JERUSALEM, July 23 — Parliament passed a bill today that exempts thousands of rigorously Orthodox yeshiva students from compulsory military service, touching a raw nerve in relations between strictly religious and secular Israelis.
After a six-hour debate, the legislature voted 51 to 41, with five abstentions, to anchor in the law a longstanding arrangement that releases more than 30,000 yeshiva students from army duty.
The exemptions have outraged many secular Israelis, who say the yeshiva students are shirking a burden borne by the rest of society. The argument has gathered force as scores of soldiers have been killed and the army has called up reserves while combating the 21-month-old Palestinian uprising.
The issue is emotional in a nation where men are required by law to serve three years in the army when they reach age 18, followed by a month or more of annual reserve duty that can extend to age 51.
"This is the bill of discrimination between blood and blood," Yosef Lapid, the leader of the ardently secularist Shinui Party, told the legislature during a debate peppered with citations from the Bible and the Talmud.
Ofir Pines, a member of the Labor Party, predicted that the bill would leave "an open wound between secular and religious people in this country."
Strictly Orthodox lawmakers retorted that the yeshiva students were preserving a sacred heritage that has proved vital for the survival of the Jewish people, especially in times of crisis.
"What saved us during the terrible time of the Holocaust?" asked Moshe Gafni, an Orthodox legislator from the United Torah Judaism Party. "People sat in the bunkers and studied."
Rabbi Shmuel Halpert, from the same party, declared: "Torah study is the secret of the existence of the Jewish people. The Torah has preserved the Jewish people for thousands of years, in all the diasporas, from assimilation."
The legislation was passed in response to a Supreme Court ruling four years ago that the system under which exemptions for yeshiva students were granted by the Defense Minister was illegal and would have to be either regulated by law or canceled.
The bill, which is to be reviewed in five years, states that strictly Orthdox yeshiva students can be exempted from service as long as they are engaged in full-time studies. After they turn 22, if they choose to stop their studies and go to work, they will become liable either for military induction or for a year of national service in areas like health, welfare or rescue services.
Critics of the bill, which is based on recommendations of a panel led by a former Supreme Court judge, said it institutionalized discrimination between Israelis who perform army service, sometimes at risk to their lives, and those strictly Orthodox Jews who can now avoid induction under the law.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who as opposition leader objected to the bill two years ago, voted for it today with members of his Likud Party and his strictly Orthodox allies in the governing coalition.
Mr. Sharon, a former general, said he was casting his vote "with a heavy heart," but warned that inaction would lead to another court ruling and even forced conscription of yeshiva students. "I don't want to see the military police raiding the yeshivas," he said.
Lawmakers from the Labor Party, led by Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, voted against the bill, although some were absent.
"Precisely today, when the people of Israel are mobilized, the current situation must not be perpetuated," Mr. Ben-Eliezer told the legislature, referring to the exemptions. "It must not be given legal approval. We must find a way for equal sharing of the security burden."
The arrangement releasing yeshiva students from military service originated with Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who saw it as a way to preserve the scholarly remnants of Orthodox Jewry, which were almost destroyed in the Holocaust.
At Israel's inception in 1948, the release applied to 400 students, but the number has mushroomed over the years, with thousands of strictly Orthodox men avoiding military service, which many consider a violation of their religious way of life, through full-time enrollment in yeshivas. Because they cannot work under the terms of the study exemption, many are dependent on state stipends. Some work despite their registration as full-time students.
According to figures cited in the debate in Parliament, nearly 11 percent of all exemptions from military service this year were given to people registered as strictly Orthodox yeshiva students. Other exemptions are given to Israeli Arabs and to people found unfit for service.
Israeli Arab members of Parliament cast crucial votes today for the exemption, saying they too were opposed to forced conscription.
Mr. Lapid, the lawmaker from Shinui, said that according to his calcluations, based on the rate of yeshiva exemptions, 18 Israeli soldiers had been killed during the Palestinian uprising "so that not a hair will fall from the head of a strictly Orthodox young man." Shinui said it would challenge the bill in the Supreme Court.
Yossi Sarid, the leftist opposition leader, said, "The Prime Minister and the Likud have betrayed the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces."
But United Torah Judaism, the strictly Orthodox party, said it would now rejoin Mr. Sharon's coalition; he had dismissed its members from the government two months ago in a dispute over budget allocations.
"The state needs the yeshiva students more than the yeshiva students need the state," said Rabbi Halpert, the legislator from the party. "The Torah and those who study it are the guarantee of the existence of the State of Israel."