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The Haredi Insurrection Transcript
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Donniel: Something’s happening. There’s a feeling that the Haredi community, the ultra- Orthodox community in Israel is raising the bar and is increasingly at war with the rest of Israel.
Yossi: A significant minority adopted the slogan, “namut ve-lo yitgayes,” we will die rather than be drafted. And of course, on social media, the mainstream Israeli responses. We will be drafted and maybe we’ll die.
Donniel: Here it is. I can’t survive without you. And the other one is saying, when you want me to serve and enhance your survival, my world will come to an end.
Hi, friends. This is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute, and this is our podcast, For Heaven’s Sake, in collaboration with Ark Media. Today’s June 30th, and our theme is the Haredi Insurrection.
Something’s happening. There’s a feeling that the Haredi community, the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, is raising the bar and is increasingly at war with the rest of Israel. And it’s a very interesting position because there is no minority which has been more privileged and more powerful and currently even more powerful than this Haredi community. They’ve somehow convinced—and it’s an interesting question, why and how, may be worthy of some discussion—forcing the government to attempt to pass two brand new legislations.
One is a law suspending the arresting of Haredi draft dodgers. And the other one is the presentation of some form of a basic law which was put forth four years ago, almost three, three and a half years ago. And that is the basic law of the study of Torah, making the study of Torah a national value, a national value. So that if there is some special consideration given to students of Torah. And when it comes to military service, the foundation of that law, which will then allow it to be accepted by the Supreme Court and not be discriminatory, is because, listen, there’s a basic law which says the study of Torah law—
Yossi: Right, but the basic law doesn’t explicitly connect the study of Torah to exemptions from the military.
Donniel: Exactly, that they can’t pass. But what they can pass is listen, study of Torah is special. Ah, now why you exempt it? Well, listen, we have a basic law that says it’s a study of Torah is pecial. There’s a move going on.
Yossi: It’s the Talmudic mind at work.
Donniel: It is Talmudic, because politically they can’t pass the exemption. But this way the Haredi community could turn to its population and say, look, we achieved this and Netanyahu is agreeing. So this is a very—and for what, we’re not really sure. Is it so that he could delay the election from October 20th to October 27th? There is some calculation. It seems too bizarre to me, but I think part of what he’s doing is he’s trying to establish his relationship with the Haredi community for the next government. He’s trying to say—
Yossi: He’s trying to make sure that they remain firmly in his camp, even though they have nowhere to go.
Donniel: And even though for four years he basically refused, other than budgetary compensations, which were very significant, he wasn’t able to pass even from within his own government.
Yossi: Yeah, it’s not—he didn’t refuse. He tried, you know.
Donniel: I don’t know. I think he was ambivalent because he also knew it was very unpopular. But they’re very, very powerful. But there’s a clear sense, ongoing demonstrations, shutting down of roads. You know, every day we sort of reach another level or another low or another high, depends on who you ask. A major Haredi rabbi from the Shas party called the chief of staff the cursed chief of—
Yossi: It’s a kind of rhetoric that we used to hear from the haredi fringe and now we’re hearing from the mainstream.
Donniel: From the mainstream. Like they’re breaking, there’s a sense of a break with Israeli society. They’re pushing the line for a reason. And what we want to do today is we want to talk about why? Because it’s shaping the nature and form of our country. And for many Israelis, it’s one of the most significant questions.
So we’re going to try to understand today’s moment, but we’re also going to try to put it in a larger, both historical and ideological context, which I hope will help us understand where we are today and where we might go in the future.
So Yossi, when you see this moment, what is it that you see?
Yossi: A deep sense of mutual betrayal on the part of, on the one hand, the mainstream that’s holding up this war, that we have reservists who have served 405 hundred days. We’ve never experienced anything like this, not since the 1948 war.
And on the other hand, a feeling of betrayal among the Haredim toward the mainstream. And so if I could just unpack that mutual betrayal for the mainstream, I think it’s fairly straightforward. You know, not only do we subsidize their separatism, but then they turn around and try to shut the country down. To do so at a time like this—aand the rhetoric, there’s a part of the Haredi community, by no means the majority, but a significant minority that’s adopted the slogan, “namut ve-lo yitgayes,” we will die rather than be drafted.
And of course, on social media, the mainstream Israeli response is we will be drafted and maybe we’ll die. And the lack of sensitivity, the lack of self-awareness, You know, how do you not see how you are perceived through the eyes of their fellow Israelis? And so there’s this sense of growing outrage.
And the chief of staff has been pleading for reinforcements. He says, we can’t hold our positions. We need, what is it, 15,000, 20,000 thousand soldiers? And really, there’s only one place that that’s going to come from, if at all It’s from the Haredi community.
Donniel: Partially also from women, from opening up more jobs.
Yossi: And they’re trying to stop that from happening.
Donniel: And that’s, in some sectors of the religious Zionist community they’re trying to stop that. And so, but he’s holding the line. And he actually, when he spoke to the rabbis, they understood that this was a life and death moment and they stepped back. But there is some pushback about women service in various positions, but principally it is from the Haredi community.
Yossi: And so, you know, most of us stop there. We’re so engaged with our outrage. It’s so pure and right that we are also not able to see the other side.
I’d like to offer some sense of what I think they’re experiencing, not because I agree with them, but because I think we need to understand them. They entered into a pact with mainstream Israel and the pact was, you exempt us and we’ll support whatever government comes along, and we will gradually shed our theological anti-Zionism and shift to a kind of non-Zionism, which increasingly, over the years, became an Israeli patriotism, a kind of patriotism. They were proud of Israel. They were proud of our victories. Younger yeshiva students knew the names of generals, and they were, some of them were really expert in military maneuvers.
Donniel: I was reading an article that on Purim they dress up as Israeli soldiers.
Yossi: That’s right. And I guarantee you this coming Purim, they will not.
Donniel: That’s right.
Yossi: And so there was this sense of softening, you know, the bitter ideological enmity between Zionism and Haredism was coming to an end, except on the fringes.
Then suddenly, we change the ground rules. And now not only are we breaking the deal, but we’re accusing them of being mishtamtim. Mishtamtim is, it’s more than slackening off. To be a mishtamate is almost to be a parasite. You know, you’re letting others do the job that you’re supposed to do. And suddenly we, who have been your loyal allies, we are not a hedonistic community. We are the last repository of the old Israeli sense of voluntary poverty for a ’cause, you know, we used to have the kibbutzim and then the early settler movement. We had idealists who took on voluntary poverty.
Today it’s, the Haredi world, I have a cousin, 13 kids, 2 1/2 rooms, and you go in there—spotless. The walls are lined with religious books, and they have a sense of themselves as royalty. But it is a level of poverty that we don’t know. And so we’re accusing them of betraying. We’re upholding Judaism, we’re upholding Torah. And look at the price we pay. Look at how we live.
And so now you’re changing the ground rules. And not only are you accusing us of not pulling our weight, but you’re starting to arrest our yeshiva students. You’re turning the cream of our society, the spiritual elite of our society, into criminals. This is the red line.
And you know, Donniel, and we talked about this after October 7th, the change that happened in the Haredi community. It was short lived, but it was very profound, this deep identification with mainstream Israel. And I heard it through the music that was coming out of the Haredi community. I saw it on these YouTube clips of these Haredi musicians that were singing about how we’re one people, all right? We don’t always agree, you know, It was very moving. And those songs are completely gone.
Donniel: So I think what we need to do if we want to understand the Haredi community, and I appreciate your point that each side feels victimized by the other and we have to understand them.
I don’t think you could understand this moment unless you go back to the founding of the Haredi movement by, probably, Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, Chatam Sofer, in Hungary in 18101213.
Around that period of time, which is when ultra Orthodoxy started in response to Enlightenment and, at the time, the Reform movement.
Because at this moment what I think you see is a return to a core Haredi ideology that has been weakening or being diluted by Zionism. They had become a modern Zionist community in their terms. There were shifts taking place.
Yossi: They had become Zionist adjacent.
Donniel: Adjacent. And I think part of what’s happening is a feeling that that move is threatening something core about who I am. And there are two core dimensions to the Haredi community conceptually.
The first is the notion that the greatest danger to an authentic relationship with God and a commitment to Judaism is the modern world. The modern world provides a new system of authority, new truths, things that are compelling. They’re emotionally attractive, politically attractive, psychologically and even morally and intellectually attractive. They’re presenting themselves as advancement. Here it is. Are you primitive or are you advanced?
And the Haredi community looks at that claim, the claim that modernity makes on you, and says that claim is going to be idolatrous because the only thing that’s supposed to claim me is God and Torah. And in order to do that, this man, Chatam Sofer, came up with an unbelievable innovation in which he said anything that is new is forbidden under Jewish law. This is his most famous statement.
Yossi: That was his innovation.
Donniel: That was his innovation, and this became the slogan of the Haredi community in Hebrew, chaadash asur min ha-Torah. It’s forbidden. There’s nothing in the world outside. What’s new is celebrated as enlightenment and advancement. Anything that’s new is forbidden under Jewish law, and they shut down. The idea is to simply shut down a tradition that had developed and evolved and interpreted itself over close to 3000 years, he said. No more. Anything new is forbidden under Jewish law, and the way they protected themselves from the new was by retreating from this enlightened world. How you dress, what you do, where you live. How do I lower my interaction with that outside world? Because the minute I interact, the new is going to attract me. And so I have to remove all my inclinations, this idea that the new is forbidden.
Now there is nothing newer happening in Jewish life in the 20th century than Zionism, than the Jewish people building a society and saying, I want to make it, and in order to make it, you’re not going to make it. I don’t want this to be a replica of the ghetto. I want to be a nation amongst the nations and the rules of the nations are going to apply to me. And how we have to run this country is going to have to be judged by the world, not by Torah.
So they looked at Zionism and said this is paganism because what obligates you is the real politik and not God and Torah.
Yossi: So Zionism for them was the essence of the threat of modernity.
Donniel: Of modernity. And it is the ultimate innovation.
Now, what even made it more significant was the fact that it was led by people who had no commitment to Torah. They had a commitment to the Jewish people. They had a commitment to Jewish history, but Zionism was led and founded by secular individuals for whom Torah and God were at best superficial figures in their lives. So this state, this is not Torah. This is an alternate universe that represents the worst of what the modern transformation could be about.
The second core principle of Haredi ideology is the commitment to the study of Torah. You can’t understand the depth of the Haredi movement unless you understand the notion that the study of Torah surpasses everything else. The study of Torah is not a vehicle to guide you how you’re supposed to live your life. Your commitment to halacha has to do that, to Jewish law. The study of Torah is an end unto itself. The study of Torah is how I make love with God. The study of Torah is how I live in the midst of this 3000 year old romantic journey between God and the Jewish people.
So you have, one is, modernity is going to violate my core religious passion and the term Haredi, which means I am fearful, which ostensibly meant, I want to live in fear or in awe of God. They became, I’m fearful of the modern world.
Yossi: That’s a very important notion.
Donniel: The second one is, Zionism, more than also any other movement, had no respect for the study of Torah. Here it is, the Haredim said, I am the pioneer. I am the one who’s bearing the ultimate weight of the real difficult task of Jewish life. And that is, I am working in Torah. I am carrying the burden because I’m studying this 3000 year old tradition.
And Zionism says, give me farmers, give me trees, Give me, you know, the classic Mishnah, which says a person who’s walking along the way and they’re, of course, when you’re walking along the way, you’re studying in Torah. And the person who’s walking along the way and sees a beautiful tree and they stopped their study of Torah and says, how beautiful is this tree? The Mishnah says, they’re deserved of death. And Zionism says, give me back my trees.
Let’s create a normal Jew who embraces the physical world. We want Jews of muscle. We want Jews who know how to do things and farm. And the Haredi community is a community that says no. The ultimate act of a Jew is Torah as an end of itself, as a vehicle for embracing God.
Yossi: There’s an innovation here, there’s an irony here, and the innovation is the creation of what they call the “Society of Learning.” There was never a society devoted exclusively to learning built around the study of Torah as there is today.
Donniel: Never at these numbers.
Yossi: Oh, that’s for sure. I mean, there were always yeshivas and communities helped sustain these yeshivas, but an entire society that not only is built around the study of Torah, but depends on the largesse of the surrounding Jewish?
Donniel: Societies of Torah always depended on the largess, but the Haredi community itself saw the student of Torah and the support of the student of Torah as the ultimate mission, because there was nothing holier than the study of Torah. What does a Jew do? A Jew lives with God through the study of Torah.
Now, the paradox is, is that the Zionist community actually created the greatest manifestation of yeshiva learning in Jewish history.
Yossi: We created the means for them to create with their society.
Donniel: To create their society. So this is the frustration because Zionism enticed them, knows we sold their integration into Israel. We accepted okay, reject modernity, reject the country, reject the ethos of the country, as long as you support my government and they became part of it. And now they’re looking and Zionism is saying we need to change the covenant.
And so I think part of what you see is an attempt now, part of the demonstrations, part of the language, they don’t even care how it’s being played out. What they’re arguing is that this journey that we’ve walked together with now for 78 years or 80 years, 90 years that served you and served us, we realize it’s coming to an end. Because if you have that authority over me, I will no longer be able to protect myself from the new. And you are undermining the essential value now.
Yossi: This is a crucial point.
Donniel: They are at war for their survival.
Yossi: And there’s nothing manipulative about their rage. It is an authentic outbreak of fear and outrage.
But you know, I think there’s another dimension here, too. It’s not only a feeling of mutual betrayal. There’s a sense among mainstream Israel and within the Haredi world that if the other side gets its way, its very survival will be in danger.
And so the way that plays out on our side is we look at the numbers. It’s very straightforward. We look at the economic implications, we look at the military implications. And I ask myself, how much longer will average Israelis continue to go to the army? Will kids continue to volunteer for elite units as Haredi numbers grow and if this community refuses to serve?
I heard that one of the Haredi politicians recently, Gafni, Mordechai Gafni, was asked, what is your vision? You know, the Haredi community is growing. In, in 20 years you’ll be 25%, at some point you’ll be 50%. He said. My vision is that 50% of Israeli society will be in the Society of Torah and 50% will defend us.
Now, that is not a sustainable model, not economically, not psychologically, not morally, and not militarily. And so there’s this feeling and and you feel this when you speak to people who are approaching these elections as an existential moment. If we don’t stop this arrangement now, this country will not be sustainable. So that’s on our side.
On their side, they’re saying, well, exactly as you put it before, that my separatism—it’s not a choice. The survival of our understanding of Torah society depends on the separatism. The tragedy of this moment is we’re in a zero-sum game.
You know, I’ve been doing some research on the period immediately after the show off after the Holocaust, specifically the displaced persons camps, where you had 300,000 survivors living in camps in Germany and Austria from 1945 to 1950. It’s an extraordinary period in Jewish history, almost forgotten. And what you had there were basically two parallel societies.
What we’re seeing playing out in Israel today begins in the displaced persons camps. The overwhelming majority of survivors were Zionists, the full range from right wing to left, religious, secular. And you had a very small but determined group that was resurrecting the Haredi lifestyle.
Now, each of these approaches were offering a very, very different idea of Jewish survival. The Haredim were saying, we’re not doing it anything differently than Jews always did. A Jewish community was destroyed in one place. You rebuild the exact replica of what was destroyed. And the Zionist said, something new has happened. The extent of the destruction, the hope of fulfilling this impossible dream—we’re going for broke.
And so you had two very divergent ideas of how to respond to the Holocaust. And in the displaced persons camps, the two groups coexisted, sometimes uneasily. There were tensions, but on the whole they cooperated.
The only groups, interestingly, Jewish groups that were not allowed to organize within the camps were the anti-Zionists. And the Haredim were not—at least among the survivors—were not overtly anti-Zionist in those years. You see the change already.
Donniel: Interesting.
Yossi: Now, if you fast forward to this moment, those two divergent strategies of survival, which nevertheless managed to coexist in the camps and which coexisted however uneasily over the last 80 years, we’ve now come to an impact.
Donniel: Because you could coexist when you’re adjacent, like I could live next to you. But now, in many ways, we are each other’s nightmare. And I think, post-October 7th, you have to understand the nightmare of the serving Israeli society. And it’s not just the burden of the reserve, because it might be, the wars will close down a little bit. We’re not going to have to fight as much. You know, the more we withdraw from the buffer zones and the buffer zones and the buffer zone, at least in theory, maybe Lebanon is quieting down. You might be able to envision a time where there’ll be less military service, possibly.
I think there’s something bigger happening. Israeli society is frightened. They’re frightened and you could see it in reports all the time that the Zionist ethos was we are powerful and who’s going to protect us? The army. Israeli society no longer trusts the army to protect them. They don’t.
Yossi: Not since October 7th, not.
Donniel: Since October 7th, yeah. And you look in the news, they’re telling stories of imminent possible October sevenths again. Now they’ve added Eilat. One person was driving. What do they call those C mobile motorcycles or whatever they’re called there. They did it. It’s a plot to possibly test infiltrating from Aqaba. And you remember, Eilat, is the place where Israelis go to get away.
So if you can’t get away in Eilat, and in, today in Samaria, and every tunnel in Lebanon, there’s no protection for this next October 7th. And we used to say, don’t worry, the army has it. The army has it. And that’s why we have—with its equipment, we don’t—intelligence, don’t worry, we’ll have warning.
The only thing that Israelis want right now are two things: Don’t tell me my army’s superior, don’t tell me the army’s going to know what to do. There’s two things I want. One is I want buffer zones. I need a buffer zone. I need you as far away from me as possible. And the second thing is I want troops on the ground.
Yossi: Which requires everyone to be a part of the effort.
Donniel: And so that’s, this, paradoxically now, we cannot reclaim the security of pre October 7th without more soldiers, and that’s the Haredim. So it’s not that I want you to bear the same burden. It’s not like a theoretical concept.
Yossi: It is that too.
Donniel: But I don’t think you could understand this moment, as you know.
Yossi: Yeah, I think you’re right. You’re right.
Donniel: It’s not economically, here, I disagree. It’s not that it’s not sustainable. We are looking to fill a hole and the only ones who could fill that hole are more bodies.
Yossi: I actually think the anger among religious Zionists might be even greater, the feeling of betrayal might be even greater than among secular Israelis, because they look at the Haredim and say, you’re us. We’re committed to the study of Torah. You are betraying us.
Donniel: But that’s an ideological—I think it’s more primal, is what I’m saying. You’re correct. There is the economic issue, There is the sustainability issue. There’s the fact that you dare to speak about Torah study as if your Torah study is better than our Torah study.
But at the end of the day, post October, I need buffers and I need bodies. And when you’re not giving it, what you’re basically doing is keeping me in the midst of my profound trauma of October 7th. And the reverse is like, here it is. I can’t survive without you.
And the other one is saying, when you want me to serve and enhance your survival, my world will come to an end. So how do you—and by the way, I think they are right. Their world of elevating Torah study as the ultimate goal and being disassociated or disconnected from the world will be profoundly threatened when their bodies are on the borders.
This is a very clarifying moment because for years, what have we heard from the Haredi world?
Our Torah study is protecting you. We’re protecting the state of Israel. And in the last year or two, there have been growing demands, even on the right that say, okay, we’re not going to touch the yeshiva students.
But half your young men, we know the truth. They’re not sitting and studying Torah. They’re out working in jobs under the table. And so let’s have a new arrangement where we draft those young men who are not engaged in full time Torah study.
And what do we hear from the Haredi rabbis? Not a single Haredi young man can be touched. So what is it that they’re actually protecting? They’re not protecting the state of Israel. They’re protecting themselves. And I understand. I understand that.
Donniel: That that was their, that was the covenant with the country.
Yossi: They’re protecting the intactness of their society, their ability to control their young people. That’s the real struggle now.
Donniel: They know—and everybody could say that it’s not true and that we will create units exclusively for the Haredim. There will be a price to pay. Now, if you will—
Yossi: They will lose a certain number.
Donniel: There will be a price to pay. Already now statistics speak about 15 to 20% drop off from within the Haredi community. And it used to be that, you have to realize that in the 19th and 20th centuries, the greatest assimilation in Jewish communities happened from Haredi communities who saw the large words.
Yossi: Where we all come from.
Donniel: That’s where we all like, where did we come from?
You know, like the whole notion that Haredi, are going to protect us is a myth, because all liberal Jews came one at one time from this community. We have to be honest. You, like, when you tell them, don’t worry, we’ll protect you. They know that a new covenant is being demanded of them.
Yossi: The moment that they allow another authority to step in, military or government.
Donniel: It’s innovation.
Yossi: Then the rabbis lose their exclusivity.
Donniel: It’s not that, Yossi. It’s not that. That is the standard language. It’s not that. It’s not that the rabbi loses their authority. It’s not that. It’s deeper than that, Yossi. It’s not that there’s another authority. It’s that there’s another world that my children are going to be exposed to. There’s another world.
It’s not the rabbis who are holding them back. It’s true that they are. But because the community had started a process of assimilation and now they’re retrenching and saying, my covenant with the state was I will enable the state to function as you want it to function by giving you the government you need. And you have to enable me to continue to function as a separate community. The problem we’re facing is nobody knows how, nowm these two desires, they can’t work anymore. We need them.
Yossi: The old arrangement is not sustainable anymore.
Donniel: Not sustainable.
Yossi: That’s the tragedy.
Donniel: So the only thing in what you see now in the government these last three months is they’re trying to pass the government legislation. Here it is. I’m part of the government, so give me my laws. So the government is going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the Knesset, they’re going to give them their laws. But the street knows that the covenant is over and we have a crisis now.
Yossi: So where are they heading, Donniel? Where do you think the Haredi world is going?
Donniel: I know where they’re going, but it’s going to be, they’ll—
Yossi: How far will they go?
Donniel: They’re going as far as they could go. They’re going to go back to the Satmers. They’re going to be living in Israel.
Yossi: The Satmer, the theological anti-Zionist core.
Donniel: They’re unseating. They’re trying to break with the integration in this country. And the problem is, is the country, again, it depends on who wins. But if a Likud government wins again, there’s only so far you could push them, because you can’t force this community to go into the army. It’s like forced conversion. That’s what it ultimately is right now. Forced.
Yossi: That’s how they see it.
Donniel: Exactly. You’re not going to force—we Jews throughout history—
Yossi: They really see this as a moment that requires martyrdom if necessary.
Donniel: And you’re not going to win.
Yossi: No. No, you can’t. You’re frontal.
Donniel: You’re not going to win that war. And that’s, in many ways, the challenge, the crisis that we’re facing. You know, you’ll try to buy them off a little bit, but at the end of the day, a post October 7th security consciousness needs bodies, and we don’t have enough bodies to protect us with all the walls and all the stuff, you know, the Iron Domes. We create these myths of walls, walls and fences and borders. And this, you just, every buffer zone, every border needs thousands of soldiers.
Yossi: OK, so it’s, one hand, we have a growing, desperate need to draft Haredim. On the other hand, you can’t do it the way that we’re trying to now. So what do we do Donniel?
Donniel: So right now—
Yossi: What’s the plan?
Donniel: Right now there is no plan.
Yossi: It’s, what’s, what’s—what would you do?
Donniel: It’s a car wreck that’s happening. And what will happen is, again, if a non-Netanyahu government is voted in, what you will have is you’re not going to arrest more of them. That doesn’t work. What you’re going to do is you’re going to cut all special subsidies that ultra-Orthodox Jews—
Yossi: It’s the only way to go.
Donniel: And then they’re going to have to decide, but I think they’re going to decide, by and large, no. And the question will be, is there, within the Haredi community a group that wants to engage with Zionism?
I think where it’s going to go is going to be a split in the Haredi community. You will have an expansion of the Satmar dimension of the anti-Zionist, the people and them, they’ll choose poverty. And once they’re smaller in numbers, they’ll also be funded by various groups of people. They’ll just re-entrench.
And another group who actually wants to be a part of the modern world, who are now sending their kids to high schools where they matriculate and learn core subjects. You’re going to see a split in the Haredi community.
But this is my biggest caution to Israeli society right now. This process is going to take time. It’s not going to happen through legislation. And the tragedy is, it’s also not going to give us the number of bodies that we need in the time that we need it.
Yossi: No, no. But it—
Donniel: So Israelis are going to be living… There’s going to be more anti-Semitism against Haredim from Israeli Jews. I mean, you know, there’s that sense of profound alienation. They’re going to become more marginalized. And I think over time you will see a split, new Haredi parties. But this is a 10 year… There’s a time process.
Yossi: So basically there is no real answer to the urgent need of the Army right now, but—
Donniel: Can I just reiterate—it’s not an urgent need of the army. There’s no response to the urgent angst of Israeli society.
Yossi: All right. Well, we’ll carry the angst along with all the other angst we’re carrying.
Donniel: We’re going to have to learn how to carry this.
Yossi: But this is a moment where the opportunity is to do a deep reset, right? And I think that that is coming. And you listen to all the leaders of the opposition parties, everyone talk about the need to stop the funding of Haredi separatism. And if and when that happens, the economic crisis, the upheaval is going to be so profound in the Haredi world. We are going to see drastic poverty. We’re going to see, God forbid, hunger. We’re going to have to start dealing with this.
Donniel: Now there you’ll stop, because when a Haredi individual is hungry, you help them like you help any Israeli citizen, Jew or non-Jew.
Yossi: But not specifically as part of the Haredi community.
Donniel: Exactly. Our social welfare safety net will apply to Haredim. But what’s not going to happen is you’re not going to have the funding, you know, the distortion and funding and the special status.
So we’re at this unsettled time and the Haredi community, I believe, understands it, and that’s why they’re going into the streets. They’re going into the streets because they realize that this is not a government issue anymore. It’s not about manipulating the power. This is a struggle within the society. And they have to make Israeli society, en masse, understand that they’re not going to give in like there was one.
I’ll end with this, and then last comment of yours. Yashar Eisenkot’s party, when recently the Haredim were shutting down certain central highways, they sent out an SMS to every telephone in Israel amongst the non-Haredim because the Haredim don’t get SMS in their kosher phones.
But they sent out an SMS which said basically the people who aren’t serving and aren’t contributing are shutting down the country from us who are serving and contributing. And that’s a very dangerous language, because that’s a language which says, that right to demonstrate is going to be dependent on your service.
Yossi: The right to shut down the country, not to demonstrate.
Donniel: But the Supreme Court in Israel said, demonstrations are allowed to be painful. You don’t have to demonstrate in your own backyard. You demonstrate on the street your freedom of speech, your freedom to demonstrate, your freedom to petition, your freedom to shout and be seen, which is such a central part of the society. The hostility is so great that here it is, this, this Liberal Democratic Party wasn’t even aware that it was saying, excuse me, you don’t have a right to the most basic democratic rights that you have. You don’t have a right to your rights right now because the anger there is this boiling point.
Netanyahu is trying to hold both sides at the same time. But the country wants a government without the Haredim. And the Haredim are saying, okay, you have your government, but just know I have the streets. And I might not be sitting in the government and I might not get my legislation, but I’m going to be able to stop you from coercing me to change who I am. And how that plays out is going to be the story both of this election and of years to come.
Yossi, last thoughts?
Yossi: Look, I agree with you that the only way to go is to drastically cut the government subsidies that enabled Haredi separatism. But I think at the same time, we need to soften the language.
And I saw this beautiful clip by this rabbi from the Breslov Hasidic community, and it’s making the rounds. It’s apparently a very popular clip in the Haredi world. He’s speaking in Yiddish on some podcast, and he’s saying, leave aside all the ideological arguments. When you stand before a soldier, you should be in hachna’ah, you should be with humility, with surrender,.
He said, we have tremendous accomplishments in the haredi world. We sacrifice. We study Torah. We send our children to study Torah. But what they have, we don’t have. They sacrifice life and death. We’re not there. And he said, at the very least, when you see a soldier, have humility.
Donniel: So both sides need to change.
Yossi: And so on our side, and I have used this language freely, the language of hishtamtut, of accusing the Haredim of not pulling their weight. I think we need to drop that word. What do we call the government’s bill, which is—it’s an outrageous bill, to offer exemption for the Haredim?
We call it the law of hishtamtut. That’s of course on the opposition streets. That’s what we call it.
But I think we need to speak to the Haredi world with respect. Determination. The arrangement is over. But to say to them, and this is what I would say to them is, I wish we could continue to carry you, because for all of the deep ideological disagreements that I have with Haredism, I also have enormous respect, and I’ve also gained tremendously in my own development over the years from exposure, intimacy with the Haredi world.
Donniel: But that’s just irrelevant. Yeah, yeah.
Yossi: It isn’t. It isn’t.
Donniel: No, but like right now it’s like the war, the—
Yossi: No no, because what—
Donniel: That sounds like whitewashing, Yossi.
Yossi: No, it isn’t.
Donniel: So make it sound not whitewashing.
Yossi: No, no, no, no, Donniel, I’ll tell you why it’s not whitewashing, because I don’t move a millimeter from my determination to stop this arrangement. But at the same time, I need to speak with love to the Haredi world, and gratitude. In the same way that this rabbi from Breslov said that we need to stand before the soldiers because they’re doing what we don’t. They’re doing something that the rest of us are not doing.
Donniel: Very good.
Yossi: And what they’re doing here, Donniel, this is what I learned from the Haredi world. They are the last repository of the struggle for holiness. Now, whether they achieve it or not, that’s a different question, but that’s what I’ve learned from them.
Donniel: See, so Yossi, in internment camps we could look at each other with some radical amazement and positiveness. When there’s a zero-sum game—
Yossi: When we have sovereignty, and
Donniel: When there’s a zero-sum game—
Yossi: And when the stakes are so high—
Donniel: So the question is—
Yossi: Agreed.
Donniel: So, all of the above, I’m with you.
Yossi: But can we speak to each other?
Donniel: The question is—
Yossi: Or let’s say on our side, can we speak to the Haredim without rage or God forbid, hatred?
Donniel: Or the question is, when you say I can’t move a centimeter, part of what we’re going to have to see over the next months and years is how each community is going to be moving some centimeters because—
Yossi: It’s my opening position.
Donniel: That’s your—
Yossi: Liste,n when you’re, when you’re dealing with the Haredi community, you’d better have an opening position that is as intransigent as they are.
Donniel: That was your policy with Palestinians too. It didn’t work that well, at the end of the day. But as it is, this is a country’s tough and we’re rewriting the covenant right now. And when that happens, it’s a challenging and difficult moment.
Yossi, it was a pleasure being with you.
Yossi: Great to talk.
Donniel: Thank you.
