Bnei Brak riot shows that to integrate Haredim, Israel should expect strife

If the average Israeli were to fall asleep under a tree and wake up, like Rip Van Winkle, a generation from now, it’s hard to say what kind of country they’d see when they opened their eyes — whether it would be at peace or war with its neighbors, or whether the roads would be just as clogged as they are today.

One thing is nearly certain, however: The Israel of 25 years from now will be a lot more Haredi.

That’s the main takeaway of a report published this month by the Israel Democracy Institute, which cited population estimates showing that, by 2050, the country is projected to be nearly one-quarter ultra-Orthodox.

The report analyzed what that population growth would mean for Israel’s higher-education rate, its employment rate and its GDP (the short answer: Without far-reaching societal changes, they all decline).

But beyond the granular data, the report pointed to a more fundamental shift: The rapid Haredi population growth, rising from 11 percent of Israelis a decade ago to almost 25% in 2050, means that this country’s citizens will one day open their eyes to a different kind of Israel.

The question of what that Israel will look like became more urgent on Sunday. A harrowing riot in Bnei Brak saw a mob of Haredi men chase a pair of female soldiers — who had to be rescued by police — and overturn a police car and torch a motorcycle.

Footage of the incident was shocking not only because of the violence on display, but because it laid bare an issue that Israel has been facing for decades and only recently started to confront in earnest: The Haredi population’s current priorities are at odds with those of the rest of the country, and any reconciliation is likely to come only after considerable national strife.

 A festering issue

The Bnei Brak riot drew widespread condemnation, not only from politicians across the political spectrum but from Haredi leaders themselves, who called on their followers to stay away from protests and decried the demonstrations as a “desecration of God’s name.”

Haredi rabbis and politicians have portrayed the rioters as an unrepresentative fringe. But the riot didn’t create a new issue; it just exposed how dire an existing problem has become.

For decades, successive Israeli governments have largely avoided confronting the fact that Haredi society operates differently from the rest of the country’s Jewish population, in terms of education, employment, government funding and military service. Over the past couple of years, pushed by the judiciary and amid growing public frustration over the unequal imposition of the mandatory draft, the government has been forced to address the blanket exemptions ultra-Orthodox men have long enjoyed from IDF conscription.

The effort has come as the army has been driven to the brink by the longest war in Israel’s history, stretching resources and putting a heavy burden on reservists.

The draft legislation that resulted is, according to a vast array of critics, a capitulation to Haredi demands and unlikely to meaningfully ease the manpower shortage currently afflicting the army. But that hasn’t prevented a string of raucous (and sometimes deadly) Haredi protests, nor has it calmed leading rabbis’ harsh rhetoric about the army.

Now, in the wake of the Bnei Brak riot and in the lead-up to this year’s election, opposition politicians are unveiling plans to integrate the growing Haredi population and end the special treatment they say the ultra-Orthodox receive from the government. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, the most credible challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted a five-point plan on social media covering Haredi army service, government funding, education and the rule of law.

But Gilad Malach, a research fellow at the IDI and the lead author of the recent report on Haredi population growth, isn’t optimistic that such ideas will go over well. Haredi leaders will portray any government that tries to meaningfully change their community’s way of life, he said, as a “government of destruction.”

“I’m worried that, in the end, in the political context, it will be an explosion,” Malach said in an interview with The Times of Israel. “I say it with pain.”

He went on, “If, today, the most pro-Haredi coalition isn’t able to reach an agreement on an enlistment law, it’s clear to me that if there’s a coalition that isn’t pro-Haredi, there’s no chance they’ll reach an agreement with the Haredim on an outline for the law… If there’s another law that is even tougher in Haredi eyes, they’ll call it an ‘enlistment decree,’ and that will be an explosion.”

Growing influence in the public square

Part of the underlying issue, according to Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, who runs the Iyun Institute for Haredi Responsibility and works to support ultra-Orthodox soldiers in the IDF, is that Haredim have historically viewed themselves as a minority that didn’t need to take responsibility for the Israeli national interest. That outlook has persisted even as Haredi numbers and political power have grown.

“Being the majority implies something [Haredim] cannot assume: full responsibility for the Jewish state,” Pfeffer wrote in a JNS column last year. “And once Haredim accept responsibility for Israel as a whole, they cease, by definition, to be Haredim as we know them.”

He added, “Down the line, as Israel became the accepted political representative of the Jewish people, the argument for exclusive internal focus weakened. Yet to assume national responsibility would have meant stepping outside the isolationist framework that, until now, has served as both protection and identity.”

By 2050, when nearly a quarter of the country (and an even higher share of its draft-age men) is ultra-Orthodox, that narrative may become harder to sustain. Twenty-five percent is, of course, not a majority; it would make Haredi numbers roughly akin to those of Arab Israelis, who have long charged that Israeli society marginalizes them, discriminates against them and, lately, has done too little to stem a violent crime wave afflicting their cities.

But in places where Haredim are making up an increasing share of the population, their growth has changed the public square. A recent article in The Marker, for example, described how the promenade in Tiberias now essentially shuts down on Shabbat, dealing a heavy blow to the city’s tourism economy. Malach also cited fears of gender separation in academic settings as more Haredi students pursue degrees.

More broadly, Orthodox practice is being prioritized in government. A bill that advanced in the Knesset in December, sponsored by non-Haredi coalition members, would criminalize interfering with Jewish religious practice in public spaces, including via minor bureaucratic obstacles.

“It’s clear that in 25 years the political power of the Haredim will rise,” Malach said. “So naturally, they’ll also aspire to influence the public square, and in many aspects, aspects connected to observing Shabbat. I can’t say exactly, but that’s certainly their aspiration.”

Can American Haredim serve as a model?

As Israel looks to deal with these questions, the US might serve as a model. The American ultra-Orthodox population, like the Israeli one, is growing. Haredim make up 11% of New York Jewry, according to a 2023 population survey, and are most of its Orthodox Jews, but Orthodox children (Haredi and not) comprise fully 64% of the Jewish community’s kids.

Unlike Israeli Haredim, though, this hasn’t precipitated a national, or even communal, crisis. There was recently a fierce debate in New York’s press and government over English and math education in some yeshivas, and some US ultra-Orthodox communities rely on government assistance in certain areas of life.

But unlike Israel, those budgets are not directed specifically at Haredim as a sector, and many people in the community work and study while still devoting meaningful time to Torah study and strict Jewish observance.

Rabbi Avi Shafran, the former spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, wrote in an email to The Times of Israel that ultra-Orthodox population growth in New York has led to “openly Haredi legislators and advisors to elected officials, not to mention haredim in the business and blue collar worlds.”

American Haredi men, he added, “are more likely to be part of the work and business forces than in Israel. And, of course, without military conscription here, there is little if any tension between American Haredim and other Jews.”

Malach also said incentives encouraging Israeli Haredim to integrate could make a meaningful difference. His report, he stressed, also looked at what would happen if Haredi economic and educational behavior more closely resembled that of the rest of Israel’s Jews. In that scenario, statistics like the employment and education rates would rise, not fall.

“We know that policy can work, that changing policy can move things,” he said, also citing US Haredim as an example. “It’s possible to change policy and influence society.”

He added that if Haredi attrition rates rise, as they have in the past, the entire conversation could change.

“Someone who you see at the demonstration yesterday in Bnei Brak, it could be that in another year he won’t be Haredi,” Malach said. “Some of the protesters were extremist Haredim, and some of them were marginalized youth who, you know, won’t stay Haredi at all.”