Lawmakers argued over how to legally define who is ultra-Orthodox on Tuesday, wading into a heated debate at the center of efforts by the ruling coalition to pass controversial legislation regulating military conscription and exemptions in the Haredi community.

According to opposition lawmakers and other critics, a bill recently put forward by the government would enshrine a definition that includes many who are no longer in the ultra-Orthodox community. Those people would nonetheless count toward Haredi enlistment quotas, meaning fewer ultra-Orthodox men would actually have to join up.

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service but have not enlisted, in line with a long-standing status quo exempting the Haredi community from the country’s mandatory draft. Israel’s highest courts have repeatedly struck down the arrangement and demanded that ultra-Orthodox teens be drafted with the rest of the Jewish population, setting off a scramble to legislate a compromise that would set Haredi enlistment quotas and impose sanctions on those refusing to enlist.

A government-backed bill making its way through the Knesset, which sets yearly quotas, defines ultra-Orthodox as anyone who studied at a Haredi educational institution for at least two years between the ages of 14 and 18.

The bill also grants yearly deferments from enlistment to full-time yeshiva students not engaged in any other vocation, while imposing punitive measures aimed at encouraging them to serve instead. Most sanctions, however, only kick in if enlistment quotas are not........

© The Times of Israel