The righteous, or perhaps not so righteous, anger that was rained down on Prime Minister-designate Naftali Bennett by the leaders of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties on Tuesday was unprecedented in its ferocity.
In a rancorous and intemperate speech, United Torah Judaism chairman Moshe Gafni vowed a war against Bennett and his nascent government for what he alleged would be its assault against Judaism, and he invoked dire biblical imprecations against the prime minister-elect.
And Shas leader Arye Deri, as well as UTJ Construction and Housing Minister Ya’acov Litzman, both denounced Bennett for “uprooting religion,” with the latter telling the Yamina leader to remove his yarmulke for his betrayal of religious values.
What has riled these leaders is the modest proposals to reform religious life in Israel proposed by Yamina, as well as the more far-reaching plans of Yisrael Beytenu, which includes efforts to change the state’s relationship with the haredi community.
Yamina plans to allow municipal chief rabbis, who are all Orthodox and have passed Chief Rabbinate exams, to establish conversion courts; allow more than one formal kashrut supervision service to operate in the country, like in any other country with a large Jewish population; and, heaven forbid, ensure that at least one of the two chief rabbis to be elected in 2023 is from the religious-Zionist community.
Yisrael Beytenu’s designs are more extensive, including the provision of civil marriage in Israel, public transportation on Shabbat, having haredi elementary school pupils study mathematics and English, and the implementation of the Western Wall agreement.
It is worth noting that although there is no current provision for civil marriage in Israel, such ceremonies performed outside of Israel are recognized in Israel; that public transportation on Shabbat would only be provided in nonreligious cities and neighborhoods; and that the haredi parties initially consented to the Western Wall agreement.
Still, Yamina hasn’t signed on to the Yisrael Beytenu proposals, and there is essentially no chance they will pass without the former’s consent.
During the 34th government of Israel, in which Yesh Atid and Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi Party were central partners and from which the haredi parties were excluded, several efforts to reform conversion, institute civil marriage and enact other religion-and-state reforms were nixed by Bennett’s party.
Bennett came under pressure from the rabbis who influenced Bayit Yehudi, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pressured by the haredi parties from the opposition, which threatened that the political alliance between them and Netanyahu might be torn up if he allowed religious reforms to be approved by the Knesset.
The putative government that Bennett is supposed to lead and is scheduled to be sworn in on Sunday will have a razor-thin, bare majority of just one MK. It will be comprised of eight parties – from the left-wing liberals of Meretz to the right-wing, pro-settlement Yamina, and from the secular-Jewish nationalists of Yisrael Beytenu to the Islamist Ra’am Party (United Arab List).
In such a coalition, every MK is a prime minister, and passing any legislation depends on the goodwill and cooperation of absolutely every single one of them.
Given this precarious state of affairs, Yamina has throughout the negotiation process of forming a government sought to peel away the haredi parties from its alliance with Netanyahu, with negotiations continuing up to just several days ago.
For this reason, its proposals for the reform of religious life have been modest.
Indeed, there is no guarantee that they will be enacted. To start with, Bennett does not have tight control over his faction, as the defection of MK Amichai Chikli and the threatened desertion of MK Nir Orbach clearly demonstrated.
Furthermore, Orbach and MK Idit Silman are both originally from the more conservative Bayit Yehudi Party, whose rabbis are not well disposed to liberalizing religious life, especially decentralizing the authority of the Chief Rabbinate, which they see as sacrosanct.
And Bennett’s longtime ally and No. 2, MK Ayelet Shaked, has for a long time courted and curried favor with the haredi parties, despite her secular lifestyle. She is well aware of the fate of politicians who antagonize them, such as Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, who has struggled to represent a viable alternative to Netanyahu due to their antipathy for him.
All these factors make passing the reforms Yamina itself has proposed in its coalition agreements with Yesh Atid more difficult and less certain.
But the curses and religious threats, including calls to excommunicate Yamina MKs from Jewish life, issued by Gafni, Deri and Litzman might have changed this equation.
Such unbridled public hostility cannot easily be brushed aside or dismissed, and it forms a barrier of personal animosity between the two sides.
It is true that the haredi MKs are beholden to their rabbis and not their voters; therefore, public commitments today can easily be dismissed by rabbinic dispensation tomorrow.
But the ferocity of the attack on Bennett makes joining the new government more difficult, since the haredi political leaders would look hypocritical and ridiculous if they joined the “evil government” they had previously denounced.
If there is no realistic option that United Torah Judaism and Shas could ever join the new government, what incentive is there for it to moderate its religion-and-state reforms?
Bennett himself did not restrain himself in his response to Tuesday’s haredi broadside, accusing the Shas and UTJ leaders of “losing their minds,” telling them he would not be lectured by them on Judaism” and, most bitingly, implicitly alleging they were responsible for the Meron disaster in which 45 mostly haredi men and boys lost their lives.
One Yamina source said the level of animosity exuded by Gafni, Deri and Litzman on Tuesday, and the threats to the religious lives of Yamina MKs, could indeed alienate the party from UTJ and Shas and make Yamina more determined to enact the legislation it has proposed.
“It is very possible things will go in that direction,” the source said. “This could go down in history as the biggest tactical mistake the haredim have ever made.”
Yamina’s commitment to religious reform in Israel has always been in question. The party declined to talk about these issues throughout the last election campaign, and it has always had one eye on the haredi parties for fear of suffering Lapid’s fate.
Now that Gafni, Deri and Litzman appear to be burning these bridges anyway, it is possible that the liberalization of religious life in Israel is a step closer.