The Haredi community and Israel’s national project

1. Introduction

On July 6, 2025, it was announced that the Israeli military would issue 54,000 draft notices to Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) yeshiva students following a Supreme Court ruling ordering their conscription, amid growing pressure from reservists seeking relief from extended deployments.[1] Less than a year earlier, on June 25, 2024, the Court had overturned the ‘Torato Umanuto’ arrangement—a decades-old exemption that allowed full-time Torah students to avoid military service. At the time this policy was enacted, Haredim constituted a much smaller share of Israel’s population than the 13% they represent today, in a country of 10 million, a proportion expected to reach 19% by 2035.[2]

Moshe Gafni, leader of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party, warned that without a new draft exemption law, Netanyahu’s government could collapse by December 2025.[3] Should the Haredi parties exit, Netanyahu’s coalition would lose its majority in the 120-member Knesset, threatening the government’s stability.[4] At the end of October, hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis demonstrated in Jerusalem against military draft.[5]

Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18 to 26, typically lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Historically, the Haredi community has been exempted from mandatory conscription, a policy that has become a focal point of political tension, particularly during Israel’s two-year war in Gaza.[6] Similarly, most of Israel’s Arab population, which constitutes roughly 21% of the country, is mostly exempted from military service. Notably, these directives generally do not apply to the Druze and Circassian communities, whose members typically serve alongside Jewish citizens in the Israel Defense Forces.[7] 

2. The Haredi challenge to secular Zionism

Unlike most countries, Israel does not formally separate religion and state. Religious Zionism—and particularly Haredi Judaism—enjoy a privileged position rooted in the 1947 Status Quo agreement. Negotiated under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, the agreement granted religious authorities jurisdiction over key aspects of public life, including marriage, divorce, and the determination of Jewish identity, nationality, and status.[8]Since their establishment, the majority of judges in these rabbinical courts have come from Haredi or religious Zionist backgrounds.[9]

Consequently, both leading orthodox streams—the Haredim and religious Zionists—have been granted religious hegemony and a measure of legislative power within the state. This fusion of religion and state allows these groups to exert significant control over civil affairs, representing a persistent challenge to Israel’s secular foundations and the Zionist vision of a modern, civic nation-state.[10]

These structural arrangements create ongoing tension between secular and Ultra-Orthodox communities, manifesting as a cultural conflict between Hilonim (secular Jews) and Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox Jews), who hold divergent visions of Israeli identity, civic responsibility, and the role of religion in public life.[11]

At the heart of the Haredi-Hiloni divide lies a fundamental disagreement over who is considered a Jew, particularly regarding the Law of Return. Orthodox authorities adhere to halakha, recognizing only matrilineal descent, while secular interpretations tend to include patrilineal descent and a broader set of conversions, reflecting an ethnic or civic understanding of Jewishness.[12] Orthodox Jewish circles remain dissatisfied with the Law of Return, arguing that it extends benefits to non-Jews and grants citizenship to individuals whose Jewishness they contest, including some from the Soviet aliyah,[13] as well as the Falasha (Ethiopian Jews), the Karaites, the Samaritans, and the Indian Sons of Israel.[14]

Disputes also emerge over the Haredi education system. When Israel was founded, the coexistence of the secular state and Haredi communities was partly secured through the autonomy of Ultra-Orthodox schools. These institutions enforce gender segregation, with boys and girls attending separate schools and following distinct curricula.[15] While girls typically receive basic education and vocational training for the labor market, boys often lack sufficient schooling to pursue careers outside the Haredi community.[16] Enrollment in these schools has grown rapidly, from 212,000 children in 2000 to nearly 442,000 in 2018.[17] Efforts to modify Haredi school curricula remain limited by the political influence of religious parties in the government.[18]

Workforce participation among Haredi men remains low: in 2024, approximately 54% of Haredi men were employed, compared to 87% of non-Haredi Jewish men.[19] This disparity reflects the Haredi model of pious masculinity, which prioritizes scholarly achievement in the yeshiva over professional or economic success.[20]

Finally, Haredim and Hilonim diverge sharply in their attitudes toward the democratic state. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 89% of Haredim indicated that, in cases of conflict between halakha and democratic principles, halakha should take priority, whereas only 3% favored democracy. By contrast, 89% of Hilonim support democratic rules, with only 1% prioritizing Jewish law.[21]

3. Fundamentalism and secular nationalism

These enduring tensions over identity, authority, and civic participation are not merely political but reflect deeper ideological worldviews that can be analyzed through the lenses of fundamentalism and secular nationalism.

Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan, in ‘Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World,’ define fundamentalism as a militant, organized movement that arises primarily in reaction to secularization and modernization processes in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which erode and displace traditional religion.[22]

The emergence of Haredi fundamentalism is generally dated to the formation of the Agudat Yisrael in 1912, formed in response to demographic and cultural challenges from modernization.[23] Haredi fundamentalism is characterized by an internal enclave culture, based on strict adherence to Jewish law and clearly defined communal boundaries. They view themselves as living ‘in exile among Jews.’[24] Haredim practice Halakhic absolutism[25] and maintain strict communal discipline,[26] including specific dress codes (black coats, distinct headgear, wigs for females) and language practices (Yinglish).[27]

Haredi communities maintain a highly effective, decentralized organizational structure, composed of autonomous affinity groups centered on major yeshivas or Hasidic courts, coordinated politically by bodies such as Agudat Yisrael.[28] Before 1948, the Haredi leadership viewed Zionism as a heretical movement, warning that it would draw Jewish youth away from religious observance and toward secular nationalism. Although most Haredim have since come to accept the existence of the State of Israel, they continue to reject Zionism as a secular ideology.[29] This ideological stance coexists with a pragmatic political strategy: Haredim tactically engage with state institutions to secure military exemptions, financial subsidies, and religious protections. Their participation in the political system is centered on preserving community autonomy while shaping state policy to maintain a protective ‘cordon sanitaire’ around Haredi society, while depending on the state for essential support and services.[30]

On the other hand, Joel S. Petzer and J. Christopher Soper, in ‘Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective’, define secular nationalism as a system in which secular concepts of the nation, rather than religious ones, shape identity.[31] It is characterized by weak or nonexistent ties to religious identity in national consciousness;[32] this is reflected in the secular Zionist reading of the Law of Return, which defines Jewish belonging primarily in civic and ethnic, rather than religious terms.

Historically, leaders like Theodor Herzl viewed Zionism primarily as a political project. Labor Zionists, heirs to this vision, promoted a civic and secular nationalism focused on shared political values rather than Jewish culture, history, or religion. They associated Zionism with implementing social justice ideals.[33] Accordingly, secular Zionism advances a nationalism largely shorn of religion.[34] Modern secular Jewish organizations, such as the BINA Center, promote secular Zionism defined by commitment to human respect and cultural freedom.[35]

Although Israel’s founders adopted a fragile civil-religious compromise—balancing those who wanted a religious state with those who sought a secular one through mechanisms like the Status Quo and rabbinical control over marriage and divorce[36]—secular Zionists have consistently challenged these institutional ties.

While Haredi Judaism represents one form of Jewish fundamentalism, it is not the only one active within Israeli society. Militant religious Zionism, which emerged after Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, is another influential religious-nationalist movement.[37] Supporters of this ideology regard the “Greater Land of Israel”—the territory of historical Palestine—as sacred to the Jewish people to the same degree as the Torah. Accordingly, militant religious Zionists seek to assert Jewish control over these territories, sometimes extending beyond the internationally recognized borders of Israel, and have at times acted in coordination with state institutions to advance settlement and territorial objectives.[38]

Unlike Religious Zionists, Haredim are not ideologically militant. By 2020, nearly one-third of Jewish settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem—around 130,000 people—were members of the Haredi community. In contrast to militant Religious Zionists, Haredim generally remain restrained in their support for settlements and do not engage in violence against the Palestinian population. The primary motivation for the growing number of Haredi settlers is the need for affordable housing to accommodate a rapidly expanding population. Nevertheless, the political stance of Haredim on the Occupied Territories has shifted over time. While in the 1990s, leaders such as Elazar Menachem Schach and Ovadia Yosef supported a two-state solution under the slogan “Land for Peace,” research suggests that, due to demographic pressures, Haredi political parties may increasingly oppose such a prospect in the future.[39]

The Haredi community’s relationship with the Israeli state illustrates the enduring instability of Israel’s civil–religious compromise. Neither fully integrated nor fully separatist, the Haredim embody the paradox of a state that defines itself as both Jewish and democratic. Their pragmatic engagement with secular institutions, while maintaining theological distance from Zionism, shows how religious fundamentalism can adapt within a modern nation-state without surrendering its autonomy. The persistence of this duality suggests that Israel’s national project remains an unfinished negotiation between faith and citizenship, identity and power.