The rabbis thought they had extracted a compromise from Eisenkot last year when he assured them that no conscript would be forced to serve in a unit alongside women. They believed that a stampede of religious conscripts for the small number of units which have been segregated for Haredi soldiers would force the IDF to reverse its policy of opening up more units and roles for women. It didn’t happen. Alumni of national-religious yeshiva high schools don’t seem too bothered by the presence of women when selecting which unit they prefer to serve in.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. For all the talk of a more religious army, the overwhelming majority of religious soldiers, when issued with contradicting orders in the past, chose to obey their commanding officers rather than the rabbis. [...]
In recent years, the army’s high priests, or generals, have clashed with the rabbis repeatedly over the role of women in military life, as well as over control of the IDF’s Education Corps. And the rabbis were forced to give way. They’ve fought as well with the nationalist politicians, preaching against shoot-to-kill policies and the vigilantism that was creeping in during the short-lived “stabbings intifada” that reached its peak when Sgt. Elor Azaria summarily executed a wounded Palestinian attacker in Hebron. [...]
But in a period when politicians, on all sides, have failed so miserably to project a vision for Israel’s future, and rabbis are so lacking in authority, it’s only natural that an organization like the army is filling the moral vacuum. For better or worse, the IDF is now the most visible and potent form of secular Judaism.
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