Israel’s Knesset passed a Basic Law on Monday enshrining Torah study as a fundamental value, by 63 votes to 52, even as the army’s top general warned that the country faces a wartime manpower crisis. The bill, proposed by Degel HaTorah chairman MK Moshe Gafni, declares that “Torah study is a fundamental value in the heritage of the Jewish people and in the State of Israel,” giving it constitutional standing in a country that has no single written constitution.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not attend the vote. Two Likud MKs, Dan Illouz and Yuli Edelstein, broke ranks and voted against the bill. The legislation was the first to clear both readings under a coalition arrangement aimed at passing haredi-backed bills before the Knesset recesses for elections set for October 27.
What the Knesset Just Voted Into Basic Law
Israel’s Basic Laws are the closest thing the country has to a constitution, Knesset-legislated sections that hold a high legal status. The new Torah Study law sits alongside them, having cleared its second and third readings on Monday with 63 MKs voting in favor and 52 against. The enacted text states simply that “Torah study is a fundamental value in the heritage of the Jewish people and in the State of Israel.” The revised draft no longer carries the earlier clause about “creating a balance” in Torah study, language that had triggered legal warnings and that the haredi parties agreed to remove as part of a coalition deal last week.
Critics had warned that the balancing clause “could be used as a basis to justify future attempts to exempt haredim from the IDF and to continue funding yeshivas and subsidies for haredi draft evaders,” per an Israel Democracy Institute statement. Even after that clause was dropped, both coalition and opposition lawmakers warned that the law’s essence had not changed. Earlier drafts also contained wording equating those who study Torah with those who serve in the IDF, a comparison removed from the final text.
The Manpower Warnings Behind the Dispute
The bill’s passage lands directly on top of a crisis the IDF chief of staff has spent months raising publicly. Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir told a security cabinet meeting in March that “the IDF could soon collapse” if no solution was found to a wartime manpower shortage that has been building since the war began, and the army has pointed to an immediate and urgent need for 12,000 additional soldiers.
He has carried that warning into private correspondence as well as public remarks. In January, Zamir sent a letter to Netanyahu and other senior officials warning that the soldier shortage “could harm military readiness in the very near future,” per his reported cabinet warning that week. The cabinet meeting came next, where Channel 13 quoted him telling ministers, “I am raising 10 red flags in front of you.” He warned the same ministers that “before long, the IDF will not be ready for its routine missions and the reserve system will not last.” On Monday, July 13, the same day the Torah Study bill passed, Zamir wrote separately to Defense Minister Israel Katz calling a separate draft-evader arrest-freeze bill “clearly and unequivocally inconsistent with the IDF’s needs.”
Israel relies on a “people’s army” model that puts most non-Haredi Jewish 18-year-olds through nearly three years of service. The Israel Democracy Institute frames the law’s passage as entrenching an exemption at a moment when reservists are exhausted and standing forces are stretched across multiple fronts. The size of the gap is concrete: the army’s latest reporting also noted approximately 130,000 people returned to active reserve duty.
- January 2026: Letter from Zamir to Netanyahu and senior officials warning that the soldier shortage “could harm military readiness in the very near future.”
- March 2026: Cabinet meeting remarks in which Zamir said he was “raising 10 red flags” and that the IDF would not be “ready for its routine missions and the reserve system will not last.”
- July 13, 2026: Letter from Zamir to Defense Minister Israel Katz calling a draft-evader arrest-freeze bill “clearly and unequivocally inconsistent with the IDF’s needs.”
The Coalition Deal That Brought the Bill to a Vote
The Torah Study bill had been on the coalition’s books since the government was formed in December 2022, signed by all Shas MKs and by Gafni and his United Torah Judaism colleagues. The haredi parties have used their leverage by threatening to boycott coalition votes when their own legislation stalls, a tool they have reached for repeatedly in recent weeks to force the pace. The result is a tight sequence of haredi-backed bills moving through committee and onto the plenum floor. The Knesset’s English summary of the proposal confirms that the text enshrines Torah study as “a fundamental value in the heritage of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”
The earlier version of the bill carried a clause about “creating a balance” in Torah study as a fundamental value, language that triggered sharp legal warnings from Knesset legal advisers. That phrase was pulled before Monday’s vote as part of a coalition settlement with the haredi parties last week. The Israel Democracy Institute argued that removing that language did not change the law’s operative thrust, since the remaining text still elevates Torah study to a constitutional value that could be used to argue that funding for yeshivas and subsidies for draft-evading students should continue.
Who Broke From Their Own Coalition
The cracks on the coalition side of the aisle were visible at the vote itself. Two Likud MKs, Dan Illouz and Yuli Edelstein, joined the opposition in voting against the bill, a split inside the prime minister’s own party. Netanyahu stayed away from the plenum, though he had voted for the bill when it cleared its first reading last month.
Gadi Eisenkot, the Yashar Party leader and a former IDF chief of staff now running against Netanyahu in the upcoming elections, called the absent premier “a coward” for not showing up. The criticism landed on a man already weakened by the prospect of running a divided coalition into the October vote. Coalition discipline held long enough to pass the bill by 63 to 52, but it held without the prime minister’s public backing. Had Netanyahu voted, his party’s tally would have grown, since only those two Likud MKs broke from the coalition on this bill.
Likud’s Illouz had already framed the trade-off bluntly during an earlier debate over manpower. On X, he wrote, “Being right-wing means, first and foremost, security.” He continued, “You can’t demand annexation, settlement and total victory, and then let the IDF collapse due to lack of soldiers,” per Times of Israel reporting. His colleague Eli Dallal made a similar point, calling for the government to enforce conscription rather than extend the exemption. With the Torah Study bill now in the Basic Law column, those internal Likud objections move into the legal record.
The bill’s supporters inside the coalition see the picture differently. They argue the law’s passage makes a constitutional case for state support of Torah study that can underpin future defenses of the yeshiva exemption in court, a question Israeli courts will now have to decide.
Opposition Voices Against the Bill
Before the vote, opposition leader Yair Lapid and a group of other opposition MKs sent a joint letter to coalition members, calling on colleagues to “act responsibly and not vote in favor of legislation that would severely harm the IDF during wartime, in defiance of the dramatic warning issued by the IDF chief of staff.” After the vote, leaders of the bloc seeking to replace Netanyahu lined up with a single promise: repeal the law once elections deliver a new coalition.
This is not a Basic Law on Torah study. It is a law that betrays IDF soldiers, harms combat troops, reservists, and Israel’s security.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, a former defense minister, framed the legislation in those terms the night of the bill’s final-reading coverage. His party has framed the bill as the centerpiece of a “liquidation sale” of Israeli society’s values by what he calls a “draft-evasion coalition.” Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister now leading the Together Party, called the government “the most anti-Zionist government in the history of the State of Israel, a government that has acted against those who serve the country and against the Torah.” Bennett argued the bill amounts to “a deliberate and conscious blow to the IDF throughout the war and up to this day.” He promised a future government would investigate what he described as the cabinet’s “abandonment of the IDF and its soldiers” after October 7.
Democrats party leader Yair Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff, took aim at Shas leader Arye Deri. He told Deri that his grandchildren “should be ready for their draft orders, coming on October 28, the day after the election.” Across the opposition spectrum, the goal now is concrete: reverse the law once the next coalition is sworn in.
The Draft Evader Arrest Freeze That Comes Next
The Torah Study bill is not the only haredi-driven legislation moving through the Knesset in the same week. A separate bill to temporarily freeze the arrest of haredi draft evaders is set to be voted on in its second and third readings after a week of marathon committee meetings. Defense Minister Israel Katz has publicly backed the freeze, an unusual alignment with the same haredi partners whose Torah Study priorities he has just helped deliver. Most bill opponents expect this one to pass as well.
The IDF chief’s Monday letter to Katz and Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Boaz Bismuth made the military’s objection explicit. The proposal, Zamir wrote, “provides an incentive not to report for military service, since it would grant immunity from prosecution and criminal proceedings.” He called it “clearly and unequivocally inconsistent with the IDF’s needs.” Katz has not publicly addressed those concerns in detail. The bill, as currently drafted, would put the IDF in the unusual position of determining which individuals qualify as yeshiva students and are therefore exempt from enforcement.
Election Day Forces the Clock
The Knesset will recess before elections scheduled for October 27, leaving opponents of both bills a narrow window to set the political terms for the next government. The vote on the Torah Study bill is likely to be a campaign issue, given the volume of opposition rhetoric, the prominence of the manpower file, and the absence of any precedent: no sitting coalition has ever used a Basic Law to elevate Torah study before.
The opposition bloc’s repeal pledge is a different kind of threat from a routine post-vote protest. If they follow through, the law’s status as a Basic Law will turn its repeal into a constitutional question alongside a political one. The Israel Democracy Institute raised that exact concern in its analysis, framing the law as part of a broader pattern in which “additional laws are formulated as Basic Laws in order to ostensibly shield them from review by the Supreme Court.”
The High Court of Justice ruled in April that the state must take “concrete steps” to revoke key financial benefits from draft evaders and move toward criminal enforcement. That ruling is the legal backdrop the coalition’s arrest-freeze bill is moving against. October 27 is also the date Golan chose to call for Deri’s family to start receiving draft orders. The election calendar is now the only thing standing between the legislation and a fresh attempt at a different coalition.
By the Numbers
- 63 to 52: Final Knesset vote on the Basic Law: Torah Study
- 12,000: Additional soldiers the IDF says it urgently needs
- 130,000: People returned to active reserve duty, per the Israel Democracy Institute
- October 27, 2026: Scheduled election date, when opposition leaders have vowed to repeal the law
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Basic Law say, exactly?
The bill, proposed by Degel HaTorah chairman MK Moshe Gafni, was passed by the Knesset on July 13, 2026, with 63 MKs voting in favor and 52 against. The enacted text declares that “Torah study is a fundamental value in the heritage of the Jewish people and in the State of Israel.” Earlier drafts contained additional wording stating that “creating a balance” applied to Torah study as a fundamental value; that clause was removed before the final vote.
What does the law change in practice?
It elevates Torah study to the level of a Basic Law in Israeli constitutional law, the closest thing Israel has to a constitution. Critics including the Israel Democracy Institute have warned that the new standing could be used to justify continued funding for yeshivas, continued subsidies for haredi students who do not serve, and support for education institutions that do not teach the core curriculum.
Does the Basic Law shield the haredi exemption from High Court review?
Israeli courts have already ruled that Basic Laws remain subject to judicial review when they harm foundational values such as equality. The Israel Democracy Institute argues that the law’s passage could, paradoxically, intensify judicial review rather than insulate the haredi exemption from it.
Who actually voted for the bill?
The bill passed with support from the haredi parties and other coalition partners after a week in which haredi leaders threatened to boycott coalition votes until their priorities moved. Prime Minister Netanyahu did not attend the vote, though he had voted for the bill at its first reading last month. Two Likud MKs, Dan Illouz and Yuli Edelstein, voted against it.
What is the IDF’s stated concern?
Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir has said publicly that the IDF could “soon collapse” without a solution to its wartime manpower shortage, which the army has sized at 12,000 additional soldiers. He wrote separately on July 13 that a related draft-evader arrest-freeze bill is “clearly and unequivocally inconsistent with the IDF’s needs.”
What comes next?
A second haredi-backed bill, to temporarily freeze the arrest of haredi draft evaders, is set for second and third readings in the Knesset plenum. Elections are scheduled for October 27. Opposition leaders including Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, and Avigdor Liberman have vowed to repeal the Torah Study law after the election.
