Ultra-orthodox draft exemption sharpens threat against Netanyahu government

Ya’akov Cohen shrugs off the prospect of a new law that will force young ultra-Orthodox men like him to abandon full-time study of Jewish scriptures and serve in the Israeli army.   “I can promise you that none of us students will leave the seminary,” he said. “We’ll continue to do what our people have done for hundreds of years: study Torah.”   Cohen is one of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews studying at seminaries — or “yeshivas” — who are exempt from mandatory military service. A dispensation that has grown increasingly contentious in Israeli society now threatens to blow Benjamin Netanyahu’s government apart.   The exemption has long irritated secular Israelis, who must all serve nearly three years in the army followed by years of reserve duty. But with the war in Gaza dragging on, and more than 250 soldiers killed in combat, that irritation has morphed into anger and a determination to change the status quo.  

Ya’akov Cohen shrugs off the prospect of a new law that will force young ultra-Orthodox men like him to abandon full-time study of Jewish scriptures and serve in the Israeli army.   “I can promise you that none of us students will leave the seminary,” he said. “We’ll continue to do what our people have done for hundreds of years: study Torah.”   Cohen is one of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews studying at seminaries — or “yeshivas” — who are exempt from mandatory military service. A dispensation that has grown increasingly contentious in Israeli society now threatens to blow Benjamin Netanyahu’s government apart.   The exemption has long irritated secular Israelis, who must all serve nearly three years in the army followed by years of reserve duty. But with the war in Gaza dragging on, and more than 250 soldiers killed in combat, that irritation has morphed into anger and a determination to change the status quo.  

Ya’akov Cohen shrugs off the prospect of a new law that will force young ultra-Orthodox men like him to abandon full-time study of Jewish scriptures and serve in the Israeli army.   “I can promise you that none of us students will leave the seminary,” he said. “We’ll continue to do what our people have done for hundreds of years: study Torah.”   Cohen is one of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews studying at seminaries — or “yeshivas” — who are exempt from mandatory military service. A dispensation that has grown increasingly contentious in Israeli society now threatens to blow Benjamin Netanyahu’s government apart.   The exemption has long irritated secular Israelis, who must all serve nearly three years in the army followed by years of reserve duty. But with the war in Gaza dragging on, and more than 250 soldiers killed in combat, that irritation has morphed into anger and a determination to change the status quo.