Is This The Kind Of Aliyah We Currently Need?

Jake Turx, senior White House correspondent for Mishpacha magazine, recently proposed on X what he called an “eight-billion-dollar idea”: build a development in Israel tailored to the needs, standards, and lifestyle of American Chareidim, then use it as a prototype for similar communities across the country. With 1.5 million “potential customers” in America, he suggested, the model could be repeated again and again.

Turx framed this as a real estate opportunity, but an influx of that magnitude would fundamentally reshape Medinat Yisrael. Its broader implications, I believe, are far more troubling than the proposal suggests.

The last thing Medinat Yisrael needs right now is an influx of one and a half million Chareidim. Such a demographic shift would bring Israel significantly closer to becoming a theocracy, at considerable cost to Medinat Yisrael and Am Yisrael, and perhaps even more so to Torat Yisrael.

This is entirely aside from the question of military service. The prospect of another million and a half citizens who would overwhelmingly refuse to serve is, by itself, an enormous problem that would intensify an already dangerous source of resentment and division within Israeli society. But even if we put that issue completely aside, the political and religious consequences of such an aliyah would still be disastrous.

For the Zionist enterprise to succeed, the governing institutions of the state must remain secular. That is necessary for the good of the state, its citizens, and, perhaps most importantly, for the good of Torah and Yiddishkeit.

Eschatological visions notwithstanding, we are still living in the here and now. Halakha, in its current iteration, is diasporic. It developed over many centuries to sustain Jewish religious life in the absence of political sovereignty. It does not presently possess the keilim necessary to fully govern a modern Jewish state, with all its economic, military, diplomatic, technological, and civic complexity.

That is not an indictment of halakha. I love halakha and have devoted my life to it. It is precisely because I cherish it so much that I do not want it conscripted into a task for which it has not yet developed the necessary language and institutions.

The status quo must therefore be preserved: the state should remain secular, and its citizens should be free to pursue their religious lives according to their own commitments. Such an arrangement benefits both the state and the Chareidi community. The state can function as a modern democracy, while Chareidi Jews can live rich and uncompromised Orthodox lives.

Attempting to govern Israel according to contemporary Chareidi halakha would cause immense damage not only to the state but also to halakha itself. It would expose enormous gaps in its present political and institutional vocabulary and then attempt to fill those gaps through coercion, improvisation, and the raw exercise of power. Halakha would cease to be experienced as a sacred way of life and would instead become the means through which one group imposes its religious convictions upon everyone else. That would be a chillul Hashem of historic proportions.

I cannot say this strongly enough: my emphatic opposition to a halakhic state comes precisely from my devotion to halakha. Halakha is far too precious to me to want it legislated and enforced by the state, with all the bargaining and compromise that politics inevitably entails. I do not want the Torah I love to become something from which other Jews feel compelled to flee. Protecting halakha from political power is, at this moment in Jewish history, one of the ways we protect and preserve it.

A massive influx of Chareidim would therefore pose a serious danger to the Zionist project. Chareidi Zionism, to the extent that it exists, is largely eschatological. Its ultimate aspiration is not a democratic Jewish state in which multiple forms of Jewish life can flourish, but a state progressively reshaped according to its understanding of Torah. Given sufficient demographic and political power, it would inevitably push Israel in that direction, destabilizing the delicate foundations upon which the state rests.

As someone who loves Medinat Yisrael and loves halakha no less, I therefore hope that such a massive Chareidi aliyah does not take place.

I say this as someone who was raised in the Chareidi world, and much of it remains dear to me. Its devotion to Torah and the seriousness with which it seeks to build life around halakha continue to inspire me. I very much want Chareidi life to flourish in Israel. Medinat Yisrael is their home no less than it is mine, and the aliyah of any Chareidi Jew who wishes to come should be embraced and supported. My objection, then, is specifically to Jake’s proposal for facilitating a mass Chareidi aliyah on this scale and presenting it as something Israel presently needs.

My hope and prayer is instead that the massive and heartbreaking trend of secular yeridah will be reversed. More and more chilonim are becoming jaded, disappointed in the state, and disillusioned with Zionism. Many come from families that have been deeply invested in Israel from its earliest years. Their parents and grandparents served in the army, built its institutions, and devoted their lives to the success of the state. And now they are beginning to wonder whether Israel still has room for them and whether their children have a future there.

That is tragic.

Every secular Israeli who leaves because they no longer believe that Israel has room for them represents a profound failure of the Zionist project. They and their families have been central to the building of the state. To watch them lose faith in the country, and to hear them wonder whether their children have a future there, should trouble all of us.

There is also a larger Jewish cost. Historically, secular Israelis who make yeridah have often assimilated over time, with their children and grandchildren gradually losing any meaningful Jewish affiliation. Their Jewishness may not take a halakhic form, but it is real, often deep, and worthy of preservation. Reversing secular yeridah is therefore not only a Zionist imperative. It is also an imperative of Jewish continuity.

That, therefore, is where our energies should be directed. We must give secular and non-Orthodox Jews reason to believe again that their dreams can be realized in Israel and that their Jewishness, no less than ours, can thrive in the Jewish state.

Israel does not presently need the demographic transformation that a mass Chareidi aliyah would bring. It desperately needs those who will help it become more democratic, more just, more livable, and more worthy of the Zionist dream.

That is the Israel I still believe in: a state secure enough in its Jewishness to make room for every kind of Jew, and democratic enough to belong fully to all its citizens. An Israel in which Torah flourishes because it is loved, not because it is imposed, and in which chilonim can once again feel that their future and their children’s future belong there.

Halevai