, and employment.
There are moments when a political dispute stops being a disagreement over policy and becomes a debate over the character of the state. The promotion of the daycare law and the Basic Law on Torah Study is such a moment. דווקא after October 7, after hundreds of reserve-duty days, thousands of mobilized families, and the heavy personal and financial price paid by Israel’s citizens, one could have expected the government to lead a historic move to broaden shared responsibility for the burden. Instead, it seeks to enshrine in law the opposite reality, one in which part of the public serves, works, pays taxes, and bears responsibility for the state’s security, while another part receives ongoing exemptions and even public benefits funded by the same citizens who carry the burden.
The daycare law and the Basic Law on Torah Study are not merely technical laws. They express a worldview. According to the proposal, anyone who dedicates his life to Torah study will be regarded as performing significant service for the state and the Jewish people. But the question is not whether Torah study is valuable. It is certainly a central value in Jewish tradition. The question is whether Torah study can be equated with the civic duties on which a sovereign state relies. Zionism was not founded to create a society of learners supported by a society of servants. It was founded to return responsibility for its fate to the Jewish people, to replace exile with sovereignty, and to turn Jews from subjects into citizens. That responsibility includes defending the state, participating in the labor market, and contributing to society.
Over the past year, I devoted a great deal of time to studying Haredi society and meeting Haredim from all streams. I came to understand its complexity, but also the reality that is rarely spoken about. An overwhelming majority of young Haredim are not raised to identify with the state and its symbols, and a significant number of them do not actually take part in a full Torah-study framework either. Despite this, the government seeks to grant their status recognition and benefits equivalent to those given to people who fight in the IDF. This is a moral mistake and also a national one. Instead of rewarding Haredi seclusion, the state should invest in creating pathways to integration, in high-quality state-Haredi education, pre-military academies, Haredi hesder yeshivas, and frameworks that allow a Haredi way of life alongside meaningful service, education, and employment. Not to deepen the separation, but to build bridges.
This struggle is not between religious and secular people, nor between right and left. It is between two concepts of citizenship, one based on responsibility, partnership, and mutual guarantee, the other on separatism, sectoralism, and withdrawal from shared obligations. If these laws pass, it will not be a victory for the world of Torah. It will be a victory of evasion over Zionism.
That change will not come from the current government, which chooses to enshrine Haredi withdrawal in law instead of broadening shared responsibility. It can come only from a broad Zionist government that knows how to combine respect for the world of Torah with commitment to the fundamental principles of Israeli sovereignty and democracy. A government that will invest in integration instead of separatism, in responsibility instead of exemptions, and in a shared future instead of deepening divisions. Only such a coalition can advance a vision of Israeli Haredi identity, Haredi identity that preserves its faith and way of life, while seeing itself as an inseparable part of Israeli society, the economy, security, and the shared fate of the State of Israel.
The writer is CEO of Yozmat HaMe'ah.
