You Asked Me Anything!

This members-only Q&A took place on Sunday night for paid members of Orthodox Conundrum Commentary on Substack and Patreon members. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation, formatted for readability. Obvious transcription errors have been corrected, while the substance and conversational character of the original discussion have been preserved.

Hi, everybody. I’m looking forward to this, what will hopefully become a regular feature for members of Orthodox Conundrum Commentary and Patreon members. I really appreciate your support; it’s been very helpful.

I’m going to try to answer these questions as best I can. They’re on any topic. This is an AMA, Ask Me Anything.

The questions are relatively random, but hopefully we can have an interesting conversation about them. And if anyone has any follow-up questions or their own questions, feel free to raise your hand, turn on your microphone, and jump right in.

Two new Haredi political parties are beginning, one pro-integration, one separatist. Do you think this is good or bad?

This is referring to the fact that right now in Israel there are two political parties that are Haredi, ultra-Orthodox. It’s really not so simple, but there’s one called Gimmel, broadly, which is also known as UTJ, United Torah Judaism. That’s a combination of two separate parties, Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael.

Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah, in turn, are composed of different sectors and different factions. But together they’re called Gimmel, the Ashkenazi Haredi political party. Then there’s Shas, which is the Sephardi Haredi political party. Those are the two main Haredi political parties that always get enough seats to get into the Knesset.

Don’t forget, in Israel you have to have, I believe at this point, 3.25 percent of the vote to get in. If you get under 3.25 percent, then you don’t get into the Knesset at all. So if a party is running at two percent, even though that’s more than one seat in the 120-seat parliament, it means it’s probably a waste of a vote if you don’t think the party is going to get in. Those votes essentially go to waste, and the 120 seats are divided among the parties that get past the minimum threshold.

In any case, those two political parties, we’ll call them two for now, are the main Haredi political parties. But now there are new political parties opening up: one pro-integration, one separatist. Is this good or bad?

I don’t really know anything about the separatist party. I’ve heard a little bit about it. This means it’s one more to the right that believes in less integration. The one that’s more pro-integration believes, as best as I understand it, that Haredim who at least are not learning should serve in the army.

They believe in more integration into the workforce, less separatism, and more integration into Israeli society. I don’t know that many details. Good time for a plug: I believe that someone on the list of that new political party, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, will be joining me on my next episode of Orthodox Conundrum; I’m recording him this Thursday night.

But do I think it’s good or bad? If I want to be cynical - and this has nothing to do with Rabbi Adlerstein, whom I like and respect - cynically speaking, is it good or bad to have more Haredi political parties? It’s great, because it means they’ll divide the vote. There’s a good likelihood that it will take votes away from the existing political parties, and then the two main Haredi parties will get fewer seats in the Knesset, which is a net positive.

I don’t say that because I’m anti-Haredi. I’m anti-religious political parties on the whole.

I think religious political parties are the worst thing that’s happened to religious Judaism in Israel. I think that the number one reason, and perhaps I’m being a bit over the top here or exaggerating, that more secular Jews have animus toward religious people to the degree that they do is because they see the religious political parties, which completely undermine Torah and completely undermine commitment to religion and God.

So I’m happy to have anything that will make the religious political parties, be they Haredi or not Haredi, less powerful.

But beyond that, if we get away from that cynical answer that I’ll do anything to lessen the power of religious political parties, on a less cynical level, any Haredi political party that’s pro-integration is a very good thing. The existing Haredi political parties are doing everything they can to undermine the army by pushing their voters to avoid enlistment, and legislating additional ways that they can get away without enlisting.

We need to have more, I’ll call them, sane voices within the Haredi community. I think that the current Haredi political and religious leadership is not necessarily representative of the broader ultra-Orthodox population. I can’t prove that, but that’s what it seems to me.

Right now, if someone’s ultra-Orthodox, they may, based on a sort of tribal instinct, vote for the Haredi party. That’s very much the way Israel is. If you’re Likud, you vote for Likud. If you’re a Religious Zionist, you vote for Religious Zionism. Because of that instinct, which many people have, many Haredim are going to vote for a Haredi political party even if it’s not necessarily good for them.

However, if there’s another Haredi political party that allows them to satisfy that instinct while at the same time doing something that is not Haredi in the classic sense, being more pro-integration and drafting more Haredim into the army, I think that’s a positive development.

So my feeling is that this is a net positive. We should encourage this other political party, and hopefully it will actually make a change in the Haredi world in a way that matters. Because as the general population has gotten more and more frustrated with the Haredi tendency to stay away from the army, the Haredi political parties have dug in their heels and become more adamant that they’re not going to join the army.

I think we have to try to fight against that.

However, as best as I understand it, the new party’s goal is not to be a separate party. They know they’re not going to get a high enough percentage of the vote. Instead, they hope to have enough popularity that they can convince the existing Haredi political parties to include them on their list, to give them one or two seats as part of the existing UTJ party. I don’t know if that means UTJ will ultimately co-opt them or they’ll be able to positively influence UTJ. If they can, that would obviously be a boon for the Haredi population’s willingness to participate in Israel’s national life.

That’s the end of my rant about the new Haredi political party.

Regarding the separatist Haredi party, I don’t know anything about it, so I can’t really say anything. But if it divides the current vote, great.

The remaining content is available for OCC members. Join today and read the full Q&A! Among the questions we discussed are Islamophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice; Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and the language of criticism; Netanyahu, security, and Arab parties in government; Rabbi Lamm and the failure to report abuse; should Judaism revert to Temple-based worship; should full-time yeshiva students be exempt from military service; kashrut reform and the chief rabbinate; and more.