Uncategorized
Inside the auction house driving the rare-book craze in the Orthodox world
(JTA) – Israel Mizrahi joined dozens of fellow connoisseurs of rare Jewish books last December to watch the livestream of Genazym, the hottest auction house in the market. A bookdealer by trade, Mizrahi was also on the phone being paid to advise a wealthy client who had signed up to make bids.
But as the auction proceeded, Mizrahi’s advice had little use. His trigger-happy client didn’t seem to care about established valuations: He ended up paying about $50,000 for a book estimated at half that price. “He just pressed the button and kept on bidding until the bidding was over,” Mizrahi said. “There was no convincing him out of it. He spent nearly $600,000 that day and there was no sense to it.”
Behavior that confounds veterans of the rare Jewish book market has become routine at auctions organized by Genazym.
Mizrahi recalled the sale in 2021 of a Passover Haggadah printed in the 1920s in Vienna. With attractive illustrations of a prominent 19th-century rabbi named Moses Sofer and his family, the book makes for a nice addition to a collection. It also happens to be very common.
“I sell copies for $100, and I have probably sold 150 copies in my life,” said Mizrahi, whose shop in Brooklyn is a mecca for Jewish book lovers. “It sold for about $5,500 at Genazym’s auction. I currently have it on sale still for $100.”
At the highest end of sale prices, a 16th-century first-edition Shulchan Aruch, a book of Jewish law, commanded $620,000 at a Genazym auction last September, while a copy of Noam Elimelech, a classic rabbinic treatise, printed in 1788, fetched $1.4 million four months later — in both cases at least doubling or tripling what experts thought the items were worth based on past sales of the same texts.
“Genazym has come on like a freight train into the world of Jewish auctions. Some of the prices realized are far beyond what this market has seen before,” said David Wachtel, the former Judaica consultant for Sotheby’s auction house.
Since Genazym’s first auction in 2017, it has sold some 1,900 books, manuscripts and other collectible documents for about $26 million plus commission, roughly $12 million above total starting prices, according to an analysis by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of auction records on Genazym’s website. Genazym has increasingly outperformed the longest-standing Judaica auction firms in New York and Jerusalem.
A page from an illustrated Passover haggadah printed in Vienna in the 1920s. (Courtesy of Genazym)
It’s hard to tell exactly what’s driving the boom because the identity of Genazym’s customers is confidential and few flaunt their collections widely. One of the auction house’s owners, in a rare public comment, ventured that Jewish buyers are craving a connection with their heritage. What’s clear is that at a time when traditional libraries are cutting back on buying Jewish texts, Genazym is tapping into an emerging luxury market among Orthodox Jews — and fueling the rise of religious texts as both a status symbol and investment vehicle in some communities.
“I know the sellers, the customers and everybody involved and there is a new wealthy class of Orthodox Jews that have a limited range of things they can splurge on,” Mizrahi said. “They don’t go to Vegas, they don’t do crazy vacations. They keep kosher. So this is a way that they can splurge and show off.”
Rabbi Pini Dunner, who collects rare Jewish books, said investing in Judaica is likely attractive for some in the Hasidic community, whose religious observance is stricter than that of congregants at his Modern Orthodox synagogue in the Los Angeles area.
“There are people I know here in Beverly Hills who’ve got car collections worth tens of millions of dollars,” Dunner said. “In the Hasidic world that has no currency, just as the wow factor of a Picasso has no currency. An original manuscript or first-edition of the Noam Elimelech has a real wow factor, particularly if you can tell people the book sold for more than a million dollars at a Genazym auction.”
The impression that the Hasidic world has grown wealthier over the last decade or two is widespread and based, at least in part, on the proliferation of luxury products and services tailored for the community in places like Lakewood, New Jersey, and Kiryas Joel, New York. Weddings have become increasingly expensive and elaborate, fine dining options are common, and high-end kosher wine and liquor are more readily available.
“It wasn’t that long ago that sit-down dining was looked down upon or not even available. Now there are a plethora of options,” said Chaim Saiman, a law professor at Villanova University who studies the intersection of commerce and Jewish law. “It’s no secret that $200 bottles of Scotch appear at kiddush clubs all the time. $50 used to be a big deal, then $100 was a big deal, now we are at $200.”
Where the new wealth is coming from is not totally clear. Limited survey and U.S. Census data suggests that Orthodox Jews feel crunched by costs associated with practicing religion and that there are large pockets of poverty among them, particularly in Hasidic communities, according to Mark Trencher, the founder of Nishma Research, a nonprofit dedicated to studying the Orthodox Jewish community. The prevalence of large families also means that generational wealth can be harder to accrue for Orthodox Jews.
But there have always been high earners whose philanthropy has buttressed their communities, Trencher noted. “There are a lot of people in that community that are very successful in their businesses and they have large amounts of wealth,” he said. “Those people generally are huge donors to charities. From a financial perspective, those communities are probably doing much better than you would expect them to.”
Many of those high earners make their money through entrepreneurship rather than professional success in the white-collar world. Many nursing home chains — an industry valued at an estimated $171 billion and where growth is expected — have Orthodox owners. Amazon has also created new opportunities for Orthodox businessmen. Orthodox landlords, meanwhile, have benefited from skyrocketing real estate prices in places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
A page from a 16th-century first-edition Shulchan Aruch, a book of Jewish law, which fetched $620,000 at a Genazym auction. (Courtesy of Genazym).
Recent reporting in The New York Times about the Hasidic education system has provided a window into another stream of revenue for private businesses in the community. Entrepreneurs in the community have responded to the increased availability of government funding for special education in New York in recent years by establishing companies to service Hasidic schools, with the government footing the bill. In one example highlighted by the Times, a married Hasidic couple opened such a business in 2014 when they were 21 and 19 years old; in 2022, their company received more than $38 million in government funding.
The owners of another set of companies providing services to Hasidic schools appear to have used their windfall to purchase rare books through Genazym. The owners were indicted in January for allegedly billing the government for more than $1 million in childcare services that they never provided and otherwise defrauding the government out of more than $2.8 million.
Prosecutors are seeking to have the alleged fraudsters forfeit seven books and other documents as listed in a federal indictment. They include manuscripts with a rabbinic signature and rare books of blessing and Jewish law, all of which match items listed on Genazym auctions, where they sold for a total of about $274,000.
Buying Jewish texts at auction can seem like a savvy investment for buyers seeking to safeguard or grow their wealth. Before Genazym launched, a typical Genazym buyer might have invested in U.S. Treasury bills or the stock market, according to Wachtel, the former Sotheby’s consultant.
“I think Genazym has been able to convince people that this is a good vehicle for establishing and growing wealth,” he said. “That also dovetails with your ability to, let’s face it, show off. Somebody comes to your house, you can show them a first-edition Shulchan Aruch. But you’re not going to say, hey, come look at my T-bills.”
The auction house’s tactics appear tailor-made for this growing market. Its motto is “Own your heritage,” and it’s printed on the catalogs the company distributes through popular Orthodox magazines like Ami or Mishpacha or podcasts, places where people with no prior interest in books might encounter the hype. The catalogs also appear in synagogues in heavily Hasidic areas like Brooklyn or Lakewood, but without the prices printed on them so as not to violate a Jewish prohibition against discussing financial matters on Shabbat.
The descriptions in the catalogs emphasize any links that exist between the items for sale and notable rabbis from history, especially figures who established rabbinic dynasties that continue to exist today and who are revered by yeshiva-educated Orthodox Jews. The link might be a signature of a rabbi in a ledger from an old fundraising tour that took place 200 years ago. Or it might be that an important rabbi owned the book in question or even prayed out of it. Like a pair of pants of a prominent Israeli rabbi that drew widespread attention when they briefly went up for auction last month, these texts are seen by some as conferring holiness onto those who possess them. By virtue of their pedigree, these artifacts might even be seen as a segula, or Jewish protective charm.
In its promotional materials and live auctions, Genazym also uses more colloquial and hyperbolic language to describe its items than traditional auction houses, which tend to stick to the kind of terminology used by academic scholars.
“Genazym found a formula to make books and manuscripts really exciting for the layperson, especially in the Orthodox community,” said Yoel Finkelman, a former curator of the Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel. “They are not using the vocabulary of experts, they’re using plain ordinary language, like ‘very old’ or ‘very rare.’ No one at Sotheby’s would ever refer even to a thousand-year-old book that way.”
Genazym’s unique approach extends to the delivery of items to buyers. A traditional buyer in the rare Jewish book market, like Michelle Margolis, Columbia University’s Jewish studies librarian, might only care that the book they bought is safely delivered. But with Genazym, the books come wrapped in a proper clamshell and velvet bag. “I rolled my eyes when my delivery arrived, but at the same time that’s a lot of investment,” Margolis said, adding that many other auction houses have been cutting costs, for example, by doing away with their customary printed catalogs.
Jacob Djmal, who lives in Brooklyn, has dabbled in Judaica collecting for many years, an interest he picked up from his grandfather. He remembers suddenly seeing Genazym’s advertising everywhere. “They started reaching out to you in every way possible, finding a demographic that wasn’t aware before. Every Genazym auction I have people texting me — ‘Did you hear about this? Did you hear about that?’ — as if something is happening that had never happened before.”
Sometimes, that is true. A breakout moment came during the December auction, when Genazym cleared $4.4 million in sales, about $2.6 million above total starting prices.
“If there was any doubt that Genazym were now the most commercially remarkable rare book auction house on Earth, the results of their latest Judaica auction this week put paid to that: essentially almost every lot sold for at least twice [the estimated amount],” a major British book collector living in France said on his anonymous Twitter account, which has around 110,000 followers, in December.
If there was any doubt that Genazym were now the most commercially remarkable rare book auction house on earth, the results of their latest Judaica auction this week put paid to that: essentially almost every lot sold for *at least* twice estimate…. 1/https://t.co/iAC4sQudIz pic.twitter.com/eeunjqWzAs
— Incunabula (@incunabula) December 13, 2022
It remains to be seen whether Genazym can challenge Sotheby’s Judaica division as the destination for sellers with the rarest and most valuable books. Last year, a medieval prayer book sold for $8.3 million at Sotheby’s and this year, the New York auction house is accepting bids for the oldest known copy of the Hebrew Bible, which is expected to fetch as much as $50 million.
But Djmal considers especially remarkable about Genazym is not just the high prices but also the way in which rare books have caught on among Orthodox youth as something cool. “My son and his friends in yeshiva are talking about these items,” Djmal said. “These books represent rabbis they have heard about from a young age.”
The team behind Genazym’s success is led by three brothers from the Stefansky family who live in Jerusalem and New York. Before starting an auction house they worked for many years as private dealers in the rare book market. Their names, Chaim, Moshe and Bezalel, rarely appear anywhere and they almost never grant interviews. Chaim Stefansky made an exception for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and requested that this article not put him in the spotlight nor portray Genazym’s success as a product of his business acumen.
Stefansky said Genazym has tapped into a universal and deep-seated desire of people to strengthen their identities by connecting with the past. The Jewish community, he said, has been poorly served by an emphasis on historical and even current persecution.
“Always, we are victimized and we cry,” Stefansky said. “What we have in common maybe is that your grandmother and my grandmother were sharing the same bed in Auschwitz. Give me something positive of my past to be proud of. Your heritage has not only sorrow but also a happy, rich, and huge intellectual tradition. So Genazym comes and tells people about their heritage. It’s yours. It belongs to you.”
He said the same thing can be done with any ethnic or religious group.
“If you go to the Irish community and press the right buttons in terms of what you know that every Irish person is extremely proud of, I think you’ll be very successful,” Stefansky said.
He rejected the impression that Genazym’s buyers come primarily from the ranks of the nouveau riche in the Hasidic world.
“It’s coming from all sections,” Stefansky said. “People will say that there’s a lot of fresh money in the market. But we also have very good old money. We have institutions. And, also, the regular man. Mostly, the regular man, who never knew he could have access to any of this.”
One of the only customers who agreed to be identified and interviewed for this article is Rick Probstein, who says he’s spent more than $100,000 at the company’s auctions. He can’t remember when he started seeing Genazym catalogs but he had never collected Judaica before, which is perhaps surprising given that he’s an Orthodox Jew who’s been working in the collectibles business since he was a child trading baseball cards.
Today, at 53, Probstein is one of the largest sellers of sports collectibles in the world, operating through a dedicated account on eBay. “I run a humongous business — I am doing something like $160 million a year,” he said of his sales volume.
Probstein, who lives in Passaic, New Jersey, had long felt a pang of guilt about the lack of Jewish content in his collection. “I collect things but what do I have of my own heritage?” he recalled thinking to himself. “So when I started getting the catalogs, I said, ‘I gotta be a good Jew.’ I started bidding on things and I got really into it.”
Once Probstein got started, the Stefansky brothers began checking in on him, providing concierge service and cultivating him as a client.
“This is a boutique run by a Jewish family with a personal touch,” Probstein said “They call me on the phone, saying, ‘Rick, did you get the catalog? What did you think? Here are some items that you could really like.’”
Bidding on Genayzm items is not purely sentimental for Probstein. “I’m putting real money into it because I think that from an investment standpoint, it has a lot of upside,” he said.
Still, the items he buys tend to have personal significance.
“I am partial to items relating to the Chofetz Chaim,” Probstein said, referring to the rabbi and Jewish scholar Yisrael Meir Kagan, who died in 1933. Probstein’s oldest son is named Yisrael Meir in his honor. The Chofetz Chaim also appeals to Probstein because of his writings about lashon hara, the prohibition in Jewish law against speaking evil of people. “I think that speech is important and he’s sort of the embodiment of that,” Probstein said.
Genazym has sold six letters and a handwritten blessing signed or written by the Chofetz Chaim at prices ranging from about $16,000 to $68,000.
Ever since Probstein started collecting Judaica, these items have served as a draw for family and friends visiting his home.
“People in my community that come over for kiddush [refreshments after Shabbat service] know that I have this stuff and they always want to see it,” Probstein said. “Nobody ever looks at my sports memorabilia collection because it’s in my office but my Judaica stuff is in my house. They look at the letters and talk about the historical context. People love it.”
The revelation that so many Jews appear fascinated with their own history and want to engage with scholarly tradition comes at a time when many Jewish libraries have been struggling.
The library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, which has the most comprehensive and significant collection of Jewish books outside of Israel, has seen its footprint downsized amid budget cuts at the Conservative movement seminary. Also under financial pressure, American Jewish University was forced to sell its Bel Air campus in Los Angeles, which housed a library. Hebrew Union College, meanwhile, opted to end its Reform rabbinical training program in Cincinnati and even though the campus library has survived the cuts, financial uncertainty remains.
Genazym’s populist approach might hold lessons for Jewish institutions and university libraries with significant Judaica collections that hope to engage the public around books.
“The lesson is to lay off the snobbery a little bit,” said Finkelman, the former Judaica curator at the National Library of Israel, which is slated to reopen in a new and more accessible space later this year. “The goal of public institutions is to enable preservation but also to enable public access and public education. There are great stories in books and archives.”
Finkleman said he has encountered sneering reactions to the way Genazym promotes books, and they are similar to the response in the United States when the pop star Lizzo played a crystal flute that belonged to James Madison on stage at the Library of Congress.
“There are echoes of the same thing here,” he said. “Get out of the snobby ivory tower and realize you are preserving history for people.”
—
The post Inside the auction house driving the rare-book craze in the Orthodox world appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Prominent rabbi and fierce Mamdani critic turns his criticism toward Jews and Israel
(JTA) — In the lead-up to New York City’s mayoral election last month, Elliot Cosgrove emerged as one of the most outspoken rabbinic critics of Zohran Mamdani, the anti-Zionist activist who is now the mayor-elect.
On Monday, speaking to a convention of Zionists, Cosgrove turned his critique toward U.S. Jews, saying that supporters of Israel “shouldn’t be surprised” by Mamdani’s roughly 33% tally among Jewish voters.
“For a liberal Zionist disillusioned by the Israeli government, Mamdani’s anti-Zionism is a difference of degree, not of kind,” said Cosgrove, who leads Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side. “He understood the fissures of our community better than we ourselves did, and the question we face now is, what are we going to do about it?”
Speaking at the the convention of the American Zionist Movement, Cosgrove laid out a vision for a “new chapter of American Zionism,” calling for his audience to “avoid the reductive and destructive tactic of labeling people with whom we disagree either as self-hating Jews or colonialist aggressors.” He said a rigid vision of what Zionism should look like had been damaging for the Jewish people.
“By making unconditional support for the Israeli government a litmus test for Jewish identity,” Cosgrove said, “we ourselves have inflicted harm on the Jewish future.”
Cosgrove’s speech capped a two-day conference for the AZM, an umbrella organization for 51 U.S. Zionist groups that also serves as the American affiliate to the World Zionist Organization. Tensions were running high at the national assembly as Cosgrove took to the podium to call for the Zionist movement to widen its tent.
Speaking to the conference’s roughly 250 attendees in the East Village, Cosgrove lamented what he described as the increasing ideological divide between American and Israeli Jewry as a result of the war in Gaza. He criticized some Israeli policies in laying out why many in the liberal Jewish majority are feeling distanced from Israel.
“Leaving aside the role of historical revisionism and progressive identity politics, the unresolved status of the Palestinians, lacking as they are in freedom of movement and access, self determination and other accoutrements of sovereignty, forms a wedge issue between an increasingly liberal-leaning American Jewry and an increasingly right-leaning Israeli Jewry,” said Cosgrove.
During his address, Cosgrove also criticized the lack of recognition of the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel, adding that the country “neither supports, defends nor recognizes Judaism as I teach it and preach it.”
“The fact that the same government that fails to recognize American Jews also fails to recognize the Palestinian right to self determination only serves to increase American Jews’ sense of estrangement,” said Cosgrove.
The AZM Biennial National Assembly, which was titled “Zionism: Many Visions, One Dream,” brought together representatives from a wide range of U.S. Zionist groups. An hour before Cosgrove’s remarks, Israeli President Isaac Herzog also gave a talk where he lamented growing antisemitism within the United States.
In a Jewish environment shaped by the Oct. 7 attacks and the war in Gaza that followed, Jews have been buffeted by intense criticism on the left, a rise in antisemitism and internal fissures. Cosgrove both referenced and reflected these divisions, which often pit Jews offering full-throated support for Israel, its military and its government, against those like Cosgrove who are committed Zionists but expressed doubts about the conduct of the war and Israel’s political direction. Far to the left of both groups are increasingly visible Jewish anti-Zionists and younger Jews deeply disillusioned with the Jewish state, whom Cosgrove also referenced in his talk.
To address the growing divide within American Jewry over support for Israel, Cosgrove called for “heshbon hanefesh,” or a “self audit.” But the onus for “heshbon hanefesh,” Cosgrove added, “goes both ways” — and he reinforced red lines that he laid out in a October sermon against Mamdani and his Jewish supporters that spurred a rabbinic statement that drew more than 1,300 signatures.
“For such a time as this, when Israel is surrounded by enemies, Jewish critics of Israel need to be judicious in how they voice their dissent,” continued Cosgrove. “It’s one thing to attend a pro-democracy rally in a sea of Israeli flags that begins and ends with the singing of ‘Hatikvah.’ It’s another thing to stand in an encampment next to someone calling for global intifada.”
But within the broad Zionist tent, Cosgrove argued, all views should be taken seriously in the quest to build a future for Zionism while it is under attack..
“The future dream of American Zionism depends not on my vision or yours, not on the right or the left, religious or the secular,” said Cosgrove. “It’s a dream that depends on all of us together, an American Zionism for such a time as this, bold enough to embrace the voices, complexities, paradoxes and even contradictions of our age.”
At the conclusion of his speech, dozens of audience members stood to applaud, though a couple of “boos” could be heard across the room.
During a brief Q&A following the keynote speech, Marc Jacob, a member of the Haredi Orthodox slate Eretz HaKodesh, said he felt “ostracized” by Cosgrove for “wanting to open the door to those who are sitting in camps that are against the Jewish state.”
In response, Cosgrove clarified that he was “trying to stand firm in my convictions, but also embrace those views to the left of me who don’t represent my views.”
“I was not speaking about those outside of the camp who seek the ill will and destruction of the Jewish people,” said Cosgrove. “I was speaking about the ability of those within the tent to find an opportunity, a platform to support Israel in a way that need not be aligned with every policy of this or that Israeli government.”
The post Prominent rabbi and fierce Mamdani critic turns his criticism toward Jews and Israel appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel faces a most dire threat, and there’s only one solution
Most discussions about “saving” Israel revolve around geopolitics and security from the dangers posed by the rest of the Middle East. But the most vexing of the challenges facing the Jewish state is internal.
The burgeoning military and economic crisis surrounding Haredi communities risks destabilizing the entire state. What is needed is an organized effort, across all sectors of society, to incentivize hundreds of thousands of Haredi Jews to participate in Israel’s shared life in ways that, while honoring their practice, will prevent the social and economic disintegration that looms if no drastic changes are made.
This effort should be organized through a new ministry, tasked with encouraging and assisting Haredim in pursuing a more modern education, employment, military service and active citizenship. Ideally, it would be an independent statutory body, shielded from daily politics.
An unavoidable demographic problem
The significantly higher-than-average Haredi birthrate means the Haredim are projected to make up a third of Israel’s citizens by 2050, and a majority soon thereafter.
This creates a major economic problem. Right now, Haredi communities are broadly subsidized by the Israeli government: As one indicator, Haredi men have a participation level in the workforce of just around 50%. Many of those who do work do so in jobs in the religious establishment — as kashrut supervisors, mikveh workers, and so on.
That lack of economic productivity is made up for by governmental spending. For the 2023–2024 budget cycle, some reporting estimates that spending directly targeting Haredi communities — including through stipends for scholars and funding for yeshivas and religious institutions — was on the order of NIS 13.7 billion, about $4 billion. But more spending on the community is not officially recorded — for example, that on the child subsidies, which overwhelming benefit the Haredim, whose birthrate is almost three times higher than that of other Israelis.
The Haredi leadership is entrenched in its refusal to change. They reject all calls to have yeshivas integrate a core curriculum that would enable the next generation to be employable in a modern economy, insist on Torah study as the main vocation for men well into adulthood, and have practically sanctified draft evasion.
The implications are existential. Already today, as the productive sector bears an ever-heavier burden, there is growing emigration among non-Haredim — engineers, doctors, and entrepreneurs taking with them the talent and capital that drive Israel’s economy. According to recent data, about 125,000 Israelis have left since 2022.
And as the Haredi share of the population rises, it is likely they will help secure the political right — for which they overwhelmingly vote, in large part because of support for a continuing Haredi draft exemption — as something like the permanent ruling bloc.
That outcome is all but sure to further accelerate emigration. The result will be deepening poverty, and further military insecurity, as less Orthodox portions of the population increasingly rebel against a system they see as unjustly demanding they put their lives on the line to protect the Haredim from the dangers of war.
At present, every incentive structure encourages the Haredim to persist in this madness. The Haredi community, to a large extent, ostracizes those who leave the flock — estimated as between 5% and 15% of the community — and in many cases even the tiny minority who merely enlist in the army.
A radical solution
With communal leadership so averse to change, what can the rest of Israel do?
The incentive structure must be turned on its head, through a series of radical but necessary governmental moves.
- Tie all school funding to compliance with a national core curriculum. Haredi youth, particularly boys, currently experience little to no instruction in modern subjects. This cannot continue. It creates a crippled society that is beholden to the rabbis, and ensures the Haredi community cannot contribute meaningfully to Israel’s economy, as new generations are not given the knowledge and skills to work. This lack puts an unbearable economic burden on the ever-shrinking rest of Israeli society.
- Phase out study stipends past university age. Some will object that this move will destroy the yeshiva lifestyle. But that lifestyle is a result of power politics, not tradition: in the West, many Haredim are working members of society and thrive as such.
- Redesign child subsidies. Haredim currently have an average of almost seven children per family, which is financially possible largely because of child subsidies issued by the state. To encourage workforce participation, this system must be adjusted, such that families cannot subsist primarily on these subsidies: If this trend continues, the state will buckle under the economic burden of supporting the rapidly expanding community. This must be done with great sensitivity, and apply only to future births.
- And, critically, mandate full national or military service for all citizens, with some tailored options for Haredi sensibilities.
The message would be that modern Israel will not continue to fund its own destruction. In charge of implementing it would be the new ministry. Its main areas of responsibility would include:
- Public outreach and culture — Enshrining the message that integration is not betrayal of faith, but rather an expansion of opportunity: Torah and modernity can coexist, and work, service and education are deeply Jewish values.
- Military and national service — In coordination with the IDF, establishing dedicated Haredi military tracks, alongside national service paths for some men and women who insist on that route. This would involve expanding existing routes, including the number of dedicated Haredi units in the military, and providing housing and psychological support for recruits facing ostracism.
- Adult education — Establishing adult education institutions offering full core studies to Haredim who never learned math, English or science. State scholarships and stipends during the transition period, would encourage participation.
- Employment and entrepreneurship — Creating partnerships with employers to fund professional training, apprenticeships, and personal mentorship, as well as tax incentives for companies hiring Haredim or ex-Haredim — especially in high-tech, healthcare and education, fields where Haredim have already made some inroads.
- Social and family support — Forming a national network of counselors, social workers and career coaches to accompany Haredim through their increasing integration into the modern world. Many Haredim will be deeply resistant to this change; establishing thoughtful routes to help them will be crucial to the initiative’s success.
The necessity of adaptation
Integration does not mean the Haredi lifestyle must end — only that it must adapt, so that the society in which it exists can sustain into the future. The goal would be to make integration safe and feasible.
The scale of the initiative must match that of the threat. It will cost tens of billions of shekels — but the money must be found, just as it was found for the endless Gaza war, which, for all its importance, posed a lesser risk to Israel’s continuance. Israel already spends vast sums each year subsidizing unemployment and ignorance in the Haredi sector. Redirecting some of these funds to integration will yield immense economic and social returns. I hope that many donors, secular and religious alike, will join the effort.
A great confrontation over such an ambitious effort would be unavoidable. Many Haredim, including their elected officials, will rage and accuse the government of waging war on Judaism. Protests, petitions to the Supreme Court, and even charges of antisemitism will follow. The Haredi leadership will claim the government seeks to “convert” them. But this fight must be fought at some point; the options are to fight it now, or to risk an even worse version of it in the future.
The irony is that the current situation is bad for the Haredim themselves. They are trapped in a system that denies them opportunities, and leads them instead to enforced poverty and dependence on rabbinic leadership. This leadership has built a structure of control that survives only by keeping its public helpless.
For too long, powerful parties, including the governing Likud, have kicked this issue down the road, sacrificing the nation’s future for coalition stability. It is a moral and strategic disaster. Israel’s place in the modern world hangs in the balance.
The post Israel faces a most dire threat, and there’s only one solution appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Qatar, Turkey Try to Circumvent Hamas Disarmament as Terror Group Escalates Crackdown in Gaza
Palestinians walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, November 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
As the United States pushes for the second phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire to begin, Israel is warning that Qatar and Turkey are trying to shield Hamas from disarmament as the Palestinian terrorist group seeks to reassert control over the war-torn enclave.
Qatar and Turkey have proposed alternatives to a central provision of Trump’s peace plan, according to Israeli media reports. Rather than requiring Hamas to disarm, Qatari and Turkish officials have pushed for the Islamist group either to hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority or place them in secure storage under international oversight.
As part of this plan, Qatar and Turkey are reportedly advocating a two‑year grace period during which Hamas could legally retain its weapons.
However, Israeli officials have rejected these options as unacceptable, arguing they would allow the terrorist group to maintain its influence in Gaza, which Hamas has ruled for nearly two decades.
Israel has made clear it will allow Hamas just a few months to give up its weapons, warning it will act unilaterally if the group is not disarmed promptly.
Turkey and Qatar, both longtime backers of Hamas, have been trying to expand their roles in Gaza’s post-war reconstruction, which experts have warned could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected any Turkish or Qatari involvement in post-war Gaza.
The first stage of Trump’s peace plan, which took effect in October, included Hamas releasing all the remaining hostages, both living and deceased, who were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. In exchange, Israel released thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including many convicted terrorists serving life sentences, and partially withdrew its military forces in Gaza to a newly drawn “Yellow Line,” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west.
Currently, the Israeli military controls 53 percent of Gaza’s territory, and Hamas has moved to reestablish control over the other 47 percent. However, the vast majority of the Gazan population is located in the Hamas-controlled half, where the Islamist group has been imposing a brutal crackdown.
The second stage of the US plan is supposed to install an interim administrative authority — a so-called “technocratic government” — deploy an International Stabilization Force — a multinational force meant to take over security in Gaza — and begin the demilitarization of Hamas.
As the international community works to implement phase two of the ceasefire deal, Qatar and Turkey are now insisting that Israel must withdraw from Gaza before Hamas can disarm — a demand Jerusalem vehemently opposes, warning it would give the terrorist group time to reassert full control over its half of Gaza and remove any incentive to disarm later on.
On Saturday, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the international community has only achieved a “pause” in fighting, but not a full ceasefire, stressing that Israel would need to withdraw from the entire enclave to make it possible.
“A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces, there is stability back in Gaza [and] people can go in and out, which is not the case today,” Al Thani said during a press conference.
The Qatari leader also said that the mediating countries, including Turkey, Egypt, and the US, are “getting together in order to force the way forward for the next phase.”
However, Al Thani emphasized Qatar considers phase two to be “temporary,” arguing that addressing the immediate situation in Gaza alone is insufficient without tackling what he described as the underlying causes of the conflict.
“This conflict is not only about Gaza, but also the West Bank. It’s about the rights of the Palestinians for their state,” he said. “We are hoping that we can work together with the US administration to achieve this vision.”
According to the ceasefire plan, the Israeli army is required to withdraw further as the disarmament process unfolds. However, Israel has made clear that it will not pull back until Hamas disarms and other conditions are met.
“We will not allow Hamas to reestablish itself. We have operational control over extensive parts of the Gaza Strip, and we will remain on those defense lines,” Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said on Sunday. “The Yellow Line is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity.”
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said a credible Palestinian civil administration and a vetted, trained police force should be established before Hamas can disarm.
In a press conference, Fidan emphasized that without these conditions, expecting Hamas to disarm is neither “realistic nor doable.”
However, Hamas continues to reject full disarmament, saying the group is only open to storing or freezing its weapons in order to preserve “the Palestinians’ ability to defend themselves.”
“Hamas is willing to discuss these ideas in the context of a ceasefire or long-term truce within a political process that will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” senior Hamas official Basem Naim said in a statement.
In Gaza, Hamas’s brutal crackdown has continued to escalate dramatically as the terrorist group moves to reassert control over the enclave and consolidate its weakened position.
Following the death of Yasser Abu Shabab, the leader of an armed anti-Hamas Palestinian faction, last week, Hamas has given militants a 10-day ultimatum to surrender in exchange for promises of amnesty, according to Israel’s Channel 12 and reports on social media.
Abu Shabab, a Bedouin tribal leader based in Israeli-held Rafah in southern Gaza, had led one of the most prominent of several small anti-Hamas groups that emerged in the enclave during the war that began more than two years ago.
He died last week while mediating an internal dispute between families and groups within the militia, dealing a setback to Israeli efforts to support Gazan clans against the ruling Islamist group.
Since the ceasefire took effect two months ago, Hamas has targeted Palestinians who it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel,” sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group moves to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.
Social media videos widely circulated online show Hamas members brutally beating Palestinians and carrying out public executions of alleged collaborators and rival militia members.