Dramatic changes may be coming in Israel: Demographers now estimate about a third of last year's Jewish babies were born into the ultra-Orthodox community, an insular and devout minority that has long been at loggerheads with the rest of the increasingly modern and prosperous country.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews — known in Hebrew as "Haredim," or "those who tremble" before God — have a birthrate far higher than that of other Israeli Jews, with 10 children in a single family not uncommon. They seem poised to become far more numerous and influential.
Relations between Haredim and other Israelis have never been smooth. Critics have long complained that they shun work in large numbers in favor of religious study, rejecting mainstream Israel even as they rely on that mainstream for financial support.
This has long been a worry of mine. At best, this part of Israeli society is an anchor that has to be dragged around as dead weight by the rest of the Israelis, doing nothing to advance Israel's economy or defense. They rely on the Israel they despise to protect them from a hostile Middle Eastern Moslem world and even for enough money to live.
Poor, ill-educated, self-segregated from society at large, hopped up on religion, intolerant, and fecund. Where have we seen that before?
At worst, this stratum of society could sink Israel as a Western-oriented democracy and make Israel vulnerable to foreign enemies, possibly as the result of figurative or literal civil war fought over their power within Israel.
Israel might be the most important country that needs Iraq as an example of how to run a secular state on the ruins that religious-inspired deficiencies inflicted on their society.
