The Torah was not meant to fund a welfare state

There is something quietly astonishing about the way the Haredi community in Israel envisions the future. In a country founded by secular revolutionaries, defended by conscripted soldiers, and sustained by a tech-focused economy pushing it into the 21st century, the most rapidly growing demographic largely abstains from all three.

At the heart of the matter, though, is not theology, but arithmetic: the Haredi birth rate hovers around seven children per woman – twice the national average – and signals a dramatic demographic shift in Israel. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, by 2065, nearly one in three Israelis will be Haredi. This is not a theoretical projection, either; it is an avalanche already in motion.

And yet, the community remains largely exempt from military service, underrepresented in the workforce, and overrepresented in welfare statistics. How long can a modern democracy function when a third of its citizens opt out of its most basic obligations, given that the very social fabric of Israel is built on shared obligations and sacrifices?

The traditional defence – that Torah study is as much a national service as military enlistment – may have once made poetic sense in a state still discovering itself, when David Ben-Gurion granted a few hundred yeshiva students exemption from military service as an act of goodwill. But poetry cannot carry tanks, nor run an ICU, nor pay for both. When Ben-Gurion granted the students a mass exemption, the aim was not that eighty years later, the immunity from drafting with the rest of Israel’s youth would still exist. As the country matures into a global economic and military power, this argument increasingly appears to lack the weight it once carried in the early years of the state.

There is also an irony here: while Haredi leadership warns against so-called ‘Western decadence,’ they appear to have few problems depending on its economic systems. The Israeli high-tech boom, almost entirely driven by secular and national-religious minds, now finances the social security net they so heavily rely on.

Worse still, the system is turning on itself. Haredi educational institutions largely do not teach core subjects like English, science or mathematics – and in 2023, the Netanyahu government removed incentives for those that did. A generation is being raised without the tools to participate in the very economy that sustains them. In that sense, Haredi students are trapped by their own communities, unable to leave and join the secular workforce.

The real tragedy here is that the refusal of the Haredi world to adapt may bring about its own demise. Insularity breeds fragility, and a population dependent on others for defence, healthcare, education and employment cannot remain aloof forever. The state will not break under the weight of Haredi dependence – but the Haredi sector might collapse under the weight of its own denial.

One cannot help but recall the words of Pirkei Avot: Anyone who derives worldly benefit from the words of the Torah removes his life from the world. It, is, therefore, improper to earn a livelihood from the Torah. The Haredi establishment, though, has built a system that does exactly that. It is a distortion of Jewish values dressed in Jewish clothing.

To criticise this, though, is not to reject tradition; rather, is it to demand its renewal. It is to insist that piety cannot come at the cost of collective responsibility and that the Torah’s commandments to work, serve, and pursue justice are not optional extras. The truth is, if the Haredi future becomes Israel’s future, Israel will no longer have one.