When the Jewish state was established in 1948, founder and first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion promised to allow some 400 rabbinical college students of military age to continue studying the Torah without interruption. They would not be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) like any other young Israeli, and they would not have the same normal obligations incumbent upon other citizens of the young state, which fought for its survival from the moment it was born.
At the time, Ben-Gurion had many other problems to deal with, including five Arab countries that attacked the Jewish state to destroy it. His historic promise wasn’t considered to be a genuine problem. No one imagined that within a generation or two, the number of people studying the Torah would double, triple, quadruple, and continue to soar at an exponential rate. Today, each class of young ultra-Orthodox Jews of draft age, numbers 15,000 rabbinical college students. Since military service in the IDF lasts three years (for men), the number of ultra-Orthodox Jews who should be serving in the IDF at any given moment is around 45,000. The reality is that the number of those actually serving is between 1,500 and 2,000, who are taking part in several fascinating tracks created especially for them in the Intelligence Corps and the Air Force.