Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was teetering Wednesday after the spiritual leaders of Degel Hatorah, one of the two factions that make up the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, instructed their MKs to introduce a bill to dissolve the Knesset due to the coalition’s failure to pass a law exempting yeshiva students from conscription — a longstanding UTJ goal.

On Wednesday morning, Degel Hatorah chair MK Moshe Gafni received the instructions from rabbis Moshe Hirsch, the dean of Bnei Brak’s Slabodka yeshiva, and Dov Lando, the senior leader of the so-called Lithuanian stream of non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodoxy and the chairman of the faction’s ruling Council of Torah Sages.