Among the most divisive issues perennially facing the State of Israel is the blanket exemption of Haredim from military or national service. While this issue has long roiled Israeli society, the crisis situation the nation finds itself in since October 7th casts it in a new and existentially perilous light. Tamir Granot offers thoughts about why it’s so hard for different sides to even find a common framework in which to argue—and offers a suggestion for a way forward to a common future.

Those interested in the interaction of religion and state have been captivated these last few weeks (in the way train wrecks draw our attention) by the byzantine delays in elections for the Israeli Chief Rabbinate—which for the first time in its history is doubly vacant with neither Ashkenazi nor Sefardi Chiefs. Jeffrey Saks examines a chapter in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s biography, and his flirtation with the position in the early 1960s, which reminds us just how far we are from the Rav’s vision of what a Chief Rabbi might be.

Tomorrow (3 Tammuz) marks the 30th yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson zt”l. In his memory, read an archived TRADITION essay published 60+ years ago for the 150th yahrzeit of his forebear, the Ba’al HaTanya—founder of Chabad Hasidut. Irving Block considered the character of the “Benoni” and his role in the psychological theories of Chabad.