Gershom Gorenberg says the Israeli army’s ties to the Orthodox right distort Judaism and make peace harder to achieve.
The bashful general was speaking at a cornerstone-laying ceremony for what’s known as a hesder yeshivah. A yeshivah is a place where people (well, usually men) study Talmud and other Jewish religious texts. Hesder means “arrangement.” The arrangement was born in the mid-1960s, when the Israeli army let students at one yeshivah alternate between stretches of active duty and periods of religious study. While in yeshivah, they were available for immediate call-up. Hesder soldiers had to commit themselves to extra time in the combined program but spent fewer months in active service than other conscripts.
