United Torah Judaism: Lithuanian and Hasidic Judaism at the Heart of Israeli Politics
A movement born in opposition to Zionism
To understand United Torah Judaism (Yahadut HaTorah in Hebrew), one must look back well before the establishment of the State of Israel, to Katowice in 1912, when the city was part of Germany. It was there that Agudat Yisrael – literally, the “Union of Israel” – was founded by Orthodox rabbis from Eastern Europe who rejected both assimilation and the Zionist project championed by Theodor Herzl and his successors. The movement emerged in direct response to the World Zionist Congress, which had rejected a request to fund religious schools submitted by a Jewish current seeking to reconcile Zionism with religious tradition.
Around this movement, and the rabbinic circles it represented, much of what is now known as the Haredi world gradually took shape. The term, most commonly rendered in English as “ultra-Orthodox”, refers to Jews who observe a stringent religious way of life centred on full-time Torah study and remain largely separate from the rest of Israeli society in dress, education and social norms.
Agudat Yisrael espoused a simple but radical principle: rabbinic authority should govern every decision affecting Jewish collective life, while sovereignty over the Land of Israel could legitimately arise only through messianic redemption, not through a human political enterprise. Zionism was therefore seen as a secular movement usurping a divine prerogative – a position endorsed by several of the leading rabbis of the day.
The establishment of the state in 1948 confronted the movement with an existential dilemma. Rather than persist in outright rejection, Agudat Yisrael chose pragmatism. As early as June 1947, David Ben-Gurion, acting on behalf of the Jewish Agency, had negotiated with its leaders what became known as the “status quo agreement”: a commitment to observe the Sabbath in public institutions, uphold Jewish dietary laws, preserve the jurisdiction of religious courts over marriage and divorce, and provide public funding for an autonomous religious school system. The agreement enabled Agudat Yisrael to enter the institutions of the nascent state without ever formally abandoning its ideological reservations about Zionism.
The second pillar of today’s alliance emerged later. The Haredi world is far from homogeneous. On one side stand the Hasidic movements, organised around rabbinic dynasties passed down from generation to generation; on the other is the so-called Lithuanian current, which has no dynasties of its own and is instead structured around major Talmudic academies, or yeshivot, and their spiritual leaders. In 1988, Rabbi Elazar Shach, the pre-eminent authority of the Lithuanian world, broke with Agudat Yisrael, then dominated by Hasidic groups. He founded Degel HaTorah (“Banner of the Torah”) to give his constituency an independent political voice. Yet by 1992 the two parties had decided to contest elections on a joint slate, United Torah Judaism, rather than split their vote. The alliance has suffered occasional ruptures – notably in 2004 – followed by reconciliations. Its most recent significant reorganisation came in 2020, when the two constituent parties rebalanced the allocation of places on their joint list, which had previously favoured Agudat Yisrael.
What the party represents in Israeli society
United Torah Judaism is not a political party in the conventional Western sense. It is the political arm of a social and religious world organised around Torah study and rabbinic authority. It brings together the two principal strands of Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Judaism described above: the Hasidic camp, represented by Agudat Yisrael, and the Lithuanian camp, represented by Degel HaTorah. In both cases, major political decisions formally require the approval of a council of senior rabbis. This sharply distinguishes United Torah Judaism from conventional parties: its lawmakers see themselves first and foremost as the agents of a religious authority situated outside parliament.
The party’s overriding priority is to defend the autonomy and material interests of the Haredi community: funding for yeshivot and its school system, support for families, preservation of the religious status quo in the public sphere and, above all, the special exemption enjoyed by yeshiva students from military service.
Unlike the Sephardi party Shas, with which it often shares the Haredi political space, United Torah Judaism remains more deeply rooted in a form of theological non-Zionism. In theory, many of its leaders and voters still deny that the State of Israel possesses any intrinsic religious value, even though they have participated fully in its institutions for decades. Today, this non-Zionism is largely a doctrinal position rather than a practical barrier to joining a government.
Its place on the political map
United Torah Judaism is generally classified as a right-wing party, but it represents a highly distinctive kind of right: neither nationalist nor Zionist in the conventional sense, it is above all sectarian and confessional. The party has no fundamental position on territorial issues or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; its votes are guided primarily by the interests of its community. That has made it an attractive coalition partner for the right and, historically, for some Labour-led governments as well. Since the 1990s, however, its alliance with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud has proved particularly durable, grounded in shared positions on religion and a common rejection of the secular left.
With a relatively modest parliamentary presence – seven seats in the current 120-member Knesset – United Torah Judaism wields influence far beyond its electoral weight because it is often indispensable to the formation of right-wing coalitions. Much of today’s resentment stems from this imbalance between its numerical strength and its bargaining power.
Why Netanyahu?
The party’s growing identification with the Netanyahu bloc reflects less an ideological affinity than a reordering of the fault lines within Israeli society.
As the left and parts of the centre have embraced Haredi conscription, the teaching of core subjects – mathematics, English and science – in Haredi schools, public transport on the Sabbath, civil marriage and a broader reduction in the political power of religious institutions, the right has, by contrast, come to be seen as the most reliable guarantor of Haredi communal autonomy. Netanyahu understood this perfectly.
A genuine political compact has gradually taken shape: the Haredi parties provide Likud with the seats it needs for a majority; in return, Likud protects their education system, budgets and the special status of yeshiva students. Rooted more in a convergence of interests than in a shared philosophy of the state, this alliance has proved remarkably durable over the decades. In a political system where every seat can determine whether a majority is formed, an indispensable and ideologically predictable partner retains disproportionate power.
The conscription crisis: a breaking point
It is precisely this influence that now fuels one of the fiercest conflicts in Israeli society. The conscription of yeshiva students into the Israel Defense Forces is a longstanding issue, but it has become explosive since the outbreak of the Gaza war in late 2023. It crystallises a profound divide. On one side, much of the secular and religious-Zionist public finds it intolerable that, amid a protracted war and heavy military losses, tens of thousands of young Haredi men should continue to avoid compulsory service. On the other, the ultra-Orthodox world regards Torah study as an existential contribution to the country’s spiritual protection and fears that mass enlistment would threaten the very survival of its way of life and institutions of learning.
In 2025 and 2026, the confrontation became overtly political: parliamentary boycotts, threats to leave the coalition or trigger an early election, arrests of draft-defying yeshiva students and demonstrations outside military facilities. The passage in July 2026 of a Basic Law defining Torah study as a “fundamental value” of the Jewish people and the state deepened the polarisation. Its opponents saw it as an attempt to entrench in law the yeshiva world’s special status at the very moment it was facing its fiercest challenge.
The dispute has directly undermined government stability, raising the serious prospect of the Knesset’s early dissolution and a snap election as the Haredi parties seek to maximise their leverage before any final agreement on a conscription law. Beyond military service, the conflict also extends to public spending: extensive funding for yeshivot and large families is viewed by some Israelis as a disproportionate burden on working taxpayers. More broadly, it concerns rival visions of the state’s Jewish character – theocratic and community-based for some, democratic and shared by all for others.
United Torah Judaism thus stands today at the point of maximum tension between two logics that are increasingly difficult to reconcile: the complete preservation of a communal way of life it regards as non-negotiable, and the demands of a country at war for a more equitable sharing of the national burden. More than any other issue, this conflict defines the party’s place in Israeli politics today – central, indispensable and yet deeply contested.