Thousands of Israel's ultra- Orthodox community members assembled in Jerusalem on Monday to protest a proposed bill to enforce army conscription of religious Jewish seminary students.

Jerusalem District Police estimated that some 5,000 people converged in the city's Me'a Shearim neighborhood, where leading rabbinical figures addressed the crowd, vowing to defy the government's plan to recruit their followers into some form of either military or national service.

"We will not send our children to the army or the police," said Rabbi Tuviah Weiss, the ultra-Orthodox's community's highest spiritual authority. "This is our task, to teach our children the overriding values of the Torah (the Old Testament)."

Tensions in the ultra-Orthodox community have been simmering ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasked a parliamentary committee last month with crafting legislation to replace the so-called Tal Law, which for the past decade has allowed draft-aged Jewish religious students to indefinitely defer their military service.

The law, which Israel's High Court of Justice struck down as unconstitutional in February, is due to expire in August. The committee is expected to propose the new bill later this week.

Imposing military service on the country's religiously observant was among the terms of a unity government deal forged last month between Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the Kadima Party and a former army chief and defense minister.

As a way of expressing their outrage over the idea of being coerced into uniform, protesters on Monday employed traditional Jewish symbols of mourning, including the donning of sack clothes and smearing ash on their heads.

Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, a spiritual figure representing a more moderate ultra-Orthodox faction, further inflamed the crowd, contending that "we must give our lives against the decree. In an issue that belongs to the heart of Israel, there are no compromises," The Jerusalem Post quoted Auerbach as saying.