For many Israelis, the upcoming election is not just another round of political maneuvering. It feels like a rare, almost sacred opportunity to loosen a grip that has been tightening for decades — the hold of the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community over the shared space of Israeli life. The phrase “stranglehold” sounds dramatic, perhaps even harsh, but for a growing number of ordinary citizens it describes the daily reality: buses where women are expected to sit in the back, public streets closed on Shabbat, state budgets siphoned into religious institutions that do not teach math or English, and young men excused from military service because studying ancient texts is considered more important than protecting their country. Behind the political headlines are human stories: a secular soldier who carries the burden of national defense while his Haredi peer sits in a seminary classroom; a Reform rabbi who cannot officiate a marriage; a new immigrant who wants a simple secular burial but finds the state will only fund a religious one. These are not abstract policy debates. They are moments of heartbreak, anger, and exhaustion. Yet the same election that hands the Haredi parties their familiar leverage also hands Israeli voters a weapon: the ballot. For the first time in years, there is a realistic chance to reshape the old status quo, not by attacking religious Jews, but by refusing to let a minority dictate how the majority lives. The opportunity is fragile, complicated, and easy to squander, but it is there, waiting in voting booths across the country.
The roots of this stranglehold run deep, reaching back to the founding of the state. In 1947, David Ben-Gurion made a pragmatic deal with religious leaders: a separate education system, kosher food in state institutions, and exemption from military service for a few hundred Torah scholars. The assumption was that the ultra-Orthodox world would eventually shrink, or at least assimilate into modern Israeli society. Instead, the Haredi community grew, both in numbers and in political confidence, surviving the secular, socialist ethos of the early state by building a counterworld of yeshivas, synagogues, and neighborhoods sealed off from secular culture. The exemptions meant to be temporary became permanent entitlements. The poverty meant to be temporary became a way of life, sustained by generous state allowances for large families and by a cultural ideal that saw work as a threat to holiness. Over time, the Haredi parties learned to exploit the fragility of Israeli coalition governments. Because no single party ever wins a majority, the largest party must negotiate with smaller ones. The Haredi parties, with their ten to fifteen seats, became indispensable kingmakers. Their demands were simple and unyielding: more funding for yeshivas, protection of draft exemptions, subsidies for children, and no interference in internal community matters. And because they were disciplined, unified, and fiercely loyal to their leaders, they extracted concessions that far exceeded their numbers. A democracy built on negotiation became a system of quiet blackmail, and the quietest victims were the ordinary Israelis who had no seat at that negotiating table.
To understand what is at stake, one has to walk through the daily lives of people on both sides of the divide. For a young Haredi man, the world is warm and full of meaning. He marries at twenty, studies Torah from morning until night, depends on his wife’s salary or on stipends, and sees military service as a corruption of his soul. His community is tight-knit, loving, and deeply suspicious of outsiders. To him, the state is not his project; it is a temporary guest that owes him protection and money. For a secular Israeli mother, the same world looks completely different. Her son is drafted at eighteen, spent years of reserve duty, and may have fought in the last war. Her daughter studies chemistry and engineering, pays high taxes, and works in a tech company that funds the country’s innovation. She sees Haredi neighborhoods expanding, demanding more from the state while refusing to participate in it. She hears about dead soldiers and thinks of the young men who stayed home. She pays for kindergartens that close early, while yeshiva students receive stipends for life. She tries to find a restaurant in Jerusalem that stays open when she is hungry after a trip, only to be turned away by city ordinances pushed through by religious councils. None of this makes her hate religion. It makes her resent the politics of religion, the way an entire way of life has been imposed not by faith but by law. That resentment is no longer a private grumble. It has become a movement.
This election is different because the old fear has turned into a form of civic courage. For decades, secular and moderate religious Israelis were told that if you vote for change, the Haredim will punish you, and they did. But in recent years, a growing number of voters have stopped being scared. The 2011 social justice protests, the 2018 protests against a new military draft law, the 2020 government crisis that dragged Israel through four elections, and the 2023 judicial reform struggle all exposed the same underlying truth: the system is held hostage by a handful of parties who care more about their own funding than about the country. In response, new parties have emerged, not from the religious world but from the heart of the secular and national-religious camps, promising to draft all citizens into national service, to moderate the power of religious councils, to fund only schools that teach core subjects, and to redefine a Jewish and democratic state where the two worlds can coexist without one dominating the other. Even within the Haredi community, there are voices of change: women seeking employment, young men joining the workforce, a small but determined experiment of Haredi soldiers serving in the army. These voices are often drowned out, but they are a reminder that the stranglehold is not the only reality. It is a choice, and choices can be changed.
Still, the opportunity is delicate, and the path is littered with obstacles. The Haredi community remains the most organized and disciplined electoral bloc in the country. Its leaders tell voters that voting for a secular party is like abandoning a ship, and the fear of Jewish assimilation into modern culture is a powerful weapon. In many Haredi neighborhoods, there are no posters for other parties, and social pressure is relentless. A man who votes for a centrist party may find his children ostracized in school, his business boycotted, his family shamed. Against this, the secular majority is fragmented. It fights over economic policy, foreign affairs, and personal grudges, allowing the Haredi parties to slip through the cracks and remain the ultimate arbiters. The electoral system itself, with its nationwide proportional representation and low threshold, rewards small parties and encourages splintering. A voter who wants to end the stranglehold may face a choice between a party that is strong but too radical, and a party that is reasonable but too small to matter. And even if a new government is formed without the Haredi parties, those parties will not disappear. They will be in the opposition, screaming, negotiating, and waiting for the next crisis to rise again. Ending the stranglehold is not a one-time event. It is a long, slow disentangling of entitlements, exemptions, and cultural control. But the first step is always the hardest, and the first step is happening now, in the minds of voters who have finally realized that they can say no.
What would the future look like if this opportunity is seized? It would not be a country without ultra-Orthodox Jews. It would be a country where Haredi men are free to study Torah, but not free to ignore the draft completely; where women can be modest without dictating modesty to others; where the state funds yeshivas but also funds secular schools and requires all schools to teach the skills children need to survive; where a wedding can be performed by a rabbi of one’s own community, or by no rabbi at all; where public transport runs on Saturday for those who need it, while those who keep Shabbat remain free to close their shops and celebrate; where the suffering of a secular family and a Haredi family are equally visible in government budgets. That is the humanized vision: not a war against religion, but a rebalancing of the covenant, a renegotiation of the old deal that has outlived its purpose. It is a deal that once protected a fragile Jewish state, but now threatens to break it from within. The citizens of Israel — the soldier, the doctor, the mother, the student, the believer, the skeptic — are all exhausted by a battle that never ends. This election is a chance to put down the weapons, not with victory, but with a new arrangement based on dignity, fairness, and mutual responsibility. The stranglehold can be loosened, but only if enough people look beyond their own fear, beyond their own anger, and into the eyes of their neighbor and say: we are all in this together. That is the true opportunity. It is not to defeat the ultra-Orthodox, but to welcome them into the same society they have been pushing away, and to build a country where no one has a stranglehold because everyone has a share.
