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Episode 21: Why won’t Haredim serve in the IDF? A deep dive with Shmuel Rosner
00:59:32
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- [00:05]
Aviv
Hello everybody. Welcome to Ask Aviv. Anything. We're going to do one of those episodes where we take a deep dive into an issue that is front and center in the Jewish world. Certainly front and center on Israelis minds. And that is the Haredi community, sometimes called ultra Orthodox. I know quite a few Haredim that object to the idea of ultra Orthodox, as though there's a spectrum of Orthodox and then ultra Orthodox, they're just what they are. They're not a comparison to someone else, but extremely so. And this community is extraordinarily diverse. It doesn't always look at on tv, but it in fact is. The Lithuanian communities, the Hasidic communities, there's a huge gap there in how they learn and how they live, in their mystical theologies and all of that. It's a different place. They vote differently, they think differently, but nevertheless, nevertheless as a community, in many, many ways they act as one. And certainly they think of themselves. There is a coherent Haredi identity. The Israelis have been at a war now in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, the seven front war for well over 600 days. And over the course of that war we have discovered that we don't have enough fighting men. And that has created huge new pressure, huge new demand on the Khuiti community to stop doing something that it has been roughly since the 60s, 70s, which is explicitly and purposefully choose not to serve in the Israeli military. This is very frustrating. If you are like my brother in law, a soldier in the paratroopers in the reserves, who left your job in high tech in Tel Aviv and was in Gaza when your first child was born, and was in Lebanon when your first child celebrated her first birthday. And in fact, in order to push back, Israel's enemies had to give 300 days over the course of the last 600. And there are people in this country who sat around for those 600 days, went to work, raised a family, they're not literally sitting in the streets, but they're not sacrificing, their businesses are not collapsing as are the businesses of so many reservists. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have sacrificed tremendously at a moment of great danger for the country. And the ultra Orthodox community, as many call them in English, the Haredim have not. And the question has arisen therefore in a new way. It's not just about fairness. The small campaigns among secular Israelis to have universal draft also apply to the Haredim is no longer just about literally the principle of the thing. We actually need the manpower. And so the whole big question of the enormous gap in participation in the workforce, the gap in payments into the welfare system because they don't participate in the workforce, the gap in education, the gap in military service, the gap in participation, the fact that to so many Israelis, it feels as though they carry this community on their shoulders and the community stands around telling them that it is holy and they are the mules whose task it is to carry them. That is some of the political language used by some Haredi leaders that creates a lot of this anger and tension. We are going to dive into this anger and this tension with someone I respect very deeply and learn from. Part of the purpose of this podcast is not to tell you the clever things I have discovered or know, but it's to tell you where I get them. And Shmuel Rasner is one of those places. Shmuel Rasner is a senior fellow at jppi, the Jewish People Policy Institute in Jerusalem. He is also, and this is a top secret of Israeli journalists, Please don't tell anybody so we look cooler and more clever. He's the editor, publisher, pollster, grand puba of a website called the Madad T H E M a d a d.com or the measure. The index is the translation and it contains an aggregation of polls, it contains opinion pieces, thought pieces. It's small. Journalists read it and then say clever things about what Israelis think. Now you know, now you don't have to guess. And also, Shmuel has done a lot of work on the Haredi community, including putting out video series online in Hebrew. And I respect him tremendously. He's been a very, very. He's a veter journalist and a very experienced one. He was the Haaretz reporter in the United States and the only Israeli reporter in the United States I ever knew or read who taught me about American Jewry and among Hebrew speaking Israelis. I consider myself quite an expert on American Jewry in the sense that Israelis don't really take an interest and Shmuel did. So he's a Hebrew speaking Israeli with serious interest and credentials and provides us all with tremendous amounts of knowledge. We're going to dive in on this really foundational, really painful question for Israeli society before we get to that two minutes of sponsorship. This episode is sponsored by Frank and Julie Cohen. And thank you so much for that. Frank and Julie believe that this podcast is a way to teach our story because understanding our past and present is key to building a better future. And as with many, many of our sponsors, they have dedicated this episode to someone who fell on October 7. Today we remember Yochai Azulai 28, from Holon. He was murdered while trying to flee the Hamas attack on the Supernova Music Festival on October 7. Yochai grew up in a traditionally religious family. He spent much of his time exploring his roots and his connection to Judaism. He served in the Kfir Infantry Brigade during his mandatory military service. After his release, he toured around America. My wife did that. It is the law. You're not allowed to stay in the country after getting out of the army. You're required to go backpacking somewhere around the world. And after his return, he met his girlfriend, Noah, and they. They were planning their future together when he was murdered by the Hamas terrorists. He was buried in Colon on October 15. He is survived by his parents, Ziva and Itzik, and his older sister, Daniela Keren. Thank you to Frank and Julie. Shmuel, how are you?
- [06:25]
Shmuel Rasner
I'm okay. Everything is great, but there's a war going on, so I cannot just say it as if nothing is out there.
- [06:34]
Aviv
I'm okay and I'm sorry about it. Yeah, exactly. Let's dive right in. I gave a little bit of an introduction on the Hareda community. I want to just say one thing to start, and I know I've been talking now for, I don't know, eight minutes, but I really want this to be the beginning. I deeply respect the Haredi community, and I don't mean that to be politically correct, and I don't mean that to set them up for a fall. What I mean is something very specific. When I am driving down the Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv and I see a huge billboard with a supermodel in underwear, I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated for my daughter. I don't want to start covering up billboards. And I believe in free speech. I'm one of those wackos who think you should have too much free speech rather than too little. But I also don't want my daughter growing up in a world surrounded by those images. In one of the videos you produced, Moshe A. Shah, minister in government, and an extraordinary and competent and serious and thoughtful man who will speak to all Israelis and speak honestly and thoughtfully when confronted by these economic questions that we're going to talk about today, said, look, humans are not. I'm paraphrasing, humans were not created to increase the gdp. There is a deep meaning to life, and if all we see are these numbers, we're not going to be happy. And here's the thing. There is something broken in the west, and I am a big, big fan of capitalism. In the sense that every other system is worse. And I'm a big fan of democracy in the sense that every other system is worse. But that does not mean that there isn't something broken. People are sadder, more angry, more anxious, polarizing, radicalizing. And we have measures of these. Every single health authority in every single democratic is measuring how societies are falling apart, they're fraying, and the algorithms and the attention economy of modern life. And then I go to visit my friends in the haredi community. And it's a world with a tremendous amount of psychological quiet, right? There's one sacred source. It's a community that is measurably among the happiest people in the world because it has this one thing that matters. And it isn't quite ideology, it isn't quite religion. I mean, they of course will say it's God, it's religion, it's Torah. But it's also the deep bonds of loyalty and connection. It's infinite social capital. They. Their strange dress. I'll finish with this. I apologize. You will hear Shmuel Rosner's wisdom here. The strange dress is part of it. They're not stupid. They know what they look like. That's on purpose. I once asked a Hasidic rabbi, I think he considers himself from the Bubba sect, you know, why does he dress funny? And he says, I can't stand in a line to a movie and get angry. I can't stand in a line to an inappropriate movie because I have that. It protects me and it protects others from me. And it makes me purer. And my soul, it's easier for my soul to be stronger. And the other piece to it is it's hard to step out. Right. It's a signal to the in group that you belong to, that you're willing to pay the social costs of looking weird and therefore distancing yourself from the out group. It's a signal of the strength and importance to you of belonging. And so I think they have some significant wisdom that is part of the healing of the world from all the horrors and awfulness of this moment, all the fraying of our societies and democracies all over the Western world. I want to start with that. I don't think it's a small thing. That is beautiful there. I think it's an enormous thing. Now let's get into all the problems and failings of this community with that in mind, we'll start with the military. I'm just. I'm coming to you up front. My family, my wife has another brother who has a similar story in the armored Corps. My family has given a lot to this war and they haven't, and that pisses me off. First of all, what's the data? Do they serve? Are there any that serve? How much do they serve and why don't they serve?
- [10:33]
Shmuel Rasner
Well, the answer to the question, do they serve? Is an easy one. They don't. Maybe 8% of them do. Very few of them on the margins on the Haredi society serve in the idf. Most of them don't. And, you know, we are all familiar with stories such as the one you mentioned. My son is now doing his reserve time in the military. He was called for three months, so he's spending April, May and June in uniform. Before that, he spent, I think, all November and December of 24 in uniform. So in one year in which he needs to do internship as a graduate of law school, so it's a year of internship of which at least five months he's going to spend in uniform, which means that an internship of a year is really an internship of half a year. And you know, there are people who do even more reserve time than him. So to see ultra Orthodox youngsters his age, 24, 25, not having to wear uniform, that's something that is. That is quite frustrating for many of us. You ask, why aren't they, why don't they serve in the military? That's a long story. It begins with David Ben Gurion in 1948, at the war of Independence, right after the Holocaust, when the world, when the yeshiva world, the haredi yeshiva world was almost eliminated at the Holocaust. And Ben Gurion was asked to Release, to release 400 students from military duty in order for them to keep learning their yeshivas. And he thought he was doing, you know, he thought the Haredi community was a museum. It was, it was basically gone. So he let them. He let them off the hook and let them keep. Keep studying rather than serving. We should say that many other haredis did serve in the War of Independence. And afterwards, in the 50s, the 60s, up until the mid 70s, more than 60%, close to 70% of all Haredis did serve in the military like everybody else.
- [13:08]
Aviv
This is an important point. Right now, secular Israelis have a service rate somewhere in the 80s. And so they were very. They were almost at the level of secular Israelis. And something changed in, in the 70s. Now the framework Ben Gurion used is called torahto omanuto, right? Where great artists, great athletes are allowed to step out of the army. Not if you're an Olympic level swimmer and you go to the military for three years, you will not be able to compete in the Olympics. You'll lose those three years. So you are exempt from military service. But in art, in sports, these are a tiny group, you know, a couple hundred, a few tiny number of hundreds every single cohort or every single year. And the Haredim started as that. Right. It was their Torah is their art. Right. What happened in the 70s and what's the scale of the problem now?
- [13:57]
Shmuel Rasner
Well, in the late 70s the change was political change. Menachem Begin became prime minister, he won the election, became prime minister in the late 70s. He formed the coalition for which he needed the ultra Orthodox parties as part of the coalition. And they had the ability to, to make requests to, to change things for themselves. And two very significant rabbis at the time, Rav Shah and the Rebbe of Gur, they basically told him we, we want all young ultra Orthodox men to stay in their yeshivas. And he, he and them, they formed something that became, that became quite unique. They basically forced all youngsters to say to stay within the yeshivas by having the threat of military service hanging over their heads. Basically, Israel became the enforcer of yeshiva studies.
- [15:05]
Aviv
It was, explain that I'm a young Kharidi, young man. I reach age 17. Like all 17 year olds, I go to the draft office and because I'm in a Haredi yeshiva, they give me an exemption. You are faced with the community, have leverage over me.
- [15:22]
Shmuel Rasner
Yeah, you are, you are faced with the following choice. Either you go and serve like everybody else, which takes away three years of your life and takes you out of the community. In the community, in the Haredi community, it became something of an anathema to, to, to even think about serving. If you, if you serve, you will not get a proper Shidduch. You will not be respected by your community. It will, it will. It could hurt your family. Maybe you have younger siblings, they will be thrown out of, of their, of their younger yeshivas or kolels or Talmudora or whatever. They will have difficulty finding, finding a spouse. So the whole community geared up towards this situation or towards this mentality in which people who serve are second or third rank Haredis. They no longer considered to be haredis. So, so you're young and this is the choice you face. Either you tell the military, I'm going to study, which lets you, gets you off the hook of military service, but then you have to stay in the yeshiva. You stay within the confines of the, of Haredi community. You are basically under the Control of the, of the Haredi, you know, handlers of the situation. They find you the yeshiva, they give you a stipend in order for you to be able to, to learn. So you de. You're dependent on them both culturally and economically speaking. And you have to keep yourself within the community for a number of years until age 26 at least. Where you already, when you work for.
- [17:23]
Aviv
The yeshivas, these handlers work for the yeshivas. Who do they work for?
- [17:29]
Shmuel Rasner
The handlers are the politicians of the community and the rabbis and all the mahars that take care of the community. It's a structure of many people which aims to keep the community intact and basically force all youngsters to remain within the community. You pay a very high price if you decide to go and serve. It basically throws you out of the community, which is something that for young people is not something that they will tend to do. So this gives the Haredi community, Haredi handlers, enormous power over their youngsters and it basically keeps them all out of, of, of service because when they stay in, you know, they get married at a fairly young age, they have children. By the time they get off yeshiva, they, they decide to, to move on to something else. If they ever do, they're no longer useful for, for the IDF, if you're 26 or 27, you have four kids, you have no profession, you have no, there's no point in drafting you at this point. So basically this new arrangement turned the whole community into, well, not draft dodgers. It's all legal. It's all legal or used to be legal up until two years ago when the Supreme Court ultimately decided that this arrangement is not legal. But for a couple of decades that was the legal arrangement. And the Haredi community, I said up until the mid-70s, more than 60% of young Haredis served in the military. This went down pretty quickly to less than 10%. So we ended up with a community that is no longer serving. Now this could have been an anecdote had haredis remained 2 or 3% of the population, the share of the population they were back in 1948. However, in parallel to everything we talk about, and this is something, you know, the Haredi challenge, I don't call it a problem, I call it a challenge. It's a challenge to Israel. The Haredi challenge is a multi layered challenge. And, and it would not have been in challenge had the community not dramatically grown. So they are now about 13% of the population. And by, you know, if you look at projections for the future, this community is projected to become 15% and 20% and 25% and within 30 years it will become about a third of the country.
- [20:39]
Aviv
Now they're already 25% of the kindergarteners.
- [20:42]
Shmuel Rasner
Exactly. So if they are community with a very high rate of retention, people aren't leaving the community. Most Haredis stay within the confines of the Haredi community. The community is growing and suddenly you find yourself with, you know, it's not 2% of the people not serving, it's 13% of the people not serving. And suddenly people such as your brother in law or such as my son, they look around and they see a community of 80,000, that's the number we have now. 80,000 people who are within this age range where they essentially have to serve and they do not serve. So you call in whatever 300,000, 400,000 people to serve and you, you know, many of them are civilians. They are taken out of their, you know, year of internship, legal internship, or from their offices in the high tech sector, or small business owners, restaurant owners, Whatever they do, they're called in to serve for three months, for four months, for five months, for eight months. They, they, they have to serve. And These other people, 80,000 in number, do not serve. Now what could we achieve had they served? You know, the math is easy. If you call them in, you could release, you could reduce the number of reserve days for other civilians. Cut them by half or by two thirds, or even by 75%. Because one Haredi brigade can release 13 or 12 brigades who now have to, you know, you have to guard an area. Okay, if you have one brigade of people who serve for three years, think for three years. So you have, you have 38 months. Exactly, exactly.
- [23:01]
Aviv
Right. So, so for 2, 000 reservists, they would have 36 months per person taken off of, of their, of their time. So I take away from that two fascinating problems. And I think we're also going to see it on the economic side, which I want to get to in a moment. Israel created the problem. In other words, Israel asked this community how the rest of the country can carry them on its shoulders. It was part of getting their votes in the Knesset to build coalitions. And that's 1 and 2. Just from the way you described how there is a mechanism of control. In other words, if a young person doesn't want this deep ostracization from the community that military service entails, certainly deep within the Hasidic community, certainly deep within, you know, the Yeshiva community. In other words, if you really Haredim is a Diverse group. Right. Some of them do work. Half of Haredi men are absolutely in the workforce. They earn less because their education system doesn't include a lot of math and English. But nevertheless, they do work all their lives. And, but, but if you don't want that deep ostracization, then you're stuck. And that means that if you're the Haredi elites managing this system and you want to keep the young people in because that guarantees the, of the community, you want the service threat to remain. In other words, the country says, you know what, fine, you're not serving, goodbye, good luck, do whatever you want. Anything you want to do at 18 is yours. You are completely exempt. Well, does it then lose this massive mechanism and this massive leverage, this mechanism of control over the, over the young people, or do you think they would still stay in the community?
- [24:41]
Shmuel Rasner
No, I think this could help. And some people suggested such, such remedy to, to the challenge that we have. They say, well, you know, rather than trying to chase them and force them into the, into the military, let's just say, you know, you're all exempt. No money for yeshivas, no stipends for yeshiva students. You're, you're 18, do whatever you want. Yeah, this could have been a solution or some kind of solution. It doesn't solve the problem of the idf. The manpower of the IDF is now becoming an essential part of the issue because of the war, before the war, an idea such as, you know, release them all, tell them to, to go find their, their way. That could have been something that ignites a process of, you know, integration into the fork workforce, into that. They'd have to go and learn something because otherwise they, they can't work in anything. So maybe this could have, could ignite such process. Right now we have a real problem in the military. You know, we cannot go on forever with the number of reserve days that people have to serve. It's becoming an issue for Israelis. So just telling other people, you can go and do whatever you want while our sons and daughters are going to serve, that's, you know, that's an issue that is not just an issue of how it looks. It also an issue for society to deal with in the sense that some reservists could say, well, you know, you're going to let them off the hook, I'm not coming either.
- [26:41]
Aviv
You know, how did they justify it? You have, first of all, you talk to them. I hate to say them, I'm a Jerusalemite born and bred. They're all over. We talk to each other. I had Haredi, an ex Hurayi student, sitting next to me in my classroom at Hebrew University. It's very accessible. They're very loud. We, I don't know what secular, traditional, religious Israelis, we all belong to, to different. We're very loud. We're constantly talking, chatting, sometimes yelling. So they is very close and very constantly sort of interacting with each other. How do they justify it? They know there's a war, there's 450 dead soldiers from the war, something like that. That's without October 7th. That's just literally in the fighting, there's, you know, many tens of thousands whose businesses have closed. How do they justify sitting this out? And we know also from polls that they're very right wing in their views and they certainly want Hamas to be defeated, defeated and Hezbollah to be defeated, but they're sitting it out. How do they tell themselves, talk to themselves about that?
- [27:43]
Shmuel Rasner
Well, they have, they have several reasons or excuses that they mention when, when you talk to them about the situation, the first of which is, well, you don't really need us. You, you, you can do without us. The military is large enough as it is. You know, find all the people who aren't doing anything, who aren't studying Torah and you know, get them in and you'll have enough people. You managed with us thus far. Why, why suddenly the, you know, the urgent need. It's not a real problem. That's one, one excuse. I hear a lot. The second one is, you know, studying Torah is as important in, if not more important than military service. This is what really guard us from our enemies. If you have such, you know, deep belief in the power of Torah to guard the, the people of Israel, the Jews from their enemies, then you can say, well, you know, you, you do your job by holding a rifle. We do our job, our parallel job, by holding the, the Talmud, the Gemara and, and studying all day. And this is our part. We, we do, you know, this is our part of the deal. Each, each of us has believe it.
- [29:05]
Aviv
That by the way, brings count Israeli counters that, you know, from secular Israelis. Great. So put all your yeshivas on the border because that's where we really need the protection. Right? Do they not, do they believe that in some deep, mystical, spiritual sense Torah study protects the Jewish people over time and through history? They, they do absolutely believe that, and I think I believe that. But do they literally believe that there is literally a kind of dome force field over the country protecting it from its literal, immediate physical enemies from the Iranian missile fleet? Because they are studying Torah. How much is that from your understanding?
- [29:46]
Shmuel Rasner
I assume that some of them believe it in the literal way that you just described and some of them believe it in a more, you know, in a vaguer kind of way. You know, it's important that in parallel to having a military, we keep doing this thing because in the long term, if we, if we all stop doing this, even for a short period of time, this will harm the Jewish people in, in ways that, that we cannot currently imagine. A third, a third reason that we keep hearing from them is that the IDF is not well prepared, impaired to absorb young Haredis and let them live their lives in a way that will, you know, you get in haredi, you get out haredi. That's, that's, that's the slogan that they tend to use. You know, the military must develop venues through which they can serve in a way that does not harm their, or erode their ability to retain their way of life and their culture. There is some truth to this claim. Then again, if the IDF were to be told that they need to set up the bases and the places in which haredis can serve as haredis, and if the IDF does this, it will get 10,000 new, you know, battle ready haredis, the IDF will be able to handle such tasks. We doesn't do it because, you know, just preparing everything to get disappointed when these people just switch to a different excuse. That's, that's something that is not, it's, it's not a high priority for the idf. The IDF will be able to deal with such tasks. If it is convinced that this is really what, what is standing between young haredis and military service.
- [32:05]
Aviv
We should say we have this natural experiment that's been done 25 years ago. When I was a young soldier, I started out in one unit in an infantry brig of the regular infantry brigades. And after the medics course I was brought in. You have to volunteer. I was asked and I agreed to go to a special unit, the Haredi Nahal it was called at the time that was set up to be a unit that could absorb young Haredi men. And actually the first cohorts were kids who had dropped out of yeshiva, sometimes really suffered after dropping out of yeshiva, really disconnected from their community, had went through that ostracization without having anything to do with the military and to try and rebuild their lives. I mean, we're just living detached and alone and depressed and with a lot of social problems. There is this phenomenon in the Khari community, as in any community of young men. Wandering a little bit lost. And they joined the army as a way to rebuild a new life. And they wanted that to be something that was a path back also in some ways to their community. There was a group of rabbis who set up a nonprofit that came to the army and worked with the army to build this. First it was a company, then a battalion, then a brigade to be Haredi. And there was a mandatory rabbis class every day, Mondays and Thursdays, and on Shabbat, you read the Torah. So the Torah went with us into the field. When we were doing training in the field, an actual Torah scroll for the reading and the level of kosher food was a higher standard standard of kashrut. And the whole, the whole thing overseen very carefully by a group of Haredi rabbis who kept visiting constantly to make sure. And the army went with this project, and the project still exists. It's now a whole brigade. And Haredim didn't come. In other words, the first couple of very early cohorts were groups of 20, 30, 40 Haredi young men. But the hundreds that filled out the ranks were just religious Zionists who said, oh, wait a second, they were going to serve anyway in the paratroopers. But they just said, wait a minute, a second. There's an infantry brigade with a rabbi's class every day. Well, that's fun. That's my kind of place. And that's what it actually became. So we actually, the army has already gone through this experiment. It has seen what happens, and the project has utterly failed. They're not going to join even if the conditions are met. Which means that the conditions of the army wasn't the fundamental question. I asked them, you know, the biggest medical charities in Israel that are in billion dollar hospitals, the biggest medical charities in Israel are Haredi. They have this extraordinary network of charities and NGOs that help people in a thousand ways. They have their own rescue services that rescue everyone and everyone. But the Haredim built it, and the Haredim are most of the staff. Why can't they replace, under a national service civilian rubric overseen by rabbis in their civilian clothes, a third of the medical core of the idf? Why can't we find. In other words, there's so much creativity there. There's so much serious, you know, problem solving for their community that is constantly happening among. There's a very clever community that knows how to build real communal strength. Why aren't they doing that in order to serve? In other words, they're not looking for ways to make it work. They're looking for ways to ensure it can never work. And that's the part that, for me, drives the real frustration. Why aren't they replacing half of the medical course? Chabad rabbi once said to me, it's not about where you are, it's about which way you're facing. Okay, so they're in one place, but they're not facing toward, well, how do we solve this? They're facing away from how do we solve this?
- [35:49]
Shmuel Rasner
They don't think it needs to be resolved. They are happy with the way it is now. They think that they are fulfilling their role by sitting and studying. And again, if you want to be more cynical about it, I'd say that some of their, you know, leaders find it more comfortable for the community not to serve because this allows them to keep the community together and to avoid all the things that the Haredi community would like to avoid. Now, we need to remember what is being Haredi all about. It's about non mixing with the rest of society. It's about keeping themselves separate. You mentioned their clothes and their food and the cities in which they live. The Haredis do not want to mix in. If you serve in some way, and even if you're just being medical corps, even if you're keeping to yourself in separate units, you are. I cannot deny that there is some risk. You know, in order to serve, they need to take some risk. Not just risk to their lives, but also the risk of some level of higher integration into Israeli culture, Israeli society, Israeli ethos. If you have. If you have Haredi men going into battle and, God forbid, getting killed, well, suddenly Memorial Day is becoming something that you need to think about more seriously. Memorial Day is one of the most powerful cultural symbols of Israeli society, and the Haredis right now are not truly a part of it. They don't take part because they have nothing to remember on Memorial Day. It's not their youngsters, it's not their families. It's not as if they're happy on Memorial Day, but they don't play a real role in creating this cultural symbol of Israeli ness. If they become part of the idf, then this means a slightly higher level of integration, and they do not want this integration to take part. Now, again, if they were 2% of the population or 3%, I'd say, okay, we can tolerate that. We are pluralistic people. We do appreciate all the values and all the great things that, you know, you mentioned that Haredi society has a lot of great things to offer to the world, and I agree. And this could have been great had they been 2% of the population, but when they become 13% of the population and then 15 or 20 or 25% of the population, it's no longer sustainable. You cannot, you cannot have a military and call it the, the, the people's army when a quarter of the, of the population is exempt from it. It's, it's, it's not something it cannot hold. So either they join in or you need to, to change the whole structure of Israeli society in, in ways that, that can be very harmful to Israel's not just culture, but also security. We, we need the military. We October 7th was proof that we need a large, strong and watchful military. And if we don't have it, we will be butchered by our enemies. This is not a, this is not some kind of, you know, a vague threat. This is very concrete. We need manpower on our borders to guard us from vicious enemies. And then we, we need to find a way to make these people, you know, participate in it.
- [40:26]
Aviv
I want to suggest that it's already falling apart for them and the example of Memorial Day is a good one. So for, for example, 15 years ago, Haredi ministers who, the Ashkenazi ones from united to our Judaism from that party wouldn't actually be ministers. They would only be deputy ministers until a few years ago because they didn't want to swear allegiance to the state of Israel, which a full minister is required to do. And then there was some legal problem with, not with being the deputy Housing minister for many years and not actually being the housing minister, but there's some legal powers of the housing minister that the deputy housing minister was using. And there was some technical legal problems and the courts were getting upset. And because there was the technical legal problem, the head of the UTJ went to the Garera Rebbe and said can I? And the Garrebbe said, what? Are we still doing that? Of course you can. That's not a thing. This fundamental non Zionism suddenly didn't matter when it actually mattered, right? When it was about whether or not we can retain the massive budgets of the Housing Ministry. And it's a very pragmatic sense of an ability to suddenly. Well, the same thing happened for Memorial Day. The Haredi community does not mark Memorial Day. And when you ask them, they say Jews commemorate dead Jews in a hundred ways. And in a hundred different days we have like, I don't know, five different fast days for various kinds of dead Jews. What we don't do is this kind of Roman Empire, you know, militarizing of marching and formations and standing at a temple dungeon before stone monuments. That's a goyish way to do commemoration. And it works for them. And it's beautiful and great. It's not Jewish. And then sometime around 10 years ago, ministers of the haredi parties, less than 10 years ago, maybe seven years ago, began actually representing the government in official Memorial day commemorations, carrying wreaths, handing them to women, soldiers, wearing pants. In other words, not dressed as a Haredi woman needs to dress and just being part of that representation. And how do Haredic communities change profoundly on things that seemed principled? And they do it with a very simple mechanism, which is how conservative societies change always, which is by pretending they didn't. This thing, it was never a real thing. It was never a bit like, they've been fighting, screaming and fighting about this for years and years, and it suddenly didn't matter. Why? Because it didn't work anymore. It's already falling apart for them. And the other way we see it is. And in the last election, United Torah Judaism was an absolute apoplectic fit. They were shocked. They were horrified because huge numbers of their young people in their internal polling were going to go vote for the far right, not for United Torah Judaism. And so their campaign became a campaign of, you listen to your rabbis. You follow your rabbis. Your rabbis are, well, who tells you what is good and just in this world? And they're losing the young people. And when the young people are Israelizing, you know, 40 years ago, haredim didn't curse like the rest of Israeli Jews. Today, they curse exactly like the rest of Israeli Jews. Their accent has become standard Israeli Hebrew. They're integrating. It's happening. Maybe we're just, you know, the next step is the. Is the. Is the shift of politics toward the politics of the general majority. I'm suggesting, I don't know, because culturally, they're more Israeli than they were when I talked to them 25 years ago as a young soldier.
- [43:54]
Shmuel Rasner
It's true and not true. They are culturally more integrated into some of the cultural habits of Israelis. But on at least two very important fronts, we don't see any movement. And, you know, I could show you, because I did the research that 25 and 30 years ago, people were giving me the same speeches. They were saying, well, economic integration is on its way. It's a slow process. Just let it happen. It will gradually happen. They said the same thing about the draft. You know, we didn't go through the whole history of the draft law, but draft laws came and went. And there was The Tal committee and then the Tal Law. And people were betting on a slow process of integration without having to use any coercive means to integrate the Haredis. And by and large, 20 or 25 years later, we look at the numbers of, of the draft, of, of joining the IDF and economic numbers, nothing changed. And if things change, they, they change for the worse. While the community was growing, their contribution to Israel's economy declined. Declined. There's no other way of saying this. Now again, you can live with a 2, 3%, maybe 5% community who say, well, we don't really do the work thing. We prefer to study Torah and we get some stipends because we are very poor and we have large families and the country supports us, etc. At some point when they become 13% of the population, suddenly we working Israelis, finding ourselves supporting a lifestyle not because of necessity. These are not poor people because they're, you know, miserable and, and can't cope with, with, you know, studying anything. This is a, this is a choice. They choose a lifestyle that forces me and you to pay our taxes to support them. Now, again, there is a limit. There is a limit. You know, the, the Kohelet Institute did some calculation of how much money an average Haredi family is getting from the state versus how much money an average non Haredi Jewish family gives to the state. And the gap is huge. It's dramatic. The average Jewish Israeli pays the state 7,000 shekels every day, every month. I'm sorry, the average, that's, that's the.
- [47:03]
Aviv
Net after you, you know, everybody gets benefits, everybody pays taxes. The non haredi Jewish household on average pays into the system 7,000 more than they get out of the system.
- [47:14]
Shmuel Rasner
Exactly. And the Haredi, the average haredi family gets 5,000 shekels from the state more than it gives. So you see a difference here. It's 12,000 shekels difference.
- [47:33]
Aviv
And you see it also municipally, in other words. An economist once explained to me the budget of the city of Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem, which is 40% Palestinian, and among the Jews, half of that 60% which is Jewish is Haredi. And it is one of the poorest cities in Israel. And a lot of it has to do with low levels of tax payments because of low educational levels and low levels of work participation. And so to sort of close the budget, every year Jerusalem has to receive a gift, a nice little package from the state, from the national government of about a billion shekels. And what's interesting about that is who pays most of the Taxes. The answer is the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, right? And so the city of Jerusalem, the.
- [48:23]
Shmuel Rasner
Only reason that Jerusalem can function is that people in Richon, Litzion and Herzliya and Etania in Tel Aviv and Ranana are paying their taxes, Right. To preserve the ability of Jerusalem to function. Because otherwise Jerusalem stands still.
- [48:40]
Aviv
Right? Tel Aviv just hands Jerusalem a billion shackles a year, and not by choice. And that's how, that's how the Harid, that is kind of a little sort of how the Haredi economy essentially functions. So solutions, Let me. Not solutions. I take this from one of the interviews you had about the military question, but I'm going to take it to the economic side. It's unsustainable. Nobody knows how to change it. Netanyahu has is a man who prides himself on his American style understanding of the free market and on his sort of conservative American economics and reforms. And incidentally, back in 2002, when the country was in a deep recession because of the second Intifada, he passed reforms that cut subsidies to Haredim and drove something like a 10% rise in haredi male participation in the workforce over the next two years. Netanyahu very much understands that people are susceptible to these incentives and believes in these incentives. And yet to preserve his coalitions over the last 17 years or 15 years, whatever it is, he has has massively expanded this Haredi welfare state that has become an enormous drain on the Israeli economy because it is unproductive subsidies and it subsidizes people. Not. In other words, they would not be able to not work if this wasn't paid for by somebody else. So there's no way out. We're trapped in this and we're going down this road until it crashes.
- [50:12]
Shmuel Rasner
Well, I, I thought it crashed on October 7th. October 7th did change the minds of many Israelis who tended to believe in the, you know, the processes, the process is coming myth, you know, the, the story that we've been told for the last 20 years, just wait patiently, just let them, let them go through the, this process that they must go through in order to, to Israelize themselves. And they'll eventually come. When October 7th happened and Israel was in grave need for manpower and still nothing changed. And the Haredi, you know, Haredi men didn't. The share of Haredi men going into the military didn't rise, not even one iota. Many Israelis realized that this is not going to happen by itself, that the country, the state, needs to change its habit in order for something to be altered. Now, you're right. The issue here is very simple. It's choosing the long term over the short term. Because right now what we have is a coalition that chooses the short term. They need the fingers of the votes of the Haredis to preserve the coalition so they do not make the necessary changes. We need for some time to have a coalition that does not depend on the Haredi vote and can just change the rules. You know, Haredis are human. If you use the usual, you know, stick and carrot methodology, they'll change their behavior. If you say, well, you can no longer get exempt from the IDF and go to yeshiva and get a stipend and participate in, you know, get some help, some subsidies to, to buy your first apartment, etc. If the country says, well, if you didn't serve these X and Y and Z benefits are no longer available to you, then Haredis will have to find a way to, to participate in order to maintain their ability to economically survive.
- [52:46]
Aviv
So you're optimistic just because the state of Israel built out this?
- [52:52]
Shmuel Rasner
I'm not sure I'm optimistic. I'm just saying, you know, this is what needs to happen, whether I'm optimistic. Look, look, this becomes trickier again because of the overall process of the rapid growth of the Haredi community. So we are very near the time after which it will no longer be possible to even dream about the coalition that does not depend on Haredi vote. If they have the veto power, if they reach this level of growth where they have the veto power, I don't know what's going to happen. The result will be a rapid decline in Israel's ability to keep a first rate economy. And for Israel to have a first rate economy is not just, is not just about living well. It's also about our ability to survive in this region. If we don't have first rate economy, we don't have technological innovation, we don't have scientific edge, we don't have iron dome and lasers and a powerful military. This is, this is about our survival, not just about our ability to live comfortably and get nice food and great wine.
- [54:30]
Aviv
My last point, everything you've said to me, I am optimistic. And part of it is that I'm sometimes accused of being overly optimistic about everything. But we know, and we have decades of data, that they are responsive to the same incentives that all of us are responsive to. And those incentives, look, we're going to run out of money for the Haredi welfare state, for that unique sort of bubble of a welfare state within the rest of Israel's welfare state. And we're going to actually start suffering military setbacks if the economy declines and the manpower isn't up to scratch. And that danger they're going to be responsive to. And the question, I do think that they genuinely believe what they say and I think that they've built out a community that has these deep seated commitments. However, they're not stupid, they're deeply pragmatic. They know how this works. They, you know, they don't learn enough math and English in their education system, but they, they're not illiterate in how economics works and they have competent ministers and competent, you know, budgetary policies in cities controlled by Haredim that are all haredi cities, etc. And so we will reach a point where we have no choice and we will pivot or we will crash and then we will get back up and pivot. Israel has its third currency right now. We have this incredible. We're incredibly fiscally responsible. We have a debt to GDP ratio of something like 60%. America has more than double that. We're incredibly fiscally responsible. But we became fiscally responsible after crashing worse than Venezuela. So I am optimistic in the sense that they are susceptible to incentives. Israel maintains this and everybody who ever wanted Haredim at their side did this to them. If you offer me money to sit at home, I might sit at home. I might go out there and build beautiful things in the world. But having to, not having a choice is a beautiful thing. So somebody needs to stop paying for it and eventually it'll get too expensive.
- [56:37]
Shmuel Rasner
And the last word, the question is whether before we do it, we have to go through a catastrophe even worse than the one we are having now, which, you know. Yeah, I agree with you. If there is a catastrophe that truly threatens our ability to survive, we will probably come around to do what we need to do if we survive. So, so the question is, what type of catastrophe are we waiting for before we act? I was hoping that October 7th was a catastrophe dramatic enough for us to understand that, that now is the time to act. But, but maybe not. Maybe, maybe we, we, we need to see more of it before we get back to our senses and do what we, what needs to be done. And again, and it's not just about military service, it's about the whole infrastructure that currently retains the Haredi community. We need to destroy the infrastructure and start afresh. This doesn't mean that Haredis will not be able to be Haredis. I respect their choices, I respect their culture, I respect their wish to do this and not that. To live to wear these clothes and not other clothes. I have no beef with the Haredis as long as they do. What are other people, what other people do, Go to work, pay their taxes.
- [58:19]
Aviv
Do their duties, what Haredee England and America do. These are very big, very complex issues. We're not going to stop talking about them because Israelis aren't stopping to talk about them. And we will also talk to members of the Haredi community and people from within the Haredi community and put all these questions very bluntly and very clearly. To them. The conversations in Israel and Hebrew are blunt, are clear, and so it's good to get it out in English. Thank you so much, Moel, for joining me. People check out themad.com T H E M A D A D Just the aggregation of polls will let you know what all the polls from all the different newspapers are all saying about Bibi's standing and the opposition standing. And you'll be clever, you'll be smart, you'll talk to people about Israel and be able to say, well, Israelis think and like us journalists who can very confidently say these things. That's one of our sources. Thank you so much for joining me.
- [59:20]
Shmuel Rasner
Thank you for the kind words.
- [59:24]
Aviv
Sam.