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We'll Give You an Answer, MK Davidson

• 9 min read
We'll Give You an Answer, MK Davidson
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It deserves an answer. Here it is.

I. What Happened, Fairly Told

During this week's stormy debate over the Basic Law: Torah Study, MK Davidson turned to the young Charedi men seated in the plenum gallery and let loose. At your age, he told them, people put on a helmet and fight — while you are sightseeing. He spoke of reservists losing their businesses and their families; of parents who do not sleep when their child is in Lebanon; of his friend Eli Orgad, owner of Radio 90FM, whose son was called up at two in the morning and who has suffered partial facial paralysis from the sheer stress of the messages on his phone. He said the sight of the bochurim shakes him, that the crisis of trust is severe, and he called on every Likud and Religious Zionist MK to vote against the laws. And then — to his credit — he softened: I'm sorry I shouted at you, he said, but don't dismiss what I said. Enlist. It will not make you less religious. It will make you better citizens.

Let us take him at his word that every syllable came from the depths of his heart. We believe it did. The exhaustion of the reserve families is real and crushing; the father with the frozen face is real; the grief of this war is real, and no Charedi Jew should ever wave it away. So we will not answer MK Davidson with a sneer. We will answer him with the truth — because his sincerity is precisely what makes his errors worth correcting.

II. First, a Small Correction About the "Zoo"

The bochurim in that gallery were not tourists enjoying the Knesset, and they were not sightseeing. They were sitting in the visitors' gallery of their own parliament — as any citizen may — on the day the Knesset debated a Basic Law concerning the single most important thing in their lives: the status of Torah study in this land, and the law to halt the arrests of their friends and brothers. They came because their fate was on the table. A young secular Israeli attending a debate that would decide his future would be praised for civic engagement. When a bochur does it, an MK screams at him to get out. That reflex — the assumption that a Charedi boy in a public space is an offense to be removed — is worth noticing, precisely because MK Davidson is not a hateful man. It shows how deep the poison has seeped, even into decent people.

III. "Why Should They Care? They Don't Care!" — But We Do

Here is the accusation at the heart of his cry, and it is simply, factually wrong. The Charedi world cares — in the ways the cameras never film. In every shul in Bnei Brak and Yerushalayim, Tehillim is said daily for the soldiers; entire communities have taken on learning and davening for soldiers by name. Charedi chessed organizations — the ambulances, the medical funds, the food networks, the crisis teams that this publication has documented at length — serve every family in this country, reservist families very much included, without ever asking anyone's politics. And when October 7 came, thousands of Charedim stood in line to volunteer — including, let it be remembered, more than four thousand who sought to enlist and were turned away by the army itself, and Charedi veterans who volunteered for reserve duty and were never called.

MK Davidson looked at boys sitting quietly in a gallery and read indifference in their faces. He might instead have asked them. He would have found that some of them would daven that very night for Eli Orgad's son in Lebanon — by name, if given it. Not caring is not our sickness. Not being believed when we care is closer to the truth.

IV. The Address for His Anger Is Wrong

Now to the substance. MK Davidson's real grievance — the one that made his voice shake — is the unbearable load on the reservists. He is right that it is unbearable. He is wrong about who placed it there.

The reserve burden was manufactured, over a decade, by the defense establishment's own choices: the "small but smart" doctrine that cut combat units and released tens of thousands of reservists from duty before the war. It is sustained today by that same establishment's choices: a decorated combat officer — himself a bereaved brother from a Charedi home — testified in the Knesset that he presented the committee an organized table of the reserve divisions and corps that were closed before the war, and of the astronomical numbers of soldiers who have still never been called up. The IDF, he said, does not lack soldiers; it lacks management. Add the four thousand Charedi volunteers turned away, the Charedi reservists never summoned, and the billions flowing into a drone-and-AI military designed to need fewer soldiers — and the picture is complete.

And here is the part that matters most for MK Davidson's own goal: even if his prescription were followed tomorrow, it would not relieve his friend's son by one single day. The army's own showcase Charedi brigade drew seventy recruits in its last cycle — and the arrests his party champions are the very thing driving even willing candidates away in droves, as the army's own recruiters now admit. Coercion is not filling the ranks; it is emptying the pipeline. If MK Davidson wants the reservists home — and we believe with a whole heart that he does — his fury has an address. It is not the gallery. It is the establishment that shrank the army, refuses its willing volunteers, leaves tens of thousands uncalled, and then points at the beis medrash.

V. "It Will Not Make You Less Religious" — The Promise This Very Month Disproved

And now the sentence we owe the most careful answer, because MK Davidson clearly believes it: Enlist — it will not make you less religious.

With respect: how would he know? He is a secular man making a spiritual promise about a system he experiences from the outside. So let us not answer him from our own beliefs either. Let us answer him from the testimony of the religious soldiers already inside. This very season, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Eli hesder yeshiva — whose students fight and bleed in this army — said publicly that he does not believe a single word of the Chief of Staff's assurances about the Joint Service Ordinance, because the army drafted its own religious-accommodation order and then spent twenty years deliberately not implementing it. Twenty-five hesder yeshivos are boycotting the Armored Corps over the integration of women, which the Chief of Staff has vowed to expand "without compromise." Soldiers' wives published a photograph from Lebanon of a female soldier bedded down among their husbands. And in the army's own prisons, Charedi detainees have been denied their tefillin — an incident the IDF itself confirmed and apologized for, and which then happened again.

That is what the army's promises of religious accommodation are worth to the religious Jews who did enlist — the most devoted soldiers it has. MK Davidson asks our sons to stake their neshamos on a promise the army is breaking, in public, this very month, to the people who took it. Our gedolim's answer is not stubbornness. It is the evidence.

VI. The Stretcher We Carry

MK Davidson says: be part of carrying the stretcher. We answer: we are carrying one — the oldest one. The Torah that has been learned without interruption for three thousand years is, in our unshakable belief, the true shield of this people — Torah magna umatzla — and the boys he screamed at are its bearers, from morning until night. He is free not to share that belief. But then let him say "I don't believe in what they carry" — not "they carry nothing." Those are different claims, and only the first one is honest. (And as for his aside that learning from morning to night is "not so terrible" — we warmly invite MK Davidson to join a Thursday-night seder in Mir or Ponovezh and test the proposition. He will be received with honor. He may leave with a different opinion.)

VII. A Word About the Crisis of Trust

MK Davidson laments the crisis of trust between the communities, and he is right that it is severe. But he might reflect, in a quiet moment, on who has been pouring fuel on it. He serves in the party whose founder built its brand on this confrontation; whose 2014 criminal-sanctions law first turned bnei Torah into potential prisoners and brought half a million Jews into the streets; whose declared first priority in the coming elections — in his own colleagues' words — is "fighting the draft-dodging law"; and one of whose MKs stood outside the Beit Lid military prison and called Jews saying Tehillim "parasites." The crisis of trust did not fall from the sky. It was built, brick by brick, and MK Davidson's own political home laid many of the bricks. His anguish at the result is genuine. So should be the accounting.

VIII. Our Answer, From the Depths of Our Heart

So here, MK Davidson, is the answer we owe you — given as you gave your words, from the depths of the heart.

Your pain is real, and we do not dismiss it. The reservists' families are our brothers and sisters; their exhaustion grieves us; we daven for their sons, and for your friend's son in Lebanon, and we mean it. But you have been aiming your anguish at the wrong target. The boys in that gallery did not shrink the army, did not close the reserve divisions, did not turn away four thousand volunteers, and did not write the doctrine that left your friend's son carrying tour after tour. And the one thing you asked of them — to hand over the Torah-life that is their entire being, on your assurance that the army will leave their Yiddishkeit intact — is an assurance the army itself has spent this very month disproving to its own religious soldiers.

We will not stop caring about your children. We ask only that you stop demanding ours. Direct your fire at the establishment that manufactured this shortage and squanders its willing manpower — there, we suspect, you and we might even stand on the same side. And come visit a beis medrash, MK Davidson. Not the gallery — the real thing, at eleven at night. Come see what it is these boys carry, and why they will not put it down. You shouted that we should not dismiss your words. We have not. Do not dismiss ours.

May Hashem guard every soldier of Israel and bring them home whole to their families, comfort the weary and the grieving, protect every ben Torah at his post, and heal the torn heart of His people until we stand together, one nation, before Him — bimheirah b'yameinu, amen.

Sources

The video and the man

  • The video of MK Simon Davidson (Yesh Atid) addressing yeshiva bochurim in the Knesset gallery during the debate on the Basic Law: Torah Study, as circulated by HaPargod and reported by Kikar HaShabbat, including his follow-up: "I'm sorry I shouted at you... Enlist. It will not make you less religious"; his biography (born Vilnius, 1970; swimmer and chairman of the Israel Swimming Association; entered the Knesset for Yesh Atid in 2021)
  • The Yesh Atid record: the party's declared election priority of "fighting the [Charedi] draft-dodging law" (JNS interview, May 2026); the 2014 criminal-sanctions draft law and the mass atzeres it provoked; Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern's description of Charedim saying Tehillim at Beit Lid as "parasites" (Times of Israel, August 2025)

The facts of the answer

  • The testimony of Maj. (res.) Dovi Yudkin to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee — the reserve divisions and corps closed before the war, the "astronomical numbers" of soldiers never called up, and that "the IDF doesn't lack soldiers, it lacks management"; the 4,000+ Charedim turned away after October 7 and the Charedi reserve volunteers never summoned; the collapse of Chashmonaim Brigade recruitment (roughly 70 recruits in the May cycle) amid the arrests
  • The month's evidence on religious life in the army: Rabbi Ohad Tirosh on the Joint Service Ordinance ("I don't believe a single word"); the hesder boycott of the Armored Corps; the Lebanon mixed-quarters photograph; the confirmed denials of tefillin to Charedi detainees in military prison; Sotah 21a — Torah magna umatzla

The structural relationship to other articles in this series

  • "Side by Side, Not Apart: What the Chief of Staff Just Told Us About the Draft" — the manpower story his anger rests on, tested in full
  • "Afraid of a Pair of Tefillin" — what the army's religious guarantees are worth in practice
  • "Do Charedim Have Hakaras Hatov for Those Who Serve?" — the caring he could not see from the plenum floor
  • "How Torah Learning Protects Klal Yisrael" — the stretcher we carry