Over the last few years, the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community has become the subject of every front page, television debate, and political confrontation in Israel.
Questions about Torah study, military service, education, employment, and the relationship between haredim and the state moved from the margins of public debate to the center of a national storm.
Much of that debate has presented Israelis with a false choice. Either the haredi community must be forced to change from the outside, or nothing can change at all. Either Israel protects the world of Torah, or it demands greater participation in the responsibilities of national life.
After spending a year listening to haredim across Israel, I am convinced that this choice is not only false but also dangerous. Change is possible. It is already desired by many within the haredi community.
Nonetheless, it will succeed only if it grows from within, with the support and partnership of the wider Israeli public.
I traveled across the country and met haredim from different communities, backgrounds, and stages of life. I spoke with those dedicated to full-time Torah study, working fathers, mothers struggling to support large families, educators, business owners, and young people trying to find their place.
I listened to people from hassidic, Lithuanian, and Sephardi communities, including those deeply connected to existing institutions and those who increasingly feel pushed to the margins.
The details differed, but the message was remarkably consistent: many haredim are deeply dissatisfied. They do not feel represented, and they do not believe their voices are being heard.
They feel trapped between two political camps, neither of which fully understands them. On one side are those who speak about the haredi community primarily as a demographic, economic, or security problem.
Their frustration is understandable, especially post-October 7, but solutions imposed without trust, cultural sensitivity, or an understanding of haredi life are unlikely to produce lasting change.
On the other side are the established haredi parties. For four decades, they have claimed a monopoly on haredi representation, but they have become more effective at preserving their own political power than confronting the mounting difficulties within haredi homes and communities.
The ultra-Orthodox are acutely aware of the dangers Israel faces
The people I met were not seeking to abandon Torah life. They wanted to protect it, but they also understood that refusing to confront reality is placing that future in danger.
They asked difficult and necessary questions.
How can a father support his family with dignity without feeling that earning a living will cost him his place in the community?
What future is being offered to a young man who is not suited to full-time Torah study? Why are educational and professional options so limited for those who need another path?
How can appropriate frameworks for military or national service be created for those who can serve without requiring them to sacrifice their religious identity?
How can genuine Torah scholars receive the respect and support they deserve while others receive the tools to build independent and productive lives?
These are not attacks on the world of Torah. Ignoring these questions is what threatens the world of Torah.
This year of listening led to the establishment of the Haredi Public Party. It is intended to provide a political home for haredim and others who believe that protecting Torah requires responsible leadership, honesty, and practical solutions.
We seek to strengthen genuine Torah study while expanding educational and professional opportunities. We want to enable dignified employment, develop appropriate frameworks for military or meaningful national service, address the needs of young people who do not fit the existing system, and help haredi families achieve greater economic independence.
Israelis outside the haredi community should care about this initiative because the future of the haredi community will have a great effect on the future of Israel.
The economic sustainability of the country, the strength of the IDF, the resilience of Israeli society, and our ability to remain one people all depend on finding workable answers to these questions.
Continued poverty, alienation, and political paralysis within a rapidly growing section of the population will not remain an internal haredi matter. Its consequences will affect every Israeli family.
Those who want greater haredi participation in employment, education, and national responsibility should therefore recognize an essential truth: the most sustainable transformation will come from haredim who possess the trust and cultural understanding to lead it.
Coercion may produce headlines, but it rarely produces lasting social change. At the same time, preserving the current political arrangement will only deepen the crisis.
If the established haredi parties were capable of providing meaningful answers to these challenges, they would have done so by now. Israel, therefore, needs a new approach: reform led from within the haredi community and supported through cooperation and coordination with the rest of Israeli society.
Secular Israelis, national-religious Israelis, or traditional Israelis do not have to agree with every aspect of haredi life, and legitimate questions about equality, military service, or public resources should not disappear. They all need meaningful and practical solutions.
Tolerance is key to sustaining healthy dynamic between religious and secular Jews
However, we must recognize that partnership is more likely to succeed than humiliation, and that responsible haredi leadership that can build bridges with other segments of Israeli society is in the national interest.
Even Israelis who would never vote for a haredi party should welcome the emergence of a haredi movement prepared to confront these issues honestly. They should want haredi representatives who speak of solutions rather than slogans, of responsibility rather than permanent victimhood, and of cooperation rather than endless confrontation.
A strong haredi community and a strong Israel are not competing goals. They depend upon one another. Israel needs a haredi community that is confident, economically secure, and able to contribute its values, energy, and talents to the country.
The haredi community needs an Israel that respects Torah, protects religious life, and treats haredim as partners rather than as a burden or an enemy.
We have spent too many years shouting past one another. The result has been greater poverty, deeper resentment, diminishing trust, and an increasingly dangerous struggle over Israel’s identity.
There is still a window in which to choose another path, but it will not remain open indefinitely.
The Haredi Public Party was created because the haredi public deserves more than excuses, and the State of Israel deserves more than permanent confrontation.
Those who care about Israel’s economic future, social cohesion, and national security should want this effort to succeed.
The solutions must emerge from within the haredi community, but they cannot succeed without the understanding and support of the wider Israeli public.
This affects far more than just the haredi community and is a necessity for the betterment of Israeli society as a whole.
The writer is the chairman of the Haredi Public Party, a new political home for haredim who believe that protecting the world of Torah requires responsible leadership and practical solutions to the challenges facing our community and all of Am Yisrael.
