Prime ministers over the near-eight decades of Israel’s existence have been forced not to disturb the status quo for fear of losing their Knesset majority, with the religious parties usually having the ability to topple the ever-present coalitions that are the result of the country’s awkward proportional representation political system.

In 1948, Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion exempted some 400 yeshiva students from military service, needing the support of the ultra-Orthodox community to form a government.

The arrangement, which came to be known as Torato Umanuto (Torah as vocation), remained as the status quo for decades. Charedi men who were studying full time in a yeshiva were allowed by the Ministry of Defence to defer their service until they were exempted at the age of 26, effectively allowing them to avoid military service altogether.

This ‘arrangement’ has understandably upset and angered vast numbers of Israelis who feel that charedim benefit from the country’s welfare services and other facilities and should not be allowed to avoid being called up when the country needs all the manpower it can muster, particularly in times of war.

Charedim argue that without full time study, there will be no Jewish continuity.

There are exceptions, with the introduction of specific charedi units in recent years, but the secular majority in Israel still fail to understand how one section of the population can shelter from the risks of active service by using Torah study as an excuse.

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