The Haredi draft exemption fight, explained

David Ben-Gurion exempted 400 yeshiva students from military service in 1948, and the 1949 Defense Service Law wrote that exemption into section 12. The cap on how many students could hold it stayed small at first, 800 a year after the Six-Day War, until the Begin government scrapped the numerical limit entirely in 1977. From there the exemption applied to any man who could show he was a full-time yeshiva student. ²

The legal fights started in 1998, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Rubinstein case that the defense minister needed explicit legislative authority to grant exemptions on that scale, not just his own discretion. The Knesset answered in 2002 with the Tal Law, which created a "year of decision" at age 23 when a yeshiva student could leave to work or do civilian service without losing the exemption retroactively. The court struck the Tal Law down in 2012 as unconstitutional. A 2014 amendment set enlistment quotas of 3,300 conscripts in its first year, and a 2015 amendment extended the adjustment window from three years to six, but that follow-up amendment got invalidated in 2017 for violating equality principles. The legislative arrangement that followed expired in June 2023 and was never replaced. ²

That left the law as written: full conscription obligation, no exemption on the books. In June 2024 the High Court ruled that no legal framework existed for a blanket exemption for Haredi yeshiva students and ordered the government to begin drafting them. The court also ordered a halt to state payments to yeshivas whose students weren't enlisting, effective April 1, 2024. ¹²

Enforcement has not followed the ruling. Between July 2024 and March 2025, the IDF issued 18,915 draft orders to Haredi men; roughly 2% of recipients actually enlisted. About 70,000 eligible yeshiva students remain undrafted while the IDF says it needs 12,000 new recruits, most in combat roles, to cover the strain from ongoing fighting. In April 2025 the High Court issued a provisional order, a step that shifts the burden of proof onto the government, demanding it explain why it isn't issuing or enforcing enough conscription orders, with a response deadline of June 24, 2025. Netanyahu's Haredi coalition partners have continued pushing legislation to write a new exemption into law rather than comply with the ruling. ¹