New changes in the Tal Law will enable high school graduates to carry out their mandatory National Service by doing volunteer work with the Chabad Lubavitch religious outreach group.
Not all Chabad outreach activities will count; the world-renown black-jacketed, black-hatted men helping Jewish boys and men don phylacteries, many for the first time in their lives, will not earn credit toward national service, for example. Nor will the equally famous female counterpart, distributing candles to Jewish women and girls on Fridays to teach them the commandment of lighting the Sabbath candles..
However, providing assistance and services to the infirm and destitute, as well as tutoring young boys in preparation for their Bar Mitzvah will count toward National Service, according to the Chabad website COL.
The Chassidic community’s work with the poor, at-risk youth and other civilians in need will be considered an acceptable substitute for participation in similar projects in the usual National Service framework. Participation in Chabad’s efforts to teach Judaism, on the other hand, will not be considered legitimate National Service.
The agreement is part of the government's attempts to increase participation in the IDF and national service within the hareidi religious community.
The Reform Movement’s legal division vehemently objected to the government's decision allowing Chabad service to take the place of National Service, protesting that the government had no right to “substitute blatantly religious activity for mandatory military service,” as Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) head Rabbi Gilad Kariv said, adding that the hareidim have been given enough shortcuts with the Tal Law and vowing to "fight it in court.”
Kariv said the group had filed a petition with the Supreme Court against National Service for young religious women as well.
Rabbi Menachem Brod, spokesman for Chabad, pointed out that most of the young men in the Chassidic community enter the army.
The Tal Law, which went into effect in February 2003, allows full-time rabbinical students after the age of 22 to do one year of National Service and receive an exemption from IDF military service. The law, which has been challenged repeatedly over the years, was not fully implemented until January 2008.