They weren’t supposed to fight.
At Israel’s founding in 1948, the new nation’s leaders agreed that ultra-Orthodox men — known as the Haredim, or God-fearing, in Hebrew — would be spared from mandatory military service. In exchange, Haredi leaders lent their support for the largely secular state.
The arrangement held for Israel’s first 75 years, until the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
The resulting war in Gaza pulled hundreds of thousands of Israelis into battle — but hardly any ultra-Orthodox. The dynamic exacerbated tensions that had been simmering for years.
The Haredim, who average more than six children per family, now make up 14 percent of the nation, up from 5 percent in 1948. In 40 years, they are on track to account for half of all Israeli children.
As the numbers of Haredim have grown, many Israelis have become frustrated that their own sons and daughters are sent to fight while the Haredim receive government subsidies to study the Torah.
Last summer, the tensions broke open. Under pressure, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that ultra-Orthodox men were no longer exempt from service. The military has since sent draft orders to 10,000 Haredi men. Just 338 have shown up for duty.
Israel is now confronting one of its messiest and most fundamental dilemmas: Its fastest growing sect won’t serve in the military.
After the Supreme Court decision, The New York Times began following three Haredi teenagers who represent the divergent paths for the Haredim and Israel.
Chaim Krausz, 19, studies the Torah for 14 hours a day, just like his father before him. He has protested the Supreme Court decision and believes armed service is not only a sin, but also a threat to ultra-Orthodox traditions.
Itamar Greenberg, 18, a former ultra-Orthodox seminary student, has also protested against the Israeli state, but his reasons are not religious. “They’ve been committing a massacre in Gaza,” he said.
Yechiel Wais, 19, also once studied in a seminary, but had dreams of a life outside his strict ultra-Orthodox community and left for the work force. Then his draft orders arrived.
“It’s not an entry ticket to Israeli society,” Mr. Wais said of a position in the Israeli military. “But it’s the minimum requirement.”
The soldier
Growing up, Mr. Wais wore a black-and-white suit. Like most ultra-Orthodox males, it was practically his only outfit.
But one year for Purim, a Jewish holiday when many children wear costumes, he dressed up as an Israeli soldier. He lived near an Israeli Air Force base and loved watching the F-16 fighter jets from behind a fence.
The idea of him, a Haredi boy, growing up to be a soldier felt impossible. “I didn’t even fantasize about it,” he said.
Ultra-Orthodox men are supposed to devote themselves to a life of study and prayer. For many, that includes isolation from the outside, secular world: no internet, no television and no radio.
At Mr. Wais’s home, even the CD player was “kosher” — its radio antenna removed. One day, when Mr. Wais was listening to music, he suddenly heard a voice through static. His headphones had unwittingly picked up a radio signal. After that, he spent hours surreptitiously listening to the radio, discovering a very different world.
It was the beginning of his exit from a strict ultra-Orthodox life. When he turned 17 in 2022, he told his parents he wanted to leave the yeshiva to work. They were stunned, but acquiesced. They took him to a mall to shop for clothes for his new life.
He found a job outside Tel Aviv. Then, when he heard about the Supreme Court decision, he found a new path, fighting for his country.
The student
Mr. Krausz has no interest in secular Israeli society.
He spends most of his time under the tutelage of rabbis who warn against a long list of sins, including any contact with women outside his family before marriage. He hardly leaves his densely packed ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, where signs — including above his family home — warn passers-by to dress modestly so as not to offend residents.
It is how he wants to live.
Thousands of Haredi men in Israel receive government subsidies to study the Torah, while their wives often work. In Israel, 53 percent of Haredi men are employed, versus 80 percent of Haredi women. For Israelis who are not ultra-Orthodox, employment rates exceed 80 percent.
The Haredi population is also soaring — from 40,000 in 1948 to 1.3 million today.
Mr. Krausz is one of 18 children. In his four-room house, people sleep around the dining room table. He wants the same big family. “The more the better,” he said. His parents are searching for a wife for him.
The government had long funded at least a fifth of yeshivas’ budgets; donors cover the rest. Then earlier this year, an Israeli court halted public funding to yeshivas that teach military-age men, part of the push to get more Haredim into the military.
The decision doesn’t bother Mr. Krausz. One of the reasons he resists military service is that he opposes the concept of the Israeli state.
Mr. Krausz’s sect, Yahadut Haharedi, says there should not be a Jewish state until the messiah arrives.
The activist
In the weeks before his new life in the military, Mr. Wais headed out for a night out with friends. Sliding into the car, Mr. Wais wrinkled his nose and said, “The lefty sitting next to me is sweaty.”
That “lefty” he referred to was his friend, Mr. Greenberg, who was indeed far to the left ideologically — and sweaty. He had come directly from an antiwar demonstration and had stickers on his shirt to show for it.
The two had met on social media months earlier and formed a friendship as young Haredi men trying to fit into broader society.
At age 12, Mr. Greenberg began questioning his faith with a censored version of the internet as a guide, dreaming of life outside his community. “The only way to become a part of Israeli society is to get drafted,” he recalled thinking. “That was one of the most accurate realizations I had in my life.”
By 16, his views had evolved further — and to the left. He became a vegan, stopped believing in God and developed a fierce opposition to the Israeli occupation.
He also opposes the drafting of the ultra-Orthodox, but for different reasons than most. “It’s important to integrate the ultra-Orthodox people into Israeli society,” he said. “And to work for equality. But I don’t care about equality in killing and oppression.”
In the car to Jerusalem, Mr. Wais and Mr. Greenberg jokingly exchanged digs. They drank colorful cocktails at a friend’s apartment and then headed to a Haredi haunt that served traditional Jewish foods like chopped liver and cholent, a slow-cooked stew. Eventually the conversation turned to politics.
“I’m not willing to take part in a system that commits such crimes,” Mr. Greenberg said to Mr. Wais in the car.
“Which crimes?” Mr. Wais responded.
“Do you want a list?” Mr. Greenberg said.
It would be their last night out together. Both had been drafted. While Mr. Wais was preparing for basic training, Mr. Greenberg was preparing to report to a military prison as a conscientious objector. His ultra-Orthodox family reluctantly accepted his new views, including his father, a rare Haredi man who serves in the Army reserves.
He was not accepted by his bunk mates. Once in prison, Mr. Greenberg realized that his fellow inmates were not activists like him, but soldiers accused of crimes. They taunted and threatened him, he said, and guards sometimes put him in solitary confinement for his own protection. “They hate the army,” he said of the other prisoners, “but they hate me more.”
Last month, after 197 days incarcerated across five separate prison stints, Mr. Greenberg walked out of the prison for what he hoped was the final time. “The army’s decided to release me,” he said, dressed in a green sweatshirt with smiley faces.
“But the broader goal was to build a better future, for everyone from Jordan to the sea,” he added. “I’m not done with that yet.”
An ultra-Orthodox platoon
Over the past several decades, hundreds of Haredi men had defied their community and volunteered for military service, but most had been kept away from combat. Mr. Wais wanted to be different: He wanted to fight.
“I don’t like war,” he said. “But I like action in the street — the soldiers and rockets.”
Yet after a medical exam revealed he needed ear surgery, military officials told him he was not cut out for combat. Instead, he would maintain aircraft.
In August, he arrived at an air force base in Israel’s north and was assigned to a unit with two dozen other Haredi soldiers. They shed their traditional black-and-white garb for mechanics’ jumpsuits, but kept their kipas, or traditional skullcaps. Many also still wore payot, or side curls, common among the ultra-Orthodox. Mr. Wais had shaved his years earlier.
Their barracks and lunch tables were separated from other soldiers to avoid mixing with women, which could violate Haredi principles. Their food was cooked to even stricter kosher standards. They prayed and studied religious texts for two to three hours a day — the most Mr. Wais said he had studied since leaving the seminary.
“There isn’t a soldier here who could complain how we’re being treated with regard to religious issues,” he said.
On a recent day, Mr. Wais and two fellow Haredi soldiers went through final training on maintenance for an F-16 fighter jet. They were the same jets he used to watch as a child.
Afterward, the soldiers gathered for a sermon from a Haredi rabbi. They were set to graduate from training the next day.
“We are in the middle of the biggest war of all,” the rabbi, David Viseman, told the teenagers.
“You have to prepare your souls to cling to goodness in the world,” he added. “To erase evil.”
Now he is working as an aircraft technician in a special ultra-Orthodox unit of the Israeli Air Force’s 105th Scorpion Squadron.
“We are the new pioneers,” he said. “We are marching at the head of a movement.”
An ultra-Orthodox protest
To Mr. Krausz, the evil are the Haredim in the military.
“It’s the way I look at any Jew who breaks the Shabbat,” he said, referring to the Jewish day of rest. “It’s forbidden to love them.”
He was more forgiving of secular soldiers. “Of course they don’t know better,” he said, puffing on a strawberry-kiwi-flavored vape at his dining room table, shelves of religious texts behind him.
His biggest fear is that the ultra-Orthodox faith won’t survive if Haredi men must fight.
After the Supreme Court decision, Mr. Krausz joined thousands of other Haredi men in the streets. They crowded around an enlistment office and harassed the Haredi draftees going in.
The Israeli Army said in a statement that Haredi men who ignore draft orders “may face criminal sanctions.”
Yet unlike Mr. Greenberg, who turned himself in to the authorities, Mr. Krausz and his peers have largely avoided consequences.
Any effort to force them to serve, Mr. Krausz warned, would not be taken lightly.
“We are willing to die to not go to the army,” he said.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Jerusalem and Haifa, Israel.
