Ask Haviv Anything - 144: Inside the fight to change Haredi politics, with Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).--Israel helped rebuild the Haredi world after the Holocaust. It funds its institutions and sends its children to defend it. Why won’t more Haredim join them?Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer understands the anger. A Haredi rabbi who enlisted after October 7, he also understands why putting on an Israeli uniform can feel like crossing an existential boundary -- and why that boundary must change.In this installment of our election series, we explore the struggle inside ultra-Orthodox Israel: the parties and rabbis who hold power, the emerging challengers, and the growing demand for education, work, military service and a political voice. It’s a conversation about gratitude, shared sacrifice, and whether a community built to preserve the Jewish past can take responsibility for its future.--This episode is sponsored by an anonymous listener who asked us to say: “Thank you to Haviv for this podcast. Things get noisy in the diaspora. We really appreciate your clarity and voice.”--If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Haviv Anything. It is a pleasure to invite to the podcast, Rabbi Yeshua Pfeffer. This is another installment of our election series, and today we're going to be focusing on the Haredi or ultra-Orthodox. And as some people say, in English, political parties, political factions. Who are they? What is their story? What is their history? What do they want? How are they different from other parts of the Israeli political system? And most importantly, the questions that are very divisive, the generate anger at the Haredi community, the draft especially, and why the Haredi community feels that these questions, this specific question, is so existential. And with me to explain this fascinating and complex segment of Israeli society and politics, a part of this country I deeply admire and have talked about in those terms where books are always cheap and plentiful and literally go to Haredi bookstores, you'll have fun. And the internet is seen very clearly for the dangerous social and mental and cultural landscape that it is. This is a community with so many strengths and also arguably real challenges and failures.

And we're going to talk about it with Rabbi Feffer. Yeshua Fefer grew up in London, England, first coming to Israel at the age of 17, to study in the Jure the Yeshiva system. After getting married, he formerly made Aliyah and studied for over a decade under Rabbi Ashur Weiss. He proceeded to serve as a Dayan, a rabbinical judge. Today, Rabbi Fephyr is Rabbi of the old-haddash community in Ramot in Jerusalem. He founded and heads the Iyun Institute, operating a range of programs that encourage Haredi responsibility for Israel, an educational think tank.

He's the editor-in-chief of Tsarich Eun, a journal of Haredi thought, philosophy, religious thought, politics, one of the few emails that I always open when it lands in my inbox. And he lectures at the law faculty at Hebrew University. he chairs the board of Netzach Yehuda, an organization that supports Haredi IDF soldiers. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree in law from Hebrew University. He completed a Supreme Court internship under Justice Neil Handel. Following October 7, he enlisted in the IDF, together with several members of his community and does his reserve service in the combat units of the Home Front Command.

He's one of the founding members of a new Haredi political party, Hatsibur al-Haredi, and of course we're going to ask him about that as well. he chairs the party's rabbinic committee. Before we get into the conversation, I want to tell you that this episode was dedicated today by a sponsor who asked to remain anonymous and asked me to say, just to embarrass me because they have fun with these things, our wonderful community. Thank you to Chaviv for this podcast. Things get noisy in the diaspora.

We really appreciate the clarity and your voice. Thank you to that sponsor. You know, for any teacher when your teaching goes a little viral, when it helps somebody in a time of need. That's what it's all about. Really appreciate that dedication. I'd also like to invite everyone to join our Substack and our Patreon community.

If you want to ask the questions, the guide the topics we choose to talk about, that's where you do that. You also get to take part in our monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. That's at www. www. patreon.com slash ask Chavivivainthing or Javivgur.com.

Those links are in the show notes. Rabbi Pfeffer, how are you? Thank you, Javeefef. of all, pleasure to be on the show. And thank God we're well. We're going to get into your personal story, which is a fascinating that arc, the community that we want to start to see a little bit through your eyes, and to the question of the Chabedi draft, obviously. But a lot of our listeners and viewers are a little bit baffled. They've asked these questions many times by our chaotic, weirdly simple and weirdly complex political system.

And also, not many of them realize, and they ask this openly, how diverse the Haredi political world is. So let's lay out for people what Haredi politics looks like, which is in some sense is a sort of a signal, a mirror image of the Haredi community itself. It's demographics, it's streams and movements. who are the Qaridi political parties that will compete in this election? Who do they represent? What do they want? You know, who heads them? How the party list is chosen? Which is a question that gets especially interesting with the Ashkenazi factions.

Can you give us that lay of the land of Qaredi politics and we'll take it from there? Sure. I'll do it briefly, of course. We have a lot to get through, I'm sure. But the Haredi parties traditionally, they follow a divide, which is, I would say, the traditional, the more kind of accepted historically, way of dividing Haredi society. And that's a division into three different subgroups, sub-societies.

If you want, one of them is known as the Litvish or yeshivish, often in English. These are those who are not Khashidim, misnagdim, some call them, and they represent a kind of yeshiva-centered society where everything revolves around the flag of Torah study, which becomes the ultimate kind of value that stands at the center, Torah scholarship, Torah study, those are the heroes, the Tamideh Khahmim,

those who achieve real deep and profound scholarship in Torah, and those are known as the Litvish. They're more or less 35, 40% of what's known as the Haredi society today. Then we have the Hasidian. Khashidim are those who espouse the more Khashidic, let's say if the Lithuanian system is from Lithuania and its surroundings. So the Hasidic system is more from Poland, not exclusively. You've got Hungary, you've got Romania, you have other places also.

But that's where it originates from. And rather than the focus on Torah study, the focus there is more on devotion, on prayer, on joy, on the connection to the Rebbe, this larger-than-life Hasidic Rebba figure, that's the Hasidim. And you also have the Svadi sector. which is Kharedi Jews who bought in to the Qaredi system, even though they originate outside of Eastern Europe. They originate in many of the Arab lands, originally Spain and so on, Babylon,

but then later on the Arab lands, whether it's Morocco or Tunisia or Iraq and so on, any of the kind of Arab countries. And those divide into parties, into political parties. The Litvish party was established in 1982 as a breakaway from a combined Agudha Sissra. Aguda used to hold both, meaning both Khadim and the Litvish, in 1982 under the leadership of Ravshach, this mythological Haredi leader, who was also a Rosh Yeshiva, the head of a Yeshiva Academy, but also a very shrewd and very sophisticated political leader. and under his leadership, the party was called Degel Hattura, founded in 1982.

That's the Litvish Party. It runs in a kind of technical block together with the Hasidic party, which is a goddess Israel, meaning the Hasidim retained the name, a goddess Israel, and together they run. Degel-A-Tura, together with the goddess Israel, under the symbol Gimel. So those who vote Gimel are voting for the Ashkenazi parties. which is two different parties, Degell and Aguda. When it comes to... That union is called United Torah Judaism. Correct.

People will read that in the Times of Israel or whatever. We'll talk about. That's that union. UTJ is United Torah Judaism. It's the Ashkenazi-Khraidi union of both of these parties that they run in the national elections as a single block in municipal elections. They run against each other.

So they're not always good friends. Each one has its own rabbinic body. Each one has its own committee. Each one has its own Knesset members and representatives and educational system and so on and so forth. But they run together in the national elections. And the Sfardi party is of course Shas, established by Ariadari together with the rabbinic leader of the time,

Ravadya Yosef, who was very charismatic, brilliant tourist scholar. and he was the one that gave this party its, I would say, core, it's called nature, it's cool character, its appeal to so many at the time, don't forget, Schas at one time, had 19 seats in the Knesset.

This is more or less at the turn of the century. Very, very strong. Today, it's not the same. I should mention, even though I've laid out the division of these three parties, this is based, as I said, on this kind of,

traditional or conventional division of the Kharidim, Wintaspharidim, Litvish, Mislakdim, and the Khashidim. But is that really the best way to divide up Kharedi society? I think today, probably not. I like to think that that division is becoming more and more obsolete over time. And the more, I would say, relevant divisions for today is number one, again, something that's been developed in Israeli academia, to divide Haredim based on their level of traditionalism versus modernity?

Are you a staunched Haredi traditionalist, which means you espouse the isolationist ideal or strategy that underpins the nature, the character of Haredi society? So you won't have movies, you won't have non-hazidic music, you won't have books, you know, the more extreme won't have books like Sherlock Holmes. You know, you'll be really living only within your own. Kharedi bubble very much separate, isolated

from what's going on the outside to the more modern Jaredim. Many English speakers are by nature a little bit more modern and are more exposed, more with it, more worldly, more earthly, more part of broader society. That's one spectrum,

which is often used to define the different characterizations of subgroups within Haredi society. My own preference in terms of division of Haredi society, in Israel is actually the spectrum of Israeli versus non-Israeli. To which degree do you identify with the state of Israel and feel that you have a deep responsibility towards the state of Israel?

Some Kharadim say we're Jewish. Our passport is a Jewish passport. And our Israeli passport is for technical reasons alone because we have to get out of the country sometimes and come back in. So we have an Israeli passport. But we don't feel deeply, we don't. don't feel a deep connection, a deep self, sense of identification with Israel, with the state of Israel, with everything that's been achieved by the state of Israel and the responsibility toward

the state of Israel, while many other Haradian, especially as the arc of time brings us closer to where we are today, have espoused a deep sense of identification, a deep sense of belonging to Israel, and also a sense of responsibility. And that is where the new Haradi parties that we're seeing today in this election cycle are really coming in. They don't care about the divide between the Ashkenazim and the Svadim, the Litvish and the Khashidim. They care about the other divides that I've mentioned. And that's where we have the potential for new Haredi parties.

So we're off to a brisk run here. Where do I find that divide? Now, you know, you live in this community. You're a leader in this community. and you feel that this is the more real divide. But Shas is still Shas, and it is still very much about being Sephardi. Who's living outside these frameworks? How many Chahridim are not literally see themselves represented?

And finally, the rabbinic leadership of the Chahreida community is invested in these parties. How much do ordinary Charedim in the street feel they can step away from with the rabbinic leadership? Literally how they order them to vote on Election Day. And I'll just say in agreement with you, 25 years ago, Kharidim spoke differently than today. They curse like Israelis now. They, you know, the rabbinic leadership managed to prevent televisions from entering the Qaridi community.

But when the internet came along, they failed to prevent the internet from entering homes because everybody's work is on it. I mean, it's just, it was too much. So there's a lot, there is an integration that you can see culturally and aesthetically. Is that translating into politics? Well, listen, at the end of the day, once you're in the same country, dealing with the same challenges, the same existential threats, and like you say, experiencing a certain cross-cultural,

I would say, pollination between the different cultures that are present in the state of Israel, you will have more and more a sense of identification with who we are more broadly, not our narrow identities in our sub-sector, wherever that may be within the Qaridi spectrum, but a broader identity that will transcend those narrow identities. This is something which I write about and speak about fairly often that we want to have our primary identity as I'm a Jew. That's my primary identity.

And then that becomes my primary responsibility. Rather than I'm, let's say, a Gera-Hasid or a Vizhnit, or some other sector within the Haredi space. And that's my all-in identity and the place where I invest all of my resources, whether financial or human or whatever. No, we want to invest our resources in the great project that's called the Jewish people and the state of Israel, which is the nation state of the Jewish people, rather than have all of those resources invested narrowly in my vision, it's a let's say, Khasidas and in aggrandizing

the Reba and that's all I think about. And this is a shift. It's taking place over time. You're right, absolutely. The Haredi parties, their survival or their power, derives from emphasizing the sub-identities, meaning those narrow identities are the way in which the Haredi parties receive their votes, because it becomes an identity vote. If you're a Sfardi-guy, then you must vote just.

That's your identity. That's who you are. And the stronger we can push those identities as opposed or in contra-distinction to the other identities. And like you say, in the past, in Israel, you know, in the 70s with Begain. And later on also, the 80s, 90s, I would say there was still a lot of talk in Israel about Israel-as-Shanai, Israel-Hasnia, you know, the first Israel, primary Israel, secondary Israel, meaning the Svardim versus the elite Ashkenazam and so on. and that trickled into Shas and Shas was able to garner a lot of seats

and a lot of power based on emphasizing based on making a point of that division. I think today that's fading. That's fading. Shas over time, rather than being this general Svadi party, became very dominantly a Haredi Svadi party. And today with everything that's going on

with a draft controversy, I do not see Shas. able to garner anything substantial outside of the narrow Haradi space. Even within the narrow Haradi space, there's a lot of people within the Shas orbit who don't get it. Why

are we being so extreme? Surely it's natural for us to be involved, engaged, partner with everything that's going on in the state of Israel. The traditional Shas voter is not an extremist. He's not an extreme isolationist. He didn't go through this

this melting part of European jury where the wars of the Jews and we have to fight against the Enlightenment and fight against everybody else who's not me they didn't go through that. And therefore naturally it's more difficult to bring them on board with this more extremist policy and that's why

we saw just the other day. We saw this video I'm sure you saw it that Shas put out of a soldier coming home to his traditional family giving a hug to his brother the isheva guy the video has been banned on legal grounds, but it was also ridiculed. It was really broadly ridiculed

because Shas has done anything but to embrace those soldiers. Shas has done anything but to create this sense of unity and on the contrary, they've been playing into the hands of the most extremist factions within the Haredi space. So we're focusing on Shas, but the same is true for the other parties. Of course, they gain by emphasizing,

by strengthening those local identity. That's who we are. That's where we need to invest our resources. That's where we need to vote. And the rabbis are a part of that. You have the Litvish Rabbanim. You have the Hasidic, Admohim, meaning the Rebhas. And you have the Sfarid, the Shahméhachamim.

It's called the Ghtolea Chachamim, I think it's called. And in each one of them, it's a little bit strange maybe to some of our views and listeners. but it's the politics that gets to appoint the rabbis in many ways, meaning the Shas party, they appoint the rabbis that will be in charge of the Sfaridihakhamim, and then they will become these public rabbinic leaders. In the Hasidic world, it's a little bit different because you have the Admar, which is an inherited title, but everywhere else it's going to be the party or the newspaper of the party, whatever it is,

that will ultimately appoint these Gaudelae Torah, these luminaries, and they will become very much a part of that system. The new Haredi parties are saying that system works for whoever it works for, but there are many, many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Haredi individuals and family

who are dissatisfied. They don't feel represented. They do care about what's going on in broader Israel. They do want for themselves, rather than being dependent on state handouts or however it is that the Haredi parties trying to persuade voters. The Haredi parties will often attract voters

by promising them that the subsidies, governmental subsidies. Many Haredi are saying, we don't want subsidies. We want opportunities. We want to be able to go out there and make a living and live a dignified life on our own, of our own accord.

And we believe that Haredi society should have that dignity, rather than being reliant on government subsidies, we should have the dignity of being self-sufficient. And that's where the new parties are going. Rather than the local and very narrow identities, let's espouse this broader identity. Sure, we're still Haredi.

We still have the particular idiosyncrasies and culture and way of life of the Haredi space, which are important. It's a special way of life, like you said. No smartphones, especially for kids. It is wonderful, kind of wholesome, family-oriented and community-oriented way of life. But without shirking or denying our belonging to broader Israel,

our responsibilities, whether to ourselves or to the rest of the state of Israel, and that's where these new parties are coming on board. So tell us about the new parties. I know that in the last election, a Haredi women's party was running. Not because it had any chance of getting in, but because it wanted to make a point that these different rabbinical establishments were, could not appoint, refused to appoint any women to the Knesset list. And they were making also the argument that women should be able to be on a Knesset list

in the Kheredi community. There's no halakhai problem with that. And so it really was just a kind of marginalization. So they ran to make that point. I don't know if that filtered through the system. But now we have four at last count, new Karedi parties. Just that fact is an astonishing fact. So tell us about the parties.

Tell us about your party. And, you know, two questions. One, do you have a chance? And it's something like 150,000 votes to pass the threshold to get in for the... Once you get one seat, you get four seats, right? But you need that three and a quarter percent to even just get a foot in the door in the Knesset. And the second question is, if the, you know, yeshivish rabbinical leadership comes out and says, we're bleeding votes to all of these different places, don't you dare pull out.

out, can you withstand that pressure? Is that likely to happen? Thank you, Chavidh. So there's what I like to call the Haredi politics conundrum or paradox, which goes like this. Haredi demographics are constantly on the rise in terms of the share of the Haredi demographic among the Israeli population. Okay, if in 2009 the Haredi were something like, I think, 10, or 9% of Israel's population.

Today there's something like between 14 and 15% of Israeli population. In 1950, the Kharana was just 2.5% or 3% of Israel's population. So the Karedi's share of the population is continually growing

and that's because of high fertility rates, high birth rate, and also because, at least in previous decades, it was also because there were many people who became Karedi, who chose the Karedi way of life. They spurned on. often the more, let's say, a secular, bohemian kind of way of life and opted into the

Qaradi space. And that's been a source of great growth for Qaradi society. The thing is that in the last couple of decades, the number of seats that the Qaradi parties win in elections has not changed. They got eight seats sometime in 2000. I don't remember. Then they got six and then 7-7-77. Meaning, and they're stuck, as it were, constant at seven seats. That's very true. You think that will, I mean, it's well over 20% of the kindergartners are Haredi. Yes.

Do you think that that fact will continue? It's not just that, you know, your generation is still not 20%, but in 20 years, they will be, you know, 25 seats in the Knesset or whatever? There's no cut-of point of 20%. We should be seeing this incremental growth. Steady growth. And instead of seeing the steady incremental growth, what we're seeing is stagnation. In terms of the number of seats that the Haredi parties are picking up, Shaz is a bit more of a roller coaster, like you said before,

because they also attracted vote from outside of the Haredi space. But if we just think about the Ashkenazi parties, UTJ, so like I said, UTJ 86-77777, meaning stark, stagnant, the same number. How is that possible if the population, the demographic, is growing, why are we not seeing that translated in terms of the number of seats, the type of power that these parties have? And clearly, one, at least, large part of the answer is that you have a lot of Haradib who are not choosing to vote for the Karatei parties, meaning the sense of disillusionment, the sense of not being represented by these Haradhi parties.

parties has already been present among the Haredi population in different parts of it for a couple of decades. This is not new. What's new now is that things have come to a head or come to a situation where alternative rival parties have gained the confidence, gained the momentum to be able to come out and establish an actual rival party. First and foremost, to represent all of these. many, many thousands of Haradians who are clearly not feeling represented.

And the fact that we have four of them now, I look at this as something similar to these breakthroughs, academic breakthroughs or scientific breakthroughs, that often happen in more than one place by different researchers simultaneously at the same time. You know, Newton, light, nets, people who are working on the same kind of ideas, the same, on the cost. of a breakthrough. And then they kind of get there at the same time.

And then there's always a question, who gets the mobile price, who gets to write the article and often it's written together by a number of researchers from different continents. And that depends on, if you want, a certain sightgeist, a certain social atmosphere that supports these kinds of developments, in this case scientific, in other cases, social, whatever it is. And then it comes to a head together. at the same time. And I think that's what we're seeing here also. There's a certain

social zeitgeist within the Karidi space which is enabling, facilitating, empowering these more individual voices, voices that are no longer beholden to that strong party kind of mechanisms which used to be very much like a one leader kind of authoritarian, very absolute leadership, the era of Ravshach really represented that. It was like one. Ravshaq was also responsible for the formation of Shas. I don't know if anybody is familiar if you've seen that there are movies about this, how Shas was actually formed.

And Raph, together with Ariadari, who was a disciple of Ravshach. He studied in Padovich in the Yeshiva. And that was the making of Shas, meaning it was a kind of Ravshach later on, expressed a certain regret when Shas became very independent and was certainly not under the auspices or the authority of the Ashkenazi politics. But leave that as it may, today what we're seeing is a decentralization of that power, political power, social power, and the confidence of these new groupings to establish new parties.

So one of them is the one that I'm associated with, Hadzibura Kharedi. again, the name Hatigora Khahidi comes to convey the fact that we're not Sfadi, we're not Latvish, we're not this, we're all together.

It translates to the Qaridi public. Yeah, that's what it means. The Qaridi public, I don't know if it's the greatest name out there, but it's a simple name that conveys the fact that this is a new representation

of the Qaridi community, a representation that really differs from the old representation in terms of its position vis-à-vis Israel, in terms of its internal policies. We need an education that will give us math and English and a toolkit to be able to manage in the broad wild world, which is where we'll be anyway. Meaning in the 50s,

I can understand that this strong isolationism was number one necessary vis-à-vis Israel's militant secularism of those years, and number two was possible. And in order to rehabilitate everything that was decimated in the Holocaust, in the Shoa, this was a necessary step. Today, we're big, we're strong, we're confident, and we're Israeli, like we mentioned before. We're going to be out there anyway. I was going to say our women,

because women are mainly the ones that are at work. But there are many men at work today also. And where are we working? You know, women used to be, Kharedi women used to be the school teachers of Israel. In fact, my daughter doesn't go to, quote-unquote, school. She goes to something called seminary. Why do Kharedi girls go to seminary rather than high school? Answer, because every Kharedi high school girl studies education. She comes out

with a teacher certificate, teacher certification. That's how it used to be. Until today, the name sticks. But where are our women folk actually working today? Well, those who study computers are working at Google and Amdocs and Moly and Intel and so on, meaning. this kind of strong isolationism isn't happening anymore and therefore we need the toolkit to be able to, number one, be a part of Israel,

number two, to bring our own values and to be able to translate them into Hebrew. And number three, to take responsibility. If we don't take responsibility for Israel, who will? You can't isolate from yourself.

If you're so big, if you have ministers in the government, if you have representatives on the security cabinet, then it's you. It's not somebody else. Who are you going to isolate from? And we need to be able to save responsibility

and we'll speak about the draft soon, I'm sure. So I'm leaving that out of the conversation right now. So that's what my party or the party that I'm involved with is about. And the other parties, each one has its thing. Some of these issues are also being raised by a party called Hakahal. Hakahal also has a certain orientation vis-à-vis the, you know, Yudabashamran, Judea Samaria and so on. Harkaral is, they held internal primaries.

Very interesting. But we'll see what happens with it. I'm not involved there. I don't know the internal dynamics, but we'll see what happens with it. There's a Svadi party, which is rivaling directly, rivaling Shast, under the leadership of a rabbi who's no longer with us,

with Yoram Abelchel, but they also have a following. I don't know how big it is, but it's a, significant development, and there's also a new party on the other side of the spectrum. On the more extremist side, the Jerusalem faction, which are the real extremist of a demonstrating in the streets, and they too have set up their own independent party, because what they are saying is that you guys, the Kharedi mainstream, you guys have failed in your strategy vis-à-vis

Israel. The only strategy that's succeeding is the extremist strategy, that it's. It's, you know, we go all the way. No compromises, no draft laws. All of this doesn't work. We need to go all the way. You know, we have to be of war against Ejan. And those guys have also set up their own party.

So it's an interesting new situation that we're in today. A very good friend of mine who's a researcher of the Qaridim and grew up in the Qaridi community. I was once complaining about some pretty slightly, not very, but slightly violent protest. in Jerusalem that stopped traffic by parts of that very isolation is that Edah Kharedit in Jerusalem. And it was about the draft and it was about a bunch of other things. And I said, you know, these protests are picking up of these extremists. Is the Khadriq community turning extreme? And he said to me in this sort of adorable, oh, Khabiv, so naive, so sweet and naive,

Haredi politics will eat you for breakfast kind of attitude. And he said to me, when the extremist. get loud and violent, they're not talking to you. They're not talking to secular Israel, traditional Israel, the rest of Israel. This is a protest at the Haredi community for going, for more and more integration happening in the Haredi community. The loud of these people get, the happier you should be. That was, that was his argument. So it's fascinating how all of these dynamics sometimes are the opposite of what they look like. And sometimes the noise that is generated because the trend is going in the other direction from the noise. You're shaking your

head. Do you disagree with that assessment? That, that, I disagree with, I disagree with the final, with a, with a, with a bottom line that they should make you happy. I don't think this should make anybody happy. Seeing the extremists get the upper hand is a terrible. Are they getting the upper hand? Of course, they very much gained the upper hand in the left. In the left, last few monks where we saw the Israeli government as passing a policy of arrests, whether it was a government or was the Supreme Court, it doesn't make a difference. Israel. Okay, the state of Israel started arresting Yeshiva guys. And this is something which is unprecedented in kind of Israel's history. Yashiva guys never got arrested, picked up off the streets and

put into army prison for draft dodging. Why is it unprecedented? Well, because there was always some arrangement. They've kept Yashiva guys within the legal boundaries and they were okay. They had exemptions or they had deferments or deferrals, whatever they had. All of a sudden, there's no law and Israel or

the Supreme Court runs out of patience and just like anybody else who's draft dodging, there are arrests taking place on the streets of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel and Yashiva guys, regular guys, are being put in prison. And the main

stream, Haredi leadership was at a loss concerning how to deal with this. No, what do we do? We tried to broker a law, maybe we didn't try hard enough, maybe could have done better.

I think the Haredim are certainly, they have, at the very least, partial blame for the absence of a law that will actually make the necessary arrangements for this. But leaving aside the question of blame, what do we do next? There's tremendous anger,

there's tremendous resentment, from both sides, and at the end of the day, the ones who were able to partially deal with this were the extremists, because once they set up their own infrastructures, that anybody facing the threat of arrest could call a hotline

and bring in a whole, you know, hundreds of these demonstrators, and the police often capitulated. They didn't want to get into these crazy situations facing this huge mob of Haredim. And then the extremists were able to actually gain some real wins and if in the past the Havedi leadership always used to say we don't participate in these demonstrations

demonstrations, they desecrate the name of Hashem, they make us look terrible in the eyes of general society, they also ruin the character of the yeshiva guy who's supposed to be this refined and elevated character and all of a sudden he's lying down in front of a bath or under a bar so who knows where, this is not what the Shiva guys are supposed to look for. All of a sudden those voices, they went mute.

They went done. They weren't able to project that voice because they didn't have an alternative to offer. And therefore the extremists absolutely got the upper hand within Israeli society. And that's why the counter, if we're going back to that video of Shas with a soldier, the counter video, which came out against Shas,

was that a vote for Shas is a vote for the extremists because they don't have an alternative. And this is part of the internal struggles within Haredi society, like you mentioned. Right. Shas wants to be able to run in an election as a unifier that also has voters who are serving the army, but in actual government, refused every kind of compromise, refused every kind of solution, and never presented anything of its own that actually solves the problem. Let me double down on that on the question of responsibility and anger.

we've talked about so much. The Mir Yashiva, in Mir, the flagship, Kharedi Yeshiva, maybe, you know, I'm going to get a lot of Ponovages coming at me right in the emails, but MIR is considered one of the Harvard of the Haredi, one of the Haraldi world. At its height, in actual Mir, in Belarus today,

was 500 students. In Jerusalem today, the Mir Yashiva is 3,000. More. Even more. No, no. No, for 3,000. even more. Kharedi Judaism has rebuilt.

And you know who enabled and funded and defended the great and vast rebuilding of this breathtaking community and world of Torah study? Israel. That Israeli society is the safest place Kharedi Judaism has ever been. And now we're coming to these questions of the draft. I want to just lay out the anger and just have you answer that or respond to that or tell me I'm completely off base.

Charedi communities enjoy a larger chunk of the welfare pie in this country than other people at the same socioeconomic level. Because of coalition funding, because of the way Charedi political parties have taken certain ministries and devote a lot of coalition funds to certain municipalities, in the end, the average Haredi household takes in net between everything they pay in taxes and everything they pay in taxes and everything they receive in benefits. There are different studies of this. One is from the finance ministry. One is from JPPI, the Taub Center, all these different economic think tanks. But all the studies agree on the basic outline, which is the average Haredi household takes in net, something like 2,000 to 4,000 shekels a month. And the average non-Huradi Jewish household gives net to the system, after benefits and all their taxes are all normalized about the same. About 2,000 to 4,000

depends on the study, depends on what you include a month. There is a huge, unique her the welfare system. And there is a cultural refusal to work that makes that welfare necessary. And there is this ethos of rebuilding something that has been massively rebuilt thanks to the surrounding society. And the thing that people like me are frustrated by in this debate on military service is, where's the gratitude? And I don't mean the gratitude like you should think, I'm great. I mean, Hakkarat at Tov, one of the foundational principles of Judaism. How many holidays and how much of davening and how much of everything that we are supposed to be is one vast gratitude system, one vast system of understanding the scale and beauty of things. And you live

inside a society of human beings who do work and do pay and do fund and do defend and do sacrifice. The Israelis that the Edacharidit, those extremists, are not willing to let draft their boys are sending their own sons to die. And we'll do so for these Edacharidit. So just at that sort of simple level of gratitude. I want this fight. I want this to be, to stop being all these weird little arrangements on the edges of society and they end up not serving. You talk about integration in beautiful ways. And if that can happen, great. Because what that does is without them, they stay, Charedi, but they flip to my side of that equation. Because they're working, they're paying taxes. They're serving in national service, non-military service, even, something, anything,

but they're part of that of that system. I don't see, and I think this is the source of the anger. I don't see in this Haredi conversation gratitude. I'll stop there. I don't know if that was the most convincing version of what I said, but I feel it deeply. I'm willing to fight for them. Why aren't they willing to appreciate that?

I think you made the case. Well, and I'm happy that you speak about gratitude, because I think you're absolutely right. gratitude happens to be among the most core central and, and I would say defining values of what the Torah expect from us, of what Judaism is. In fact, the only nation, one of the only nations that's completely excluded from being a part of the Jewish people is Amon, Amon and Moab. And the reason why, based on some of the commentaries at least, is because they were ungrateful to the Jewish people, because Abraham saved their ancestor lot,

and nevertheless they were ungrateful and were unwilling to assist the Jewish people in their plight, and therefore they're not accepted. Somebody that doesn't have gratitude, you didn't begin because our connection to God begins from a place of gratitude. So I'm happy you brought that on, and I think that the place that we need to begin is absolutely from a place of gratitude.

In my shul, in my synagogue, of course, we say the prayer for soldiers from a place of gratitude. And I find it indefensible that soldiers are not mentioned with an eye or with an appreciation with deep gratitude. This is something that we need to fix. And I'm not going to defend everything that's going on in the Haredi space. But I do want to help out. of viewers and listeners understand what it's about and and and and why there's such a difficulty here and and why it's why it's not obvious you know some people come to me and say you know come on why don't you guys just come and serve in the idea you know everybody else does it is it so

difficult you know come on so what is on their mind right what is this about so let me let me make two main points over here one one point is that it's it's important to really realize how profound service in the IDF, how profound the shift that would be for Haredi society. Haredi society was established. As you mentioned, let us talk about Israel. We'll skip Europe. We'll speak about Israel.

It was established as a parallel track within Israel. Then Gurion, right, general Israeli society, established a track, an Israeli track, in which everything is new. It's a transition, a transition from powerlessness to power, from weakness to strength, from a kind of, I would say, character or mindset in which you're under the host nations, wherever you are, and your call, your calling is a calling of religion, of tradition, of studying Torah, of devotion, whatever it might be, and a shift to a calling of building the language.

land, of supporting the agriculture, of drying the swamps, of building the institutions, of serving in the army, all of that, right? It's a transition, a tremendous shift in what it means to be Jewish ultimately. It's a real change. And the Khareidim, of course, in a profound, traumatic time, straight after the Shoa, straight after the Holocaust, there was one thing and one alone on their mind. And that was continuity, right, to perpetuate everything that we had and was destroyed. Let's perpetuate that. Let's rebuild that. Let's, and yes, it had Israel's support. You're right. This was underwritten, funded by the state of Israel. And by the way, why? Because Ben Gurion, from his perspective, he's establishing a museum. There was no way to imagine that this

would suddenly begin to proliferate and to grow and to expand. The trajectory of religion around the world, certainly in the Jewish world, was one of a steep spiral downhill. There was no way to predict that there would be this sudden revival in the Haredi space. And therefore, from his perspective, it was establishing a museum. All right, the museum did well, and it grew, and it prospered, and it proliferated, and it flourished, and it became huge. But the mindset remained a parallel line to that of Israel.

Israel is everything new and the Qaradi space is everything old. It's everything perpetuated, the continuity. Why don't Khareiden participate in, let's say, the Memorial Day for the Holocaust. Okay, we have a Holocaust

Memorial Day, Yomashu'a. Why don't Khadden participate in that? Surely they want to remember the Shua no less than anybody else, but the answer is because of the messaging. Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day is about our strength. It's about never again. It's about we won't allow this to happen because we'll be strong, we'll be independent, will be powerful, we'll be conscious, we'll have a different mindset.

While the Khareidim all, well, you know, I guess there's something good about being here in Israel, but we can't attach ourselves, we can't connect with that messaging because what we're trying to do, the model that we're living in, is this parallel line of perpetuating everything that was. Now, over time, in my eyes, there's absolutely no choice in the matter. These two lines will somehow combine, will somehow come together to make one thick line that will allow for different mindsets and different ways of life, sure, but it'll become one line because the trajectory, the path of the Khareidim is to enter into Israel, and the trajectory of Israel is to allow that entry much more than in the past.

In the past, a series like Stissel, which actually showcases Haredim in their beauty, in their innocence, in this very human way, that would not have been possible 25 years ago, that Israel has shifted also in many ways. And I think that allows these paths to coalesce, if that's the right word, to make something common between them. And the sheer size of the Haredim makes that happen. But going into the army is literally switching lines, switching tracks. You're going from the track of being in a Haredi kind of perpetuating the old, isolating from the new, you're switching from that track to the other track. You're wearing the flag on your arm. You're singing the Hatikva at the ceremonies.

It's a radical switch. It's a switch from one track to the other track, and it's a switch in identity. Your identity in the Haredi space is, Viznit, Gair, Svadi, whatever it is. All of a sudden, your identity becomes Israeli. It's a radical switch. And this is why there's such a fear or such a reluctance to reach. In the past, Garedim served. It's not a Garedim never served in the IDF.

Before 77, many Garedim served in the IDF. Post-77, much less. This is the begging upheaval, political upheaval. But there were still Khavidim who served, and, you know, Ravshach always used to say, anybody who's not full-time tourist student must serve in the army. There's no excuse, in fact, those who are not tourist students, and they nevertheless don't serve in the IDF, they get exemptions. They're undermining the Torah world.

Because how can we give an exemption to yeshiva students when that exemption becomes a cover for everybody to hide behind? So in the past, Khadim did serve, but it wasn't massive. wasn't a movement. Today, if we think about Kharedim entering the IDF, not just speak about those who are not full-time tourist students. We're talking about tens of thousands. And this will involve inevitably a dramatic shift in what it means to be Qaredi. So that's, on the one hand, to understand the rabbinic

leadership doesn't know how to wrap their heads around this. And from their perspective, let's just, you know, kick this can down the road. Let's do anything we can do to kind of avoid circumvent the issue, maybe the next government will be better than the present one. It's an issue which is very hard. It's much more, I would say, it's much more potentially undermining or potentially, you know, a seismic shift, then let's it going to work. Going to work, okay, that's what Garedim do around the world. American Gharadim, they go to work. British Garendham, go to work. They don't get, in America, you don't get free Jewish education. If you don't work, you'll be in big trouble.

So you have to go to work. Over here we have a more generous. Generous, let's call it generous, a generous welfare state. And that's why over here there's the potential, the capacity to work less. We can speak about that later. But going to work is less of a threat. Going to the army, that's it. You're becoming the spearhead of what it means to be Israeli.

You're joining Ben-Gurion's melting pot to create a common culture within Israeli society. So yes, the melting pot wasn't quite as successful. as it was supposed to be. And there's still plenty of variety within the IDF and within Israeli society. But in the, in the Haredi mindset, that's what's going on. And therefore, even if the army will be able to provide

Mahadran food and, you know, gendered units without girls, it will still be very difficult to swallow. It's very much an issue. That's one point. A second point, I'll make it briefly, is don't forget that it. that Israel shares a lot of the responsibility for the situation, for the national condition

that we're in today. Because over seven, eight decades, Israel was the one that allowed the Kharedim to refrain from, not necessarily to evade, because it was legal, right? And Israel's attitude was the economy is more important. Let's just leave the army service out of it. This is a part of the preconception of before October. 7. We want a small army technologically advanced. We don't need the

Khareedim. And even the Kharedi units in the IDF, there was no trust between the army and the Kharadim because even the internal rules and regulations of how do you treat Khareidim were not generally adhere to, certainly not religiously. Post-October

7th, all of a sudden, hey, we need the Khareidon. You know, you must draft. Everybody come on board. We don't have enough soldiers. Our reservists are doing hundreds of days of of Miloim. It's all true. But you can't have like 75 years of one approach and then all of a sudden a complete reversal. You know, everybody in, we need you now. You know, social changes don't happen that way. Healthy social changes. Don't take place overnight. This is too, um, it's too shocking or

it's too revolutionary for the Haradim to be able to, to digest it. And what the army has done, to its great credit, I think, is to establish a lot of tracks that make it easier for Haradim to integrate into the IDF, whether it's technological tracks, whether it's intelligence units, whether it's the new Haradi Brigade, not just a battalion, but an actual brigade, which is really something which we've been waiting for for many years. And it's wonderful that the army did this, and this is an exercise in trust building among bringing Haradam in. It's an exercise in trust building. There's tremendous potential for entering the army in the Haredi space. Many thousands feel that they're part of Israel and feel that they would want to take responsibility for Israel.

But the step of entering the idea of just going in, you know, going in, it's still a massive step socially. You know, for young 18-year-olds and sometimes they feel, you know, the burden shouldn't be on these 18-year-olds. You know, they've grown up their entire lives without the mention of Army service. without even entertaining the thought that they be serving in the IDF and all of a sudden, yeah, everyone has to go to the army. It's too revolutionary. You know, this needs to be an evolutionary kind of process that allows them to do this at a certain pace

with a certain rate, with a certain expectation. At the end of the day, these kinds of hopes are pinned on internal change. That's what this party that I'm a part of is trying to promote and it's what we need. We need the internal change within Haredi society. Israel is not going to put 80,000 boys in army prison. It's not going to work. Whichever government comes into power.

You know, we need, you know, our hope, I think, depends strongly on the internal dynamic within Haredi society, which needs to be bolstered, needs to be strengthened, needs to be reinforced, and it can be in many different ways, whether it's in education, an academic colleges in the kind of content and media side within the Kareedi space and communities and in rabbis. There are many that are working on this. I'm a deep part of that. But it's not an overnight solution. It's interesting that you speak about it in identity terms because, you know, I'm getting the impression that I and that Haredi conversation and, you know, again, you are somebody who, you know, chairs an organization trying to open a path to.

ways for Haredi draft, right? So you're, you are very much a bridge in this conversation, but we're both seeing maybe the same thing from different sides, right? You frame this as it's switching tracks radically in terms of identity, in terms of a self-understanding. And when you have decades of culture, and it's a very conservative society, obviously, right? So, so you bring all those things, conservative, being conservative, not changing too quickly is core to what it is to be Haredi. So you bring all of that together. But from, from, from, From my side of that curtain, so to speak, there is this solidarity that requires real sacrifice on which the survival of the Jews of the Eastern Hemisphere has depended for 80 years.

And I have four kids who will go to an army, and that army will fight wars. It's not the Belgian army, right? It's going to actually ask things of me that solidarity. And so I have a huge amount of sympathy to what you're describing that sense of a profound shift in the meaning of being Charedian community and identity. At the same time, standing apart when that circle of solidarity is what protects us, when identifying with each other to the point where we're willing to go fight for each other in real hard terms in the real world, is what hurts about this.

You know what I mean? Nobody is upset about Charedi if we're not healthy enough to go to the army. It's about the ones. Yeah. So the identity question. is the core. I agree. No, but the thing is I agree with you. That's, that's the, that's the, that's the thing. I didn't see things differently. I agree with you. And that's why, you know, I did my army service. I mentioned this at the very beginning in your bio. You joined the IDF. I didn't do my idea. Yes. And I didn't do that because I felt that I would be the, the, the greatest discovery of the IDF, you know, the next kind of, you know, senior general. I did that because I felt that I have to set an example. And, because I, because we need people who are going to be the trailblazers to set the example and to ensure that we get this ball rolling and we up the pace and we accelerate it and it's a must

and it's happening. Let me give you the following statistic. There's one of the programs that the IDF established in collaboration with a lot of people within Haredi society, of course, is called cod cod. Cod. Cod. Cod, it's actually K-O-D-C-O-D. Like cod code. coding. Right, the Cod is always the chief or the commander.

Now, but over here there's a coding element because it's a coding program where Kareedi boys, Kareedi young men will both receive the requisite training and then move on to actually serve. And they serve mainly in intelligence units. You know, the best of them will be in Shemana Matamaheim, 80,200. Others will go to other units. And good for them. Wonderful program.

It accepts approximately 400, 400. 450 boys a year. Okay. But the interesting thing isn't the number that it accepts, but the number of applicants that it receives. We're talking about thousands, okay, north of 4,000 applicants to get into this program. Now, you know, the army could say, okay, we're accepting 450. The remaining 4,000, you know, everybody go into whatever combat units.

The army didn't say that. And I guess it's because the army doesn't want to undermine the trust or whatever. It doesn't want to just take these guys by force. But the fact that there's so many that are applying means that that shift is penetrating deeply. There's a infusion within Haredi society of this understanding that we can't just carry on the way things are. Things must give. Things will change. you can't have a new cycle for the duration of three years

in which the Haredi draft is on and off the whole time in the new cycle without people beginning to think for themselves, without people beginning to think one minute, what is the just and the right that Hashem that God expects from me? What is the right thing for me to do in the situation that we're in today? How do we conceive of a brighter future in terms of Israel's social fabric which is being torn asunder by this issue? Among God the Rishu, but this is a big one.

It's a real biggie. And our closest friends, you know, so many in the religious scientist world, who were deep fans of the Haredi space, appreciated it. Really, our closest friends. And today, they cross the road. They don't go to family weddings. There's such a sense of resentment, such a sense of friction between these societies. We can't go on like that.

In order to face the challenges that Israel faces existential ones, in its short-term future, we need that unity. And many Haredim, they get it. That's why they're going into the idea. The numbers every year, since 24, 2025, every year there's like a 100% increase. Now, in real figures, it's still not huge. You know, it's like from 2,500 to, let's say, 4,000,

or whatever it is. There's a significant increase in proportion to what the Haredi society is, You know, every year there's more or less 15,000 boys who turn 18 in the Haredi space. That's the kind of figures that we're talking about, masses of young men. So, of course, proportionally, it's still not huge. But in terms of the vector, in terms of the trajectory, it's very meaningful. And therefore, something is happening. And I would also say, I don't think the majority of Israel expects absolute equality.

absolute equality is, I would say, and with respect to the value of equality, which is a dear value, but it's utopian. Kestr is not the same as regular army service. In HESDA, religious scientists boys do a year and a half of army service, of course. They happen to be some of the best and most ideologically motivated boys, but their army service is less. So there's no absolute equality, and I don't think Israel needs absolute equality vis-a-vis DeKareidim. What Israel needs to see is that we're a part of it. Israel needs to see that we feel that we're partners in this great endeavor. And the thing is that Haredim, you know, for so many years, it's all been about struggle.

Struggle over religion and states. Struggle over resources. Struggle over the politics. Struggle over survival. Khareidim are in survival mode. That's the way that we're brought up. It's about survival. And when you're in survival mode, it's difficult.

to see the wood for the trees. You don't see that big picture that you were drawing before of Israel, you know, this miraculous state that's defending itself against the enemies all around that's been able to build

the Torah world and fund it that's been able to return the exiles from across the globe more than a hundred countries to create everything that Israel is.

It really is the most incredible, unfathomable achievement. Surely we want to be a part of this. Surely we want to take responsibility. Surely we want to bring the good that we have, our social good within Karedi society and try to be a lighthouse rather than just the Noah's art that's protecting

ourselves from the storm. Sure, we want to make that transition. But many Karede, because of the struggle mindset, find it difficult to make that transition. That's what I'm trying to do. Is there an in-between step? I have been asked often, you know, what about the Kareedi draft? And my answer, my explanation for my anger, and there is an anger here, is they don't look like they're trying. It's not, okay, so there's real cultural, religious. By the way, someone comes to me and says, I'm religiously pacifist. I respect that tremendously. Come and say that to me.

But then where's the, you know, Haridim have built some of the most extraordinary institutions in Israeli society, medical institutions from Yad-Sahara to, you know, all kinds of Zaka and all kinds of rescue services and charities, immense, immense things. There are, the Haredi society is profoundly competent in certain fields of human endeavor. So where's the National Service, civilian draft, so to speak, where you don't do Army, you don't put on a uniform. But, you know, probably 50% of the Army Medical Corps can be, can be, you know, turned into a civilian national service program run by Haredim.

There are clinics all over the country. He could run clinics. Where's the attempt? In other words, where's the coming and saying, listen, putting on that uniform, huge, complicated, historic trouble for me. It's a real obstacle. Well, maybe we'll get there, but it's a real obstacle. So how about I run half the clinics that people have to draft them serving, you know, uniforms and what if I take on some of the many duties that the Israeli army takes on that can release some of those soldiers that can take the. They can take the pressure off some of those.

And if there isn't a conversation about what can I contribute, I who receive so much, then it's not about, then I don't believe it's really a religious thing. Can that be done? Can we establish this halfway thing where you don't put on a uniform, but you do work in medical services that are expanded to take on some of the work of, and there's many others. There's educational services.

By the way, military coding, you know, if there's a cyber division in the Mossad and a cyber division in the Shabakh, not the entirety of the Army's cyber division doesn't necessarily have to be in uniform. And if the question really is identitarian and cultural rather than strictly halakhic, religious, or maybe that's a kind of process

that can be handled that Chardin can lead it. Yeah, so this has been suggested, meaning it has been brought up. There have been several programs that have attempted to create this kind of intermediate solution. the thing is after October 7th, Israel isn't really ready for it,

meaning Israel is not prepared to accept that kind of halfway solution. The idea of, for example, making work within Zaka or work within Ichodat Sala, and by the way, these are some of the heroes of October 7th. They were down there in the South doing remarkable, remarkable and unspeakable work in the Gaza envelope on October 7th. and to kind of let's convert that into some kind of national service that will be an alternative to army service. Israel right now is not ready for that.

Israel says in a time when so many reservists are away from their families for years, you know, for a year plus, okay, away from families. In a time when the regular army is bleeding and requires new recruits, we can't allow this kind of alternative track. Now I will say at the same time that I'm not excusing in any sense the Qarady for blame for this too because if there would be from government,

if the Qaridi representatives in government would go to the army and rather than saying big no would say yes, but with the following conditions, then they would be able to get them. If they would push for that, it would be much quicker, much more effective, and also it would trickle down much better into the rest of Israeli society.

And unfortunately, they haven't done that. I'm assuming because they felt that they only have what to lose from doing that. Their core base doesn't want to send boys into the IDF. And those who do want to send boys into the IDF are probably not voting for them. And therefore, they kind of raise their hands and said, we're not getting involved in this. You know, the Qaradi politicians, they don't visit the Qaradi army bases. They're not the ones that are supporting the movement of Kharadim in the IDF. And I think that that change that's taking place now,

we'll see exactly what happens in the upcoming elections. But that kind of change, if we'll have a stronger political Karatea arm that will be supporting these kind of programs, and of course real and crucial army program for the integration of Khadim, we'll see that having much more of a momentum, gaining a lot of strength, gaining momentum. You know, outside of the Qaeda community, a lot of what you hear from Haredi,

what the Haredi community tells Israel is to some significant extent what Ariadari tells Israel, or Moshe Gafni tells Israel, those politicians. And so those missing Knesset seats you described, the Kharidim who do serve, the Khadim who do serve, the Khadim who do work, who aren't just building out as much of the welfare state

as they possibly can using their leverage in the Knesset, they don't have a voice that speaks to Israel and I think also speaks to what it is that you're trying to do. Yeah, they don't have a political. They don't have a political voice. I agree with you. It's so crucial. You know, the political voice that's being heard in Israel

from the Karatey parties is mainly one of somebody called Golknoth. This is a minister in Israel's government. And he was the one that said, Israel, he said, has a budget. that budget is a cake and we need to take our share of the cake. That was his analogy. That was his, you know, the way he represents his job in, you know,

in government. And that's not the kind of voice that we need to project. We don't want to be in Poland. You know, our representation in Poland was, we need to survive, we need to be able to get our rights and to get our share of the cake. In Israel, it's not about getting our share of the cake. It's about making sure that the cake exists.

It's about ensuring that we together within Israel will be able to write the next chapter of the Jewish people and that it should be a glorious one. The only way to do that is through a voice of responsibility, a voice of partnership, a voice of working together towards those future goals. And unfortunately, in the politics, that voice is not projected. And it's a must. It's a must just in order to create this, like you say, there's a lot of resentment, Unfortunately, sometimes the resentment crosses over into a certain, tough for me to say, but a certain hatred. And for me, that's horrible. I mean, that's the worst.

When we have actual hate, it's how for me to say to what? When we have actual hate between the denominations, between the Khavedim and others, that's where we say, you know, we throw up our hands and we say, as can. You know, this can't go on any longer. and I do call out to anybody outside of the Kharedi space. You know, yes, there's a lot that needs to be improved. There's a lot that needs to be fixed. But, you know, it requires work. It requires a lot of internal change.

It's not simple. It's been eight decades of things going one way, and now they have to go a different way. And there's a lot of infrastructures that are in place to facilitate that. Sure, we need incentives. And the government has not been able to provide a, good incentive structure even, you know, for the kind of changes that need to be made. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done, but it's being done.

And if we'll see these new parties gaining momentum, whether they get in or not, I hope they'll get in. But even if they don't get in, they will at the very least apply real pressure to the existing traditional party that they too will need to change their tunes. That's happening on a school level because of the proliferation of new Haridi schools that teaching English and math and other subjects on a good level. So that's applying pressure to the traditional schools of the Ginnah Khatzmae, the Kareedi system, that they too should be able to offer some of those skills.

They do it, I would say, reluctantly, and therefore it's also not very effective. But it's happening. And it's public. And I would love to see that happen on the political level. The Belzeravi came out publicly and said that his, a couple years back, that his schools will teach more of the also you get more money if you teach more of the core curriculum. And so there's a process in which even deep in the Hasidish world, there's more and more of this, at least being talked about, even from the rabbinic

British. Yeah, so a very close friend, very close friend and colleague of my Menach and Bambach. Maybe you know the name. So he has a network that includes many schools, both elementary schools and high schools, boys schools and gold schools that really bring a different mindset, a different educational approach and their robotics. schools, they're good schools. Is it a high percentage of the Haredi educational system? Not yet, but you know what?

Overnight, the proportion of those kinds of schools doubled. Why? Because BELDS decided to buy in. Why did BELD decide to buy in mainly because of funding issues, but we leave aside the reasons. The fact is that they bought in, and that creates a certain momentum. It gets you to a critical mass. Right now, just the other week. The Haredi High Schools in Bels decided that the state. they're doing full baguayot, full matriculations, something which is not common in the more

mainstream, traditional Karadi space. And of course, they explain this in a language of holiness and the rabbi decided and the rabbi's decided and whatever. Great. Count it in whatever language you want, ultimately. That's a big step forward. So you have a lot of these step forward. They accumulate together to create a critical mass. That's where we're going. That's where we need to go. You know, ultimately we'll get there. I'm certain we'll get there. Rabbi Feffer, thank you so much for opening our eyes to all of this complicated world that is profoundly changing. One of the interesting things to observe in the Haredi space that for me over the years has been the extent to which Haredes society is responsive, does change. But in the way of all

conservative societies, it changes quietly. The change is not loud in revolutionary. It changes quietly and Chavababh, it changes with a lot of growing pains. It's not easy. And it changes, doesn't change by itself. It changes because of committed individuals and brave individuals who are ready to, you know, go the distance and to pay prices for being the kind of trailblazers of this. It's, it's not, it's not easy. It's not something we should. I have to ask in that context. You know, you're born and raised in England. You, you, you, you, you're a little bit culturally, this is a question, not an answer, but you're a little bit culturally able to be an outsider. You're not an outsider. You're a rabbi of a community in Ramot, in Jerusalem. But you also can be in your mind, you know, on Tuesdays, right?

When you need, when you want to be. And not ability to look in on some of these weaknesses of the Qaridi community that are not shared by Haridim elsewhere. Maybe that's a big source of strength that can be brought to bear. Maybe the diaspora of Jaredism needs to come in and contribute to this change. So, Kaveva, I'm very happy that you brought up that point. The truth of the matter is that a lot of the kind of shift and changes that are taking place within the Kharidi space are being driven by Kharadin, who are originate either they or their parents in a kind of English-speaking Kharedi space. A lot of the schools that I referenced before, their original parent body is an Anglo parent body, areas like Bechamesh, Ramat Bechamash, and so on. a lot of these Anglo-English-speaking parents who say, you know what? First of all, yes, we want a broader education for our kids. We want to give them choices for when they'll be older.

We don't want this narrow education that burns your bridges, and by the time you finish high school, you know, you have a mountain to climb if you want to do anything other than tourist study. But beyond that, a lot of these Anglo families, they didn't come to Israel in order to isolate or disassociate from Israel. They came to Israel because they believed that Israel has become the center of the Jewish people, that Israel is the center of mass is where things happen, and because they want to be a part of Israel.

Now, not every American Kharadi would have that approach vis-à-vis Israel, and that's where Israel is more complex than America because of the Zionist angle, because of the angle of, you know, this kind of trauma upon a trauma, not just the Shia, the Holocaust, but also the victory, quote-unquote, of the Zionist and how do you live with that? So that's why Israel is somewhat different from America alongside the army issue that you also don't have in the United States and you have in Israel.

But broadly speaking, a lot of these American families, English speakers, let's say, and also French, meaning not exclusively the English-speaking world, it's just the world that I'm more familiar with. They do come here with a different attitude. Now, in the past, what have they done? They've come here and they've said, well, you know, the Kareedi world here is so strong.

strong. Its machinery is so robust. They have such luminaries, you know, rabbinic leaders. They have these strong institutions. What we need to do is to put our head down and to become a part of it. But today, that's shifting. Today, these Anglo families are saying, no, we have core values that we don't want to give up on just because we came to Israel. We do believe in being a strong part of civic society. We do believe in civic responsibilities. We do want to see a

dignified life of self-reliance, rather than be reliant on government handouts. We want to be a part of Israel and to bring a sense of elevation, to bring Torah into all of these corners of Israeli society. And that attitude is, I wouldn't say it's being led, but certainly there are many Anglos who are a part of that space. And one of the reasons why Anglos are deterred from making Aliyah is because that space isn't big enough yet, not robust enough.

Because I'm going to think many people want to make aliyah, but they say, where am I going to go? To be all the way Haredi, that doesn't suit me. I don't want to be this isolationist, you know, a Qahedi guy that doesn't live, that doesn't have a good relationship with the earthliness, with the world, right, isolates from the world. I don't want to be there. But on the other hand, what am I going to do? Go religious Zionist. That's not the culture that I was brought up with.

It's a very different culture, different energy, different kind of religious spirit. It's not what I'm used to. So where do I go? And my appeal to them is come, we need you. Be a part of it. Be a part of building it. That's exactly the spirit that we need. And yes, of course, there are risks everywhere,

but there are risks to staying in America too. It's not like, you know, education in America has its own problems. We don't have opioid crises over here. Barach Hashem, we have our own challenges. But over here you get to have the privilege of being a part of it, of building an up, of actually having an influence on what's going on over here. And we need you, guys. We actually need that.

That's my, that's my pitch. And anyone that speaks to me about Aliya, I just say, can. You know, we need you and we can do wonderful things together. As the great Qaridi Rabbi Mohatma Gandhi said, be the change, right? Thank you, Tavaev, absolutely. That was just having fun. Rabbi Feffer, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for teaching us and enlightening us.

Kavir, thank you.