The law abrogating the reasonableness standard enacted by the Knesset last week does not, in itself, herald the end of democracy. But the manner in which it was passed shows the willingness of the ultra-Orthodox-settler-Netanyahu government to continue its political coup d’état while trampling the will of the majority of Israelis.

Those who will pay the price, in “cash,” for this conduct are the ultra-Orthodox (haredim) and the settlers in Judea and Samaria – two religious-messianic enterprises that elicit little sympathy from many Israelis, if not criticism or hatred.

Both groups are perceived, rightly, as advancing a coup over the objection of most Israelis, and if they don’t rethink a new course, they will find themselves facing a majority that will stop supporting their continued prosperity, and perhaps their very existence.

The shocks endured in recent months have cut deep fissures into the Israeli body politic. Even if the “dust settles” on this struggle and the government retracts its intention to continue the revolution it started, things will never be the same. This upheaval has opened the eyes of many Israelis who, until now, had the luxury of being immersed in daily life, and who were willing, for the sake of cohesion and unity, to put up with ideological factions using their resources to promote world views far from the national consensus: the haredi way of life and the settlement enterprise.

The haredim will undoubtedly be the first community to pay a significant price for the current upheaval. The basic data points are well known. The ultra-Orthodox are growing at vertiginous speed; its members evade military service and enjoy budgets that subsidize a way of life featuring Torah study but little work. They bear almost none of the Israeli tax burden, and ideologically reject secular Israel.

Until recently, a large majority of Israelis tolerated the situation. Sometimes they gritted their teeth, sometimes they griped, but they went on shouldering the security and economic burden of the state on behalf of the haredim. The events of the last few months, and the conduct of the government, in full partnership with the haredim, will likely change all that. Utterly blind to reality, the haredim have now gone even further by proposing a new Basic Law: “Torah Study,” which would give draft dodgers a status similar to those serving in the IDF.

The first test will be immediate. As of now, there is no legal basis for exempting the haredim from IDF service. The first thing the Knesset will have to legislate in its next session is a new conscription law. This will have to be done while bonfires are still burning along the Ayalon highway and protesters continue taking to the streets.

Faced with yet another step which the majority of Israelis, the burden bearers, perceive as unfair and exploitative, the tumult of recent days may pale in comparison to what is to come. True, the haredim can do whatever they want under the current government, but short of a complete dictatorship here, they will pay the full price when the next government takes power. The budgets that finance their way of life will be slashed, government support for those who don’t prepare their students for a productive life will be terminated, and rights will be denied to those who don’t serve in the army or at least in civilian national service.

The settlers, whose leadership constitutes the far-Right end of the present government that is championing the judicial overhaul, can also expect to pay a high price. The settlement enterprise, despite its growth and expansion, remains controversial. Some Israelis view it as a risk to democracy, others take exception to it for security reasons.

Many who help finance it do so reluctantly. Many who defend it in the course of their regular or reserve IDF service do so grudgingly. In the wake of these past few months, the settlers, and their hardal (“national-haredi”) leaders, are widely regarded as working determinedly against a liberal-democratic Israel. They are perceived as doing so directly, via the judicial-coup laws, and also indirectly, due to the need for control over the Palestinians as part of the settlement-development process.

Such control continually gnaws at Israel’s image as a democracy. And there is another potential risk posed by the judicial coup: IDF soldiers could find themselves in the dock at the ICC in the Hague for their actions in Judea and Samaria.

Until now, most Israelis have put up with this situation as well. Except for fringe groups preoccupied with the “occupation,” Israelis on the political Left and Center have gritted their teeth and continued serving. Refusal to serve in the territories has been marginal. There is a significant chance this is going to change.

The anger aroused by the willingness of the leaders of “religious Zionism” to trample liberal Israel will boomerang on the Zionist enterprise dearest to them – settlement. This will take the form of refusal to serve, in the near term, and in budget cuts and stalled development once the government changes.

Whatever one thinks about the price to be paid by the haredim and the settlers, none of this bodes well for Israeli society. The predatory conduct of the government, which has created deep chasms between us, may end up inflicting damage on Israel’s various communities and their ways of life. It may cause further damage to the IDF, and make Israelis less disposed to the “mutual responsibility” that is so essential to our survival here.

First published by The Jerusalem Post.

The post Israeli settlers, ultra-Orthodox will pay for trampling over Israel first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

The boycott of Angel Bakery was a spontaneous grassroots response to the trampling of The ultra-Orthodox community’s most cherished symbols.

How would secular members of Kibbutz Ginosar feel if ultra-Orthodox protesters from Mea Shearim came to the main square of the kibbutz to demonstrate against their way of life? Against the things that are important to them?

This was the biggest spontaneous boycott I can remember. Piles of bread and baked goods of all kinds stood completely untouched in our neighborhood grocery store every day. There weren’t always suitable substitutes, yet no one touched them. Because the Haredi public decided to stand up for themselves. Not to let others walk all over them; not to turn the other cheek.

Omer Barlev now claims he didn’t actually apologize; perhaps he’ll keep trying to wiggle his way out of it. But it doesn’t matter what Barlev calls it; it’s clear he fully realized that his behavior required him to go to Bnei Brak and deliver a letter of apology. Above all, it required him to atone for the disgrace of having violated the honor of the Torah.

Because even if Barlev tries to deny it, the message came through: The Haredi community will not stay still when our most cherished symbols are trampled.

First published by ‘The Times of Israel’.

The post Barlev understood the message first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

A possible result is that the criticism will become even more incendiary, rather than softened or silenced entirely.

A bill that would expand Israel’s anti-racism statutes to include incitement against the haredim (ultra-Orthodox) was approved last week by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, and will likely become law. The proposed legislation is bad in every way. It is bad for freedom of speech. It is bad for the right to engage in substantive debate. It is bad for the ultra-Orthodox themselves.

The culture of silencing, which has many unfortunate implications, including for protests against the government, will, if this goes ahead, be enshrined in legislation. And as experience shows, the result may prove far worse than acrimonious public debate.

In recent years, and even more distinctly in the past few weeks, a barrage of criticism has been directed at haredi social and political conduct. Criticism of the ultra-Orthodox is nothing new, and the special status they enjoy with regard to the military draft and other issues has been met with harsh rebuke by the broader Israeli public.

But it seems that the haredi community’s demographic growth, along with the behavior of many of its members during the corona crisis, has sharpened the criticism. This intensified even further with the haredi support for the judicial overhaul initiative and the community’s recent budgetary demands, amounting to billions of shekels which reinforce the community’s insularity, rather than encouraging its integration into Israeli society.

Given the circumstances, haredi distress is understandable. Many haredim feel that they are being judged harshly, giving way to hatred in some cases – a situation which they find uncomfortable, to say the least. Because of this, three United Torah Judaism Knesset members sponsored a bill that would include incitement against the haredi public in the Israeli penal code under “incitement to racism.”

The bill’s explanatory notes state that we are “witnessing a phenomenon… of racist incitement against the Haredi population. The incitement is (also) being perpetrated by public officials.” In other words, say the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox sector, the admonishment against us is too brutal. Even public figures are denouncing us, for goodness’ sake; so let’s have the law stipulate that such tough criticism is a criminal offense.

This is a particularly bad idea for several reasons. The offense of “incitement to racism” is too vague, and its enforcement policy is less than clear. Despite several Supreme Court rulings – including the ruling upholding the conviction of Rabbi Elba for incitement to racism based on his article, “Examination of the Rules Concerning the Murder of non-Jews,” – the scope of the offense and how it should be legally interpreted is too ambiguous. However, the fact that there are few examples of the attorney-general bringing charges for incitement diminishes the risk associated with the proposed legislation.

Nevertheless, the risk does still exist. Due to the anti-incitement statute’s ambiguity, it is hard to anticipate when the line would be crossed between legitimate criticism and incitement against the haredi public. Thus, the very fact of defining criticism of haredim as a criminal offense could “criminalize” Israeli public discourse.

The proposed law is expected to start a race to the bottom, at the end of which criticism of any group could become “incitement to racism.” The crime of incitement to racism – already controversial in its current form – was enacted to prevent harm to groups that are by nature ethnic or religious minorities, often weak and subjected to speech that could result in grievous violence. Extending this to groups and sectors that are criticized for their conduct could prove dangerous.

We live in a reality where every group in Israeli society feels that it is a minority. The secular feel this way, as do the National Religious, the settlers of Judea and Samaria, and other subgroups. If criticism of the ultra-Orthodox is determined to be a criminal offense, then why not criticism of the settlers, who have been repeatedly dosed with poison? And what about “leftists” who, according to certain leaders of the Israeli right, have “traitor” as their middle name?

This bill, whether enacted or shelved, is also bad for the ultra-Orthodox themselves. For a variety of reasons, some ideological and some utilitarian, the haredi leadership consistently adheres to a policy in which the State of Israel and its non-haredi citizens don’t “count.” In the face of this conduct, along with the political power at their disposal, the haredim have been met with opprobrium.

With the proposal of this new legislation, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the haredim want to do with Israel whatever they wish and, accordingly, silence criticism directed their way by wielding yet more political power. A possible, perhaps probable, result is that this criticism will become even more incendiary, rather than softened or silenced entirely.

Today’s Israel is a “state of all its minorities” – divided into different groups and communities – and the tone that characterizes the current political and public discourse is more strident than ever. And yet, precisely because of these divisions, the silencing of criticism via criminal law would both undermine freedom of expression and threaten our ability to engage in debate – with raised voices but not with violence.

I hope that public discourse here will become more substantive and much less saturated with mutual animosity. But the way to get there is not by criminalizing criticism.

First published by The Jerusalem Post.

The post Freedom of speech at risk for haredi critics first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Precisely this week, in the Hebrew year 2448, we received the Torah at Mount Sinai, and ever since then, the greatest hope of every Haredi mother is that her son will keep the tradition, learn that exact same Torah, and invest all his energies in meditating upon it.

I remain happily devoted to Jewish tradition, even if that adherence means that my son, who attends “exemption” institutions, receives only 55 percent of the funding allocated to any other Israeli student — despite the fact that my husband and I pay all the taxes required by the state (and that’s a lot of taxes).

My 3-year-old son, who started municipal preschool this year, studies in a storeroom that was converted into a kindergarten. Next year, he’ll be upgraded to a “caravan” (a trailer). Two years from now, he’ll be “promoted” to something even better – “The Cave.” This is a windowless basement room carved into the bedrock under a Talmud Torah building that went up in the 1970s and has not been renovated since.

In the community where I live, a third of the boys study in caravans or storerooms that have been converted into classrooms, while the rest learn in a building that was built in the early 1970s — small classrooms, no auxiliary rooms, and a 200-square-meter (some 2,000 square feet) yard for 800 children. The local council head — full disclosure, my husband and our young son’s father — has warned the Ministry of Education countless times that the structure does not meet earthquake resistance standards. Only after continual pleading and tremendous pressure was a renovation budget allocated. Why do we Haredim have to beg for things the general public takes for granted?

My fellow mothers and I have only one modest entreaty: that our children actually receive the 55% they are entitled to by law. So why is the Haredi public, of which I am a proud member, met with such contempt when my Knesset representatives demand that the disparities be addressed by the Ministry of Finance and that years of eroding conditions be remedied? Antisemitic remarks worthy of Goebbels or Strasser? Why are we called bloodsuckers when all I’m asking is that my son be allowed to receive half the funding enjoyed by the son of any non-Haredi mother?

Why is my legitimate demand again bringing demonstrators to the streets? Last month, they denounced the Haredim as part of the protest against the judicial reform; this month, the hate speech is being directed at my child. I don’t see the connection between this behavior and safeguarding democracy. Perhaps you, my protestor siblings, are looking for reasons to hate Haredim? And maybe the whole reason for your hatred is the fear of a community that venerates a supreme value, the eternal Torah. Maybe the great hatred is actually fear of a community that, despite all the opposition and contempt, is not afraid to cling to its empowering, elevating, invigorating values. Do some people fear my community’s growth and the values I represent enough to take to the streets with these shallow and superficial condemnations?

Even if some find my values scary, I am not going to give them up. I see no reason to apologize or to justify my decision to adhere to the Torah of my ancestors and to educate my children in accordance with its light. Even if that causes them to be restricted to a 55% budget. But I do have the right to ask that the law be upheld, that the finance minister fix the dilapidated conditions, and that the state budget give my son the meager funding to which he is legally entitled.

First published by ‘The Times of Israel’.

The post What Haredi mothers want first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

The newly proposed draft exemption framework for the haredim (ultra-Orthodox) spells disaster for the State of Israel. At its core is monetary compensation for IDF soldiers in exchange for what amounts to a global exemption of the haredim from military service.

In the short term, it constitutes an official disavowal of the aspiration to equality and of the “people’s army” model. In the long term it may lead to military decline and economic collapse.

As an exercise in risk management, Israel’s politicians once again prefer to acquiesce to the haredim, this time with support from the IDF and the Finance Ministry, which wants rapid growth. The politicians have preferred this to fighting for the ideal of equality so that the Zionist project can survive.

In two months, the current draft arrangement will expire, and the government will have to present an alternative. Given the power the haredim wield in the governing coalition, that alternative will most certainly not entail a more equal sharing of the burden. Resolution of this issue would also ease haredi demands for judicial reform, another bonus for the government

Thus, the IDF and the defense minister are promoting a “revolutionary” arrangement. In general terms the arrangement offers a “you serve-you get” formula. The higher the “quality” of one’s military service – combat or high-tech/intelligence duties – the longer one’s service will be and the more generous the compensation.

If you’re a clerk at the Kirya army base, your service will be short and you’ll get a standard military salary. If you’re a fighter in the Caracal Battalion, you’ll serve for a longer period and be showered with financial benefits. A minimum wage for service, study and apartment-purchase benefits, and more.

All this wonderfulness is, in essence, hush money. In “exchange” for it, the IDF and the Defense Ministry are willing to advocate lowering the haredi exemption age, such that the haredim will effectively be exempt from military service altogether.

The non-haredim will serve, while their sense of injustice and of unequal treatment will be numbed by government money. This is a perfect tradeoff for this government. IDF and Defense Ministry support for the proposed framework will soften public opposition and make it possible to close a “historic deal” with the haredim.

Among the proposal’s supporters are those who cannot be suspected of disregarding equality. They admit the deal stinks but take a realpolitik approach: past attempts to draft the haredim have failed, so it’s better to pursue the “real” than the “ideal.”

The significant benefit to Israel, they reassure themselves and us, is that the haredim will join the labor market. According to them, if the haredim are exempted from military service, they’ll abandon their yeshivot and enter the workforce – and Israel’s GDP will skyrocket.

But this is incorrect on all counts. It’s a bad deal in terms of values, but also from a cost-benefit perspective, as it is based on faulty assumptions.

The first casualty of the deal, should it be implemented, is the “people’s army” model, which was built at a time when the entire country was a battlefront, and which is still essential for the country’s survival. The model has indeed eroded over the years. In the 1990s, the conscription rate among those for whom the draft was mandatory was 75%, but by 2022 it had dropped to 69% for males.

Part of the decline is explained by a significant increase in the share of haredim among conscription candidates, but another portion is due to a decrease in motivation to enlist. The erosion of the people’s army model also manifests in public attitudes.

A 2021 Israel Democracy Institute survey found that 47% of Israeli Jews believe that compulsory conscription should be abolished and that the IDF should be professionalized; 42% oppose such a move. Not surprisingly, haredi support for this far-fetched idea reaches 80%.

Rather than fighting this trend, the new proposed deal will significantly exacerbate it. While today there is a demand, at least in principle, for equality in burden sharing, the deal will extinguish that too, for a handful of shekels. Imagine a Gen-Z teenager who gets his tzav rishon (“first notice”) from the army. He lives in a materialistic society and his life revolves around social media figures and images that have nothing whatsoever to do with the State of Israel, its values and its troubles.

On the news channels he sees how haredim go about their business without any commitment to serve and put themselves at risk. If he’s from an affluent background, what incentive does he have to show up at the IDF induction center? And who exactly will show up? Those for whom the financial benefits beckon.

The IDF will go from being the “people’s army” to the “poor people’s army.” The ability to attract the best of our youth to the army’s essential combat and technological units will simply not exist. The worse the problem gets, the more the state will have to pay in order to maintain an army that will come more and more to resemble a professional military – something that almost no serious expert thinks is possible in the Israeli reality.

Haredi labor market participation will not be able to finance this budgetary burden. The employment gap primarily affects haredi men, who in yeshiva, study only Torah. Even those among them who choose to enter the workforce find it difficult to secure quality employment. In fact, because of the money they receive from the state to sit and learn in yeshiva, their incentive to go to work is so low that they often find it just not worth it to do so.

In 20 years, the haredim will constitute about 27% of the Israeli citizenry. As the haredi population grows and the army-serving population shrinks, it will become harder to recruit soldiers, and those who do serve will cost more money. But the haredim, barring some drastic change to their way of life, will continue to pay very little in taxes and receive allowances and benefits at high rates. In this reality, who will fund the security burden, which will be significantly greater than it is today?

The proposed change is a huge gamble on the country’s security. It is also an irreversible step. Once the people’s army model is buried, it will be very hard to raise it from the grave. At the same time, it is not at all clear whether it will be possible to recruit soldiers under a service model that essentially buys their loss of life in combat, with money.

Indeed, the question of equality in burden sharing is complicated, and there is no simple solution in sight. But buying political time and a solution of present convenience could exact an unbearably heavy economic and security price farther down the road.

The only way to continue to sustain the State of Israel is to insist on meaningful service, military or national, for everyone; on core studies and employment training for the haredim; on equal sharing of the economic burden; on our existence here, but also on our values, including the value of equality.

First published by The Jerusalem Post.

The post New proposed draft exemption framework for haredim endangers Israel  first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Ultra-Orthodox autonomy is being established before our very eyes – both in practice and within the framework of Israeli law. True, the ultra-Orthodox have been living in a bubble behind walls for years. But the coalition agreements that have set the stage for Israel’s new government, together with planned reforms in the legal system buttress this autonomy.

Practices like closing supermarkets to women during certain hours and enforcing gender segregation in particular public spaces have been given an official stamp of approval in contravention of settled Israeli law. Two separate states are being created inside Israel. In education, transportation, housing, and shouldering the security burden, the ultra-Orthodox are creating a parallel reality. This process hurts everyone, Haredim and non-Haredim alike, and endangers Israel’s resilience. If the state is split into “cantons,” it will no longer be able to exist.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community currently numbers 1.28 million and constitutes 13.3% of the total population. A quarter of students enrolled in the country’s Hebrew education system are ultra-Orthodox. Within four decades the Haredim will amount to a third of the population

The community’s most striking characteristic is its insularity. The Haredim live behind walls – 66% in Haredi cities or in cities where they constitute a large share of the population (Jerusalem) or an absolute majority (Bnei Brak). Though intangible, these walls are very real and close them off from the spheres inhabited by other Israelis. Now that their political power is almost unlimited, they are wielding it to make those walls even higher and, in essence, to establish a Haredi autonomy that exists unto itself – but at the expense of the Israeli majority.

Education in the ultra-Orthodox sector, especially for boys, is an island with almost no ties to the state except for the public funding it receives. The ultra-Orthodox curriculum is determined without the ability of the Education Ministry to intervene. Supervision of teaching and learning conditions is minimal to nonexistent, and participation in the state’s measurement and evaluation system is marginal. The recently-signed coalition agreements only intensify this trend. They stipulate increasing state funding for ultra-Orthodox education while exempting the system from the few obligations and ties to the state that had existed. Shas set a new sleight-of-hand record by turning its own school network into a virtual city in order to bypass local-authority supervision and licensing requirements. In effect, it has established a national bureaucratic autonomy in all its operations, with no need to be accountable to anyone.

In the transportation sphere as well the ultra-Orthodox are deepening their separation from the rest of the country. Over the years, a public transportation system was established for the general public, and another for the Haredim. Largely subsidized by the state, the Haredim enjoy public transportation services between the major Haredi strongholds. These services are not technically off-limits to the general public, but they are routed in such a way that only the ultra-Orthodox actually use them. This has also opened the door to yet another form of injustice: gender segregation in public transit, which has become commonplace on Haredi bus lines – men in the front and women in the back.

Ultra-Orthodox self-segregation has also been amped up in the housing market. The coalition agreements provide for the establishment of yet another Haredi city, besides the five that already exist – this in addition to planning and construction benefits intended for the Haredim exclusively. The ultra-Orthodox do, of course, have a right to appropriate housing, but at a time when the housing market is unfavorable to all groups, special planning for the Haredim comes at the expense of the rest of the population.

And finally, under the aegis of the override clause, the ultra-Orthodox will be able to execute a number of legal maneuvers not subject to judicial review. Chief among these is the Haredi draft law, which is expected to provide the ultra-Orthodox with a blanket exemption from IDF service – a glaring moral and legal injustice. But there is also an array of other benefits the Haredim are seeking for themselves, such as representation on government directorates without the need for appropriate qualifications, recognition on public sector jobs of yeshiva study as equivalent to academic study, and myriad other special and dubious arrangements that create one set of rules for Haredim and another for the rest of Israelis.

Haredi integration in Israeli society and in the various spheres of Israeli life is an existential challenge for Israel. As a community that sprang up within ghettos, the Haredim now live in a separate world altogether. Instead of reversing this trend and promoting integration, the new government is working to fortify the Haredi ghetto. The outcome, which is already visible and which will only grow stronger, is the existence of an ultra-Orthodox autonomy that will live within but also alongside the State of Israel, and the relationship between it and the rest of the country will be based on give-and-take on the side of the state and those who support it with their taxes, and take-and-take on the ultra-Orthodox side.

First published by ‘The Times of Israel’.

The post New bricks in the ultra-Orthodox ghetto wall first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

According to leaks from the coalition negotiation room, a new arrangement is planned that will end the masquerade ball that has accompanied this saga for over 50 years.

The coalition will advance “Basic Law: Torah Study,” aimed at safeguarding Knesset legislation from judicial review on the issue of “equal sharing of the burden.” This rebrands the issue (shifting the emphasis from commonality in the “big tent” to disparity in the “Torah tent”) and its positioning within the normative hierarchy (the arrangement will be elevated to the constitutional level – Basic Law).

The real meaning of the planned legislation is that the State of Israel is explicitly shelving the aspiration for significant ultra-Orthodox conscription into the IDF. The “hindsight” of the past becomes the “foresight” of the future.

The non-mobilization of the ultra-Orthodox has far-reaching unfavorable consequences in the public arena – culture and society, employment and the economy, religion and state, military and defense, equality and freedom.

But the adverse effects do not end there. The Supreme Court, Israel’s most impressive governmental institution, is now being led to the public square for trial and condemnation for, among other things, its extensive involvement in the plot twists and turns of the ultra-Orthodox recruitment drama. This is one of the key issues fueling the coalition’s political will to make dangerous changes to the justice system.

Until the 1980s, the Supreme Court refrained from intervening in the matter and dismissed outright petitions for equal sharing of the burden. The ball was in the arena of the executive branch – the draft deferment issue left to the defense minister.

In the 1980s the court signaled that it was ready to enter the fray; in the 1990s it intervened for the first time through judicial review of the executive branch, invalidating its authority to set policy on the issue. This kicked the ball to the legislative branch. In the first decade of this century, the court warned that it might subject a conscription law enacted by the Knesset to judicial review, and in the second decade, it made good on that warning and twice struck down (in 2012 and in 2017) laws enacted as primary Knesset legislation.

Although the ball remains in the hands of the legislative branch, the Supreme Court has made it very clear that it retains veto power over how the game is played.

It is worth emphasizing the slow and measured manner in which the justices have dealt with the matter. They have understood the great sensitivities involved in both the substantive aspect of the arrangement (affecting the relations between Israeli society as a whole and the ultra-Orthodox sector) and its institutional aspect (affecting the relations between the branches of government). This is why the Supreme Court, for decades, was content with issuing warnings. Only in the light of growing public protest – when it became clear that “quantity makes quality” – did it finally act. The justices felt they had no choice but to shoulder the task of advancing equality by carrying the weight of the conscription controversy, as the Knesset was not sufficiently committed to doing so. Without the court’s involvement, so the claim goes, the blanket ultra-Orthodox draft deferral would have continued unhindered.

However, the judicial action has brought its own storms to society. Again and again, the court has ruled – contradicting Knesset decisions – on an issue that inflames the culture war. Although a large majority of the public wants to advance equal burden-sharing, the Knesset’s coalition majority reached far-fetched compromises with the ultra-Orthodox minority. Political parties on the Right, in the Center and on the Left have placed the burden-sharing issue high on their agendas; professional committees, public committees, and innumerable public debates have been devoted to the topic and produced the results that we have seen. After all this, is it appropriate for the court to become the veto-wielding arbiter of this issue?

The justices seem to take it for granted that they are charged with imposing change on the status quo. In their rulings they display little hesitation over the underlying dilemma – one with which legal scholars in Israel and abroad are intensely engaged – regarding the judiciary’s role, on the normative level, as an engine of sociopolitical change in spaces the country’s elected officials refuse to enter.

But beyond that, does the law have the practical power to compel such change? It is difficult to find another issue to which the Supreme Court has devoted so much attention over such a long period of time: nine petitions over five decades, involving about half of all the judges who have served on the Supreme Court since the founding of the state. In the last decade, the justices have brandished the maximal power the law grants them – the doomsday weapon of striking down two military conscription laws passed by the Knesset. There is no stronger device in the justices’ arsenal. The rulings, even though they were among the most activist in the country’s history, enjoyed wall-to-wall support, even among those who on other issues aim their arrows at “judicial imperialism.” (Indeed, one sometimes gets the impression that the opponents of judicial activism are moved not by the underlying principle, i.e., the court’s proper place in public life, but, rather, by the substance of its rulings.) And after all this, what has actually been achieved? Nothing. Not a thing.

A striking expression of the futility of the judicial effort is evident in the words of former Supreme Court justice Elyakim Rubinstein in a ruling (issued during his last week on the bench) in which he supported the repeal of a contentious draft law. His decision opens with a sentence of just a single word: “Despair.” This extreme rhetorical move accurately reflects the state of affairs in the real world, outside the learned rulings of judges. He eulogized the judicial system’s steep investment of time and effort in this area with the following words: “The absurdity – the travesty of the ping-pong between the branches… makes one wonder whether to laugh or cry.”

Over the years a number of legal arrangements have been proposed for the conscription issue, but none survived. They fell into the triangular abyss of the three branches of government and disappeared from the radar screen, like ships or planes swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle. But unlike the mystery in that area of the Atlantic, what happens in Israel’s governmental triangle can be explained: The legislative branch, striving to balance an array of interests, devises conscription arrangements that undermine equality, while the judicial branch, acting out of a “salvation fantasy,” seeks to promote equality on behalf of the majority.

But, at the end of the day, the Israeli street turns a cold shoulder to the heroic efforts of the judges. Although the equal-burden issue was once a powerful political motivator, it was barely mentioned in the frequent election campaigns since 2019. Here and there, conscription arrangements were suggested (for example, in the coalition agreement between the Likud and Blue and White in 2020), but they were only for show. When one looks at the arrangements themselves, one clearly sees that they could just as well be called “non-recruitment” arrangements. Their purpose was to stall for time and to whitewash, not to meaningfully change how the burden of military service is distributed among the populace. And now, in the coalition agreement, a paradigm shift has been proposed that would slam the door on ultra-Orthodox recruitment. In response, the public merely sighs.

This account of how we got to this discouraging place is meant to cast some light not only on the specific situation, but also on the broader issue of the power of the court in a divided society.

Israeli society, which lives in an overload of unresolved identity tensions, searches for a way out of the quagmire and turns to the judiciary for a “professional” answer. The Supreme Court, as a public servant, attempts to be, in the Mishnaic phrase, “a man” in “a place where there are no men.” In so doing, however, it is tempted to tinker with the most delicate mechanisms of the Israeli collective soul. But the judiciary – in reality – has limits beyond which its power cannot reach. The judges want to save us from ourselves, and they should be saluted for that noble desire, but their efforts to resolve identity conflicts between Israel’s “tribes” may turn out to be not only unhelpful, as has already been proven in this case, but also harmful to the court itself.

The ultra-Orthodox draft controversy is what sparked the political instability crisis of the last decade. A straight line runs from the ruling that overturned the Tal Law in 2012 (precipitating the elections that decimated the Kadima Party, then the largest) to the present coalition. That ruling, and the one that followed in 2017, shifted the entire ultra-Orthodox camp – a decisive factor in Israeli politics – into the territory of those opposing the court. The Haredim have become the main promoters of an “(anti-)constitutional coup”. The ruling that nullified the conscription law then is bringing us “Basic Law: Torah Study” in the here and now.

Then-Supreme Court justice Asher Grunis, in his minority opinion in the 2012 ruling, showed prescience: “The court’s repeated engagement with the issue of ultra-Orthodox military recruitment, without any real progress having been made as a result of judicial involvement, certainly does not redound to the court’s advantage,” he wrote, adding that it would have been better “for the court not to have entered into the matter at all, and to have left it in the public sphere, outside the purview of the court.”

The judicial effort failed because the court interprets ultra-Orthodox conscription as a question of “equality.” This conceptualization misses the issue’s dominant aspect from the ultra-Orthodox perspective: Their greatest fear is that military service will erode the identity of ultra-Orthodox youth. The special character of the issue as one of identity rather than of rights and obligations – as with a range of identity dilemmas that characterize Israel in its 75th year – makes it essential that decisions ultimately be made by the legislative branch, not by the judiciary. The court deceives itself and the public when it uses its authority to be the final arbiter in these matters. If the country’s elected officials choose to yield to the ultra-Orthodox on military conscription, the court will be unable to do anything about it.

The court should avoid wasting its public credit in order to achieve resolution in the culture war. As the draft issue proves, this is an unattainable goal. It lies outside the purview of judges.

The court should focus on the main task with which it is charged: the protection of human, civil and minority rights. That would be a step toward restoring trust in the court.

First published by The Jerusalem Post.

The post Israel’s judiciary shows its limited power first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Friedman explains that the reason the employment rate of ultra-Orthodox men has not increased: “The acute problem is that the ultra-Orthodox men have no incentive to go out to work.” According to him, “The additional income that an ultra-Orthodox student who goes to work, minus the welfare benefits he loses as a result, is only NIS 1,500-2,000 a month,  a small amount. An ultra-Orthodox who leaves the ‘Kollel’ pays a high social price – without earning anything.”

Friedman is pessimistic about the expected consequences of the elections, and estimates that the lack of incentive to work among ultra-Orthodox males will intensify. “The election promise was that all ultra-Orthodox institutions would be fully funded, and there is no reason why this will not be fulfilled. I don’t think Goldknopf (the head of the United Torah Judaism political party) will hesitate,” he said. “The meaning is a negative incentive to learn core subjects. Those institutions that until now taught core in order to receive a full budget, will be able to stop. The chance that an ultra-Orthodox student will encounter educational content  beyond the Gemara until he decides to leave the Kollel will decrease sharply. The share of ultra-Orthodox who do not integrate into the general Israeli society will increase.

“The statistics show unequivocally that the employment rate decreases when the ultra-Orthodox are in the coalition. Ultra-Orthodox politics uses power to preserve the ultra-Orthodox way of life and increase transfer payments to finance the ability of the ultra-Orthodox to continue studying. Maybe there are fringe groups that will want to work and help them, but there are no Knesset members who will fight for them.”

He further adds that “the data show that the chance of ultra-Orthodox students being successful in their studies is one in four, and that too  results in relatively low earnings.”

The post Will the return of the ultra-Orthodox parties to the government curb the integration of the ultra-Orthodox in workforce? first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.