OP-ED: Why I Joined Hatzibur HaCharedi-A Politics of Hope, Responsibility, and Partnership

JERUSALEM (VINnews/Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer) — This year’s Israeli election season includes a genuine chiddush: Hatzibur HaCharedi, a new Charedi political party seeking to offer a different kind of Charedi politics. Led by Moti Leitner, the party challenges assumptions that have defined Charedi political life for decades. I am proud to chair its rabbinic committee.

Why now? The answer, I believe, has two parts. The first is hope—our profound and urgent need for it. The second is October 7.

No human emotion is more precious, or more basic, than hope. Fyodor Dostoevsky famously remarked that to live without hope is to cease to live. More than a century earlier, the Ramchal put the matter even more starkly: “He who has no hope shall die instantly.”

Centered on the verse, “I hope for Your salvation, Hashem,” the Ramchal’s Derush Al ha-Kivuy (Treatise on Hope) teaches that hope is woven into the deepest fabric of creation. The Jewish task is to take this most elemental of human longings and direct it toward its true source: Hashem.

Hope gives life. It allows us to see beyond the confines of the present and imagine that tomorrow can be different. And we need that hope badly—not only as Israelis, but within Charedi society itself.

We need hope for the young Charedi man who wants to work, provide for his family and contribute to society without feeling that in doing so he has somehow become a lesser Jew. We need hope for parents searching for schools that will give their children an intensive, high-level Torah education while also equipping them with the knowledge and skills required to navigate adult life with confidence.

We need hope for Jews abroad who dream of making Aliyah, but are looking for a Charedi life that combines deep religious commitment with derech eretz, personal responsibility, and a positive relationship with the Jewish society around them.And we need hope for Israel.

Before October 7, the principal demand for greater Charedi participation in Israeli society was economic. Without more Charedi men entering the workforce, people asked, how could Israel sustain long-term economic growth? Among its many rude awakenings, October 7 taught us that the issue runs far deeper than economics. It is about partnership.

Charedi enlistment raises many serious questions: the preservation of religious standards in the army, protection for genuine Torah students, trust in the IDF and the state, the role of the courts, and the proper balance between Torah study and national obligation. These questions cannot be dismissed, and they deserve serious Torah consideration.

But beneath all of them lies something simpler. Israel needs to know that Charedim are partners in its fate. Given the size and extraordinary growth of Charedi society, that question is no longer peripheral. It touches the future character, and perhaps the very viability, of the Jewish state.

A senior Charedi political figure recently captured the problem with painful clarity. Asked whether young men who are not studying Torah should enlist, he replied that “our purview is yeshiva boys alone.” Whether non-students should serve, he explained, was simply not his concern. Yet when asked whether he would work to secure their release if imprisoned for refusing to enlist, the answer was immediate: of course. That would be pidyon shvuyim.

The exchange revealed an entire political worldview. Our task is to defend “our people” from “their state.” “Their” army is not our responsibility. “Their” economy is not our responsibility. Politics exists to secure Charedi interests from the surrounding society.
That posture may have been sustainable when Charedim were a small and embattled minority. It cannot provide a vision for a community rapidly becoming one of the central pillars of Israeli society. Nor does it provide a satisfying vision for Charedim themselves.

Hatzibur HaCharedi begins from a different premise: we are part of the story. That does not mean abandoning Charedi identity. Quite the opposite. It means believing that Charedi Judaism is strong enough to take responsibility: for Torah, for family and community, but also for livelihood, defense, civic life, and the future of Israel. It means creating space for the young man who works and remains fully Charedi; for the Torah scholar whose learning is protected and cherished; for the family seeking educational excellence alongside uncompromising religious commitment; and for the oleh who wants both the intensity of Charedi life and the dignity of derech eretz.

Above all, it means moving from a politics of fear to a politics of hope. Partnership cannot be forced on Charedi society from outside. Lasting change never works that way. It must grow organically from within, from people who love the Charedi world enough to believe that it can grow, mature and assume a larger role without losing its soul.

That is the hope HaTzibur HaCharedi seeks to represent. Hope that Israel’s future can include a flourishing and deeply committed Charedi society, not as a reluctant passenger, but as a partner. And hope that Charedi young people will no longer feel forced to choose between belonging to their community and building a responsible life within the Jewish state.

Hashem did not bring millions of Jews back to the land of our fathers for Israel to fail. Nor did Charedi society build its extraordinary world of Torah, family, charity and community in order to remain forever on the margins of the national story. The next chapter can be different. The question is whether we have the courage to write it.

Rav Yehoshua Pfeffer is Rabbi of “Ohr Chadash” in Ramot Bet, Jerusalem, having formerly served as a Dayan, and taught at several yeshivot. Alongside his rabbinic duties, he heads the “Iyun Institute,” which operates a range of groundbreaking leadership programs and publications in the Charedi space, focusing on the issue of broader charedi responsibility for Israel. He is the founding editor of the “Tzarich Iyun” journal and serves on the executive board of Netzach Yehudah, which serves Haredi soldiers in the IDF. He is also a professor at Hebrew University’s law school, having previously clerked at Israel’s Supreme Court. Today, he chairs the rabbinical board of the new Hatzibur HaCharedi party. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four of their eight children.