Israel Matzav

Registration at Har Bracha yeshiva skyrockets

On Sunday night, I reported that Defense Minister Ehud Barak had ordered the IDF to take steps to end the participation of the Har Bracha yeshiva in the hesder program. Here are the unsurprising results of the recent fight over Rabbi Eliezer Melamed's yeshiva: Registration among 12th graders for the next academic year has skyrocketed. And 'right wing activists are calling on all hesder yeshivas to end their arrangement with the army.

This is from the first link.

Since Defense Minister Ehud Barak began discussing the option of expelling Har Bracha from the IDF Hesder agreement, student interest in the yeshiva has skyrocketed.

In the past two weeks over 300 twelth grade students have contacted the yeshiva about coming for the traditional “week long visit” prior to deciding on where they want to study next year. This is triple the amount of students who usually contact the yeshiva by this time.

This is from the second link:

Right-wing activists formed teams that will visit hesder yeshivot throughout the country in the coming days to urge yeshiva students to put an end to their arrangement with the IDF. Hesder yeshivas combine Talmudic studies with military service.

Ynet learned that prominent rightist figures are behind the move, such as Baruch Marzel. Marzel said, "It needs to be understood that the military has much more to lose than the hesder yeshivas. There is a huge lack of manpower and motivated fighters are an obvious need of the IDF."

Marzel is definitely right about the army having more to lose than the yeshivas. The men who go to hesder are far less likely to do a straight enlistment than they are to go to yeshivas that don't include army service.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:08 PM