JERUSALEM -It’s a typical July morning in one of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Men can be seen inside one of the neighborhood’s many synagogues reciting their morning prayers. Women are walking with their children down the narrow, congested streets, and the hot Jerusalem sun is beating down. This neighborhood has a different feel to it than other parts of Jerusalem. People here dress conservatively, respect their faith and ancient traditions and, more or less, live the way that their ancestors have for centuries.
Several hours later, dozens of people are sitting down in a trendy Tel Aviv café for lunch in one of the Mediterranean city’s glitziest suburbs. Some order quinoa salads and others sip on espresso as they engage in conversation or gaze down mesmerized at the latest smartphones. Even though only 42 miles separate the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood and the chic Tel Aviv suburb, they might as well be worlds apart.
These two scenes are an example of one of the most difficult struggles that Israel faces. Although the country has experienced external threats since its founding in 1948, today it is undergoing an internal threat that risks splitting the country: the friction between secular and ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jews in Israeli society.
This issue has garnered so much attention that former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said he views the “radicalization” of the Haredi community as a bigger threat than Iran.
Since the country’s founding, the majority of Israelis have been secular, largely non-religious Jews with minorities of traditional Jews, ultra-orthodox Jews and largely Muslim Arabs. In recent years, however, the numbers have begun to shift due to demographic changes as a result of differing birthrates.
These demographic changes have the potential for massive change in Israeli society in areas ranging from economics and taxation, all the way to mandatory military service. Today, socio-economic metrics such as educational attainment, employment rates and income all show the Haredi population below the comparable levels of their more secular counterparts who feel as if their shrinking proportion of society is increasingly taking up a larger share of its burdens. This, coupled with the fact that many Haredim don’t participate in military service, have created a rift in Israel between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews. The internal tensions have grown so pronounced that many are beginning to question if the status quo is sustainable for Israel going forward. Amiram Gonen, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the Haredi community in Israel and its friction with secular Jews extensively.
Gonen believes that the amount of disdain for the Haredim among many secular Israelis has grown in recent years, because many feel that they are being forced to subsidize what they view as an unfair situation that encroaches all areas of society.
In the Haredi community, young boys spend most of their time studying. (Photo by Timothy Johns)
,“The demographic problem is entangled with economics since nowadays they are poor and heavily dependent on the welfare state,” Gonen said. “Some Israelis are bitter about this burden of theirs and call the Haredim ‘parasites’.”
These sentiments among some secular Jews are being fueled, in part, by some startling statistics. According to a 2016 study done by the Israel Democracy Institute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, the total fertility rate among secular Jews stood at 2.1 children per woman, 2.6 for traditional Jews and 3.3 for Arabs. But among the Haredi population, the total fertility rate reached an 6.9 children per woman.
Given these numbers, the study predicts exponential growth of the Haredi population in Israel, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of Israeli society. The estimates show the Haredi population will surpass the Arab population sometime around 2050. By that point, the Haredi population is expected to more than triple from its current size of roughly one million to over three million. While the Haredi population made up roughly 10 percent of the Israeli population in 2010, these numbers suggest that they could constitute around 27 percent of the total population by mid-century.
One of the most prominent socioeconomic differences between secular and Haredi Jews is their respective levels of workforce participation and income levels.
According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, only about half of Haredi men currently participate in the workforce, with the exact percentage disputed due to varying statistical definitions. Instead of working, the other half of Haredi men choose to devote their lives as full-time students studying religious texts for hours every day. On the other hand, 73 percent of Haredi women participate in the workforce.
These numbers are lower than the workforce participation rates for non-Haredi Jews. The Central Bureau of Statistics pegs the workforce participation rate of non-Haredi Jewish women at 80 percent, and non-Haredi Jewish men at 86 percent.
The lower rates of workforce participation, coupled with generally larger Haredi families, help to contribute to a Haredi poverty rate of 49 percent, more than double the national average, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
Due to the higher poverty rates among Haredi Jews, many secular Israelis believe their tax money is being unfairly spent to prop up the “parasitic” ultra-Orthodox community.
Dr. Ram Fruman is a writer for prominent Israeli newspaper Haaretz, as well as the founder of the Secular Forum, a group that was created in order to battle the orthodox “invasion” of secular neighborhoods. In recent years, he has become a leading voice on many of these issues for some secular Israelis.
"But I think that the friction is exaggerated to a large extent and is being used or abused for political purposes..."
“It is not possible that we are financing all of the state, because we don’t care too much about this ultra-religious stuff,” Fruman said, adding, “And more and more seculars are asking themselves do we really agree to finance this and the answer would be no.”
Standing on the opposite end of the spectrum stands Tzippy Yarom. Yarom is a Haredi woman and journalist who writes for Mishpacha magazine, the most widely distributed magazine in the orthodox Jewish world.
In regards to the socioeconomic situation of the ultra-orthodox, Yarom views the notion of the Haredim being a burden on society as “nothing less than outrageous,” citing what she claims are disproportionately low amounts of government money being spent on the community as compared to their share of the overall Israeli population.
“The simple fact is that the portion of the Israeli budget that Haredi people get is much lower than our portion of society. Haredi students, from first grade through high school, are receiving the lowest percentage of [the] budget among Jewish students,” she said.
“There are huge budgets going to areas that Haredi people have nothing to do with like sports, theater and cinema. The mere fact is that it’s very easy to incite against Haredi people as a spin to get people diverted from other issues, and this is what politicians do and some newspapers are happily cooperating,” she said.
Yarom also believes that the poverty statistics for Haredi people are often misleading.
“The state of Israel has a problem defining who’s Haredi and some very wrong numbers come out from it,” she said. “In recent years, the state has adopted [a] new, broader definition of who is considered Haredi and ‘magically’ some of the numbers regarding employment went higher.”
Yarom also references the fact that, in spite of what she claims to be misguided statistics, the number of ultra-Orthodox men participating in the workforce is currently sitting at an all-time high, and that there is substantial evidence to suggest that this is a trend that is accelerating. She believes this will ultimately help to bridge the gaps that do exist in economic terms between the Haredim and their secular counterparts. Beyond socioeconomics, the other driving factor in the rift between ultra-orthodox and secular Israelis is military service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Haredi men and women have been exempt from serving in the IDF since Israel’s founding thanks to a deal struck in 1948 between the state’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, and Haredi religious leaders, who studied their faith in religious schools called yeshivas.
After so many Jewish religious scholars had perished in the Holocaust, Ben-Gurion felt it was imperative that Israel revive this fundamental part of Jewish culture.
In 1948, Ben-Gurion’s deal waived military service for 400 students. Today, the number of Haredim exempted from mandatory IDF service has swelled to the tens of thousands.
In order to address this, the Israeli government passed a law in 2014 that imposed criminal charges for noncompliance with the mandatory draft, specifically targeting Haredi men and women.
The Haredi community initiated an organized and forceful pushback, which resulted in amendments to the initial law essentially eliminating criminal charges for draft dodging and moving back target dates of initiation from this year to as far back as 2020.
On this aspect, Fruman is steadfast in his beliefs that the legal allowance for the ultra-Orthodox to forego military service is something that should have been done away with decades ago in order to foster more assimilation within the Haredi community.
However, despite his resolute viewpoints, Fruman also acknowledges that the issues run much deeper and are far more complex than they appear on the surface. Fruman argues that even if the Haredim were forced to join the military, their presence would put extra strain on its daily operations and still present a myriad of problems.
The Western Wall brings together the Orthodox Jews, secular Jews and tourists. (Photo by Timothy Johns)
“One of the outcomes of the ultra-orthodox being taken to the IDF would be that any place that you want ultra-orthodox soldiers, you have to throw out all the women, make the kitchen adhere to their crazy requirements and with the Shabbat,” he said. “And all of that is very strict compliance, and who suffers from it but the secular soldiers… The cost that my kids might suffer from bringing them into the army might be more detrimental to them than if they were to stay in their ghetto.”
Yarom argues that most ultra-orthodox are not against the idea of an Israeli army in itself. However, she claims that the tension between the IDF and the ultra-orthodox community results from the idea of the conscription of all Israeli citizens to fight in combat.
“The way we view the army, and everything else, comes from the Torah. In the book of Number 31, we find that God tells Moses to draft 1000 soldiers from each tribe, and then that he tripled the number there,” Yarom said, “The reason was that for each soldier in the front, there would be two soldiers who are praying or studying Torah for his merit. The Torah is what spiritually gives us the power to succeed and win a war, and we need lots of prayers and learning for each soldier.”
Yarom also stated that many Haredi people view the ideal of the army as the great melting pot of Israeli society with great suspicion because they believe that its true goal is the secularization of the ultra-orthodox population. Offering a view from a governmental perspective is Benny Begin. Begin is the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and a member of the Knesset for the ruling, right-wing Likud party.
He believes that the friction that exists between ultra-orthodox and secular Israelis is “overplayed.”
“I belong to those, maybe it has to do with my age, but I’m more optimistic and more positive than others, but I think that the friction is exaggerated to a large extent and is being used or abused for political purposes by politicians because some people thrive on such differences politically,” Begin said.
Turning to socioeconomics, Begin echoed many of Yarom’s sentiments and stated that the trends that the current government is seeing regarding Haredi engagement in the workforce are encouraging.
“More and more of them do work,” Begin said. “The numbers are still low, lower than the average, but I think that the trend is positive.”