As we await Israel’s future Haredi majority, we must commit to dialogue among all citizens to determine the common ground we share
By Manachem Bombach, 1.5.23
Recently, I met one of Israel’s leading brain surgeons — a doctor who has dedicated his life to saving others. He, his father, and his children all contribute significantly to the State of Israel. He told me that he feels depressed, hopeless, and full of rage toward the community to which I belong: Israel’s ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community. He feels that his country and the Zionist dream are being trampled. He was overwhelmed with pain.
We sat together and talked, and experienced a transformation, understanding each other, and hugging at the end of our conversation.
When the state was established, Jewish leaders from across the political spectrum worked together in order to declare the establishment of the Jewish state. Despite the differences between them, they understood the importance of a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Today, they would be disappointed that we have abandoned their responsible approach.
The people of Israel all have the right to live differently. The differences between us are not negative, but can actually be a source of blessing. Disagreement can lead to creativity and curiosity, and should encourage depth and empathy in our society.
Abraham, our ancestor, pleaded with G-d to save Sodom. He argued with G-d in the boldest terms found in the entire Torah: “Shall not the judge of all the earth do justice?!” He had the chutzpah to argue, but used words of caring that impressed G-d.
The statistics do not lie. The reality is that the Haredi sector is expanding, and will likely eventually become the majority in Israel. This successful and prosperous country may soon be entrusted to a religiously observant majority. And who is most concerned about this dramatic possibility? We are! We Haredim have no idea how to run a country. There is no precedent in Jewish sources for how to do this. We need to learn the art of responsibility!
This reality threatens Israeli society. The feeling that there is a large community that does not pull its weight in Israeli society is frustrating, and very concerning. But it is important to understand that Haredi citizens of Israel are also apprehensive. They fear external influences that threaten to weaken their hold on their halachic traditions, and their commitment and dedication to the Torah and its values. They live with a sense of danger. But they also see themselves as having a mission to restore the Torah world that was destroyed in the Holocaust.
At the same time, there has never been a more fruitful period for Haredi society. Many yeshivas, synagogues, communities, Torah centers, and frameworks for vibrant religious services have been established under the auspices of the state.
However, significant parts of Israel’s non-Haredi society are not prepared to bear the economic burden of the Haredi community. They are exhausted. The gaps are growing between the Haredi and non-Haredi community in national service rates, contributions to the economy, and the sharing of general social responsibilities, because of their many conflicting values. People are becoming more and more distressed.
This unraveling of Israel’s social cohesion is undermining our national resilience. It threatens our existence in Israel and damages our entire society. We seem to have reached a watershed. The metaphor of the full wagon and the empty wagon — used by the Chazon Ish to describe a wagon full of Jewish values on a collision course with an empty wagon — is no longer relevant. We’re trapped in a dialogue of the deaf, in which neither side can hear the other.
It’s important to know that there are tens of thousands of Haredim who recognize this reality. They are ready to take responsibility, and they are committed to dialogue and to finding the common ground between all citizens in the State of Israel.
This is big news. There are Haredi Jews today who recognize the importance of dialogue. They are no longer defined by who they are not and what they disagree with, but by who they are. Their identity is based on affirmation. They have deep feelings of gratitude to the state, and they know that their era of privilege as a minority is over.
We are entering a new era, in which the minority is going to become the majority. As such, we must sit together and formulate a social covenant based on respect, solidarity, and fraternity. However, there can be no agreement without compromise. Each group must be willing to compromise. Even the religious fanatics who are shouting in the streets, who have left the beit midrash in order to have their voices heard in public, must agree to compromise.
As a Haredi Israeli who regards my Jewish identity as a crucial condition for my existence in Israel, I am embarrassed by the behavior of some of my brothers. I would love to turn back the clock to the yeshiva of Hillel, 2,000 years ago, where a non-Jew asked to learn the entire Torah while standing on one leg and Hillel replied: “Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man.”
We aspire to have a Jewish state where Jews do not act hatefully toward other people. The word ”stranger” is mentioned 36 times in the Torah, to emphasize the importance of being compassionate toward other people. How much more so should we embrace our brothers and sisters. We should be showing pure, unconditional love to our fellow Jews.
The call of the hour is to call an immediate ceasefire in the internal wars that are destroying Israeli society. As an ordinary citizen, I call on President Isaac Herzog to use all of his power to negotiate agreements that can be accepted by the majority of the people, from both the right and the left, religious and secular.
Whether conservative or liberal, we look forward to a new dawn, when we can proudly announce: “We have compromised!” That is what we must all do so that we can live in a Jewish and democratic country, and build a more united and stronger Israel.
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This article is based on a speech given by Rabbi Menachem Bombach at a demonstration calling for a broad consensus between the different groups within Israeli society that are currently in conflict, which took place outside the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on April 26, 2023, at the end of Israel’s Independence Day.
Menachem Bombach is an entrepreneur, an educator, Rosh Yeshiva of the boys’ residential high school HaMidrasha HaHassidit in Beitar Illit, and the founder and CEO of the Netzach Yisrael Educational Network. ?Rabbi Menachem Bombach, a Vizhnitz hasid, was born and raised in the ultra-Orthodox community in Meah Shearim in Jerusalem. Following his yeshiva education at the Mir Yeshiva, he earned his undergraduate degree in Education and graduate degree in Public Policy from Hebrew University, where he also founded a preparatory program (Mechina) for Haredi students. Menachem was a fellow at Maoz and in the leadership program of Gesher and is a fellow and senior project leader at the Mandel Institute. ?After the establishment of the Midrasha HaHassidit in 2017 and in light of its success, Menachem Bombach established Netzach Yisrael, a network of Haredi schools whose mission is to provide its students with an outstanding Haredi education, while in parallel, they work towards their bagrut (matriculation) certificate, a prerequisite for quality employment and higher education in Israel. The network’s academic program empowers graduates to create a strong, financially viable future for them, their future families, and the Israeli economy, while remaining strongly connected to their core values of Torah observance. ?As of November 2021, the growing Netzach network is 12 schools strong. What started out with 14 students, currently serves 1500 students and fully expect to be serving 2000-2500 within two years, not including the over 18.000 registered at our Eshkolot Virtual School, an online platform which prepares Haredi students for their pre-academic studies. ?In March 2022, the Netzach Educational Network was awarded the Annual Jerusalem Unity Prize in the category of education. The annual prize is awarded to initiatives in Israel and throughout the Jewish that are instrumental in advancing mutual respect for others, and acknowledges accomplishments of those who work to advance the critical importance of Jewish unity, and inspire tolerance and mutual respect across the Jewish world –promoting acceptance of those who think, act or live differently.
@Reader Most Israelis are moderately traditional not Haredim. Actually, unlike America, the “secular” birth rate is just as robust. And I already explained, laws like the draconic modesty bill you mentioned are not popular on the right either. They won’t pass. Where did you read about it and who proposed it? I never heard of it, before.
I think the government is doing a good job. I guess you would have voted for Lapid and Co. There seem to be fewer terror attacks. I read the Defence security sections of Arutz Sheva and The Jewish Press everyday. These are the only publications that report most of them. They were averaging 8 a day for a long time.
@Sebastien Zorn
Certainly.
But that’s not all they want, they also want everybody else outside those neighborhoods to live as they (Hareidim) wish.
And they are sure it is going to happen once they achieve the “demographic victory” enabled by the heavy state subsidies (see the above article by Menachem Bombach “we are going to be the majority and you better get used to it”).
In this case, in the absence of a constitution with complete separation of religion and state, the state will be run exclusively by the Hareidim and it will be destroyed as a result.
If you want proof, take a look at how the current unique coalition is running the affairs of the state.
@Reader That’s a blood libel. Iran and Afghanistan murder and rape women for the smallest infractions like failing to cover the hair completely in Iran and the whole face and body in Afghanistan. One or two Haredi neighborhoods should be able to live as they wish.
Such legislation will never pass. The right wing is a big tent and Likud, alone. has more than double the mandates of any other party. Bibi made a point of it saying Israel will not become a halachic state and he wants a balance between court and Knesset whereas since Aharon Barak’s judicial coup the ball has remained in the left’s court even though they rarely win electtons.
These are BS issues. The state must stop coddling Arab/Muslim terrorists. The left deep state court are anti-Zionist. They must go down to defeat. None of this stuff matters.
@Sebastien Zorn
Not on public transportation.
Start your own private line and segregate anything or anyone you want (no state subsidies, though!)
Anyway, I do not wish to live in a Jewish Iran or Afghanistan.
One of the bills proposed by the Ultra Orthodox in the coalition called for a jail sentence for women who dress immodestly.
@Reader The one about the male only bus? So what? The driver said a female bus was coming along. She’s obviously not from that community. They wanted it. But, that can’t be recent because it was a trial program in one neighborhood snd the court struck it down after a few months. I disgree with you and the court.
I remember a leftist Jew screaming at me about it at the same time Hillary Clinton did, ,both comparing Isrel to Iran. Both wanted Jews in Yesha evicted from their homes. What about you? You condemned Ben-Gvir for putting his office in a terror ravaged neighborhood so the government would have to protect it and to draw atrention to the problem.
If I could have voted last year, I would have voted for him. You called it a provacative stunt.
So? Good!
Oh, I see, they were quietlyy doing it anyway this year. She was carrying a camera to record it. Obviously a leftist procacateur.
Sex segregation is a legitimate lifestyle choice. Certainly as legitimate as the LGBTQ agenda trafitional Jews are asked to tolerate.
@Sebastien Zorn
NOT YET.
Keep rereading my latest posts until you understand them instead of trying to read my mind.
What makes you think that I have something against Rabbi Kook or Peter Bergson?
When are you going to read that article I posted?
@Reader Meretz, Arab List, and Shaked’s party failed to meet the threshold. Shaked would have joined the right and the Arab List would have abstained. Do you think the threshold should be eliminated so they can win? You sound like the Democrats threatening to abolish the electoral College so Hillary could win. The system is what it is in a given country and the players craft their strategies knowing the rules. The winner has the mandate of the people, usually. Do you agree with all the hypocrritical left pundits that the disastrous and unrepresentative last government had the mandate of the people?
And what would Israel have done without Rabbi Kook and his famous son, Hillel Kook aka, Peter Bergson, of the Bergson Group and the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation,
You’ve turned into Lieberman? 😀
@Reader I presented you with facts and you didn’t refute them but resorted to name calling. Your assertions are counterfactual hyperbole.
@Reader Sure. He isn’t offering a place in the government but a hospital and crime fighting in Arab sector.
@peloni
You are doing your favorite – ascribing to me something I never said.
BTW, Yair Levin, the father of the judicial reform, has been pleading with Mansour Abbas to start supporting the reform, in vain, so far (but hope is the last to die), how incredibly “right-wing” of him, isn’t it?
Forgot to mention – Hareidim are usually pretty radical anti-zionists themselves, they just seek benefits from the government of “sinners” for their community/sector.
@peloni
You seem to be pretending not to comprehend what I wrote.
Israeli voters do not vote for the opposition or coalition.
They vote for parties whose members, if the parties pass the electoral threshold, enter the Knesset where they make the 120-member quorum, the rest is the product of negotiations between the prime minister and whoever he can get to join him in a coalition.
The coalition is NOT the sole government as much as it would like to pretend otherwise just because they have a couple more seats in the Knesset than the opposition.
Learn to read and after you are through with that, learn to comprehend what it is you are reading and do not pretend to be dumb.
@Sebastien Zorn
Learn to read and after you are through with that, learn to comprehend what it is you are reading.
See the above recommendation.
@Reader
Hardly. It wasn’t even close. It was 64 mandates to the right, 46 to the left and 10 to the Arabs who said a plague on both your houses and abstained though Levin is negotiating with Ra’am to try and obtain support for Judicial reform in exchange for hospitals and crime fighting assistance.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-elections/live-updates-721259
The right got 48.6 percent of the vote, the left got 35.04 percent of the vote, and the Arab parties got 7.82 percent of the vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election
With 14 mandates, the National Religious/Otzma Yehudit are the 3rd largest party in the Knesset. Likud got 32 and Yesh Atid 24. National religious (Ganz)got 9.8.
Bibi was elected by a landslide in his party’s primary. Most of the others don’t have primaries. Yesh Atid is built around Lapid.
And the pro-judicial reform demonstration was much bigger in spite of all the sabotage.
That’s what I call a mandate, no pun intended.
@ Reader Yes, I’m sure Haredi women are chafing under restrictions that deny them the opportunity to be groped by Arab Muslim men on public conveyances. 😀
Otherwise, you evaded my questions.
@Reader
You stated that the majority agrees with you, but the election results say otherwise. Your long list of hyperbole ignores the question I raised. If the majority agrees with you, why did they instead elect a Right wing majority govt? By the way, the govt only won by less than 1% if you conclude that the Arabs would actually have supported forming a govt. The Arab parties who stand in the opposition would not form a govt, not even with the Left, unless, as with Oslo, it would lead to the diminution of the state. Consequently, I am frankly surprised of your support of including such radical anti-zionists in any govt, but I am glad that the majority of Israelis disagreed with you in supporting even the attempt of forming such a calumny.
@peloni
They didn’t vote in this “government” or coalition (the division of the Knesset into the coalition and opposition is, at this point, perfectly artificial and harmful and must be abandoned).
They voted in ALL the parties that are now in the Knesset which include all of the 120 Knesset members.
There is about 1% difference in the popular vote between the parties which are now in the coalition and the parties which are in the opposition.
The parties which failed to enter the Knesset are the ones which didn’t pass the electoral threshold (too few people voted for them to get them into the Knesset, roughly speaking).
The way the coalition or the so-called “government” was formed was through Netanyahu’s wheeling and dealing with the religious parties by promising them the moon and stars while they agreed to support the laws which would benefit Netanyahu himself (and Aryeh Deri also) and get him out of the lawsuit which, apparently, he doesn’t believe he could win in court without taking over the Supreme Court.
This is why the judicial reform is so essential to this “government”.
The judicial reform is also extremely important to the religious parties because this coalition is unique in the history of the country and, initially, they truly thought that they could make it last through passing the judicial reform bills but after the mass protests the Ultra Orthodox backed off a bit.
The conclusion:
Those who state that the opposition is bitter and useless because it “lost” the elections, or that most voters elected the coalition are either misinformed or engage in plain lies and demagoguery.
Just because there are parties who were bribed to side with the prime minister thus forming a coalition of more than 60 seats in the Knesset doesn’t mean that the coalition is the only government of the country, that it can do absolutely anything that it wants, that all the other MK must quit the Knesset forthwith, or that their opinions don’t count, or that they should be treated like trash and fought to the death like enemies of the people, especially when they hold almost 50% of the popular vote.
According to a number of different polls, if the elections were held now, the coalition would lose its majority, and not just by a couple of seats.
PLEASE, don’t start climbing barricades for Netanyahu, I won’t read the stuff, I am convinced that he and his coalition are destroying the country.
@Reader
Is this why they voted in a govt which actually disagrees with you? On judicial reform, on separation of religion and state, on any number of topics, actually.
This sounds more like an ultimatum than a request for a dialogue, this article is deceitful.
Really?
Enjoy the preview of just one moment of the future “our Amish” hold in store for us:
Separation of religion and state serves to ensure that EVERYBODY is free to practice their beliefs, not just the most fanatical representatives of the state religion.
Hareidim are not nationalist, the parties originally entered the Knesset ONLY in order to benefit their “sector”.
The nationalism of the National Religious does more harm than good to the country because most of what they seem to be capable of is provocations and violence to sooth their overinflated egos rather than “building up the country” or “making the desert bloom”, or promoting aliyah – the ideas of the original secular Zionism which has basically been abandoned by the Jewish state.
It was the Orthodox who in the 1930s said “Po lin!” this means “Here we stay!” in Hebrew and “Poland” in Yiddish, and the not so religious contended that Poland is a democracy and things will work themselves out.
There was a virtual cult of Germany among the European Jews in those days (just as there is now a cult of America), almost no one would have left Europe even if a Jewish state had existed – are the Jews streaming into the Jewish state now?
BTW, this “Jewish state” won’t even let most of the American Jews in because “our Amish” don’t think most of the Diaspora Jews are Jewish (they actually think that those who marry in a Reform ceremony will need to undergo an Orthodox conversion even if they happen to be “kosher” Jews – this is from a book by a National Religious rabbi).
Separation of religion and state does not presume or enforce the absence of ethnic distinctions, it presumes and enforces the idea that no religion may run the state and that there is no discrimination on the basis of religion.
Religious practice can coexist perfectly well with a secular state which has only secular functions (defense, health, finance, construction, foreign affairs, internal affairs, etc.) serving all the citizens of the land equally.
I want to move to Israel for the same reason that many old European Jews wanted to move to then Palestine – to spend the rest of their lives in the Holy Land – except it was, apparently, much easier to do when it was Ottoman Turkey than when it is a “Jewish” state which “our Amish” are planning to take over once the “sinners” are done building it (this is from the above-mentioned book) – while making sure that no more “sinners” enter it.
The majority of Israeli Jews agree with ME, you have to study the topic some more.
Did you read the article I posted a couple of days ago here:
@ Reader “Do you believe that the Ultra Orthodox Jews are the only Jews left in the world?” No, obviously, being an individualistic and eclectic secular “New Age” Jew, or “Jew” as Edgar would put it, not that our enemies make such fine distinctions, myself, as my Jewish mother brought me up to be, but I believe that the historic compromise between the secular and the religious that was made in order to found the state should not be tampered with, especially now as the wolves converge from all directions., including from within. I also believe the ultra-orthodox should be free to practice their religion as they have always done, unmolested, or should they move to Kiryat Joel in upstate New York? They are our Amish,
Even though strictly on the merits, all other things being equal, you and I are on the same page, here, I don’t want to make it easier for anti-Zionists to undermine the Jewish character of the state because the only antidote to antisemitism is Jewish Power. That is the lesson of the Shoah which consumed half my family, including all of my paternal grand and great-grand parents. As far as I am concerned, “all the rest is sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Without nationalist Jewish identification, how can there be Jewish power?
How will who is a Jew be defined and who will define it?
Israel’s Jews feel themselves to be members of a family and every visitor has remarked on this. It’s not like that here. Not among the liberal secular majority, anyway.
I know all about family. I grew up watching it on TV, albeit mostly old shows in re-runs. 😀
The Progressives want to appease the Arabs who want us dead endlessly. I want to see both disfranchised, therefore. With notable individual exceptions, such as most of the Druze and Christian Arabs. We should be good to our friends and merciless to our foes.
I don’t care if Israel is the best place for someone like me to live. Lifestyle choice is irrelevant. There would have been no Holocaust, if Israel had existed as an independent state and there won’t be another unless Iran massacres Israel’s 7 million Jews with the continuous assistance of the Perpestinian Arabs.
NO MORE DEAD JEWS! NEVER AGAIN. Nothing else matters.
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Two side notes:
a) The Soviet Union allied itself with the Russian Orthodox Church to achieve unity in the face of German aggression in WWII. (Spoiler alert: they won.)
b) Volozyn, the first modern Yeshiva, closed its doors after being forced to include secular education by secular Jews working for the Czarist regime. This is always held up as an example of the antisemitism of the regime. It’s in Belarus which was part of Lithuania at the time.
Apropos of nothing, my great-grandfather (my mother’s father’s father) went there in its heyday and received his smicha – was ordained there – by the Netziv – the head of the place and the son of its founder, who sent him to America to regulate Kashrut. He founded and headed the first Kosher Slaughterer’s Union, while working as a shochet, and wrote a book in Hebrew published in 1948 in New York, on the history of Kashrut in America. Research libraries have it and it is still cited as an authority in scholarly articles. My mother and late sister, and I, until this year, in a desperate attempt to lose weight, stopped eating meat in the 1970s. Namaste 😀
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I just thought of something else. Reader, didn’t you say you want to make aliya?
Why? Sounds to me like you’d rather live in any western bourgeois democracy with a separation of church and state. and no official ethnic distinctions.
Why Israel? For that matter, if not as a jewish state, why does the state’s survival matter to you? I can tell you, for the Jews I’ve spoken to who talk like that, Israel’s survival is low on their list of priorities and they see no reason to move there.
But, since the majority of Israeli Jews who disagree with you, which is to say, the majority of Israeli Jews, support judicial reform and those who agree with you oppose it, would you say it’s safe to say, you agree with the “gate-keeper” theory of “democracy” of Israel’s Supreme Court?
But, again, why do you want to move there? Better health care?
@Sebastien Zorn
Certainly, everyone will be free to practice their own religion, and the test of one’s commitment to one’s beliefs is practicing it at one’s own expense.
Every citizen will be able to vote but there won’t be any religious parties or any religious dictate.
will happen as soon as the super religious will take over the government permanently and will fail to accomplish anything other than praying a lot and using the state money for the needs of their “sector”.
BTW, the Muslim takeover will certainly not be peaceful, and you didn’t answer my question: “Do you believe that the Ultra Orthodox Jews are the only Jews left in the world?”
@Reader “a constitution with complete separation of religion and state”
If there is a complete separation of religion and state, could it remain a Jewish state or would it simply be a state of its citizens, one which the Muslims could peacefully take over and evict the Jews over time?
Do you believe Israel should remain a Jewish state, and if so, what would its defining characteristics be? In short, what would keep it Jewish?
@Sebastien Zorn
Do you believe that the Ultra Orthodox Jews are the only Jews left in the world?
@Reader Do you believe Israel should remain a Jewish state?
a) It just goes to show the hypocrisy of the anti-Zionist Jewish left who say they want complete equality between Arabs and Jews that none of them call for Arabs being required to serve.
b) isn’t this a stark example of
The conflict between the secular socialist and the religious since Deuteronomy 20 forbids a draft? Or is this one of those Hillel vs. Shamai things where the text can mean anything you want rather than what it says that you see in every religion but Islam.
“ 5Furthermore, the officers are to address the army, saying, “Has any man built a new house and not dedicated it? Let him return home, or he may die in battle and another man dedicate it. 6Has any man planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy its fruit? Let him return home, or he may die in battle and another man enjoy its fruit. 7Has any man become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him return home, or he may die in battle and another man marry her.”
8Then the officers shall speak further to the army, saying, “Is any man afraid or fainthearted? Let him return home, so that the hearts of his brothers will not melt like his own.””
If Israel doesn’t adopt a constitution with complete separation of religion and state and doesn’t stop the fighting in the Knesset between the coalition and opposition, it is going to be finished not only as a state but as a country.
Most of the MKs in the Knesset are simply narrow minded stupid haters and lowlifes and this includes the religious.
Here is a much better article:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ignore-israels-next-chief-rabbi-at-your-own-risk/
Email received:
There are 1.28 million Haredi out of 7.00 million Jews in Israel.
“This successful and prosperous country may soon be entrusted to a religiously observant majority.” Well, maybe well in the future but not yet with those numbers despite the larger Haredi birthrates.
Haredi women are pretty much in the labor force – 78% of them work vs. 82% of non Haredi Jewish women. Only 50% of the men work and these men don’t serve in the IDF. Make non-working men do 30 years of public service or their public funds get cut off. Also, most military’s have lots of non-combat jobs. They can do those: cook food, drive trucks, do clerical and medical work