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I Come From the Haredi World — But It Must Change to Help Israel and Ensure Its Own Survival
An attendee at Kosherpalooza 2024 hugging an IDF soldier as part of the “Hug a Chayil” interactive part of the kosher food and beverage festival on May 30, 2024. Photo: Provided
“Go to the ant, idler; consider her ways and be wise” (Prov. 6:6).
This vivid call to action from Hebrew Scripture elevates a tiny, industrious insect as a timeless model of diligence and foresight. But what is it about ants that the Bible considers so critical for us to emulate? Across rabbinic literature, numerous interpretations and insights shed light on the deeper meaning of this ancient directive.
What makes ants genuinely remarkable, as Proverbs reminds us in the very next verse, is that they don’t have bosses, managers, or rulers telling them what to do. They simply get on with it — tirelessly, effectively, and without hesitation — doing what is best for themselves and their colonies.
Ants’ success lies in their adaptability, collective organization, and ability to balance individual roles with the greater good of the colony — qualities that Edward O. Wilson, a leading biologist and expert on ants, described as making them “arguably the most successful life forms on Earth.”
The Talmud asserts that the real brilliance of ants lies in their adaptability — a quality as crucial for humans as it is for ants. Proverbs describes the ant as a model of provident industry: it prepares its food in summer to ensure survival through the winter.
Ralbag highlights both the ant’s resourcefulness and humility. Despite its small size, it accomplishes great things by never allowing a challenge to stand in its way.
Rabbi Isaac Arama, in Akeidat Yitzchak, goes a step further by explaining that no creature can rely on divine providence alone. While God ultimately determines everything, diligent effort — like that of the ant — is essential. Adaptation and planning are not signs of weakness or lack of faith, but acts of partnership with God in shaping our destiny.
During my recent visit to Israel, I reflected on these lessons, particularly in the context of the never-ending debate over the contentious issue of Haredi enlistment in the IDF. Just last month, a Knesset bill — ostensibly about daycare but in reality aimed at addressing social welfare support for Haredi families whose members don’t serve — was derailed at the last minute.
Likud MK Dan Illouz, a freshman lawmaker who is fully Orthodox and observant, publicly opposed the bill. Speaking afterward, Illouz made it clear that he opposed the bill because it undermined efforts to expand the conscription base in Israel, a goal he considers vital to the country’s future.
“Reality dictates that there must be a ‘tectonic’ shift in the Haredi draft to the IDF,” he said.
I met with Illouz in his Knesset office, where he explained that although he was the only one to speak out before the vote, many of his Likud colleagues felt the same way. “The need for Haredi involvement in the broader national effort, particularly in the IDF, is too important for it to be sidelined just to preserve the coalition,” he told me emphatically.
Meanwhile, the rhetoric from Haredi leadership remains as strident as ever.
Already short by over $100 million in social welfare handouts for 2024 — and facing the looming threat of a $400 million shortfall in 2025 — one might have expected a push for meaningful solutions. Instead, their responses seem anything but constructive.
The ant, “which, having no chief, overseer, or ruler, provides her bread in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest,” sets a clear example. Unfortunately, the chiefs, overseers, and rulers of Israel’s Haredi community have struggled to meet the ant’s example — showing no humility, no adaptability, and offering no meaningful solutions for the challenges their community faces.
But there is a solution — the path set for us by our forebear Jacob, which has shaped Jewish survival throughout history.
Jacob’s journey in Parshat Vayeitzei marks a turning point. He transforms from the “simple man, dwelling in tents” of Parshat Toldot into a resourceful and adaptable personality who succeeds at every turn.
Arriving in Haran penniless, without resources or allies, Jacob could have relied solely on God’s promise to protect him. But he understood that Divine promises are no substitute for personal effort.
Like the ants, Jacob didn’t wait for external guidance to act. He took the initiative, balancing faith in God’s promises with his own resourcefulness and determination. Far from home and the support of his parents, Jacob recognized that something had to change — and change it did.
Without compromising an iota of his principles — Rashi famously teaches that Jacob never abandoned any of the 613 commandments — he became a skilled and successful animal farmer, outshining even his wily father-in-law, Laban, who had been in the business his entire life.
This narrative of Jacob’s transformation has echoed throughout Jewish history. Each era has brought new challenges to our spiritual identity as Jews of faith, demanding steadfast devotion to heritage alongside a dynamic flexibility that allowed us to adapt to new circumstances.
While IDF exemptions for yeshiva students were a necessary strategy to rebuild Torah scholarship after the Holocaust, the thriving Torah world today, coupled with the explosive growth of the Haredi demographic, has created a new reality that requires a reassessment.
Today, there is more Torah study and knowledge than at any time in Jewish history, and this flourishing has expanded well beyond the Haredi world. The Religious Zionist community boasts scholars and scholarship that rival their Haredi counterparts, ensuring that Torah remains vibrant and central to Jewish life in ways unimaginable during the dark days of the 1940s.
More significantly, even the most learned scholars of the Religious Zionist world are part of Israel’s national effort, with many of them serving in IDF combat units.
For much of recent history, the Haredi world has viewed itself as under siege, building walls — both literal and metaphorical — to protect its values. This strategy allowed the community to survive and even thrive against overwhelming odds. But today, the greatest threat to the Haredi world isn’t secular society — it’s internal resistance to change.
I proudly come from that world, and would not be who I am without it, but I have watched this phenomenon develop over my lifetime with great sadness — and, more recently, with deep concern. In the past, refusing to adapt may have been necessary. Today, it poses the most significant risk to Haredim in Israel and is severely straining the relationship between Haredim in Israel and Haredim in the Diaspora.
Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta’s experiment with ants, recounted in the Talmud (Chullin 57b), offers a profound lesson. Observing an anthill, he tested whether ants truly function without a ruler, as described in Proverbs. During the heat of summer, he shaded an ant hole with his cloak, knowing that ants avoid intense sunlight.
One ant emerged and noticed the shade. It returned to the colony, and appeared to communicate the news, prompting the others to emerge and begin working. Then, Rabbi Shimon removed the cloak, allowing the sun to shine directly on the ants.
The colony immediately turned on the marked ant, attacking it until it died. Reflecting on this, Rabbi Shimon concluded that ants have no king, for “if they had a king, would they not need the king’s edict to execute their fellow ant?”
The Israeli Haredi world, like those ants, cannot rely solely on the existing leadership to solve its challenges. Instead, individuals must draw on their instincts and take initiative — just as Jacob did in Parshat Vayeitzei.
By embracing their shared purpose and actively contributing to Israeli society and the wider Jewish world — without compromising core ideals — Haredim in Israel can show that tradition and modernity are not opposites but partners, ensuring the survival of what matters most — not just for their community, but for all of Klal Yisrael.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
The post I Come From the Haredi World — But It Must Change to Help Israel and Ensure Its Own Survival first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Experts, Lawmakers Suggest Same Hateful Ideology That Motivated New Orleans Attack Also Behind Pro-Hamas NYC March
Palestinian Youth Movement protesters speaking in Times Square, New York City, NY, USA on Jan. 1, 2025. Photo: Ethan Johnson/SIPA USA via Reuters Connect
Some experts and lawmakers are drawing a link between the Islamist ideology that seemingly motivated the New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans and the pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City that took place hours later.
On Wednesday, hours after a US Army veteran who pledged allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS) drove a truck into a crowd of New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans and killed at least 14 people, protesters marched through New York City, chanting slogans condemning both America and Israel.
Hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrators descended upon the streets of Manhattan, sporting signs calling to “End Zionism,” “End all US aid to Israel,” and for “No War With Iran.” Many of these activists also carried Palestinian flags and bellowed slogans such as “intifada revolution!” — a slogan that many consider to be a call for violence against Israelis, Jews, and Westerners more broadly.
“We’re sending you back to Europe, you white b–ches,” a protester yelled at participants of a pro-Israel counter-demonstration. “Go back to Europe! Go back to Europe!”
The demonstration was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a group that plans anti-Israel demonstrations across the United States. PYM has repeatedly praised Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
US lawmakers were quick to slam the anti-Israel demonstrations, accusing them of fomenting unwarranted hatred toward the United States and the Jewish state.
“These protesters in New York City are marching not to condemn the ISIS terrorist attack against their own country but to falsely accuse their own country, as well as Israel, of terrorism,” wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), one of the most strident allies of Israel in the US Congress.
“The hatred for America and Israel far exceeds the hatred for actual terror, apartheid, and genocide in the world,” Torres continued. “For an ideologue, ideology has more reality than reality itself.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), another stalwart ally of Israel, also linked the New Orleans terror attack to the New York City demonstrations, saying that “hours after a jihadist sympathizer killed 10 Americans, pro-Hamas agitators are marching through New York City calling for a global intifada.”
“The governor and the mayor must put an end to this nonsense — now,” Lawler added. “Silence is not an option.”
Israeli diplomat Yaki Lopez similarly linked the two incidents, posting on social media that “pro-Hamas demonstrators chanted ‘intifada revolution’ in New York City while jihadist terrorists carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans, killing over a dozen Americans.”
“There’s little distinction between the actions of [the suspect in] New Orleans, who used a truck as a weapon and terrorist attacks in the West Bank where cars are used to run over Israelis,” added Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of its Long War Journal. “It’s terrorism, yet there are people in this country who support ‘resistance’ and ‘intifada.’”
US federal agencies have established a link between domestic anti-Israel protests and foreign actors. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in July that the Iranian regime has organized “influence efforts” to undermine trust in American institutions, adding that “actors tied to Iran’s government” have encouraged and provided financial support to rampant anti-Israel demonstrations. Haines also said that Iran has weaponized social media against the Jewish state and America, spreading misleading propaganda regarding the ongoing war in Gaza.
Meanwhile, experts have warned of a rising global terror threat in the year following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities. Last May, experts explained to The Algemeiner that “lone wolf” terrorists inspired by ISIS and al Qaeda could carry out attacks on US soil, incensed by the ongoing war in Gaza and inspired by terrorist violence abroad.
“As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in April.
The post Experts, Lawmakers Suggest Same Hateful Ideology That Motivated New Orleans Attack Also Behind Pro-Hamas NYC March first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Florida Man Arrested for Alleged Plot to Attack AIPAC Office
The 2018 AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC. Photo: Guatemala Presidency / Handout via Reuters.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stopped an apparent plot to attack an office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Plantation, FL, according to court documents filed earlier this week.
Law enforcement apprehended Forrest Kendall Pemberton, a 26-year-old resident of Gainesville, FL, on Dec. 25, the first night of Hanukkah, after he traveled to Plantation in search of the local AIPAC office, local and national media outlets reported.
Prosecutors alleged in their filings that Pemberton was in a rideshare vehicle carrying multiple firearms, including an AR-15 rifle, and ammunition when law enforcement officers stopped and arrested him.
AIPAIC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US, seeks to foster bipartisan support for a stronger US-Israel relationship.
The court documents reportedly did not specifically name AIPAC as the target. However, an FBI affidavit described an organization with the same mission statement as AIPAC and referenced identical language from the group’s website. The suspect’s search engine history also included queries for AIPAC and its former Plantation office, believing it was the current local office.
According to law enforcement, Pemberton initially scoped out the premises of the Florida site for entry and exit points before later attempting to return with weapons.
Suspicions first arose surrounding Pemberton’s whereabouts after his father reported him missing to the police on Dec. 23. The father said he found a “concerning” note in his son’s backpack that “espoused anti-authority sentiments.” His father added that Pemberton often “espoused antisemitic views.”
An AIPAC spokesperson issued an identical statement to multiple outlets thanking the FBI for its work and saying the pro-Israel organization will not be intimidated.
“We take these threats very seriously and we are working closely with law enforcement concerning this matter,” the spokesperson said. “We will not be deterred by extremists in pursuing our mission to strengthen the relationship with America’s valued ally, Israel. We are deeply appreciative of the FBI’s work to stop this individual.”
Pemberton faces a federal stalking charge and is accused of traveling to AIPAC with the intent of “killing, injuring, harassing, and intimidating” people with the organization.
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Antisemitic Hate Crimes in Massachusetts Reach Eight-Year High
The Boston skyline stands behind the Tobin Bridge and the city of Chelsea as seen from Everett, Massachusetts, US. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect.
The US state of Massachusetts saw more antisemitic hate crimes in 2023 than at any time since government officials began tracking such data eight years ago, according to a report issued by its Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS).
A striking 119 antisemitic hate crimes were reported to law enforcement agencies, EOPSS said, a total which, in addition to eclipsing 2015’s total of 56 incidents, amounts to a 70 percent increase over the previous year. Antisemitic hate crimes also constituted 18.8 percent of all hate crimes reported in 2023, a figure which trails only behind the percentage of hate crimes which targeted African Americans.
The report added that 68.9 percent of the antisemitic incidents involved property destruction or vandalism, a total of 82, while another 19 percent involved intimidation. Some physical assaults, six, were recorded or reported to the police.
EOPSS’s numbers fall somewhat below other figures reported by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in spring 2024, when the civil rights group said 440 antisemitic incidents occurred in the state in 2023, a 189 percent increase over the previous year. However, the discrepancy may be due to differences in methodology, as ADL reports include all antisemitic incidents, while EOPSS’s tally considers those which fit the legal definition of a crime and were brought to the attention of law enforcement.
The ADL has said, however, that their numbers and EOPSS’s are mutually inclusive.
“This report mirrors what sadly we’ve been tracking and responding to on a daily basis. There has been a marked increase in antisemitic hate incidents in the Bay State and in fact across the country,” Peggy Shukur, vice president of the ADL’s East Division, told The Algemeiner on Thursday. “The local increase reflects national trends. Our data showed that over 10,000 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the US since Oct. 7, 2023, an over 200 percent increase compared to incidents reported to us during the same period a year before.”
She added, “Behind every one of these numbers are people who have experienced the harm, fear, intimidation, and pain that reverberates from each of these incidents. The fact that numbers increase by 70 percent is a grim reminder that antisemitism continues to infect our communities in real and pervasive ways.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitism in Massachusetts has been an acute problem on college campuses, one to which school officials have allegedly hesitated to respond.
“I’ve become traumatized,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student Talia Khan told members of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce in March. “MIT has become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus. Members of the anti-Israel club on our campus have stated that violence against Jews who support Israel, including women and children, is acceptable. When this was reported to president [Sally] Kornbluth and senior MIT administration, the issue was never dealt with. Then, administrators pleaded ignorance when we reminded them that no action had been taken, saying that they either forgot about it or missed the email.”
Allegations of neglect have prompted civil lawsuits, including one against Harvard University which was recently cleared to proceed to discovery. Filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (Brandeis Center), the suit centers on several incidents involving Harvard Kennedy School professor Marshall Ganz during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Ganz allegedly refused to accept a group project submitted by Israeli students for his course, titled “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” because they described Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy.” He castigated the students over their premise, the Brandeis Center says, accusing them of “white supremacy” and denying them the chance to defend themselves. Later, Ganz allegedly forced the Israeli students to attend “a class exercise on Palestinian solidarity” and the taking of a class photograph in which their classmates and teaching fellows “wore ‘keffiyehs’ as a symbol of Palestinian support.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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