Elections for the World Zionist Congress show that the ultra-Orthodox can, and will, fall in line. Here’s how Israel can learn to do the same.
For most Israelis, the World Zionist Congress is a memory from boring high school history lessons: a momentous gathering held in 1897 Basel, where Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, unveiled his utopian vision for a Jewish national homeland in the Land of Israel. Yet despite its archaic name and image, the Congress is still very much alive. Today it is a fiercely contested arena for influence over billions of shekels in Israeli public funds – and more importantly, over how that money is distributed.
Indeed, beneath its nostalgic façade wedges as a historical footnotes somewhere between Balfour and Ben-Gurion, the Zionist Congress holds real sway, particularly when it comes to land use and matters of religion and state. This is largely due to its impact on key national institutions like the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael), both of which oversee significant annual budgets. Through its delegates, the Congress effectively decides how these funds are allocated.
Elections to the Congress are held every five years and began last month in the United States – the most influential voting bloc, accounting for roughly a third of the Congress’s composition. Another third comes from Israel, its share distributed in line with the current Knesset’s party makeup. The final third is drawn from other Jewish communities around the world. And here is where things start to get interesting – or perhaps, surprisingly revealing.
Despite their long-standing opposition to women’s participation in politics, the parties billed as ultra-Orthodox, Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ, comprised of Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah), are showing unexpected flexibility on this issue. The same parties that bar women from running on their slates for the Knesset are suddenly embracing gender equality, or at least when it comes to the Zionist Congress.
Take Eretz HaKodesh, for example, a list affiliated with UTJ. Not only did it meet the Congress’s mandatory female representation quota, it exceeded it. According to unpublished data from the Glazer Center at the Jewish People Policy Institute, 56 percent of Eretz HaKodesh candidates are women, while only 9 percent are rabbis.
Shas, for its part, claims that its international slate, Shas Olami, was formed to give voice to traditional Sephardi communities in shaping Jewish education and religious life. Its list includes 10 rabbis and 17 women, meaning over 40 percent of its 42 candidates are female.
It’s a striking contrast from a party that still refuses to allow a single woman to run for the Israeli parliament.
The dissonance is strange. How does a party like UTJ, one that enforces rabbinical decrees down to the precise cut of a suit or the angle of a hat, suddenly field a list where women outnumber men?
The answer is simple: they had no choice.
Several years ago, the Zionist Congress instituted a rule: every list must include at least 30 percent women. That quota later rose to 40 percent. The ultra-Orthodox parties realized that if they wanted to continue to have access to the significant financial resources funneled through the World Zionist Organization, they would have to play by the rules. That meant including women on their lists.
There were no protests. No boycotts. No fiery speeches in the Knesset or last-minute walkouts. Just compliance. When presented with an immovable condition and clear incentives – money, power, influence – the ultra-Orthodox parties adapted. And quickly.
It’s a lesson Israel’s domestic leadership should take seriously, especially in dealing with the long-standing tensions between the state and the Haredi sector: specifically refusal to teach core curriculum subjects in schools or the blanket exemption from otherwise mandatory military service.
Take Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, for example. Just a few weeks ago, he was filmed dancing at a wedding to the lyrics of an anti-Zionist, anti-IDF song. It was a reminder of the duality some Haredi politicians embody: by day they serve in government, by night they celebrate sedition. And they do so with impunity, because there are no clear red lines, no enforcement and no consequences.
But what’s happening at the Zionist Congress tells a different story. It shows that when conditions are non-negotiable, and when a tangible reward is offered for cooperation, the ultra-Orthodox fall in line.
This isn’t about shaming or alienating an entire sector. It’s about establishing enforceable norms that apply equally to all segments of society.
Israel’s civil society, and more importantly, its political leadership, can draw an important conclusion here: rules matter and they also work. When boundaries are put in place and enforced, the ultra-Orthodox adapt, even those who have spent decades resisting the very premise of change.
No, they didn’t suddenly embrace feminism, nor did they have a cultural revolution. They simply made a pragmatic calculation. Faced with a choice between adaptation and losing influence, they chose the former. As Herzl famously said: If you will it, it is no dream.