When, two years later, Congress passed a Conscription Act requiring able-bodied men aged 20 to 45 to serve in the Union army, it never occurred to Morgan that he ought to join up.
The 400 Talmud students whom Ben-Gurion exempted from army service have grown to 110, 000 able-bodied haredi men who have served neither in the regular army nor in the reserves.
Tens of thousands of able-bodied ultra-Orthodox men defer their conscription year after year on the pretext of devoting their lives to religious study.