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.

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