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Specialized training base to open following $46 million investment, with brigade reportedly to be ready for combat in a year.
By Ben Rappaport, United with Israel and Pesach Benson, TPS
A new haredi IDF brigade is advancing despite current tensions surrounding haredi recruitment policy.
Israel Hayom reported that the first group of infantry combat trainees for the brigade will in December arrive for training at a Jordan Valley base which has seen a $46 million upgrade to accommodate haredi religious requirements, including four new synagogues.
The haredi brigade will reportedly be ready for combat by November 2025.
According to Israel Hayom, the IDF’s increased focus on haredi recruitment emanates from operational necessity, as an additional infantry brigade could substantially decrease the burden on reserve forces.
In turn, the IDF has shifted its approach away from trying to “educate” the haredi community toward a more conciliatory approach attempting to show that haredi religious observance and army service can coexist. Toward this end, the army has sought broad-based support for recruitment, including from rabbinical leaders.
Military service is compulsory for all Israeli citizens. However, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and the country’s leading rabbis agreed to a status quo that deferred military service for haredi men studying in yeshivot, or religious institutions. At the time, no more than several hundred men were studying in yeshivot.
However, the haredi community has grown significantly since Israel’s founding. In January 2023, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that haredim are Israel’s fastest-growing community and projected it would constitute 16% of the population by the end of the decade. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, the number of yeshiva students exceeded 138,000 in 2021.
That demographic growth has fueled passionate debates about “sharing the burden” of military service, the status of religious study in a Jewish society, and haredi integration.
The war against Hamas, now in its tenth month, has stretched the army’s manpower needs, sharpening the national debate.
At the same time, attitudes within the haredi community itself toward IDF service have softened since Hamas’ October 7 attacks. Speaking to Israel’s Channel 14, Hasidic singer Mendel Rata, who is also the son of a Hasidic Rebbe (spiritual leader), this week explained why he has decided to join the new brigade.
“This decision has been brewing within me for a full year, since the beginning of the war and after the tragedy that occurred,” Rata said.
“We understood we have a great enemy and that the nation of Israel is doing historic things,” he continued, also noting “the heavy prices that Israeli society is paying.”
“The conscience cries out to anyone who is sensitive to it,” Rata said, adding that the decision to join the brigade took time in light of “social, familial, and communal obstacles.”
“As time passed, I came to the realization that, with all due respect to all sorts of sacrifices, there is a much larger story happening here. I don’t think there is any other way to heal the rift in our society without a solution of the type” offered by the brigade. “Someone needs to forge the path.”
Rata said his feelings have been met with admiration and identification from others in the haredi community, with some expressing, “Mendel, if you join the brigade, we will follow you.”
He said the younger generation of haredim, which is more connected to social media than the previous generation, feels closer to the army “because they identify with the state and know what’s happening. There is a great desire, and they are waiting for a framework that is fitting for them,” he said, adding that the brigade appears to be just such a framework.
Rata recalled being “amazed” speaking with the commander of the new brigade, Avinoam Emunah. “A man with so much military experience who commanded over many and did great things, who speaks with such humility and modesty, who truly fears Heaven.”
When Rata asked the commander what the goal of the brigade was, “he responded, ‘My goal is that this should be a holy Jewish brigade like the army of King David.'”
Addressing the concern that joining the army might distance haredi boys from Jewish observance, Rata said respected haredi rabbis had blessed the brigade “with full heart,” and the staff responsible for maintaining spiritual and religious standards within the brigade addressed concerns he had raised.
“I saw a lot of openness to what our real needs are. When I saw this level of attentiveness, I said, ‘There’s hope, my heart tells me great salvation will emerge from this endeavor.'”
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