The mandatory one-year waiting period before applying to grow a beard after having shaved it is itself a judgment on religious sincerity. Here, the IDF falsely concludes that someone who shaves his beard once must not have a sincere religious motivation for growing a beard after that, regardless of any other facts.
The mandatory one-year waiting period imposed for a violation of the directives implies that the IDF will use prohibitions on religious practices as a method of punishment for disciplinary violations.
As a symbolic matter, intentionally or unintentionally, the regulations send a message of hostility to the Jewish character of IDF and the state.
The IDF has immense social, political and even religious relevance to Israeli and world Jewry. For world Jewry, the IDF is the Jewish army, unique in modern history, the last line of defense against another Holocaust, the reversal of the Jew’s historical position as helpless victim and the heir to the Jewish military tradition of antiquity. For Israeli Jewry, the IDF is a rite of passage, a social training ground where many form social, business and political connections that can endure a lifetime, and of course society’s protector against terrorism and war.
The enactment of new anti-beard regulations sends an official message of disparagement toward traditional religious practices symbolized by beards, which Lt. Col. Azulai implied are not in keeping with “the image of the IDF.”
Azulai’s assertion that beards violate the IDF’s image is plainly false. Half the young combat officers are religious and 40 percent of all graduating officers in 2007 were religious. Recently, Operation Cast Lead produced many photographs of soldiers sporting beards, yarmulkes and side-locks in uniform, sometimes in combat and often while praying. The religious soldier – beard and all – is, in fact, fast becoming the real image of the IDF.
In addition, many religious soldiers have been forced to question their assumptions about the IDF due to its role in the expulsion of 8,000 Jews from their homes as well as the recent threats to disband Hesder units, which combine army service with religious study. The new regulations can easily be viewed as insulting – if not a direct assault on religious soldiers.
But any public-relations problems the new directives may create with the national-religious sector are dwarfed by the potential for damage with Israel’s growing haredi community, a large portion of which views the State of Israel and the IDF as anti-religious institutions.
Practically 100 percent of the haredi community, constituting 11.5% of each year’s potential enlistment, does not, for religious reasons, enlist for IDF service. In order to reverse this problem, the IDF, in cooperation with a group of rabbis, created Nahal Haredi in 1999 as a venue for young, nationalistically inclined haredi men to serve in the IDF while adhering to the highest religious standards. From a small unit of 30 soldiers, Nahal Haredi has expanded to a full battalion with close to 1,000 troops and already aiming to grow to a fully operative infantry brigade.
The new anti-beard regulations, however, could set back the public-relations gains made with Nahal Haredi. They will only enforce haredi perceptions and arguments that the IDF and the state are hostile to Judaism. Taken together with newly proposed reductions in exemptions for haredim, the regulations could spark even greater haredi resentment toward the IDF and the state.
Finally, the regulations are unnecessarily overbroad and arbitrary. Purportedly, they were enacted in response to data showing a rise in soldiers who grew beards in violation of regulations. But if this is the case, all that is really needed is improved enforcement of the old regulations, not onerous restrictions that impinge on religious freedom.
A better rule would be, as the Legal Forum has recommended, to simply accept “a soldier’s declaration that he grows a beard on a regular basis for religious purposes or that he grows a beard temporarily for religious purposes.”
Absent evidence that the soldier is lying, the onus should never be placed on a newly drafted young Jewish soldier to justify his religious sincerity.