In the past, it has been claimed that there is a jump in the number of religious conscripts. • A new study reveals a jump in the center and a moderate increase in the periphery.
Enlisting in the IDF (Those photographed have no connection to the news)
Photography:
Gideon Markowitz
In recent years, despite disagreements over religious Zionism, there has been a dramatic increase in the rate of religious women enlisting in the IDF, but in the past, researcher Ariel Finkelstein, a doctoral student in political science and researcher of the Torah and Labor Trustees, revealed that the numbers were inflated and inaccurate. A new study that examined and segmented the characteristics of religious women soldiers and their personal backgrounds.
In a study conducted for the Torah and Avodah Trustees movement, Finkelstein wrote that in 2000, the recruitment rate among state-religious education graduates was 24.8%.
This year saw a continuous decline that intensified and reached its peak in the years following the disengagement plan from Gush Katif that occurred in 2005 until in the years 2007-2008 only 18.5% of the national religious stream enlisted.
Since 2009, the number of religious conscripts has risen again and reached a peak in the 2016 recruitment yearbook after standing at 27.7%.
Finkelstein points out that the state religious stream also includes Chabad institutions, so that after deducting this public, which usually does not enlist in the IDF, the rate of religious conscripts is even close to 30%.
But in terms of the characteristics of the mobilization, it appears that the vast majority of the change occurred among students from the center of the country and the Haifa area, or as Finkelstein points out her nickname in the research literature, "the silent bourgeois majority."
Among the same "silent bourgeois majority" of religious Zionism, which lives mainly in the central region, the Jerusalem area and Haifa, in the years 2011-2016 the rate of enlistment increased by 67.8%, compared with an increase of only 11.8% in the rest of the country.
In Haifa, the number of conscripts has almost doubled in recent years and jumped by 93.3%.
In Tel Aviv, the number increased by 69.1%, in the Jerusalem area the number of conscripts increased by 53.1%, while in the Central District the rate of religious conscripts rose by 49.3%.
In contrast, in areas identified with the periphery, enlistment rates rose much more moderately, 31.1% in the south, 9% in the north, and 8.9% in the settlement district, where many boarding institutions are located.
Another aspect in which there are large differences in recruitment rates among graduates of religious Zionist institutions is the socio-economic background.
Pickelstein writes in his study that "the findings show that the change in the rate of enlistment is mainly focused among girls at a high socio-economic level. On the other hand, in schools in the social and geographical periphery there has not been a significant increase in the enlistment rate."
He bases his determination on the quintile key of the Ministry of Education, that is, division into five groups with quintile 1 uniting schools where students come from the highest socio-economic background and so on.
The rate of change in the number of religious mobilizations in quintile 1 in the years 2011-2016 was 54.6%.
In quintile 2 there was an increase of 43.9%, in quintile 3 the increase was 21.2%, in quintile 4 it was 21.4% and in the last quintile the number of female religious education graduates increased to only 28.3%.
Finkelstein concludes from these data that "in three significant groups in the national-religious society, the rate of enlistment has not increased significantly over the years: the peripheral group, the ultra-Orthodox group - in which the enlistment rate increased slightly but remained very low, and the religious-liberal group - the enlistment rate. Although he is very tall, he was like that already in the 2011 yearbook. "
Regarding the number of officers, in contrast to the male trend, it seems that the percentage of officers among the national religious soldiers is on the rise, but still lower than the figures for all female soldiers, and the increase in recent years is more moderate.
In 2014, the rate of conscription among all female soldiers was 9%.
In 2018, 10.2% of IDF female soldiers became officers, an increase of 13%. Of the religious female soldiers, in 2014 7.6% became officers, compared with 8.5% in 2018, which reflects an increase of about 11%.
Although the geographical location and social and economic background affect the rate of religious mobilization, the director general of the Torah and Avodah Trustees movement, Shmuel Shetach, says that "the data reaffirm the phenomenon that there is almost no religious institution or community without mobilization." Instead of struggling with this, we must leverage the blessed trend, which aims to make girls exhaust their abilities and skills and contribute to the State of Israel, and add information, advise, prepare and accompany them.
The solution to the challenges involved in national and military service does not lie in strengthening and nurturing different incubators, but rather in building a solid educational system that enables education in the complexity and ability to cope with the world. "