The massacres in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were overwhelmingly an attack on kibbutzim, particularly secular ones. But the burden of the war that resulted from those attacks has disproportionately been shouldered by Israel’s “national religious” community, in terms of both the number of casualties and the amount of reserve service that its members have performed over the past 18 months.

It can be seen anecdotally in the memorials at flagship religious Zionist schools and yeshivot, and it can be seen quantitatively in a study published late last year by the Israel Democracy Institute.

In the study, a bar graph shows reserve service over time by religious affiliation, with secular and “traditional” Israelis serving at roughly the same level as their portion of the population, while those who identify as religious are serving at nearly twice that rate, with religious soldiers making up 27.4% of combat reservists, while religious Israelis make up 14.7% of the population. The graph also shows that Haredim who make up 14.5% of the population, made up 2.1% of reservists in 2024. The study also found that, unlike secular Israelis whose share of reserve duty has decreased over the course of the war, the share of religious reservists has been going up. This represents a major challenge not only for the reservists themselves, who often serve at the cost of their careers and salaries, but — for those who have families — also for their spouses and children, who are forced to contend logistically and emotionally with their prolonged absences. 

A result of this has been that a disproportionate amount of the casualties in the past 18 months of war have also been religious.

This was not always the case. A study last year by Israeli military scholar Yagil Levy found that the proportion of religious troops killed in war is more than 10% higher in the current war — officially known as the Iron Swords War — than it was in the 2014 Gaza war or the 2006 Second Lebanon War. 

The effects of these losses on the religious community and on Israeli society in general will likely be profound. As Israel continues to debate the issue of military enlistment for Haredim, some of the harshest voices are coming from the religious Zionist community, who can credibly argue that they are bearing the burden of Haredi exemptions. 

To better understand the effects of the past 18 months of war on Israel’s national religious community, eJewishPhilanthropy spoke with Rabbi Kenneth Brander, the president and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone, a moderate religious Zionist network of schools and religious institutions.

The interview has been edited for clarity.

Judah Ari Gross: The other day, I was listening to a podcast on the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that was talking about how it disproportionately affected the Haredi community, in terms of the number of people killed by the virus and the public debates at the time that criticized Haredim for not following the safety restrictions, and how that can still be felt today. It made me wonder if this war, which is disproportionately affecting the religious Zionist community, will similarly have a lasting impact. How is this affecting Ohr Torah Stone and the wider religious Zionist community? 

Rabbi Kenneth Brander: You are 100% right that the religious Zionist community has been deeply affected by this. I mean, Ohr Torah Stone lost 20 students, plus another 38 first-degree family members of [students and faculty]. And that’s not dealing with the injuries. I’ll just focus on the injuries just since Friday: One of my colleagues, her brother was shot in the eye. Thank God they were able to save the eye. Another one of our students — actually I went to [Yeshiva University] with his parents, but he went to Neve Shmuel — a sharpshooter took off a good part of his arm up to his elbow. And that’s just since Friday. So it’s not just the losses, it’s the injuries also.

And while it is true that Ohr Torah Stone has unfortunately taken heavy losses, I try not to look at it as an Ohr Torah Stone issue because I think every loss is a world unto itself. And I don’t like counting the losses, saying, you know, ‘We have more than you’ — everyone loss is an entire world, that’s the way we should be looking at it. I also try not to look at this as a religious Zionist challenge. I try to look at this as a people of Israel and State of Israel challenge.

But I also think that the power of the religious Zionist community is that we don’t just focus on ourselves but realize that we are the glue between all different aspects of Israeli society. As the president of Ohr Torah Stone, it is my job to help those in need to make sure that each school has its own processing of its losses. But in the public sphere, it is my job not to allow the religious Zionist community to say we’re the ones who suffer the most, but rather to show the larger community that the merging of the Sefer and the Saifa, the sacred text and the sword, is something we represent and we do it proudly as citizens of the State of Israel. I wouldn’t want our tragedy to make us, for lack of a better term, live a Robinson Crusoe lifestyle of just basically living on our own island. I think that that would be a trap. I think that would in some ways — I want to make sure I have a right to say what I want to say — I think in some ways that it would compromise the great sacrifice that each one of these young people made for the people of Israel if we suggested that this was only a religious Zionist issue. So we dare not live that type of lifestyle. 

JAG: There is a certain tension there though because you may not want to count how many fallen or injured soldiers are from the religious Zionist community, but the fact that so many have come from that background gives the community a standing to speak on certain issues, particularly related to military enlistment for Haredim. 

RKB: I think the religious Zionist community would be doing itself a disservice if we reminded everybody how many fell from our community. I think that people are smart, and I think people recognize it by themselves, and those who do not yet recognize it will recognize it.

There have been more than a dozen times in the past year that Haredi people have stopped me and said, ‘I know that you’re connected with Ohr Torah Stone, and it’s nice that your young people know what they’re supposed to be doing.’

And it will be pretty evident on Yom HaZikaron. I don’t think we should be promoting it. But I think the message is out there. 

Regarding the Haredi community, it’s a personal struggle of mine.

Today, I was at the Straus Kollel, and I saw a guy who came back to the yeshiva early, and I said to him, ‘What are you doing?’ He goes, ‘I’m studying Yoreh De’ah [a medieval halachic work that is also used as a shorthand to refer to the preparations for the “forbidden and permissible” section of rabbinical examinations, which deals with kashrut and food].’ I said, ‘What year are you in the study of Yoreh De’ah? He goes, ‘I’m in year two of studying Yoreh De’ah.’ Now normally Issur v’Heter [forbidden and permissible] takes a year to study. So I was a little puzzled for around 30 seconds. And then he said to me, ‘Oh, my first year of studying Issur v’Heter I was in the army for 300 days. So really he didn’t have two years. He had a year in Lebanon with a little Issur v’Heter on the side, and now he’s studying his second year. 

And his fellow test takers for the rabbinate didn’t spend 300 minutes in the army, let alone 300 days. And they don’t have to spend another year preparing for the exam, as opposed to him. And that does anger me. And in some ways I’m angry at myself. It does anger me. I just need to make sure that I don’t allow that anger to consume me. Because I have too much to do to be consumed by anger. I’m hurt by it. I have two children in the IDF. Another one in the reserves has spent north of 200 days doing that. And all of our kids would be doing less [if more Haredim served in the military] — and not just kids, it’s 50 year olds who are still doing reserve duty.

I’m upset about it. I think they violate halacha. I think they’ve made the beit midrash into a ‘city of refuge,’ and I think their Torah is not complete. But I cannot allow myself to make that my cause because I’m not going to accomplish anything. I need to make sure that I inspire our students to be the future leaders of the Jewish people, both in the religious sector and in the public sector, and work on giving them the tools so they are the next leaders in the Knesset, in the courts and in the business world.

JAG: If we’re discussing the enlistment issue. While the focus now is on Haredi enlistment, religious women are also exempt from military service. Of course, the situation is different because religious women perform national service, which Haredim don’t, but is that an area that you expect to change or are pushing to change within the religious Zionist community writ large? I know that Ohr Torah Stone is working to facilitate religious female military service. 

RKB: The plural of anecdotes is not data, so let’s look at some of the data: Out of the 8,000 young ladies who graduated from religious schools in June 2024, 3,500 of them decided to go into the IDF, and 350 of them decided they wanted to go into combat. 

I think the religious Zionist community has decided to [follow] the Rambam and the [line of] gemara that says that in a [necessary] war … that the groom and bride still under their chuppah have a responsibility to serve. I don’t think that that’s an Ohr Torah Stone thing, I think that’s a halachic phenomenon that is catching up with the reality. And I don’t understand how anyone ignores that halacha. 

That being said, I look at the fact that 3,500 young women from the modern Orthodox or religious Zionist community have said they want to serve in the army. What is Kenny Brander’s responsibility to that group? Our responsibility is to give them the spiritual infrastructure before they serve. We have a program, Ma’aminot B’madim [“Believers in Uniform”], in which we answer halakhic questions for hundreds of young women. 

And 350 young women decide they want to do combat. I want to make sure that there are combat units that are in-country that are religiously sensitive, which includes having women serving as their halakhic leaders. So we created that program because the demand is there, and I think we have a responsibility to serve that demand.

I don’t know if Ohr Torah Stone and [its institution for women] Midreshet Lindenbaum has updated its webpage, but the webpage at least used to say that we do not endorse women serving in combat units. I hope that we’ve changed the website. I haven’t checked. (Ed. note: The website does still say that the institution does not endorse combat service.)

I see 3,500 women joining the IDF out of 8,000, and I’m not sure, but I’d be shocked if the number in June 2025 doesn’t go past the 50% mark. So I see these numbers, and I think our job is to assist the young women and the young men in the ways that we can.

JAG: We have reported in the past about Ohr Torah Stone’s increased focus on mental health in response to the Oct. 7 attacks and the current war, but another area of potential concern going forward, particularly for the religious Zionist community, which has suffered many losses, is the possibility of radicalization. Is your network concerned about that? Are you taking any steps to prevent it?

RKB: First of all, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this, so I’m not sure that whatever answer I give you is the same answer that will be truthful in two years from now. But there are two parts to the answer: One is I have not seen that. Not that we’re not at times angry, but I have not seen that. I haven’t seen Arab workers being attacked or anything else like that.

Two is that Rabbi Yaakov Nagen and Rabbi Aharon Lavi who run our interfaith program and work with our post-high school programs are trying to make sure that there are constant conversations about respect and responsibility to others, irrespective of the fact that we need to be strong on defense. Being strong on defense doesn’t mean you beat up every single person that doesn’t look like you, and we need to communicate that nuance because that’s what Judaism is about. It’s about the dialectic. It’s about nuance and we need to communicate that. We are making sure that Rabbi Nagen and Rabbi Lavi are communicating those messages.

It means that we have more iftar events. It means that when a Druze soldier falls, it can’t be that we don’t send a busload of kids to make a shiva call. When the Druze community in the north [Majdal Shams] lost so many young people, it can’t be that we don’t put together a way for communal spiritual leaders to make a shiva call. We have to make sure that we don’t lose our humanity and we have to make sure that we don’t lose the whole reason why we want a state.

And it’s not just so you study the Jerusalem Talmud in Jerusalem, but so you can study the Jerusalem Talmud and see the parts of it that are not relevant outside of Israel become relevant here, which includes embracing ‘the stranger who lives in our midst.’ And I therefore have to make sure that my students understand that this Yom Yerushalayim, we will do a flag march through the Mahane Yehuda market [instead of the path through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, which is often marked by antagonism toward non-Jewish residents of the city]. So we are respectful and then we go to the Kotel. 

There are complicated issues. I have not seen more anger over it. There is more confusion, but I think our responsibility is to articulate ways to think about that confusion, which under the leadership of my colleagues, Rabbi Nagen and Rabbi Lavi, I think we’re doing. 

I can tell you that the moderate Arab governments are asking us to play roles in this, of having religion be a multiplier and not a divider. And so has the Israeli government asked us to play roles in this. 

Those involved can’t be perceived as “left wing.” They are halachic Jews who are not willing to allow our halachic responsibility to protect our land to compromise our responsibility to make sure that our land has the norms and mores that Judaism asks of us.

JAG: And where will you be on Yom HaZikaron? RKB: I will start Yom Zikaron at night. I will commemorate locally [in Jerusalem] with the people on my block and friends and all of us who’ve lost people. On Yom HaZikaron morning, I will be first at Derech Avot, at one of the boys high schools that has lost eight alumni this year and five alumni and faculty in the past years from acts of terror or acts of serving the army. And then I will immediately go to Katz Oriya High School for girls, which is five, 10 minutes away by car, where there have been three losses. And then I’ll go to Mt. Herzl. The goal is to get there before the siren, and with the help of the guy who drives me, we normally beat Waze’s predicted arrival time. We’ll either get there in time or we’ll stop at the side of the road.