For 16 years now, David Hager has managed to avoid giving an interview. The businessman and philanthropist, who is considered to be one of the most significant forces urging the recruitment of ultra-Orthodox Jews or Haredim into the IDF, does his utmost to limit exposure to a minimum. "I prefer to work underneath the radar, quietly, for, as it says in the Talmud, 'A blessing is found only in an object that is hidden from the eye', but on occasions, there is no choice," he explains in a conversation from his home on the 22nd floor of the Leonardo Plaza Hotel in Jerusalem.
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He even tried to dodge receiving the Presidential Award for Volunteerism a few weeks ago, explaining that although this is clearly a great honor, he simply prefers to engage in his activities behind the scenes. He now says that he felt a duty to be interviewed in order to counter the threat that is knocking on our door: "I feel that we are on the eve of the destruction of the Third Temple. What I see is a profound schism within the Jewish people and nobody is listening to the other side, even though there are rights and wrongs on both sides. I too have criticism of the Haredim but at the same time, I also see the amazing things taking place within that sector of Israeli society.
"Just take a look at Yonatan Hirsch, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who was recently verbally harassed by a woman on a bus merely because of the kippah he was wearing and his peyot (side curls). Hirsch served in the army because of me. I had Shabbat dinner with his family, an unforgettable experience to which I bring senior IDF officers, and his mother told me that she has an extremely talented son who wants to join up, but she is concerned that it will cause them tremendous problems and that he won't be able to find a shidduch (a marital match). I asked her if she thought that he might become less religious because of the army and she said no. I then said to her 'Let the Almighty be the one to decide.' Hirsch is currently a reserve captain in the IDF and an attorney at the State Attorney's Office. One day he will be the State Attorney. And we have dozens of stories just like that of Yonatan."
Hager (69) was born in Tel Aviv to a family that made Aliyah from Belgium. His father was the owner of the legendary Arctic popsicle manufacturer, which may have been closed down decades ago, but has remained a household name among millions of Israelis to this day. As a young boy, he studied at flagship institutions of the ultra-Orthodox world – the Yishuv Hahadash yeshiva and then later on at the first Hesder Yeshiva in Israel Kerem BeYavneh. He served as a combat medic in the Nahal Infantry Brigade and during his post-army studies he met Judy, his wife of 46 years. The two of them moved to Los Angeles, where their three children were born, and he started out on a successful career in real estate.
Hager currently splits his time between Los Angeles and Jerusalem, where he spends about four months a year dedicated to philanthropic activity for the good of the general public. "Though my house in LA is five times bigger, I actually feel much more at home here." he says while we look out over the Old City, "Giving to the community now takes up more than 50% of my time (alongside business and family), and I am happy to say that my partners too are headed in the same direction. One of them, Adam Milstein, is one of the key figures in charge of the war on BDS and antisemitism."
Forced conscription is an own goal.
One of the main issues that Hager has been leading for many years now is the drafting of Haredim into the IDF, as a member of the management board of the Netzah Yehuda Association and one of its key donors. In addition to the Netzah Yehuda Battalion itself, the Association was also a partner in the establishment of the Hetz Tzanhanim (Haredi paratroopers) and accompanies the Tomer Givati and Israel Air Force programs for Haredim. A considerable portion of the time he spends in Israel is dedicated to helping and boosting the issue of drafting Haredim, and especially during recent times. "With the Haredim, you really need to understand a simple fact – there is no such thing as coercion. If you try to force anything it simply won't work, and vice versa," he explains. As proof of that, he points to the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, recounting that the first draft included a mere 30 combat soldiers, and today we are talking about a larger than usual battalion, one that is extremely active and in great demand.
Q: The figures regarding drafting Haredim in recent years have remained unchanged. The Haredim are not running en masse to sign up.
"That's true. In 2014, a senior politician said that if they fail to meet the quotas, something which was generally accepted by all, then yeshiva students would go to jail. I drove to his house in Tel Aviv and I begged. I told him, 'You know full well that if you throw 200 Haredim into jail there will be an outcry, within a matter of minutes there will be half a million people in front of the Knesset.' He refused to listen to me and this only served to increase the objection to joining the army. As a result, the hard-line ultra-Orthodox 'Jerusalem Faction' became stronger and subsequently stirred up strong feelings among the Haredi public, and everything just collapsed. Today, ultra-Orthodox soldiers are afraid of entering Bnei Brak in uniform. The number of soldiers in Netzah Yehuda was supposed to double since 2014; however, this has not been the case. It is genuinely not possible to achieve anything by coercion."
Q: You are ignoring the fact that there were a number of dark clouds surrounding the Haredi battalion. The incident, about eighteen months ago, involving the elderly Palestinian man who was cuffed and died, alongside the abuse of Palestinians by combat soldiers following a terrorist attack. This resulted in the battalion's name being dragged through the mud.
"In which battalion did Elor Azaria serve? Nobody knows. I asked a group of 300 different people, all of whom were familiar with his story, along with a number of IDF major generals, but not a single one knew that he served in the Shimshon Battalion. Yet, whenever the Netzah Yehuda Battalion is involved in something, the journalists and the public jump at the opportunity to stress that it was ultra-Orthodox soldiers who did it. The simple answer lies in the statistics, not only is the battalion not involved in more problematic incidents than others, but on the contrary. In contrast to any other battalion, which serves for a four-month stint in Judea & Samaria and then proceeds to take part in military training and to serve in other combat fronts such as the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip border, Netzah Yehuda spends the entire year in Judea & Samaria, which leads to a tremendous level of erosion."
Q: Despite that, we cannot really say that the Haredim support joining up. A few years ago, it was exposed that the IDF had inflated the numbers of those joining up in order to meet the quotas, and in practice, individuals who were not religious at all, let alone ultra-Orthodox, were counted as such.
"Today the possibility of serving in the IDF is a ready option available in the Haredi world too. Take, for example, a guy called Avi. He was in yeshiva and left to go to England for three months, even though he received authorization from the army to spend only one month there, based on his declaration of 'Torato Umanuto', literally meaning that an individual's Torah study is considered his occupation, as part of the special, long-established arrangement enabling young Haredi men to complete their Torah studies in yeshiva before enrolling in the army. On his return, he was drafted, and his plan was to immediately start shooting in the air once he received his service rifle in order to be able to obtain an exemption from military service on the grounds of being unfit due to his mental health. At the end of his first march, when the troops returned to base, his friend, who wears a knitted kippah, asked him to remain awake for an additional 20 minutes and join in the 'vatikin' early morning prayers, that take place at sunrise. This was the first time he had prayed in this special way, and it had a tremendous impact on him, but he was still unsure as to whether or not he wanted to remain. Rabbi Shteinman, with whom he consulted, told him that to be on the streets is also an issue of pikuach nefesh or saving a life so he should remain in the army."
By saying this, in essence, Hager has confirmed for the first time that Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, the Gadol HaDor or spiritual Leader of the Generation within the Haredi world, who passed away in 2017, was one of the rabbis who actually supported the military draft, something for which he suffered heavy criticism during his lifetime. "During the first five years of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, the Haredi world fought us tooth and nail. Rabbi Shteinman was one of our supporters, though clearly his support was expressed discreetly. Today, everybody understands that joining up to serve in the IDF is one of the best options for a young man who is not cut out for sitting and studying.
"My dream is that there will be an ultra-Orthodox major general, and God willing I will live to see this come true," he says. In parallel, Hager is working to establish a first Haredi Beit HaHayal (Soldier's House), near to the government precinct in Jerusalem, where in addition to the usual amenities, there will also be a Bet Midrash for soldiers on vacation to sit and study Torah. "We have some 180 lone soldiers, either due to their parents having severed relations with them or as they do not want to harm their siblings' chances of obtaining a worthy shidduch."
The military draft law is about to reappear on the public agenda, with the who knows what attempt to reach consensus. The Ministry of Finance is pressing to lower the exemption age for Haredim to 21 in order to enable them to enter the labor market, a demand that has led to broad public objection. Hager is also staunchly opposed to this initiative and says that not only is this superfluous, but it will create both economic and security-related damage, not to mention the issue of equality between the various sectors of the population in Israel.
"Why enact a law that is no good for anyone? The exemption age should be 23 as prior to this it is of absolutely no use. The problem is that the economists at the Ministry of Finance are not ultra-Orthodox and thus they do not understand that no Haredi in his right mind will go to work before he gets married, which on average tends to occur at the age of 22. Moreover, if you lower the draft age to 21, then why should a Haredi join a combat unit? In any event, he will be discharged straight afterward. For an individual who is not suited to the life of sitting and learning in yeshiva, the timespan from the age of 18 to 23 is much too long. A move such as the one that the Ministry of Finance seeks to initiate will harm the economy, the draft, and basically, everybody will suffer. If this would contribute to the state in some manner and as a result we would have to lose a couple of hundred soldiers then I wouldn't say a word, but if the end result is damage to the economy, also to the draft process and it will create a total imbalance – then what have we to gain from it?"
Torah Study is tantamount to giving up your life
According to him, there is a need to create a model in which the duration of service of soldiers who are not of critical value to the establishment should be reduced to two years, while the wages of combat soldiers and those in intelligence units should be substantially increased. Increased supervision of the yeshivot should lead to a situation in which only those individuals who are really learning will remain there, and the fact that the exemption age will be 23 would lead young Haredi men who are not learning to join the IDF.
"I speak with politicians and public figures. One of the senior figures with whom I spoke didn't believe that the young Haredim would not enter the labor market at the age of 21 because of shidduch problems. I phoned up an ultra-Orthodox woman at random and asked her if the young men would go out and work if they were to be discharged at the age of 21. She basically said you must be joking and that there was no way this would happen."
They will tell you that this isn't fair either. That there is a need for equality in shouldering the burden and that everybody needs to go to the army rather than learning in yeshiva.
"People really do not understand how much of a sacrifice is required to sit and learn. As far as I am concerned, the fact that the Haredi public figures and politicians do not invest in an effort to explain what people give up in order to learn Torah, is a serious flaw. In the history of the State of Israel, there hasn't been a single case of somebody seeking to dodge the draft, and so he decided to go and learn Torah. It is simply not a viable option as it is much too difficult. People give up their lives, literally, in order to learn Torah, and just as there are outstanding sportsmen, so there also ought to be outstanding Torah scholars. My aim is that anybody who is not learning Torah should be drafted into an ultra-Orthodox military framework, this would do them the world of good.
"My dream is for the IDF to establish another two ultra-Orthodox battalions in the format of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion. The army genuinely wants more ultra-Orthodox soldiers, but it is currently unable to draft more than a further two battalions. In the IDF they won't go shouting this from the treetops, but just go and ask any former Head of the IDF Manpower Directorate. The army would simply collapse."
Q: And how can we cause the Haredim to come?
"We need to encourage people within Haredi society to enlist via diverse means, and at the same time to increase supervision of the Torah study institutions and academies. Those young ultra-Orthodox men on the streets really need to join up. Have you ever seen people running to pay taxes? There is a state, there are laws, there are requirements, and that's all there is to it."
Q: Two additional Haredi battalions, with kosher mehadrin food and without women - I'm not sure that the secular public would be ready to accept that.
"True, it is difficult for the army to provide the specific conditions for the Haredim. To set up a battalion without women is a highly complex task, among others due to the courses that the combat soldiers need to take, such as medics, snipers, or officers' course. But at the same time, people also need to understand that we do not seek to change the Haredi way of life. Let's say for argument's sake that the IDF decides to establish an Arab unit. We couldn't tell them not to pray five times a day, correct? We need to find a way of incorporating the way of life of the various sectors within the population into the different IDF units."
Both sides are to blame for the incitement
Alongside the activity relating to the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, Hager is involved in numerous initiatives designed to advocate and encourage the study of mathematics and English in ultra-Orthodox society, based on the simple understanding that this is the future of the State of Israel. "I came to the conclusion that the integration of Haredim into the army and the economy is critical 25 years ago, and as long as this is not occurring – this constitutes a clear and present danger to the state over the next 50 years. Unfortunately, nobody listened to me.
"The Haredi army is black gold, just like oil. Until a decade ago the Israeli high-tech industry grew exponentially thanks to the Russian immigrants, but that is now over. Now is the turn of the Haredi public. Almost every second child suffers to some extent from attention deficit disorders due to the prevalence of screens. Where can you find children who are able to focus on one thing from morning until night? They just lack English and math."
Q: The Haredi MKs are increasing the stipends for yeshiva students, that is not the way to inspire people to enter the world of high-tech, on the contrary.
"I agree with you. It's sad. We were very close to getting the Belz Hasidic group to include core subjects in their educational institutions, and then pressure was brought to bear on the Belz Rebbe to give this up. The Haredi politicians have no idea of the needs of the grass roots and they are harming the chances of the rank and file in Haredi society. All the politicians are causing damage. I am shocked at the way in which they speak in the Knesset, how can we raise kids when they see this manner of speaking? Horrific turns of speech. You are the elected individuals who are supposed to represent the people. I would turn off the microphone and let each one speak in turn. This is an affliction that also affects the ultra-Orthodox MKs. They ought to be a role model for others."
"This is also true when it comes to the vicious expressions used against the Haredim. There is incitement and it is making inroads into all forms of dialogue. The politicians need to take a grip on themselves and understand that now is the time to amend this. There is a saying that you need two to tango. It is clear that the blame lies with both sides, and we need a responsible adult to assume responsibility and solve this crisis. In the Passover Haggadah, we say, 'For not only one enemy has risen up against us to destroy us.' The fact that there is a severe lack of unity is what is rising up now to destroy us and we need to put a stop to it immediately. We don't necessarily need to agree with one another, but we must stand together, despite the differences of opinion."
