During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion decided to exempt approximately 400 ultra-Orthodox scholars from the nascent Jewish state’s army service. It was an inconsequential number at the moment, in an army that would grow to more than 100,000 soldiers by the end of that year, and the reasoning was logically sound and deeply compassionate. The Holocaust, just three years in the past, had almost completely destroyed the ultra-Orthodox community, its way of life and places of study. Ben-Gurion recognized the need to preserve what remained and to rebuild. It was not only a basic act of humanitarianism, but represented a keen understanding that the ultra-Orthodox had an important, even essential, part to play in the Jewish future — one that Israel must still find a way to preserve without forcing a confrontation that neither side can afford.