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Israel’s most dangerous war is with itself
My friend Rabbi Heshy Grossman recently invited me to Jerusalem to meet top Haredi rabbis. Unhappy with my critical writings about the Haredim, this well-meaning true believer hoped to jump-start fruitful dialogue.
So 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: Angst is now dominating Israeli discourse amid a strong feeling among non-Haredi Jews that the country is running out of time to save itself. This can seem related to the Palestinian conflict, or to disputes over authoritarian reforms. But at the end of the day the main issue — for the non-Haredi Jews who are still a majority in the land — is the Haredim.
Concerns used to be about the Haredim — who have always held sway over right-wing coalitions — trying to impose religious strictures, 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, 2023 have exposed profound tensions over this large minority evading military service, and the opposition promises to enlist them should it win this fall’s election.
But even that change — heavy lift though it may be — wouldn’t come close to fixing the actual problem.
The Haredi system largely refuses to teach high school boys math, science, English and other non-religious topics. It routes as many men as possible to religious study well into adulthood, for which they expect to receive state stipends rather than pay tuition. With very low male participation in the economy, the community pays minimal taxes and depends on a huge web of ever-expanding welfare. Increasingly, Haredi women do work, but rarely in high-end jobs. The community, which currently makes up about a sixth of the population, is exploding as family sizes approach seven children on average, certainly among the highest for any significant community in the developed world.
This will clearly lead to an economic collapse if nothing changes. On top of that, it does not seem as if the Israeli Haredim can coexist happily with others from a philosophical and cultural standpoint, and the feeling is very much mutual.
‘A sense of separatism’
Heshy drove me all over the city in a whirlwind tour that 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 U.S. Haredi rabbi much involved in the local political scene, and Heshy’s 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 serious men who are easy to like. That made the substance of what they said doubly unsettling.
The first fault line, as expected, was education. My question to the rabbis was straightforward: How can a modern economy function when a large and growing share of its population receives little to no instruction in mathematics, science or “secular” language skills?
Rabbi Moshe Meiselman, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was dismissive of the premise. Meiselman, the U.S.-born founder and head of Yeshivat Toras Moshe, described secular studies as an “intellectual game” that he had experienced at the highest levels and found vastly inferior to studying the Torah. He said that Haredi communities from the beginning of the state perceived an aggressive and arrogant stance from the Zionist authorities, who felt “that no intelligent person” would want to be Haredi.
“There is a basic tension in society, and that tension is what created, more than anything else, a sense of separatism within our own environment,” he said.
“Even at the cost of self-harm?” I asked.
“In your view it’s self-harm,” he said. And if the state cut off funding, he added, “we’d simply get money from our people abroad to support us … we will handle it.”
Like the others, he seemed to believe that whatever practical skills are needed for work can be acquired in a year or two. He offered the existence of certain successful Haredi professionals — lawyers, doctors, accountants — as proof. “What relevance does my knowledge of trigonometry have to anyone’s employment? Where does Euclid come in?” he said. “I don’t have to learn to talk with Plato in order to get a profession.”
I was glad to find a more flexible position expressed by 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,” he said. “I don’t understand why there’s an objection to it.” 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 Passaic, N.J., was also more pragmatic than the Israeli cohort.
“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 even he rejected the idea that external pressure — including cutting subsidies and restructuring incentives — would change behavior. “All you’re going to do is cause more hatred.”
Rabbi Shlomo Spitzer, who preferred that I not mention his affiliation, explained the indifference to practical outcomes this way: From the Haredi perspective, Torah and mitzvot are the organizing principles of life. Everything else a person does — work, eating, recreation — is secondary: “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 argued, explaining that following the Torah “to the end” means accepting it literally. “But societies change,” I said. “Values evolve. Why shouldn’t religious frameworks adapt?” His answer was that there are foundations that must be regarded as absolute.
Military tensions
The issue of military service brings the divide between secular and Haredi priorities into the sharpest relief for most Israelis. Here, too, the argument is 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. It is not without foundation: Many Israelis would love to have more of the Haredim join mainstream society — and indeed, exposure to that society is well understood as a trigger for leaving Haredi life.
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 ages in question — late teens and early twenties — are precisely when he needs youth to be studying, lest they go astray.
It was clear he was sharing a genuinely felt defense of a way of life, not speaking out of cowardice or selfishness.
“Our nation is about learning,” Kaplan said, describing Torah study as the defining activity of Jewish existence. Once that premise is accepted, the hierarchy of obligations shifts. But the truth is that most secular Israelis cannot in honesty accept this idea. Many don’t ascribe much importance to religion as a vocation. It is one of many things that might be important to a person, but seems imbalanced to insist must be important to a country. So the Haredi argument becomes a little like someone telling you they cannot serve in the military because they must become a pilot, plumber, poet or mathematician, and do nothing else, ever. “Very nice,” many Israelis would say, “I’ll see you in the army.”
Kaplan did concede that at some point in the future Haredim may have to either agree to serve or leave the country. 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. … if the Jews were here, acting as they’re supposed to act, then there would be no more war, ” he said. 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 replied, to my despair. I told him this is the language of an irreconcilable cultural war. “I’m a very honest person,” he replied, quite calmly.
Joy, and denial
In general, there is a pleasingly cerebral atmosphere of learning and debate in these institutions. Study can go on, Kaplan noted proudly, well into the night. The Mirer Yeshiva especially positively teems with boys, many from the U.S., who clearly care deeply about the culture they’re preserving. The entire Mea Shearim neighborhood seems designed to serve that yeshiva, with nary a business visible that is not somehow involved — whether that be the kosher eateries or bookstore full of young men reading and debating in a joyous scene for which I could not recall a secular equivalent.
It was an appealing environment in a strange way, and I understood the desire to preserve it. I proposed to some of those I met that the conflict might remain manageable, enabling that preservation, if the community that was at such loggerheads with society were stable in size.
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.”
“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 points — that the explosive growth of a welfare-dependent sector risks collapsing the very economy it depends on to sustain it — went unacknowledged.
The theological problem
It was when the conversation moved from policy into theology that things got especially hopeless.
Rabbi Spitzer, for example, said scripture allowed no leeway on the matter of the halakhic prescription of capital punishment by stoning for Sabbath violations. 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, there is no Sanhedrin or Jewish Temple.
But then again, if the Haredim end up as the large majority, there will be.
In the car, as we zoomed around Mea Shearim, Heshy tried to explain that the Haredi community and I simply speak 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.
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 will operate within a framework of shared accountability.
What came across very clearly in my listening tour was that a society organized around Torah study operates according to a different set of assumptions: that insulation from external influence is a virtue, that the Torah is the only valuable truth and that no moral or legal framework except what is ordained therein has any meaning.
These two systems can coexist for a time, if the Haredim are in the minority and they are economically supported. If the Haredim become a majority, as is inevitable unless the birth rate comes down fast, that fragile peace will break. Even though demographic predictions must be couched, it seems clear that without change, soon, non-Haredim will start to despair, and many will flee the country.
Correcting the course
Heshy will not be so happy, but the meetings he set up convinced me all the more that radical steps are needed to completely upend the current dynamic. The leaders of Israel’s opposition say they will move to draft the Haredim if they win the upcoming election. They should go much further. Among the steps necessary:
- Impose a secular core curriculum for all religious schools, and completely cut off state funding to any schools in any sector that resist.
- Eliminate most yeshiva stipends, or funds for those who study Torah full-time.The original draft exemption allowed by Israel’s first leader, David Ben-Gurion, allowed for funds for several hundred students, and that’s a number most Israelis could live with.
- Cap the number of child stipends — state funds allocated per child, to help support young families — at three per family. The idea here would be to encourage the birthrate to come down.
- Generously fund adult education and professional training for Haredim, and set up a state authority for absorbing, housing, training and assisting those who want to leave the fold altogether.
Recently, an Israeli news program interviewed a Haredi mother of nine who works to support her husband’s study. She seemed proud of his economic cluelessness 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, we have a national emergency.
The post Israel’s most dangerous war is with itself appeared first on The Forward.
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Bret Stephens, a stalwart Israel defender, calls out ‘Jewish terrorists’ in West Bank
(JTA) — Bret Stephens, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist known as one of the paper’s most consistent defenders of Israel, used his Tuesday column to take direct aim at the country’s handling of settler violence in the West Bank — warning that unchecked attacks now pose a threat to Israel’s security and to Zionism itself.
Stephens, who has spent years pushing back on what he sees as double standards applied to Israel, wrote that he decided to speak out against what he called “Jewish terrorists” despite his reluctance to feed the volume of global condemnation facing Israel.
“That’s not only because the terrorism is a menace to Palestinian lives and property, or an affront to Jewish ethics, or a stain on Israel’s reputation — though it’s all those things,” he wrote. “It’s also a direct threat to Israel’s security and statehood, and thus to Zionism itself.”
Stephens’s column drew heavily on a public letter sent Sunday to President Trump by Matan Vilnai, a retired IDF deputy chief of staff, on behalf of Commanders for Israel’s Security, an organization representing hundreds of retired senior Israeli officers. The letter cautioned that Israeli security services have been effective against Palestinian terror groups but hamstrung when it comes to curbing Jewish extremists. The letter warned about the consequences of Israeli inaction in curbing attacks on Palestinians.
“Unless arrested swiftly and decisively, escalating violence in the West Bank is poised to ignite the region and carries severe ramifications for both Israeli security and U.S. regional interests,” wrote Vilnai.
Stephens pointed to last week’s rampage by extremist settlers through several Palestinian villages — attacks that reportedly included arson at a home and two mosques and an assault on a stonecutting factory — as evidence the problem has become routine rather than exceptional. He cited Israeli military figures showing nationalistic and settler-related crimes climbed to 867 incidents in 2025, up from 682 the year before.
Stephens also cited Eran Shamir-Borer of the Israel Democracy Institute, a former IDF legal official, who told him the government has specifically declined to place suspected Jewish settlers under administrative detention. The practice, imprisoning individuals without formal charges, is regularly deployed against suspected Palestinian terrorists.
The columnist dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public framing of the violence as the work of roughly 150 “juvenile delinquents,” as he did in an interview with NBC earlier this month. Stephens argued that a government capable of eliminating a Hamas commander deep inside Iran cannot plausibly claim it’s unable to rein in a few hundred vigilantes.
Stephens is known, and widely admired within the pro-Israel community, for his robust defense of Israel, from refuting the charge of “genocide” directed at Israel to condemning what he has called the “hyperbolic and often conspiratorial hatred of the country.” Editor of the conservative Jewish thought journal Sapir, Stephens was also chosen to give the annual “State of World Jewry” address at the 92nd Street Y earlier this year.
“I think it is really important that people like Bret Stephens are speaking up about settler violence, and I think that it also shows how terrible that it’s become,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, in an interview with JTA. “Even people who are pretty, let’s say, hesitant or who almost never criticize Israeli policy are speaking up.”
But she also suggested that the issue goes beyond a failure to enforce the law or hold settlers accountable, and instead reflects the priorities of Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
“This is actually government policy because this is violence that is designed to take more and more of the West Bank,” said Jacobs. “There’s already been not just violence, but expulsions, shoving Palestinians to smaller and smaller areas and, ultimately, annexing the West Bank or at least as much of it as possible.”
Liberal Jewish groups like T’ruah, including Torat Zedek and Bnei Avraham in Israel and the U.S-based groups Smol Emuni, J Street and New Israel Fund, regularly condemn the settler violence and call on Israeli security forces to hold the perpetrators accountable. They also take part in “protective presence” visits to the West Bank in solidarity with Palestinians threatened by Jewish settlers.
The largest Jewish organizations have been less vocal on the topic, although the American Jewish Committee and the Union for Reform Judaism have issued statements condemning settler violence.
Right-leaning groups have either downplayed the extent of the violence or say Jews living in the West Bank have been provoked by neighboring Palestinians. On the same day that Stephens’s column appeared, the media watchdog group HonestReporting ran an article saying that the major news outlets disproportionately focus on settler violence, and run many fewer articles about Palestinian attacks on Jewish civilians. It also cited official Israeli data suggesting that violence by Jewish civilians in the West Bank had declined significantly since March.
Nevertheless, Stephens appeared to be echoing a growing sentiment even on the right that the settler violence is both wrong and a black eye for Israel at a time when its reputation is suffering around the world.
“I don’t think there are many supporters of Israel in the U.S. who are happy with how Israel has handled, or really mishandled, settler violence,” said David E. Bernstein, a professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School and a frequent commentator on Jewish affairs, in an email exchange with JTA. “To me, it’s anti-Zionist to allow settlers to flout the law and public policy, whether by violence or by setting up illegal outposts, because Zionism means accepting the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and radical settlers who don’t are no different than extremist Haredim [Orthodox] in not doing so.”
Last week, Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the government had approved a plan in March to tackle violence by extremist settlers but kept the plan secret due “to political considerations.” The report didn’t say whether the plan has been implemented.
The post Bret Stephens, a stalwart Israel defender, calls out ‘Jewish terrorists’ in West Bank appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu drags Mamdani into his reelection campaign as face of antisemitism
For nearly two years, Zohran Mamdani has made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a central political target. Now Netanyahu is making Mamdani part of his own reelection campaign.
The 50-second video released Wednesday on Netanyahu’s political social media channels builds on comments the Israeli leader made on Fox News this week, portraying Mamdani as the face of a worldwide surge of antisemitism directed at Israel. It intersperses footage of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and antisemitic incidents with recent clips of Mamdani condemning Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war after the mayor backed off a vow to have the Israeli prime minister arrested during an upcoming visit to New York. It also features Mamdani’s wife, artist Rama Duwaji, who liked social media posts that supported Palestinians immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. (Mamdani said his wife is a private citizen and does not work in his administration.)
The clip ends: “No one will stop me from fighting for the truth of Israel.”
The video comes as Netanyahu faces one of the toughest reelection campaigns of his political career, trailing his rivals ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election, which could determine not only his political future, but also his legacy and potentially his freedom as he faces a corruption trial.
The fight with Mamdani has become politically useful for Netanyahu. His main rivals — former Israel Defense Forces chief Gadi Eisenkot and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — are seen as more moderate leaders who could rebuild strained ties with Democrats and win back support for Israel among Americans.
Joel Rubin, a Democratic commentator and foreign policy expert, said in an interview that turning Mamdani into a symbol of today’s Democratic Party gives Netanyahu a way to challenge one of his rivals’ central arguments that they are better positioned to course-correct the U.S. political shift against Israel. “For Netanyahu, it’s very important to try to portray the Democrats as Mamdani and make the argument that only he can stand up to that,” Rubin said.
Mamdani has positioned himself as a prominent progressive critic of Israel amid the war in Gaza, a position that helped propel his rise and which has become increasingly part of national Democratic Party politics.
Mamdani’s high-profile confrontation with Netanyahu escalated when he announced a review of whether he had the legal power to arrest the Israeli prime minister when he visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly in September. Experts on Israeli politics warned of an unintended consequence: would allowing Netanyahu to cast himself once again as Israel’s defender against international efforts to isolate the Jewish state.
“Many Israelis are sick of him and hope to vote him out,” Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro wrote on X on Saturday. “The only possible outcome of a fruitless attempt to arrest him in NYC would be to give him a political boost at home. That would be an own goal.”
Some political strategists argue that Mamdani and his allies have little reason to mind if Netanyahu remains in power. “I bet they’re rooting for Bibi, in a perverse way,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder and executive vice president of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, in an interview with the Forward discussing how Israel is reshaping Democratic politics.
While still serving as a New York state Assembly member, Mamdani zeroed in on the Israeli prime minister as an enemy, leading chants of “Netanyahu, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” during a protest in Oct. 2023.
Throughout his mayoral campaign last year, Mamdani repeatedly injected Netanyahu into New York politics., Mamdani first pledged to arrest Netanyahu shortly after he launched his campaign. According to a report, members of Mamdani’s inner circle were pushing for him to make this arrest declaration. After his election, already knowing the city lacked the authority to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani proceeded with the review. When it concluded he did not have the power to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani used a mayoral address to declare him a war criminal and then encouraged New Yorkers to protest him on his UN visit. Critics say the episode was a calculated political move aimed at energizing the pro-Palestinian and progressive base that helped elect him.
“There is a core principle amongst the left in American politics that having someone to organize against is crucial to growing numbers and persuasion, and for Mamdani, having the foil of Netanyahu is an incredibly valuable tool for motivating support,” said Rubin, who led Jewish outreach for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.
Whether that principle translates into votes for Netanyahu’s coalition in Israel’s Oct. 27 election remains to be seen. At the moment, Mamdani and Netanyahu have become unlikely political assets for each other, each giving the other a powerful opponent to campaign against.
The post Netanyahu drags Mamdani into his reelection campaign as face of antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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As Conservative rabbis, we’re rethinking our communities’ policies toward interfaith families
(JTA) — As Conservative/Masorti rabbis, we see firsthand the joy of couples building a life together in the Jewish community, and the pain of those who feel shut out because one of them is not Jewish.
We think of the community member, though not Jewish, who developed a profound love for davening (prayer) and Torah study, and has supported his children’s and grandchildren’s Jewish education and observance of mitzvot. We think of another community member who faithfully drove her four children to Hebrew school for years and, after her youngest child’s bat mitzvah, chose to convert to Judaism herself.
It is time for our halacha, or Jewish law, to address issues facing intermarried couples and families robustly.
The two of us had the honor of joining colleagues in co-authoring a teshuvah — a rabbinic response to questions of Jewish law — that does just that. The Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has approved a teshuvah that seeks to honor these couples and families and their commitment to Jewish life in our congregations and communities.
Since we are part of a movement that balances a commitment to halacha with the realities of modern life, our work is grounded in traditional Jewish texts, laws and principles while also reflecting the core belief that welcoming others and extending hospitality are essential Jewish values.
Based on halacha and Jewish tradition, the teshuvah affirms the longstanding standard of Conservative/Masorti rabbis that clergy may officiate only at weddings where both partners are Jewish. It emphasizes that while a wedding is a significant moment that often singularly drives these conversations, there are many other important life-cycle moments that rabbis can offer as occasions for Jewish celebration and reaffirmations of commitment to mitzvot.
Through this teshuvah, we formalize a public mishebeirakh (blessing) before or after the wedding day for a couple committed to building an exclusively Jewish home, as well as a hanukkat habayit ceremony to dedicate their home.
We welcome non-Jewish parents on the bimah during their children’s b’nei mitzvah and offer “mazal tov” and other basic gestures of inclusion to intermarried couples, both of which were once considered unacceptable. Our goal in doing so is to inspire the couple and family to grow in Jewish living.
We affirm that synagogues may not hire intermarried individuals as clergy but may hire intermarried individuals for other roles, and that rabbis may officiate at funerals for non-Jewish family members and support a Jewish mourning process when a non-Jewish loved one dies.
It’s been about 40 years since the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which sets halachic policy for our movement internationally, broadly addressed questions around intermarried couples and families. We have learned over time that those intermarried couples who choose to embrace Jewish life are integral to the fabric of Conservative/Masorti communities.
We invite these couples to engage meaningfully in Jewish practice at home and in community, and, if they are having children, to raise them as Jews. Sometimes they may even choose to convert to Judaism at some point.
We do so because, as rabbis, we enjoy the privilege of being invited into people’s lives, and our role is both pastoral and educational. As people figure out their own identities and relationships, our role is to help them integrate Jewish tradition. As couples turn toward each other and seek to integrate Judaism into their lives, we are here to help them chart a course and to bring Torah into the conversation and observance of mitzvot into their lives.
We aim to inspire the couple to grow in Jewish living, observing mitzvot, studying Torah and searching for God in daily life. To do so, we must create gateways so everyone can find a place to learn and find joy and inspiration in our traditions, within the boundaries of halachic standards and principles.
Many of the practices in the teshuvah are already in place in some communities. Some offer solutions that speak most directly to realities in North America, and we call on local rabbis to interpret them in light of the circumstances in their local communities.
In the days of the Mishnah and the Talmud, when faced with new and challenging circumstances, our rabbis found creative and often beautiful solutions to embody the Torah as they understood it. As we follow in their footsteps, we use the wisdom we have inherited to both uphold and transform those values and honor the halachic principles that are central to our rabbinates and communities.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post As Conservative rabbis, we’re rethinking our communities’ policies toward interfaith families appeared first on The Forward.
