We Have Spoken About the Haredim. Now We Need to Hear from Them.

How Ultra-Orthodox Jews Might Respond to This Series—and Why Their Voices Matter

For seven essays, I have attempted to understand one of the most consequential religious and civic tensions within modern Israel: the relationship between its ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and the wider society. I have examined religious separation, Jewish sovereignty, covenant, shared responsibility, the consequences of October 7, and disagreements within Haredi Judaism about the obligations of religious life.

Throughout this series, I have argued that preserving religious identity and accepting the responsibilities of common citizenship need not be mutually exclusive. Yet there is an important limitation to everything I have written. I am not Haredi, nor am I Jewish by birth or conversion. I am a Christian who has spent years studying Judaism, participating in Jewish religious life, and trying to understand a tradition that is not my own.

That position provides a perspective, but no authority to speak on behalf of Haredi Jews.

During my travels in Israel, I met with an ultra-Orthodox rabbi. The encounter reinforced my desire to understand a community often discussed through political controversies, whose members organize their lives around religious commitments outsiders may insufficiently appreciate.

I began this series because disputes over military conscription, public subsidies, education, and political authority cannot be understood without examining the religious convictions beneath them. I conclude with an equally important conviction: we cannot understand Haredi Jews by listening only to people who speak about them. We must also listen to Haredi Jews themselves.

This eighth essay therefore has a different purpose. Rather than proposing what Haredi communities should do, I want to consider how they might respond to what I have written and invite them to correct, challenge, and deepen my understanding.

There Is No Single Haredi Response

One lesson from researching this series is that Haredi Judaism is considerably more diverse than outsiders often recognize.

Hasidic, Lithuanian or Yeshivish, and Sephardi Haredi communities share religious commitments but differ in history, rabbinic authority, educational institutions, cultural practices, and relationships with Zionism and the Israeli state. Differences also exist among rabbis, educators, working families, women, younger adults, and those negotiating changing relationships with technology, employment, professional education, and public service.

It would therefore be presumptuous to predict how the Haredi community would respond.

Some readers might welcome an effort to understand their religious foundations before debating public policy. Others might regard these essays as insufficiently attentive to Torah’s authority or too willing to accept secular assumptions about citizenship. Still others might support particular arguments concerning education, employment, or national responsibility while challenging other conclusions.

These possibilities are not based on interviews with Haredi readers who reviewed the series. They are inferences from documented disagreements within Haredi society, disagreements that deserve more serious treatment than a division between those embracing modernity and those resisting it.

Those Who Believe Change Can Come from Within

Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer offers one important perspective. A Haredi rabbi and legal scholar, he leads the Iyun Institute and helped establish Tzarich Iyun, a forum examining contemporary questions from within Haredi Judaism.

In his 2024 SAPIR essay, “Haredi Faith: Theology and the Draft Controversy,” Pfeffer examined how influential understandings of divine providence shape attitudes toward civic participation. Drawing upon Jewish religious sources, he argued that reliance upon God’s protection should not diminish the importance of human action and practical responsibility.

His argument matters because it emerges from within the tradition under discussion. He is not asking Haredim to abandon religious commitments in favor of secular citizenship, but whether those commitments themselves require greater participation in contemporary Israel’s responsibilities.

Readers sympathetic to his approach might appreciate my distinction between preserving Torah and preserving every institutional arrangement developed around its study. They might nevertheless demand greater precision. Which obligations can be undertaken without undermining religious observance? Which educational reforms are compatible with Haredi institutions? How can young men pursue employment or national service without rejecting identities their families have worked to preserve?

These are not minor implementation details. Religious legitimacy and practical sustainability may depend upon their answers.

Those Who Believe the State Is Asking Too Much

Other Haredi readers may reject the framework of my argument altogether.

Rabbi Dov Lando, an influential Lithuanian Haredi leader, has opposed compelling yeshiva students to serve in the military. In January 2026, he characterized imprisonment for draft resistance as an attack upon Torah study itself.

From this perspective, the question is not simply whether Israel has legitimate military needs, but whether the state possesses moral and religious authority to interrupt study regarded as indispensable to Jewish existence.

A reader sharing this position might reject my appeals to civic equality because the underlying premises differ. The disagreement concerns something deeper than the number of exemptions or alternative service arrangements: the place of Torah learning in Jewish survival and the limits of state authority over religious life.

I may disagree with political conclusions drawn from that understanding, but economic and military consequences alone cannot settle the theological dispute.

Many Haredim regard Torah study as more than education, cultural preservation, or preparation for religious leadership. They understand it as possessing spiritual significance for the protection and continued existence of the Jewish people. An outsider who acknowledges only its educational and cultural benefits may believe he has treated Torah respectfully while overlooking the claim most important to its defenders.

Serious engagement requires understanding that claim on its own terms, even when one ultimately disagrees with its public-policy implications.

What Haredi Women Might Tell Us

Public discussion frequently centers on male rabbis, yeshiva students, and political leaders. Yet Haredi families and institutions cannot be understood without recognizing women’s contributions.

According to the Israel Democracy Institute’s 2025 statistical report, approximately 81 percent of Haredi women were employed, compared with 54 percent of Haredi men. These figures complicate the familiar portrayal of a community uniformly detached from contemporary economic life.

Many Haredi women combine professional education, employment, caregiving, and communal leadership with rigorous religious observance. Some might welcome attention to their opportunities and contributions. Others might challenge the assumption that greater individual autonomy, as understood by secular society, necessarily represents a better life.

That objection deserves consideration. People can sincerely choose lives organized around religious obligations, family relationships, and communal expectations outsiders regard as restrictive. Understanding them cannot begin by presuming their choices are inauthentic.

Nevertheless, questions about education, economic opportunity, legal rights, and meaningful personal choice remain legitimate. I would welcome Haredi women’s perspectives on these tensions, especially what outsiders misunderstand and which changes they believe would strengthen rather than weaken their communities.

Their experiences belong at the center of the discussion.

What Younger Haredim Might Tell Us

Younger Haredim confront circumstances different from those of their parents and grandparents. Digital technology, professional education, employment opportunities, housing costs, and increasing interaction with non-Haredi institutions are changing the environment in which religious life must be sustained.

Some pursue professional opportunities while remaining deeply observant. Others enter military or civilian service, while many continue established paths of yeshiva study and communal life.

Engagement with wider society does not necessarily indicate weakening religious commitment, nor should younger Haredim automatically be presumed to favor integration.

What interests me is how they imagine their future. Do they experience contemporary Israel primarily as a threat to religious continuity, a source of opportunity, a community to which they owe particular responsibilities, or some combination? How do they distinguish essential religious practices from inherited institutional arrangements? What choices do they want their children to possess?

Their answers may differ considerably, but they can illuminate experiences that demographic reports and political arguments cannot fully capture.

What Public Opinion Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

Survey research illustrates the depth of disagreement.

In a November 2024 survey reported by the Israel Democracy Institute, 61 percent of Haredi respondents supported maintaining existing arrangements under which members generally did not enlist in the military. Twenty percent supported some form of increased conscription, while 19 percent expressed no preferred solution.

The institute cautioned that its Haredi subgroup was small. These findings should not be treated as definitive measurements of the entire community or its attitudes in 2026.

Nevertheless, they demonstrate why increased volunteering, economic participation, or national solidarity should not automatically be interpreted as support for compulsory military service.

People can care deeply about Israel’s security while disagreeing over what their religious obligations require. Understanding the theological, historical, and personal reasoning behind these differences is at least as important as measuring support for particular policies.

Five Questions I Hope Haredi Readers Will Help Me Answer

Having completed seven essays, I recognize several places where knowledgeable Haredi readers might reasonably challenge my assumptions.

First, the use of Christian theological comparisons. My discussions of monasticism, the Amish, and H. Richard Niebuhr were intended to help non-Jewish readers recognize the religious impulse toward preserving communal boundaries. Yet comparisons can distort Jewish experience when substituted for understanding Torah, halakhah, Jewish history, and rabbinic authority. Where have these analogies illuminated too little or implied too much?

Second, the authority of the state. I have argued that equal citizenship entails common obligations, subject to reasonable religious accommodation. Yet Haredi authorities may understand certain religious obligations as prior to, and beyond revision by, modern state institutions. How should outsiders understand that reasoning, and what resources within Haredi thought address conflicts between religious and civil authority?

Third, the significance of Torah study. Have I adequately represented its theological importance, including the spiritual protection some believers understand it to provide? What Jewish sources should an outsider examine before reaching conclusions about the relationship between Torah learning and public responsibility?

Fourth, religious commandments and historical institutions. I have suggested that some arrangements governing education, employment, and military exemptions arose under particular historical circumstances and might be reconsidered without abandoning Torah. Yet determining which practices are essential and which are contingent is itself a religious judgment. Who has authority to make that distinction, and how are such disagreements resolved within Haredi communities?

Fifth, the language used to describe the community. Some prefer Haredi to ultra-Orthodox, a designation suggesting an extreme version of something else rather than a distinctive religious tradition. Have I represented Haredi Judaism on its own terms, or continued interpreting it principally through its relationship with secular Israel?

These questions are not merely rhetorical. Their answers may require revising conclusions I have already published.

Understanding Is Not the Same as Agreement

Inviting criticism does not mean every disagreement should be resolved in favor of Haredi religious authorities.

Military service, public funding, educational opportunity, individual rights, and equal citizenship involve legitimate claims by people outside Haredi communities. Those concerns cannot be dismissed because religious authorities reach different conclusions.

But disagreement over public policy must not become permission to caricature an entire religious community. One can affirm equitable civic obligations while acknowledging that religious objections may be serious, sophisticated, and sincerely held.

Dialogue does not require discovering that everyone secretly agrees. Sometimes thoughtful conversation reveals the depth of disagreements that cannot presently be reconciled. Understanding those disagreements more accurately is itself progress.

My own religious experience has taught me that important encounters often occur when another person exposes assumptions I did not realize I was making. Such encounters need not change one’s convictions to clarify what one is affirming, questioning, or rejecting.

For a Christian writing about Haredi Judaism, this humility is especially important. Christian history offers abundant warnings about the harm caused when Christians presume to define Judaism for Jews. Respect requires more than good intentions; it requires allowing people to describe their own faith and taking their objections seriously.

An Invitation to Haredi Readers

If you are Haredi and have read any part of this series, I welcome your response.

You need not agree with my conclusions. I am particularly interested in learning where I have misunderstood your religious commitments, neglected historical experiences, relied upon inadequate sources, or failed to recognize important distinctions within your community.

I would also welcome hearing what I have understood correctly, what you wish non-Haredi Israelis and Christians better appreciated about your way of life, and what obligations you believe Jewish sovereignty creates.

Responses from rabbis, educators, yeshiva students, working men and women, parents, younger adults, and members of different Haredi traditions would be especially valuable. Those who prefer not to be identified publicly should be able to express that preference.

I hope non-Haredi readers will approach these exchanges with equal curiosity. A community cannot be understood adequately through political controversies, demographic statistics, or provocative statements made in its name.

Where contributors are comfortable, I would welcome opportunities for public exchanges of essays, interviews, or responses, allowing Haredi readers to explain their understandings of faith, responsibility, religious education, and public life without requiring me to interpret those views for them.

Their voices would contribute something this series cannot otherwise provide.

The Conversation Should Not End Here

I began this project by asking how a religious community could preserve its convictions while participating in a society organized around different expectations. The inquiry expanded to encompass Jewish sovereignty, pluralism, equality, and shared responsibility.

Those questions remain unresolved. No eight-part series can settle them. What such a series can do is encourage a better-informed conversation that respects the seriousness of Haredi religious life, recognizes the legitimate obligations borne by other citizens, and acknowledges the difficulty of preserving both religious freedom and civic equality within a shared state.

Yet any conversation about Haredi Judaism that does not include Haredi Jews themselves remains incomplete.

I have offered my understanding, recognizing the limitations of my experience and perspective. Now I hope those who live within the religious world I have attempted to describe will help others understand it more fully.

If you are Haredi, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and corrections. Tell us what we have misunderstood, what we have overlooked, and what we need to know.

The goal is not to make Haredi Jews less Haredi, nor to persuade other Israelis to surrender legitimate concerns about citizenship and responsibility. It is to understand one another well enough that disagreement does not become a substitute for knowledge.

The first seven essays were an effort to understand. This eighth is an invitation to be taught.

And perhaps that is where a more meaningful conversation can begin.

Notes and References

1. Yehoshua Pfeffer, “Haredi Faith: Theology and the Draft Controversy,” SAPIR, August 12, 2024. https://sapirjournal.org/faith/2024/haredi-faith-theology-and-the-draft-controversy/
2. Sam Sokol, “Senior Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi: Those Enforcing Haredi Draft Are Fighting Against God,” The Times of Israel, January 5, 2026. https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-ultra-orthodox-rabbi-those-enforcing-haredi-draft-are-fighting-against-god/
3. Israel Democracy Institute, “IDI Releases New Survey Findings on Haredim; Convenes Haredi & Arab Leaders to Advance Shared Society,” reporting November 2024 survey findings. The Haredi subgroup sample was small and should not be interpreted as a definitive measurement of contemporary community opinion.
4. Gilad Malach and Lee Cahaner, Annual Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Society in Israel 2025, Israel Democracy Institute, 2026. https://en.idi.org.il/publications/63300
5. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 35b, concerning Torah study and livelihood; Pirkei Avot 5:17, concerning disagreement for the sake of Heaven.