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I Fully Support Haredim — But They Must Find a Way to Contribute to Israel’s Defense
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Two weeks ago, I was on stage at the Saban Theater in Los Angeles for a major Keren Olam HaTorah event. Rabbi Dov Lando and other senior Israeli yeshiva leaders joined about 40 to 50 local rabbis, and approximately 1,500 Haredim from across LA filled the hall.
The event’s goal was to raise urgently needed funds for full-time Torah learners in Israel. Their government stipends have been cut, and now they are struggling to afford basic necessities.
Let me be clear: those families need help. Their poverty is not “self-inflicted.” They’re part of a system that leaves almost no room for dissent. Anyone who deviates — even slightly — risks social ostracism.
And, to be fair, most Haredim in Israel sincerely believe they are engaged in the holiest project a Jew can undertake: sustaining the world through Torah study. Their idealism is real, their devotion is genuine — and their commitment is breathtaking.
And American Haredim have responded with remarkable generosity. Over $100 million in private donations has flowed to these Israeli families from the United States.
A few days after the L.A. event, Jerusalem saw the so-called “million-man protest” against Haredi conscription.
Hundreds of thousands of Haredim from across Israel gathered to oppose efforts to draft them into the IDF. Sadly, the protest ended in tragedy when a young man fell to his death from an unfinished high-rise.
The protest’s message was clear: we will not enlist or take part – this is not our fight.
But here is the core issue: Haredim cannot expect to live in and benefit from a country facing real threats without also sharing responsibility for its defense and future.
That approach may have worked when the Haredi community was tiny. It does not work when Haredim make up nearly 14% of Israel’s population and are growing exponentially.
And it does not work when the country is at war and manpower is stretched, and you go about your lives as if the country is not at war, while relying on IDF soldiers and the Iron Dome to protect you.
And it certainly does not work when every other sector — secular, religious-Zionist, traditional, even new immigrants — sends its children off to defend the nation.
Haredim claim, not unjustifiably, that Israel is the land of Jewish heritage and therefore they are entitled to live there, whether or not they serve.
But Haredim didn’t flock to Eretz Yisrael under the Ottomans or the British. It was no less “the land of Jewish heritage” then.
Haredim began to come in large numbers — and continue to do so — only once there was a Jewish state. They are right to come. Israel is the greatest blessing for the Jewish people in two thousand years. And let’s be frank — had Israel not prevailed in 1948, and the Arabs had won, there would almost certainly not be a thriving Haredi community in Eretz Yisrael today.
Which means — labels aside — Haredim are part of the Zionist story, whether they embrace the word or not. They may not sing Hatikvah or fly the Israeli flag, but they chose the state, and they benefit from it in countless ways.
And let’s say this out loud: no one has ever supported Torah study in all of Jewish history more than the State of Israel. Not even close. Tens of billions of shekels over decades — buildings, stipends, housing allowances, childcare subsidies, food aid programs, and more.
Haredim will tell you, sometimes indignantly, that the support was given reluctantly. Maybe so. But the broader reality remains: if someone pays your bills for decades, reluctance doesn’t erase support. And if you benefit from a state’s stability, security, hospitals, emergency services, roads, schools, and subsidies, you are a stakeholder, whether or not you wave a flag on Yom Ha’atzmaut.
So while Haredim don’t call themselves Zionists, they do live in Israel by choice. They rely on Israel’s institutions. They expect Israel to protect them. Functionally, they are part of the Zionist project.
Which leads to an uncomfortable truth: a community that demands support and respect while signaling indifference to Israel’s broader challenges should not be shocked when such respect is not forthcoming.
Most Israelis don’t hate Torah, nor do they reject the idea of full-time Torah study. But they do hate feeling like suckers. Watching their children serve — and sometimes die — while others march declaring “this is not our army” is painful. It breeds resentment.
Recent statistics reveal that around 75% of Israeli families have at least one child serving in the military, highlighting the widespread burden of military service. This stark contrast between those serving and those who declare their disconnection from the army becomes a tangible source of tension.
And resentment, left unchecked, becomes anger, and eventually a division so deep it threatens the foundations of the state.
To be fair, the blame does not sit solely on one side. There is enormous prejudice toward Haredim in Israel — ignorance, mockery, at times outright hostility — and it’s destructive. But here’s the trick, and it’s hard for everyone: if you want others to respect your contribution, you need to acknowledge theirs.
Torah protects. We believe that. But soldiers protect, too. Medics protect. Pilots protect. Intelligence analysts protect. Volunteers who pull bodies from rubble protect. Israel’s safety is not theoretical — it’s literal.
Our sages taught us not to rely on miracles. The concept of hishtadlut alongside emunah — effort alongside faith — aligns our spiritual devotion with the practical needs of defense. The spiritual battlefield matters, and so does the physical one. It cannot just be someone else’s problem. It’s everyone’s problem.
Thankfully, things are shifting. Quietly, beneath the noise, something else is happening. Not mass enlistment and not ideological surrender, but something subtler — and perhaps more profound. In a move unimaginable a few years ago, the Belzer Rebbe has backed a pilot IDF track for married Hasidim from his sect, the second-largest Hasidic group in Israel.
About 150 men are already in. They serve in noncombat roles — intelligence, communications, logistics — and they return home nightly, remaining full-fledged Haredim in every way. They don’t carry guns, they don’t do basic training — but they are inside the IDF framework. The program even includes pre-academic training and technician or engineering diplomas.
Let’s not underestimate what this represents. It isn’t surrender, and it isn’t capitulation. It is a bridge — modest for now, tentative perhaps, but real. And like all bridges, it begins with a small span, just enough to show that two sides can, in fact, meet somewhere in the middle. The Belzer Rebbe isn’t waving a flag. He’s opening a door.
And perhaps, just perhaps, this is a glimpse of the Jewish future we need: a future where Torah remains uncompromised and civic duty is not ignored. The million-man march may have mattered this week, but history may well remember far more the quiet courage of those 150 Belzer Hasidim who chose a different path. With God’s help, that is the future awaiting the Haredim of Israel.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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Scott Wiener wins spot in general election for San Francisco House seat as a Jewish critic of Israel
California State Sen. Scott Wiener advanced Tuesday as the frontrunner to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Congress, in a contest closely watched in Jewish politics after Wiener called Israel’s actions in the Gaza War a genocide and called for a halt to arms sales to Israel.
Wiener, a 55-year-old progressive Democrat who is Jewish, advanced with the most votes, with 42% of the ballots with about half counted as of Wednesday morning in California’s top-two primary for the deep-blue San Francisco district Pelosi has represented for nearly four decades. In November’s general election he will face the runner-up Democrat, San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, who is backed by Pelosi.
In his victory speech, Wiener promised to fight the Trump administration’s “disaster of a regime” that has “commandeered this country, that is tearing down our democracy and the rule of law, that is getting us into disastrous wars.”
“I’m polite but not quiet,” he added. “I’m not going to wait my turn.”
Wiener’s possible arrival in Congress comes amid a broader reshaping of Jewish Democratic politics, as a more progressive and younger generation of Jewish candidates increasingly embraces a more critical approach toward Israel.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict became a key issue that defined his congressional campaign. In an interview with the Forward last year, after announcing his bid, Wiener said his approach reflects that of the “large majority of Democrats in Congress” who don’t want to sever ties with Israel but are critical of the policies of the right-wing government.
Wiener’s declaration in January accusing Israel of genocide caused an uproar among Jewish leaders and voters nationally and prompted his resignation as co-chair of the California Jewish Caucus.
For years, I’ve condemned Netanyahu and his extremist government and the devastation they’ve inflicted on Gaza. It’s why I’ve been clear I won’t support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities. I’ve stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore. pic.twitter.com/71nIt6K527
— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) January 11, 2026
Wiener had already positioned himself as a progressive on Israel. He was an early supporter of a bilateral ceasefire, called the war “indefensible” and said he would back congressional measures to halt the sale of offensive weapons to Israel. But his declaration of genocide came under duress, after he faced widespread backlash from progressive voters when he refused during a candidate debate to say whether or not he believed Israel was committing genocide.
The episode reflected both the political pressures facing Jewish members of Congress and the changing landscape of Democratic leadership.
Wiener is running in the company of Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Ed Markey in Massachusetts; Brad Lander, running against Rep. Dan Goldman in New York; and Daniel Biss, the Democratic nominee for the Illinois seat represented by retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky, all of whom promised not to take contributions from the Israeli government-allied American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
These Jewish candidates remain supportive of Israel’s existence and reject efforts to isolate the Jewish state. But they are now more willing to embrace language that would have been politically unthinkable for mainstream Jewish elected officials just a decade ago, when figures such as retiring congressman Jerry Nadler and the late Reps. Nita Lowey and Eliot Engel, all of New York, were the faces of progressive Jewish politics. Pelosi, who often spoke of her pride in her Jewish grandchildren and her father’s early support for Israel’s founding, led a generation of Democrats for whom unwavering pro-Israel support was a given.
Wiener’s election would signal the start of a new era. Notably absent from Wiener’s remarks on Tuesday were references to Israel, antisemitism or his Jewish identity.
Other California races
Other high-profile California races saw progressive candidates outside the bubble as centrist and conservative candidates advanced in open primaries where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election.
In Los Angeles, with about half of votes counted, Republican ex-reality TV star Spencer Pratt (29.5% of the vote) appears poised to advance to the general election, along with incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass (36.5%). Nithya Raman — a democratic socialist who once won a pro-Israel endorsement — lags well behind them with about half the votes counted. Billionaire Democrat (and former synagogue president) Adam Miller was a distant fourth, with 4% of the vote.
And with a slew of Democrats splitting votes in the governor’s race, Republican talk show host Steve Hilton led all candidates with 27% of the vote, closely trailed by Xavier Becerra (26%), who was the health and human services secretary under President Joe Biden. Billionaire progressive Tom Steyer had just under 20% of the vote with about half of the votes counted.
Rep. Brad Sherman of Los Angeles will advance to the general election, staving off a challenge from fellow Democrat Jake Levine, a former Biden administration official.
Rep. Ro Khanna had 57% of the vote in his Silicon Valley district, meaning he will most likely win the office without a runoff. Khanna is one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress.
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At the Vatican with Chicago’s mayor, a rabbi gave Pope Leo a White Sox kippah
(JTA) — Lizzi Heydemann didn’t plan what she was going to say to Pope Leo XIV.
But when the Chicago rabbi found herself face-to-face with the new pontiff during a Vatican visit alongside a delegation of Chicago leaders, she thanked him for the way he has spoken about the war in Gaza.
“I said, you know, it’s been a hard time over these past two years to be a rabbi, but I want to thank you for, in the midst of conflict, holding the humanity of everyone involved in the conflict,” Heydemann recounted.
Leo, the first American pope and a native of Chicago’s South Side, repeatedly advocated after his election last year for the release of the Israeli hostages as well as a ceasefire in the war in Gaza, which he has referred to as “vengeance” and “barbarity.” The comments angered some Jewish leaders who have interpreted them as unfairly targeting Israel, but for others including Heydemann, they have offered a template for how to criticize the war.
“You may be anti-war, but I do not hear you denouncing or degrading people,” Heydemann said she told Leo. “Thank you for holding the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians in the same breath and the same thought. It’s not something that is modeled very often.”
She added, “He seemed grateful, and like he knew exactly what I was talking about.”
Heydemann, the founder and leader of Mishkan Chicago, an independent Jewish spiritual community, had been invited by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to join a delegation of civic, business and faith leaders traveling to Rome last week. (Johnson has been a vocal critic of Israel who has drawn criticism himself from some Jewish leaders in Chicago.) She said she was the only rabbi to take part in the trip.
As she waited for the pope to enter a room where the delegation was assembled on Thursday, Heydemann said she began weeping.
“What I reflected on is that he, maybe more than anyone in the world, is a religious leader with the world’s eyes on him,” Heydemann said. “He is beloved and critiqued constantly, and every rabbi in America has had a little taste over the last few years of that weight.”
While the interaction carried an unexpected emotional weight for Heydemann, it also came with a distinctive Jewish Chicago touch: a White Sox-themed kippah.
She said she included the kippah, which featured the Chicago White Sox logo on the exterior as well as a pomegranate on the inside, in a chest of Chicago-themed gifts presented to the pope on Thursday during the visit as a nod to his lifelong devotion to the baseball team.
“We thought that would be a sweet point connection between me and the pope,” Heydemann said, adding that the pontiff’s typical white zucchetto looks “awfully like a kippah.”
“It brings us all joy to imagine that after a long day at work wearing the cream-colored one that matches his robes, maybe at the end of the day he’ll switch it out for a jersey material, White Sox kippah, and thinks fondly of sweet home Chicago, and the Jewish spiritual community gave it to him,” Heydemann added.
A list of gifts that circulated in local media included another piece of Jewish paraphernalia: a tote bag with the words “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh.” That’s a catchphrase from T’ruah, the rabbinic human rights group where Heydemann has been on the board. But the rabbi said the inclusion was an error: She was carrying the bag, not giving it to Leo.
Looking back on the meeting with the pope, Heydemann said her experience reflected a broader conviction about “building bridges, even in the presence of difference.”
“There’s too much at stake in our world for us to not be continuing to be in relationship with one another in the presence of differences,” Heydemann said.
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Finalists announced for lucrative Jewish literary award
(JTA) — Amir Tibon’s memoir about his family’s ordeal during the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and Laura Hobson Faure’s history of Jewish children who fled from Germany to France during World War II are among the finalists for the 2026 Sami Rohr Prize.
The annual award — which alternates each year between works of fiction and nonfiction and which honors emerging Jewish writers — is considered one of the most prominent awards in Jewish literature.
The winner of the award, which comes with a $100,000 prize, will be announced on June 16.
A panel of judges will decide among four nonfiction finalists for this year’s award. Since the prize was established in 2006 — the first award was presented in 2007 — Sami Rohr Prize panelists and advisors have included historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt, historian Jonathan Sarna and longtime Columbia University journalism professor Sam Freedman.
“What strikes me about this year’s finalists for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature is the remarkable range of stories they tell and the depth of insight they bring to Jewish life and history,” Debra Goldberg, director of the Sami Rohr Prize, said in an email. “Each of the four books explores questions of memory, identity, displacement, resilience and responsibility through deeply personal narratives that feel both timely and enduring.”
The 2026 Sami Rohr Prize finalists are:
Laura Hobson Faure, “Who Will Rescue Us?: The Story of the Jewish Children who Fled to France and America During the Holocaust.” Faure is a professor of modern Jewish history at Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne. Yale University Press, her publisher, describes “Who Will Rescue Us” as “the first comprehensive study of Jewish children’s flight from Nazi Germany to France — and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime.” It is her second book.
Shaul Kelner, “A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews.” A professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Vanderbilt University, Kelner’s second book details how American Jews transformed a largely overlooked human rights issue into a landmark 20th-century mass-mobilization effort.
Jordan Salama, “Stranger in the Desert: A Family Story.” Salama, an author and contributor to The New Yorker, National Geographic and other publications, traces his Jewish family’s history “from Moorish Spain and Ottoman Syria to Argentina and beyond.” A mix of travelogue, memoir, history and reportage, “Stranger in the Desert” is his second book.
Amir Tibon, “The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands.” The first book by the Israeli journalist is a first-person account of his family’s ordeal as residents of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which was violently attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Alongside accounts of the day’s losses, Tibon also recounts the heroic efforts by his father, a retired major general, to race into the battle zone and rescue his son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters from Hamas gunmen.
“As the Prize approaches its 20th year, I hope it will continue to support writers whose work expands our understanding of the Jewish experience and sparks meaningful conversation for generations to come,” Goldberg said. “I am immensely grateful to share in the Prize’s mission to honor excellence, nurture talent and connect Jewish voices across the globe.”
The Sami Rohr Prize, named for the late American real estate developer and philanthropist who fled Nazi Germany as a boy, is administered in association with the National Library of Israel. 70 Faces Media, the parent company of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is the prize’s media partner.
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