Torato Omanuto (Hebrew: תורתו אומנותו, lit. Torah study is his artistry) is a term describing one whose Torah study ("Torato"; as a religious commandment) is his main occupation ("Omanuto", his artistry). In Israel, the term is used to describe a special arrangement for the Israeli haredi sector, called Torato Omanuto arrangement. This arrangement allows young men enrolled in haredi yeshiva academies to complete their studies before their conscription in the Israeli Defense Forces. Conscription is normally compulsory for each Israeli citizen from 18 years of age, except Israeli Arabs, and lasts three years for men and two for women.
Haredi Jews maintain that the Torah studying practice (or reciting), when practiced by great Torah scholars or their disciples, is crucial in defending the state of Israel and its people, as if it was an additional "praying division" of the Israeli army. In practice, the Torato Omanuto arrangement provides a legal route whereby Haredi Rabbis and their disciples can either enroll for a shortened service period (4 months), or be exempted altogether from compulsory military service.
The source of the phrase Torato Omanuto is taken from the Talmud:
"For it was taught: If companions [scholars] are engaged in studying, they must break off for the reading of the shema, but not for prayer. R. Johanan said: This was taught only of such as R. Simeon b. Yohai and his companions, whose Torah study was their occupation."
Originally, along with the establishment of the state of Israel, the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, reached a special arrangement with the Haredi Judaism sector (then represented by Agudat Yisrael and Yitzhak-Meir Levin), in which a small part of senior Haredi Yeshiva disciples (400 men) would temporarily be exempted from military service for as long as their sole occupation was the study of the Torah (which Haredi Judaism devote and occupy themselves with, for most part of their time and day, as a religious commandment). The new legal status was then named Torato Omanuto. The original purpose was to reach a comprehensive accommodation (later called religious Status quo) between the secular community and the Haredi population who were then living under the British Mandate for Palestine, and to prevent an internal conflict within the Jewish population (the Yishuv) while Israel was pleading to the UN for a Jewish and Democratic State.