SUNDAY READ: These discussions underscored how the Jewish state is facing the world’s most intensive internal cultural war
My friend Rabbi Heshy Grossman recently invited me to Jerusalem to meet top Haredi (meaning ultra-Orthodox) rabbis. Unhappy with my critical writings about the Haredim, this well-meaning true believer hoped to jump-start fruitful dialogue. I took the train to Jerusalem and spent a fascinating day with pleasant and welcoming scholars who left me in even greater despair.
The background is that angst is now dominating the discourse in Israel, amid a strong feeling that the country is running out of time to save itself. This may seem surprising, for the country looks hugely successful. And even once you look closely, usually the assumption is that it relates to the Palestinian conflict, or to the dispute over authoritarian reforms. But at the end of the day, as is those problems were not enough, the main issue – for the non-Haredi Jews who are still a majority in the land – is the Haredim.
The concerns used to be about the Haredim – who have always held sway over right-wing government coalitions – trying to impose religion, like banning commerce and public transport on the Sabbath, which they have done with varying degrees of success. But the clash has gone far beyond such matters. The wars that began on Oct. 7 have exposed the moral rot inherent in this large minority evading military service, and the opposition promises to enlist them should it win this fall’s election. But even that – heavy lift though it may be – wouldn’t come close to fixing the actual problem.
The ultra-Orthodox minority mostly refuses to teach high school boys math, science, English, and other non-religious topics – and routes as many men as possible to religious study at yeshiva seminaries well into adulthood, where they expect to receive state stipends rather than pay tuition. With very low male participation in the economy, they pay little taxes and depend on a huge web of ever-expanding welfare. Increasingly Haredi women do work, but rarely in high-end jobs, and almost always to enable the men to immerse themselves in Torah. The community is currently about a sixth of the population of 10 million-plus, but exploding because of family sizes approaching seven children on average – almost certainly a record for any sizeable community in the developed world.
This will clearly lead to an economic collapse if nothing changes – and on top of that, it does not seem as if the Haredim can coexist happily with others from a philosophical and cultural standpoint, and the feeling is very much mutual. Considering that Israel is also one of the global hubs of tech innovation, is richer on paper than most countries in Europe, and has pockets of some of the most extreme liberalism on earth, punches well above its weight in Nobel Prizes and television formats and cultural exchage, its hard to think of a more fundamental and impactful schism. I haven’t seen the like in any country I have been to, covered or helped cover, or even read about.
Heshy drove me all over the city in a whirlwind tour which included the head of the Hebron Yeshiva, one of the most senior rabbis of the Mirer Yeshiva (the world’s largest), the head of a major yeshiva serving mainly youth from the United States, a visiting US haredi rabbi much involved in the local political scene, and his own charming father-in-law who was the chief Rabbi of Atlanta and has long been a beloved columnist for the iconic Mishpacha Magazine.
The tone throughout was cordial, at times warm, somewhat prickly and occasionally intellectual. These were not zealots foaming at the mouth but serious fellows who are, in their very particular way, easy to like. That made the substance doubly unsettling.
The first fault line, as expected, was education. The basic question is so obvious that it smacks you in the head: how can a modern economy function when a large and growing share of its male population receives little to no instruction in mathematics, science, or other “secular” language skills beyond the minimum?
Rabbi Moshe Meiselman, who holds a PhD from MIT, was dismissive of the premise. The U.S.-born founder and head of Yeshivat Toras Moshe, who is a true thought leader in the Haredi world, described secular studies as an “intellectual game” that he had experienced at the highest levels and found vastly inferior to the Torah. He said Haredim from the beginning of the state felt an aggressive and arrogant stance from the Zionist authorities, who felt “that no intelligent person” would want to be Haredi. He said this siege was causing them to ghettoize.
“There in a basic tension in society. And that tension is what created, more than anything else, a sense of separatism within our own environment, in order to maintain yourself in such an antagonist situation.” I asked: “Even at the cost of self-harm?” “In your view it’s self-harm,” he shot back. And if the state cut off funding “we’d simply get money from our people abroad to support us … we will handle it.”
Like many in this world, he seemed to believe that whatever practical skills are needed for work can be acquired in a year or two. The existence of certain successful Haredi professionals —lawyers, doctors, accountants — was offered as proof. “What relevance does my knowledge of trigonometry have to anyone’s employment? Where does Euclid come in? I don’t have to learn talk with Plato in order to get a profession.”
I was glad to find a more flexible position from Heshy’s father-in-law, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman.
“I’m not sure personally why they should not be able to study physics or chemistry or mathematics. I don’t understand why there’s an objection to it (but) there is.” He argued that this “is not ideological but political and a decision based upon circumstances.” I suggested the circumstances were the Haredi leadership’s preference for a compliant and unquestioning flock. “It’s unfortunate that there is no effective communication and there are elements on both sides who are interested in maintaining a conflict,” he sighed.
Menachem Zupnik, the U.S.-based rabbi from New Jersey, was also more pragmatic than his Israeli cohort, and acknowledged the issue more readily, especially regarding the deficit in employment.
“The biggest problem,” he said, “is that nobody goes to work and has a profession… many, many issues are the outgrowth of the fact that they believe that everybody has to sit and learn Torah all the time.” But he rejected the idea that external pressure — cutting subsidies, restructuring incentives — would change behavior. “All you’re going to do is cause more hatred.”
It is astounding that it’s so hard to get reasonable behavior from obviously intelligent people. Clearly, this is what a chasm looks like. I put the question to Rabbi Shlomo Spitzer, who preferred I don’t mention his affiliation. He explained the indifference to practical outcomes this way: from the Haredi perspective, Torah and the commandments are the organizing principles of life for Jews, or at least Jews of this type of authenticity. Everything else — work, nourishment, recreation — is secondary and serves that purpose. “These are means, not ends.”
I asked: “When you describe unwavering commitment to Torah, doesn’t that risk becoming fanaticism?” “What is fanaticism? That is a serious question,” he reflected, explaining that following the Torah “to the end” means accepting it literally – together with its interpretive tradition, yes, but not selecting parts based on personal taste. I tried: “But societies change. Values evolve. Why shouldn’t religious frameworks adapt?” His answer was that there are foundations that must be regarded as absolute.
The issue of military service brought the divide into even sharper relief. Most readers will probably know that Israel has been involved in huge military conflicts sinee the Hamas rulers of Gaza invaded on Oct. 7, 2023, and masscred over 1,000 people. It’s difficult, it’s complicated, it’s controversial, it’s tragic — and many Israelis have been doing hundreds of days annually (!) of reserve duty. Over 1,000 soldiers have been killed in Gaza and Lebanon fighting Hamas and Hebollah, the proxy militias of Iran. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government, which depends on Haredi parties for its majority, has been trying to ram through a law codifying and cementing the Haredi draft exemption that currently is keeping 80,000 young men away from the circle of danger. This outrage may well be the deciding issue in the coming election.
Again, the argument with the rabbis was about identity. Again and again, the concern surfaced that exposure to the army would erode the religious character of Haredi young men. The fear was personal and almost visceral. I admitted freely that this is not without foundation: mainstream Israel would love to have many of the Haredim join mainstream society, even if it doesn’t always admit it directly – and indeed exposure to society is well understood as a trigger. It’s also irrelevant.
Rabbi Chaim Yitzhak Kaplan, the Dean of Students at Hebron Yeshiva, put it plainly: “There’s no way that a young man… is going to go in for two, three years in the army and come out the same Haredi.” Moreover, he noted that the specific and delicate ages in question – late teens and early twenties – are precisely when he needs youth to be studying, lest they go astray. I tend to accept that at least in part, this is not purely selfish and cowardly — but rather a genuinely felt defense of a way of life.
“Our nation is about learning,” Kaplan said, describing Torah study the defining activity of Jewish existence.
Once that premise is accepted, everything shifts. But most Israelis, most people I’m sure, cannot in honesty accept it; it is a little (though not exactly) like someone telling you they cannot serve in a country where everyone else does — because they absolutely must become a pilot, plumber, poet or mathematician. Very nice, is the plausible answer, so do it after, and I’ll see you in the army.
Rabbi Kaplan actually said that at some point in the future Haredim may have to either agree to serve or leave the country. Rabbi Meiselman was more strident, saying, in effect, that sages were more valuable than soldiers.
“Wars in the world are caused by people not being sufficiently Jewish, religious,” he explained. “If the Jews were here, acting as they’re supposed to act, then there would be no more war. Then the Arab world would not be as antagonist.” I asked: “Do you think Hitler carried out the Holocaust because the Jews were insufficiently religious?” Exactly, he said. “This is the language of kulturkampf,” I said, in what I’m sure was evident exasperation. “I’m a very honest person,” Rabbi Meiselman replied, quite calmly. At 84, he has heard it all before.
He also declared himself “well-read” and the equivalent a dozen times in an hour, and it was heart-rending to observe this desire to be appreciated for erudition. In general many Haredim seemed, to me, to be balancing a sense of cultural and intellectual superiority with a frustration at being looked down upon and thought to be — by the hoi polloi even! — ridiculous, if not parasitical. I find some solace in their awareness of an least a reputational problem. It’s a start. And in return, out of fairness, I’m happy to concede that there is a cerebral atmosphere of learning and debate in these institutions that can go on, Kaplan noted proudly, well into the night. Figure out the formula to flip a switch, find the way to harness this for society, and miraculous achievements in science might follow.
The Mirer Yeshiva especially positively teems with boys, many from the US, who clearly care deeply about the culture they’re preserving.
Indeed, the entire Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem seems designed to serve it, with nary a business visible that is not somehow involved – whether that be the kosher eateries or bookstore so full of young men reading and discoursing in so naturally bookish a scene that I could not easily recall a secular equivalent.
With Heshy listening approvingly, I made the point to several of the rabbis that this Yiddishkeit is sufficiently appealing – even for a committed secularist like me – that under different circumstances one might actually forgive the fact that they are condemning the youth to ignorance on most other aspects of life (or the clearly delineated gender roles, which to a secular father of daughters is tremendously off-putting, or the many other scandalous shortcomings).
Specifically, I proposed that the conflict might remain manageable if the community that was at such loggerheads with society stayed stable in size, or as a proportion of society. Israel is, after all, quite diverse. This line of argument is an awkward and delicate business, as it’s not normally advisable to advise others on reproduction. But it’s also the heart of the matter – and Heshy, for one, knows it, frequently bragging with eyes twinkling that his side is “winning.” This would be quite charming, were it not also catastrophic.
“Why don’t you go fight with all the people in Tel Aviv that they should get rid of their dogs and they should have five children?” asked Rabbi Zupnick. My explanations of why this was neither possible nor desirable did not further the discussion.
It was when the conversation moved from policy into theology that things got especially hopeless.
Rabbi Spitzer, for example, addressed the halakhic prescriptions of capital punishment by stoning for Sabbath violations. He said scripture allowed no leeway on such matters. When pressed on whether he’d apply it to his own child, he said: “I don’t want to, I have to.” He clarified, though, that the institutional framework required to implement such sanctions is presently absent – for example, no Sanhedrin or Jewish Temple — the scaffolding of theological justice in the ancient Jewish kingdom. But then again, if the Haredim end up as the large majority, there will be. So, what’s up with that? Rabbi Spitzer actually sent me via Heshy a written further explanation the next day, which I appreciated, but which did not assuage my discomfort with all this talk of stonings.
In the car, as we zoomed around Mea Shearim, Heshy tried to explain that we are simply speaking different languages, and I had not understood what the learned rabbi meant. “So I shouldn’t take it literally,” I asked, grasping at a straw.
“I didn’t say that,” Heshy snapped. He zipped in and out of lanes like a pro.
So what emerges from these conversations is by no means the hope of an accommodation.
A modern state depends on a set of shared assumptions: that citizens will be educated in ways that allow them to participate in a complex economy, that they will contribute to collective defense, that public policy operates within a framework of accountability. A society organized around Torah study as its central axis operates according to different assumptions: that insulation from external influence is essential, that the Torah is the only valuable truth, and that Judaism is the only moral framework. These two systems can coexist for a time, if the Haredim are in the minority and are economically supported. Their obsession with huge families is making this impossible.
Demographers will note that projections can fail – which is another way of saying birthrates will come down. Others think the Haredim will somehow change – that there may be greater attrition than the current single digits. Some version of these two things must happen very quickly, or I am certain non-Haredim will start to flee the country.
Heshy will not be happy with me, but I am willing to call Rabbi Meiselman’s bluff, in his expressed indifference to a shutdown of all funding. The leaders of Israel’s opposition say they’ll draft the Haredim should they win the next election. They should do that for sure, but also much more:
- Do everything possible to impose and verify a modern, broad core curriculum and completely cut off funding to any schools in any sector that resists this.
- Eliminate yeshiva stipends except for perhaps a small number of genuine “sages.”
- End the vast network of state-funded jobs in the “religious services” — many of them utterly fake scams that amount to a funnel for shadow subsidies. Only half the male Haredim have income, and many of these are fictitious in this way.
- Cancel child stipends past the third child (with the exception of those already born).
- Generously fund adult education for Haredim, and set up a state authority for absorbing, training and assisting those who want to leave the fold.
In other words, they must decisively end the perverse incentive structure that enables the madness to continue and even funds it via the taxes paid by the ever-diminishing and increasingly alarmed Israeli taxpayer class.
There was a news program recently about this issue, and a Haredi mother of nine was interviewed. She seemed quite modern, doing gym exercises while being interviewed. She works to support her husband’s study and seemed proud of his own economic cluelessness, as a Torah scholar, since his job was to “keep the flame alive.” She predicted the Haredim will never join the army no matter what. When the exasperated reporter – himself religious but not Haredi – asked whether it was fair that other mothers should spend their days in fear for their sons’ lives as they serve, she replied that she too spends her days in fear of her children becoming secular. She seemed very serious, and not at all apologetic.
Is she an exception? Can this way of thinking be changed? If the answers to these questions are no, then Israel has the world’s most urgent national emergency.
