Another Own Goal By The Gedolim

Finally, there are grounds for hope.

A lot of people accuse me of only being critical of charedi society because of how the Gedolim banned my books twenty years ago. That does not appear to be true, in light of the fact that most non-charedi people in Israel feel exactly the same way about charedi society as I do. As for the ban, while it was extremely painful to endure, it ended up improving my life in many ways, and I am extremely glad that it happened.

But even more significantly, it was an enormous own goal on behalf of the Gedolim. Many, many people revised their views of charedi society as a result, and some left it entirely. As Rav Aharon Feldman observed at the time, nothing else in our generation so completely undermined their credibility and authority.

Well, that’s no longer true. Their utter opposition to helping with the war in any way has far topped that. If the Gedolim had deliberately set out two years ago to convince the rest of Israel that charedim are not our brethren, and are not even Torah Jews, but instead are a weird aberrant Neturei Karta-like sect that are a dangerously powerful threat to Israel’s survival, they couldn’t have done it any better. And last week’s mass prayer rally was perhaps the culmination of this “own goal.”

For two years, as hundreds of thousands of men (including yeshiva students and Torah scholars) served repeated rounds of reserve duty, with consequences to their lives and families that ranged from harsh to devastating, the charedi world made it clear that they didn’t care to help in any way whatsoever. Of the 80,000 or so young chareidi men avoiding enlistment, they wouldn’t send even 15,000 non-learners that the IDF desperately needs. And any attempt to get them to help - even the wishy-washy minimalist farce of an effort by the most charedi-subservient government in the history of the country - was met with absolute rejection and accusations of persecution. Many charedim chanted a song about not recognizing the legitimacy of the heretical state. All this means that charedi society effectively views the rest of the population as being of a different nation and Israel as being an enemy state, and some of them are not shy to explicitly say so.

Meanwhile, as the entire nation was tightening its belt (or suffering career collapse) as a result of the war, the charedi community was still demanding billions in financial support for being deliberately underemployed. As countless people started pointing out, the charedim refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the state or help with its needs, but they insist on getting its money.

And last week’s rally topped it off. Maybe those in attendance found it inspirational, but nobody else did. Rather, they saw masses of people, who profess to believe that their Torah learning is an invaluable military asset that replaces any worldly effort, freely abandon that Torah learning in order to engage in a rally that was either for prayers that they did not recite for the soldiers or for a political stunt. Most people now realize that the charedi opposition to enlistment has nothing to do with Torah. The messaging is consistent: “Even as we have become a rapidly growing community of over a million people, we see ourselves as a completely separate society with no civic duties, we will not help with national defense in any way whatsoever, we couldn’t care less about the hardship that others are suffering, we will use our political strength to force everyone else to financially support us, and we will accuse everyone who opposes this of being anti-Torah.”

Naturally, most of the rest of the country concludes that the charedim, rather than representing authentic Torah and Jewish values, are a perversion of Judaism that pose a significant danger to the economy and to national defense. Indeed, Mekor Rishon, a mainstream national-religious Hebrew newspaper that is very supportive of the government, just published an article titled “The Covenant with Charedim has turned into a National Security Threat.” Such views were previously only heard from rare individuals in religious society, but now they have become widely accepted as everyone begins to realize what charedi society is about and how it poses a clear existential danger to Israel.

And everyone is also realizing that if even the war did not get charedi society to wake up, certainly “gradual organic change” is never going to happen (or will not happen anywhere near fast enough to stop them collapsing the country). The only solution is to cut off the money which enables the freeloading lifestyle. Aside from this being innately the correct thing to do - there is no reason for everyone to fund a lifestyle that contributes nothing to the nation and poses a threat to it - it’s also the action most likely to result in change, since necessity is the mother of hashkafic reinvention.

It’s not clear if it will be possible to stop the exponentially growing charedi community from collapsing Israel’s economy and then military. But whereas until two years ago I was despondent about even waking society up to the problem, now it’s on everyone’s radar. There is hope that the nation will take the necessary steps.