When he leaves the army barracks to return to his ultra-orthodox Kiryat Menchem neighbourhood in west Jerusalem, Jacov Barchaim immediately swaps his khaki uniform for a traditional black suit to avoid causing offence.

His work as a reservist in the Israeli army would be too difficult for his conservative father-in-law to understand, said Mr Barchaim, 35, adding that he kept his occupation under wraps out of respect for his wife.

“When I joined the army in 2015, it was a very big secret. For the first three years, almost nobody knew about it,” he told the Telegraph last week at the Yeshiva Chedvata, the religious school where he teaches in Gan Yavne, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

The Yeshiva, an outlier in the Haredi community, seeks to train ultra-orthodox – or Haredi – men for secular military culture.

When Mr Barchaim signed up for the army nine years ago, the question of conscription for young Haredi men was a hot-button political issue, as it is now.

He confided his dream to serve and protect the country to his rabbi, who advised him to keep quiet to avoid the risk of his four young sons being excluded from their Talmud Torah elementary school.

“I said to him, ‘I can’t live like this. I am proud of who I am and what I am doing and I want to [openly] wear a uniform’,” he said. “The rabbi replied, ‘you are right but this is a moment to be smart and not to be right’.”

Mr Barchaim, now a military rabbi, who carries his own personal handgun, currently works in hospitals to receive and care for the bodies of dead soldiers from the battlefield in Gaza and to comfort their relatives.

He counsels young Haredi men on how to reconcile the strict and isolationist religious traditions of their community with military service, and he wants to remain a reservist until he’s 50.

But the young father is a rarity in Israel’s Haredi community, which now makes up about 13 per cent of the country’s 9.5 million-strong population and is currently at the centre of a political storm over its decades-long sweeping exemption from compulsory military conscription.

In the interest of fairness

On Tuesday, Israel’s Supreme Court attempted to draw a line under a controversy that has remained unresolved for generations by unanimously ruling that the military must begin drafting ultra-orthodox men in the interest of fairness.

The landmark decision effectively scrapped the system, which allowed Haredi men to side-step military service to devote their time to state-subsidised full-time religious study.

It also threatens to precipitate the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, which is tenuously held together by Haredi factions for whom draft exemptions are a red line.

The contentious policy dates back to the founding of Israel in 1948 when a few hundred students of the Torah were allowed to avoid conscription.

The boom in the Haredi population has made the policy unsustainable, particularly at a time when the Israel Defence Forces are overstretched by a nine-month war.

Resentment is building among the Israeli majority who are shouldering the economic and social burden of the country’s security while tens of thousands of fit young conservative men study on the sidelines.

Ron Scherf, an Israeli social and political activist and former IDF Lt. Colonel said: “After October 7, it became not only a moral social question but also a firsthand security question.

“We were under the impression that we can have a small and clever army. But we understand now that clever is not enough and we need a lot of soldiers to protect our borders.”

“I believe that Israel after 76 years is at a real watershed moment,” he said.

Rabbi Yonatan Reiss, who founded the Yeshiva Chedvata, has been trying to close the gaping divide between Israel’s minority ultra-religious population and the majority of Israeli men and women who serve three and two years respectively in the military.

Since he founded the Yeshiva Chedvata six years ago, the number of ultra-orthodox students it has trained to join the military, either for combat in the Haredi-majority Netzach Yehuda battalion or the technical division of the Air Force, has grown from six to around 300 and keeps expanding. 

Haredi leaders in part opposed conscription out of fears about the influence of Israel’s open and liberal society on their youth. The Yeshiva trained young people on how to remain faithful to their values while serving in the military, he explained.

The students from the Yeshiva currently join the Netzach Yehuda battalion, where they are allowed time to pray and for religious studies. The unit also has no female soldiers which is an important part of them respecting Haredi traditions. The base is strictly kosher.

‘Solution to a problem’

Mr Reiss said he also aimed to offer a viable alternative solution to Haredi men who were not capable of studying the Torah full-time. He estimated about 30 per cent of those registered as students were not actually in the classroom.

“I am trying to give a solution to a problem,” he told the Telegraph ahead of the court ruling.

But he cautioned that the military was not ready to suddenly absorb a large number of ultra-orthodox men and that while some within the Haredi community understood the need for change it would not happen overnight.

“A social process can’t be done fast. There is no solution that you make in a second,” he said.

Baruch Linshe, 23, one of the Yeshiva’s students who will be conscripted within a few months said his parents had been initially reluctant about his decision but now fully supported him.

But he acknowledged that men who joined the military rather than study the Torah full-time could be perceived as lower in the community’s social hierarchy and find it harder to marry.

Fear of going against Haredi norms and traditions was holding his own friends back from joining up, he said.

“My friends are proud of me,” he said. “They would like to join but they won’t because of their families and the community. You have to be brave to do this.”