What the Haredi Draft Crisis Says About Israel

And it’s not a new question. When the tribes of Reuben and Gad approached Moses with a request to settle outside the land of Israel, Moses didn’t argue theology. He asked, “Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here?” That line, buried in the Book of Numbers, has become a litmus test for national solidarity. It draws a hard line between tribes and spirit, special interests, and the social contract between being part of a people and stepping outside of it.

Today, with special guest Agamit Gelb, founder of Mothers on the Front Line, we go deep into one of the worst debates in Israeli society. A debate about military service, values, shared responsibility, and what happens when one group opts out. This is not a story about war. It’s a story about belonging. Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform, and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Parasha is Matot, and we are joined by Agamit Gelb, founder of Mothers on the Front Line, an Israeli grassroots, not-for-profit organization, fighting for the soul of Israel. Normally at Madlik, we focus on Torah texts, and this week will be no exception. But this week, we will be privileged to hear from a Torah. The Book of Proverbs warns us not to ignore Torat Imecha, the Torah of our mothers. So join us. “For shall your brothers go to war without you?” Adam, Agamit, welcome to the podcast. I realized this morning that this is the first time we’re having a podcast with three podcasters on it. Adam, you have your podcast, “My People Will Be Your People,” part of Project Ruth. And Agamit, you have “Ima B’Masa Komunah,” which translates roughly to “mother on the journey of the beret,” like the Green Beret, the soldier beret.

Agamit Gelb [2:45 – 4:47]: Yes, so thanks. And thank you for having me here. I’m very excited to be here. I’m a mother of three. One of them is a combat soldier. We actually founded Imahot Bakazid, which is Mothers on the Front Line, in April 2023. We have already celebrated over two years. We founded this movement because for decades the Haredi community in Israel has been exempt from military service while other Jewish men and women are being drafted. We saw this as a major violation of the principle of equality, sharing a national burden, and national solidarity. We also saw the national security situation, and after a couple of months, we woke up to the October 7th war, which made us understand that we need all sectors in Israel to serve the country and be part of this draft duty. So this is the background for the movement.

Geoffrey Stern [4:49 – 6:20]: When we first talked, I was amazed when you gave that date because that was before October 2023, and so with the intuition only mothers can have, you realized that this issue cuts to the core of Israel. It’s an issue of fairness. It’s an issue of the social contract. It’s an issue of values. I listened to your podcast in Hebrew as best I could, and the episodes are amazing. You interview other mothers, and one of the mothers describes what happened. You ask everybody where they were on October 7th. One of the mothers was living in the United States with her Israeli husband for 30 years, and her children were lone soldiers in Hebrew, that’s Hayalim Bodedim—is that right? Yeah. She never understood that to be something that had any baggage with it, but her American friends would say, “That sounds so sad,” and then she realized what they were going through. So talk a little bit about the mother part because I think what makes what you do so fascinating is what unites the many members. I think you say you have 70,000 mothers involved with this is that you’re mothers. Does that cut across all demographics and all tribes, so to speak, in Israel?

Agamit Gelb [6:20 – 8:00]: Yeah, absolutely. You’re totally right. We heard Gallant back then talking about our existence and the potential threat over here with security issues that are coming ahead. We, as mothers of combat soldiers, realized that we are going to hit something big. Yes, we have already reached 7,000. But I definitely think that no, there isn’t any mother in Israel that will forget the morning of October 7th. I will not forget it in my whole life. But I definitely think that, in my view, mothers are the pillars of the home, family, and in a way, they are also the pillar of the community. We see mothers as the engine that can really change society over here and preserve the country as democratic and equal. We have educational and resilience programs that gather mothers from all sectors in Israel because the equal draft consent in Israel is about 80% of the population here. I think that this issue is a consensus that everyone agrees should be reinforced as soon as possible.

Adam Mintz [8:01 – 8:08]: So you mentioned 80% of the 70,000 mothers. What percentage are Haredi mothers?

Agamit Gelb [8:08 – 9:06]: So there aren’t a lot of Haredi mothers that send their sons to the military. We have only a couple of hundred Haredi soldiers who were drafted this year. But we have some of them, and they are talking to us and working with us. They also have their own groups where they understand each other and talk to each other on the same level. But we have also secular groups of mothers, and they are all combined together because as mothers, we have a mutual language of anxiety, love, and everything that we as mothers know how to handle with our children. This is a very good basis to use for activism in the end.

Geoffrey Stern [9:08 – 10:46]: So, I mean, I think one thing that our listeners have to understand is what makes Israel different is it’s a people’s army. It’s not like the United States, where at this point, the military is by option. Many families are military families and have a strong tradition. In Israel, everybody goes to the army, but that’s where the rub is because not everybody goes to the army. In one of your podcasts, a mother was describing what it’s like to have a baby boy in Israel. She says, “The first thing you think about is the brit, the next thing you think about is the joy, and the third thing you think about is you look into the future 18 years and you say, another soldier is born.” That is such a powerful statement that affects literally the mothers. But I think one of your challenges is that you need to be able to break through to other mothers, and I think of any group, you have the highest potential because a mother is a mother is a mother and has that.

The other thing, when I first talked to you, I didn’t sense a feeling of anger or bitterness. I’m sure it’s there somewhere because you can’t go through the experiences you’ve gone through.

But on the other hand, there is the potential to reach out as a mother with love and embrace. And so I think what you’re doing is really important. What are you doing right now? What are your activities? If you could go through the gamut you talked about, I know in the podcast you bring on psychologists and there’s resiliency training. It’s not all about getting the Haredim into the draft.

Agamit Gelb [10:47 – 11:19]: Absolutely. So I think that we, and thank you for the sensitivity. And of course, we are angry, and we have this anger all the time because we filed a petition to the Supreme Court, we had two of them. And those petitions canceled the exemptions of the Haredi sector from the army. And of course, we push the army to send all the draft orders that they can send because we are fighting over 21 months, and we want to see everyone under this burden.

But we don’t call it a burden. And that’s why I also say that it’s kind of love because we think of it as our duty, but it’s also something that we are proud to serve our country. This is something that cannot come only with legal petitions or anything else. It should come also from education plans, which we are doing, because if you love the country, you will be loyal, and you’ll come to serve her. We are raising our children to love the country and to serve the country.

It all starts at home. So what we were doing, we were actually filing petitions to the Supreme Court. As you said, we are still growing the movement. Of course, we do a lot of involvement and engagement in the field. We want to create more mothers that will come and raise their voice because when you have a lot of people in the field that are engaging and doing those activities, it’s really powerful.

We also work a lot with municipal and communities on the ground, and we take actions to make sure that whoever serves gets the rights that he needs for resilience in this kind of a very challenging time. And of course, we promote equality in education and in resilience programs. I must say that we’re going to pursue another. We’re going to continue our petition in the Supreme Court very, very soon because we see that the Haredi sector is not exempt from military by law. But their leaders, actually their religious leaders, tell them not to come.

They’re like, you know, they say if you get a draft order, just throw it away, put it in the toilet or something, and that’s it. So we are fighting also on this level also in the Supreme Court.

Geoffrey Stern [14:08 – 14:38]: You know, the word I think that you were looking for before, in terms of not so much an obligation, in English, it’s called a privilege. In Hebrew, it’s called a zechut. It’s a zechut to serve, and that’s also a biblical word and a Talmudic word. I think last week we learned about the daughters of Tzelofchad who came and petitioned in the Supreme Court, named Moshe, to change the law. I think also what you’re doing is very much in the tradition of our people, and I just applaud it and love it.

We’re going to jump into the text because I think what we do at Madlik is we look at our ancient texts, and we don’t look at them through the lens of anybody else besides ourselves. You talk about the leadership. I am not going to engage in a halachic dispute with any other Jew. I’m going to look at our texts, and I’m gonna see what I see there and what they say to us. I think that’s much more important.

We lead by example. We would love to believe at Madlik that no Jew can give away the privilege of looking at their texts to anybody else. Nobody owns our Torah, just as nobody owns our country, and nobody owns the social contract. As I said, the Jews, the Israelites, are about to cross the Jordan River. It’s a pivotal moment. Maybe you could even say it’s an October 7th moment. All of a sudden, two Shevatim, two tribes, come, Reuven and Gad, and they say to Moshe, we’re actually happy here. We don’t want to continue on. You fight without us.

Moshe says, and you can hear the disbelief in his voice, “Your brothers will go to war, and you will sit here.” I was obviously struck by the word tishvu. It sounds a lot like Yeshiva to me, but the point is that it’s staying out of the fight. Then what happens is Moshe goes through arguments, and he actually brings them back to the meraglim, which was the greatest fiasco in the Israelite political dynamic. It says that what was the big sin of the meraglim? It says, “they took away,” the English trail translation is varied here. It says, “away, they turned the minds of the Israelites.”

This is not only a question of, do you go to the draft or do you not go to the draft? It’s a question of the morale of the Jewish people. It’s a question of resilience. We are almost two years into this war. Your children, your boys are going back and back and back to the army. They’re leaving their wives, they’re leaving their children, they’re leaving their jobs. The most important factor is not guns and airplanes anymore. It’s resilience, its morale. This is exactly what the text focuses on. It says, “you now, to these two Shevatim, are a breed of sinful fellows. You are bringing calamity upon all these people.”

What it’s saying is this is not a segment. This is not like a. As I said in the beginning, it’s not about coalition numbers. Do we lose a few votes? Do we win a few votes? It’s about all this people.

Adam Mintz [17:35 – 18:16]: I just wanna say that this is also about leadership. Because the question is, Moshe is challenged by the people. We don’t want to go. The question is, how does the leader respond? In this case, Moshe stands up, and he says, no, that’s not acceptable. You need to fight ahead of everybody else. So you’re right, Geoffrey, that we’re worried about how the other tribes are going to react to this request. But also, it was a challenge to Moses’ leadership. While Moses didn’t always in these parshiot respond with strength, right here, he responds as a really good leader.

Geoffrey Stern [18:17 – 18:49]: I think we’re going to see through the rabbinic commentaries that he moved the conversation from him personally to the people. But let’s just finish the verses because an interesting word comes up. So what happens is we actually have a good ending here. A paradigm shift, if you will. The two tribes say we’re going to fight, but they say we’re going to stay till the end. Not just until things have solidified, but until the whole haluka is made. It uses words, a terrible translation, shock troops. But in Hebrew, it’s halutzim. They said we will be the halutzim.

I think one of the unintended consequences of missing a demographic such as the Haredim in every vote, where we vote about peace and security and they don’t have a horse in the race, they are not Nogaya b’ Davar. That affects their vote. I think the whole polarity of Israel could change. If the Haredim were Nogaya b’ Davar and if their mothers were worrying about their children, who knows how they would vote? We need their voice as much as we need their children. They might be leaders in the peace movement. They might be leaders. Who knows? It’s a fascinating dynamic, but I think in these verses, it brings out the challenges.

Rashi, well, the Seforno says in terms of what Moses’ argument was, “surely you did not think for a moment that you could get away with such an arrangement.”

He puts into Moses’ mouth, your suggestion, therefore, can only have the effect of undermining the morale of your brethren. He hits the nail on the head. We are talking about the social contract and the morale of our people. In a different commentary, Birchat Asher, which is actually a very new commentary, the word that he says is “b’derech klal yotzim lehem yotzim l’milchama,” we go out to war. Here it says, “yavo le Milchama” coming to war. He says, this is a war of existence. This is a war that came upon us. It wasn’t our choice. This is not some adventure. And for that type of war, we all have to be together, because if we’re not together, we lose everything. I just love the way the rabbinic commentaries are using this as kind of a mirror to comment on issues that are with us even till today.

Geoffrey Stern [20:51 – 21:22]: And then we talk about the paradigm shift and Rashi says that what they did at the end was they came 360 degrees and they made an additional promise to stay on, on to the seven years. And that’s what I was talking about before, that we have to understand what we’re dealing with here. The potential. It’s a terrible situation now, but the potential is so large because all of a sudden 20% of the electorate will be voting on issues of war and peace with skin in the game.

Agamit Gelb [21:26 – 22:56]: I think that if we look at the Haredi sector already, they are 14% of the Jewish, you know, of the Israel population right now. So demographic-wise, we need them to be part of this people’s army. And we don’t have any choice even on a demographic or economical level. So it should be there.

Of course, that equality is not just a legal principle for us; it’s a core value. And I want to give you an example as a mother for a moment, if I may. Imagine the mother of two boys, right, who tells one child you have only rights and one child you have rights and duties, right? So which one of them will appreciate what they receive at home eventually and want to give back? You have any suggestions?

I think that the same applies to any state. When a state allows some citizens to only receive and be exempt from duties and never give back, it destroys both love and loyalty and solidarity and everything. So I think it’s very much resembles what we have right now in Israel.

Adam Mintz [22:57 – 23:03]: That’s what Geoffrey said, what you call the social contract. Right. It’s how one group relates to the other group.

Geoffrey Stern [23:04 – 25:29]: Of course, I love the fact that you bring the mashal from a mother’s perspective of raising her children, because that never goes stale and it always resonates. It’s timeless. And that’s what I meant by Torat Imecha. It’s so obvious. And I think the challenge is I’ve got to believe. And we’ve had discussions on our podcast with Haredim who are fighting very hard for the draft, and they’re doing it quietly behind the scenes because the issue is those leaders.

And you know, the Haredi man who wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror and he has nine kids and he can’t have a job because he has a draft deferment that requires him to study in the yeshiva. He’s not totally committed to studying in yeshiva. Or maybe he is, but Torah im derech Eretz, he knows he has to provide for his family and then he walks through the streets and he cannot be blind to the fact that the whole country of Israel is being attacked, and that’s him too, and his safety is there.

You have to think in terms of him and his wife, the mother of those nine kids, the self-respect that they must be looking for. And I think there’s going to be a tipping point. And it’s going to take people like you, mothers like you on one side who are approaching it from the pragmatic, motherly point of view that you are, and people on the inside who are trying to undermine that leadership. And you know, at the end of the day, I think it’s not an argument that’s based on philosophy or theology. It’s really an argument.

The Haredim argument is, and I think one of their rabbis said it, maybe it was the last Sephardic Chief Rabbi, that if you go into the army as a Haredi, you don’t leave as a Haredi and it means that you lose what is so precious to them. And part of that has to do, I think, and you’ve identified this, is the army has to be prepared for the Haredim. Something in the past that they looked at as maybe, oh, let’s do something “simli” (token), or this would distract us.

But now with those boys of yours going back into miluim on a constant basis, it’s no longer a luxury. The army has to be able to address the needs of the Haredim and take away any siba, any excuse for them not being able to do that. Are you working on that front as well?

Agamit Gelb [25:29 – 27:30]: Yeah. So first of all, we need to understand that even our children are not getting into the army and getting out of the army the same one. They are on a constant change and I think that the war really changed them and some of them are getting back with post-trauma symptoms, and some of them are getting back wounded and some of them are getting back totally different people. I know that this is a risk and it’s crazy, right?

An Israeli mother sends her precious thing to the army and I’m taking here a huge risk when I’m sending him because I know what the consequences might be. Right. So no one sends his child to the army and expects to get him back as, you know, as the original one. The other thing that I must say is that we were talking with the IDF commanders a lot and they are really getting there. They build special bases, they are dedicated special troops for Haredi soldiers.

They have their own bases with their own, you know, things that they need for kosher things and stuff. So I don’t think that there is a gap anymore not to send them to the army. They had really big steps and huge steps just to make them come. But as you said, their leaders are actually, I think in Israel it’s against the law to tell them not to go to the army. I don’t think that any citizen in Israel should be above the law. And this is something we all should understand right now.

Adam Mintz [27:30 – 28:06]: You mentioned courage, the fact that it takes a lot of courage for a mother to send her son to the army knowing that the child, the soldier is going to come back different. I think that’s something that we don’t talk about so much. And the fact that the Haredim need more courage. They have a lot of religion, they have a lot of observance of ritual, of mitzvot, but they’re lacking courage, they’re afraid. And I think that’s something again that, you know, the mothers and organizations like yours, they teach courage to the Jewish people.

Agamit Gelb [28:06 – 29:27]: Yeah, I think it’s more like we really love our country and we are raised on this love. We want our country to be stable and strong. We were taught to look at the country as our home. So when you feel attached to something like this, you are doing this courageous and maybe stupid stuff. I don’t know. But this is how we do it. And I think that this is part of what we’re doing on a daily basis.

Because if we teach the Holocaust, if we go and travel around Israel and we show our kids what they fight for, right, for the country, they need also to have those pillars in their education programs in order to make sure that they know the country, they love it and they get attached to it. And yeah, this is a courage, but we all know what we had in the past when we didn’t have a country to live in, right? So it’s not that, you know, we all remember it.

Geoffrey Stern [29:28 – 31:39]: I think the metaphor of our parsha, where those two tribes are standing outside of the country and actually what the decision that they’re making is, are they in or are they out?

And one of the commentaries, I think, really pushes the right button. He said, “she’atem rotzim lehafrid atzmachem mikahal Yisrael.” And it goes further and says, if you do not cross that Jordan, if you do not consider Acheichem your brothers, then you literally are ma’asim. You are detesting God, you’re detesting the land, and more importantly, and most importantly, the people. In the Haggadah, we all talk about the four children and the Rasha. The only thing the Rasha does that’s wrong is he refers to the people as them and not me and not us.

What you were talking about a second ago is if we love this country, if we love our people, if we love our Torah, there’s really no discussion to be had here. I think that probably those leaders who are against this, it’s not for religious reasons; it’s to maintain control over their mandate, over their tribe. They’re going to have to learn to let go, and they’re going to have to learn to read the Parasha and to read our Torah and to listen to the Torah, listen to our mothers. You got emotional before. I was shaken when you said, we are all changed and we are all making sacrifices. I think we just so respect you and your children and our people. We try here in the States to do whatever we can to provide support, but we are just inspired by you and we’re here for you. There will be a link in the show notes to your Amuta. You can contribute to the Amuta through PEF, the organization that I run. I’ll also provide a link to the website and really just keep up your work, keep up your voice, keep doing what you’re doing.

Adam Mintz [31:40 – 32:04]: Thank you for everything that you do. It really was an honor to be able to share this podcast, Parshiot Matot Masei. You know this is right before Tisha B’Av. We pray “hashiveinu Hashem elecha” and “hashuvah,” that things should go back and that sense of democracy that goes all the way back to this story of Reuven and Gad, you should have your role and be able to return us to that democracy.

Agamit Gelb [32:04 – 32:37]: Thank you so much. It was an honor to meet you and talk to you. I feel a bit emotional but very, very much grateful. I know it might sound crazy that we still do it over and over again, but we believe in it and I think that we will make Israel a better democratic and a very stable Jewish country. Thank you for all the support you are giving us.

Geoffrey Stern [32:38 – 32:39]: Thank you so much.

Adam Mintz [32:40 – 32:40]: Thank you so much.