The Bourgeoisie Will Change Haredism

Originally published: May 12, 2026

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

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The Bourgeoisie Will Change Haredism – Tzarich Iyun

In his article, Rabbi Pfeffer describes the cultural change already taking place in Haredi society, and the need to recognize it and cooperate with it as part of adapting Haredism to the new age. In his view, an elitism encompassing the whole society is not feasible. The orientation and prestige of striving for excellence should be preserved, but there should also be room for people who do not realize it in practice, so long as they look toward it as a utopia and an ideal model.

Perhaps relevant here are the words of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner on the verse (Prov. 27:21): ‘The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, and a person according to what he praises.’ He explains that a person is not necessarily judged only by what he is, but no less by what he praises (the furnace refines and tests whether a metal is pure silver or pure gold). Rabbi Pfeffer proposes that the new Haredi should be judged not by what he is, but by what he praises—that is, by what his ideal model is.

In this short article, I would like to make two comments on the consequences of integrating the bourgeoisie into the Haredi world. The first concerns the characterization of Haredism, and the second the role of the bourgeoisie. At the end I will return to what emerges from both.

Will Haredism remain as it is?

Rabbi Pfeffer defines the essence of Haredism as the aspiration to spiritual excellence. I very much doubt whether this characterization is sufficient. From Aristotle we have already learned that when we come to define a phenomenon or a concept, we must present the genus and the species to which it belongs. Thus, for example, the human being is defined as a living creature (genus) that speaks (species). Such a definition gives us, through the genus, the context within which the phenomenon or concept appears, and through the species, the distinction between it and other phenomena belonging to the same genus. If we return to the definition of Haredism, the proposed definition gives us at most the genus, but not the species. There are other societies and groups that strive for excellence, and therefore it is difficult to define Haredism in this way. To arrive at a better definition, we must also appeal to the species—that is, to the content of that excellence. A group of athletes strives for excellence in sports; others strive for excellence in art or economics. Even in the religious sphere (not only the Jewish one), there are groups that strive for excellence, and what distinguishes them is the question of what model of excellence they aspire to. What excellence do the Haredim aspire to? Ostensibly, Torah excellence—that is, excellence in Torah and commandments. But even that is still too general a statement. To be more precise, we must ask: what is excellence in the service of God, and what is greatness in Torah?

The excellence or greatness in Torah in the Haredi model consists of comprehensive Torah knowledge and the ability to issue rulings in various cases, and of course meticulous observance of the commandments. The question is: what is that knowledge? Haredism holds that it is what is commonly studied in the yeshivot, such as the books of the early and later authorities, the commentators, and the legal decisors. Some are even punctilious enough to demand greatness in the literature of Jewish thought as well, though this is not a necessary criterion in the Haredi conception.

A bourgeois Haredi who engages in other fields will not necessarily be a coachman, an insurance agent, or a cobbler. He may also be a doctor or a researcher… When people acquire academic education and are exposed to other worlds of knowledge and content, it becomes much harder for them to preserve their admiration for Torah learning and for traditional ideals

I, humble as I am, and a member of Modern Orthodoxy, see Torah excellence differently from the way described above. From my perspective, Torah knowledge in its conventional sense is only a small part of the picture. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin already remarked that in his day, when the Oral Torah had been written down, the weight of Torah knowledge was less than people had attributed to it in the past—all the more so in our own day, when there are computerized databases. By contrast, in the contemporary world, to the best of my judgment, familiarity with the ways of the world, education in the sciences and literature, and more, are an inseparable part of ‘excellence’ and of greatness in Torah בכלל. This is a different model, which also strives for excellence, but it does not fit what is accepted in the Haredi world. The Haredi described by Rabbi Pfeffer is meant to look up to a very specific ideal—the one currently accepted in the Haredi world.[1]

Why is this important? Because once one understands this, one immediately notices the inherent danger in Rabbi Pfeffer’s model, which from the outset introduces the bourgeoisie into Haredi society. A bourgeois Haredi who engages in other fields will not necessarily be a coachman, an insurance agent, or a cobbler. He may also be a doctor or a researcher in one academic field or another. When people acquire academic education and are exposed to other worlds of knowledge and content—some of them deep and very impressive—and especially when they encounter intelligent, profound, and impressive people in those fields, it becomes much harder for them to preserve their admiration for Torah learning and for traditional ideals.[2] With the integration of the bourgeoisie, alternative figures of excellence will enter the pantheon of the new Haredi, and it is doubtful whether he will succeed in preserving the model of which Haredism currently speaks. The hagiographic attitude toward the past and its figures (which is an essential part of the Haredi outlook) will probably be damaged as well. Traditions about sages endowed with divine inspiration who knew everything and never erred will likely be met with less assent by someone versed in history and in critical thought about it, and certainly if he knows wise and good people from other fields (including non-Jews, of course). The centrality and uniqueness of Torah itself (in the Haredi definition of the term)—and indeed the very definition of Torah—may be gravely damaged. His attitude toward rabbis will no longer be one of self-effacing deference, for there will be important and significant fields of knowledge in which he is better and more educated than they are. And this is not only a matter of financial understanding, but of familiarity and skill in intellectual fields. In other words, integrating the bourgeoisie creates real competition with the intellectual greatness of the rabbinic leadership.

The centrality and uniqueness of Torah itself (in the Haredi definition of the term) may be gravely damaged… integrating the bourgeoisie creates real competition with the intellectual greatness of the rabbinic leadership

Rabbi Pfeffer refers mainly to the danger that recognizing the legitimacy of mediocrity will harm the aspiration to excellence, but in my opinion that is the secondary and less important danger. The more significant danger is to the Haredi model itself. It is doubtful whether, in the situation that will be created by including the bourgeoisie as a legitimate part of Haredi society, there will be any possibility or right of existence at all for the current model of Haredi excellence. It is not clear to what extent the society that emerges will still be considered Haredi. In other words, bringing the bourgeoisie into the Haredi world has implications for Haredism itself. In the Rogatchover’s terms, one could say that the combination of Haredism and bourgeois life is not a mechanical combination but a chemical one. Recognizing the bourgeoisie will change Haredism (and perhaps the reverse as well).[3]

In my view, this should not be seen as a danger, and as I wrote, I myself advocate such a model. But it is important that anyone considering Rabbi Pfeffer’s proposal understand its full significance properly. What is at stake here is not a merely formal change in Haredism but a substantive one. It is no accident that the institutional Haredi world consistently refuses to recognize these new phenomena, for at least intuitively, the Haredi leadership and functionaries understand their implications well. So long as this happens through turning a blind eye and through declarations of rejection, it may still be possible to preserve the accepted conceptions. But once bourgeois life is seen as legitimate, the situation may change—for better or for worse.

Lay Opinion and the Torah Outlook

I will now depart somewhat from the discussion of Haredism, which is primarily sociological, and deal with a substantive question: the question of the bourgeoisie from a religious and Torah perspective in general. Rabbi Pfeffer assumes that bourgeoisization is a problem and that we must deal with it. Ignoring it is ignoring reality, and therefore one must come to terms with mediocrity, provided that the utopian model of excellence is preserved. Here I would like to argue that the bourgeoisie has a religious role. Recognizing and accommodating the bourgeoisie does not merely answer a difficulty and seek to compromise with the inferior reality around us; its purpose is to repair the religious and Haredi world itself. In blunter language, to change and correct Torah and its conception. This is not done only in order to save the bourgeois from being expelled from Haredi society, and Haredi society from the threat of that expulsion (which would leave the leadership of the excellent without foot soldiers and followers, and would create identity problems, economic problems, and more), but also in order to save the Haredi path from its own model of excellence.

The Haredi ethos is that the yeshivot are Noah’s Ark, and in Bialik’s phrase, ‘the workshop of the soul of the nation.’ Outside, the storm may rage, but Noah’s Ark protects those within so that they will not be influenced by the winds of the age and will preserve Torah thinking in its purity. This idea, from a somewhat different angle, is expressed in the saying (first formulated, I believe, by the Haredi writer Sheinfeld, on the basis of the Sema, Choshen Mishpat sec. 3, subsec. 13): ‘The outlook of laymen is the opposite of the Torah outlook.’ My claim is that in many cases it is precisely the ‘laymen’ who are right. There is something in the common sense of the layman that finds flaws in the rabbi’s arguments or rulings. Torah truth is not necessarily located in its entirety in the study hall and among the outstanding Torah scholars; it requires assistance and oversight from laymen—that is, from the bourgeoisie.

There is something in the common sense of the layman that finds flaws in the rabbi’s arguments or rulings. Torah truth is not necessarily located in its entirety in the study hall and among the outstanding Torah scholars; it requires assistance and oversight from laymen—that is, from the bourgeoisie

Rabbi Binyamin Lau once wrote that he sees a problem in the fact that religious leadership today is entrusted to yeshiva heads rather than rabbis. Yeshiva heads deal with sharp and intelligent young people who criticize their logical moves and mainly point out flaws and inconsistencies in the logic. They must build the lesson carefully, because the eyes of their young critics are open and will discover any logical flaw in the structure they present. The conclusions can be completely detached from natural intuition, so long as they are consistent with the premises (that is, so long as there is no logical flaw in the argument). In the study hall, any claim is accepted, provided you present it in a well-constructed logical framework. One can propose arguments in this direction or that without putting them to the test of common sense and reality. Rabbis, by contrast, deal with laymen—that is, mature and critical Jews who are familiar with the ways of the world and with various fields of knowledge and activity. Such listeners can tell the rabbi that his words do not ‘make sense,’ that is, that they do not accord with common sense. Here, the object of criticism is not only logical consistency but also, and perhaps primarily, the conclusion itself. They offer the rabbi criticism from the standpoint of common sense, not only of logical inference.

So who is right in the debate between the rabbi and the audience of laymen? Rabbi Binyamin Lau assumes that in many cases the laymen are right, and therefore he laments the fact that leadership has been handed over to yeshiva heads. Rabbis are more fitting leaders, because their positions were formed in the face of criticism from common sense and from people who know the world and reality well, and not only tested for logical consistency, as with yeshiva heads.[4]

This claim too can be stated in two senses. It can be explained from Rabbi Pfeffer’s perspective, namely, that the Torah that comes from yeshiva heads who lead Noah’s Arks is not suited to the inferior world outside, and therefore we are obliged to recognize this and compromise with it. By contrast, here I want to argue that in many cases the laymen are right on the substantive plane. This is not a compromise that lowers Torah to reality, but Torah truth itself. There are rulings that seem logical in the study hall, but sometimes they are detached from common sense and from the world. The criticism of the bourgeois layman is a common-sense correction to the ruling and to the legal thinking formed in the study hall and in the decisor’s room. This is especially true of the new bourgeoisie Rabbi Pfeffer proposes, which includes strong-minded people engaged at a high level in fields of work and knowledge.

On the basis of this idea, one can understand a well-known Talmudic law in a new way. The Sages established that an enactment or decree that did not spread among the majority of Israel is not valid.[5] We are accustomed to seeing this as a compromise with reality. The decree or enactment is created in the study hall by the great scholars of the generation, and therefore the question arises whether it suits the masses—that is, the laymen and the people in the fields (the bourgeoisie). Rabbi Pfeffer too implicitly assumes in his remarks that the bourgeoisie is a deviation from the ideal, and that it can be contained only if it recognizes the utopia of the pure study hall and lifts its eyes toward it. There is a measure of truth in this, but here I want to argue that there is also an opposite side. Pushing bourgeois life and laymanship outside leads to incorrect Torah thinking. The enactment or decree that did not spread among the majority of Israel lost its force simply because it is incorrect. It is nullified not because we are forced to compromise with reality, but because its lack of fit with reality shows that it is not correct. The Torah is meant to be implemented on earth (the Torah was not given to the ministering angels). Therefore, norms that are not absorbed by the majority of the public indicate a disconnection from reality, and thus they also represent an incorrect Torah position. In other words, the problem with an enactment that does not spread among the public is not practicability but content.

This law expresses the fact that the thinking of the bourgeois person outside the study hall has added value and an important, unique contribution to Torah thinking itself. He is not meant merely to preserve what he absorbed in the yeshiva and take it with him into life, but also to return and influence the study hall from within life. Rulings detached from common sense, even if they are well grounded in Talmudic and scholarly arguments, are a Torah and legal mistake. These mistakes are weeded out by laymen—that is, by the bourgeoisie—through critical common-sense thinking, through ‘layman’s arguments,’ a phrase usually mentioned as a term of disparagement.

Once, I happened to teach the Talmudic issue of one who admits liability for a fine to a group of legal professionals (lawyers and judges). Among other things, we studied the rule, ‘One who admits liability for a fine, and afterward witnesses come, is exempt.’[6] We wondered about the logic of this rule: even if the admission itself does not obligate the confessor, here witnesses have come, and they do obligate him, do they not? The later authorities explain that according to this approach, the admission exempts the confessor from payment of the fine. But that is a definition, and the obvious question is: what is the logic behind it? A judge who was sitting in the audience, and who was clearly not versed in Torah study, suggested that since the person admitted his deed, he is forgiven, and therefore exempted from the fine. My first reaction was to mock the suggestion inwardly. I saw it as a ‘layman’s argument.’ Later I thought that in fact this is a very fine explanation of this puzzling rule.[7] The scholars define the law such that the admission exempts and does not merely fail to obligate, but they generally do not offer an explanation of the logic underlying this definition. In a place like this, what is needed is the thinking of a layman—a judge, in this case. A judge who knows such situations from life immediately sees interpretive possibilities that the scholars will not necessarily see.

The accommodation of the bourgeoisie by religious society is not merely passive and one-sided accommodation, but the addition of an important shade to Torah thinking and to the service of God. This accommodation is not only a need of the bourgeoisie, but a need of Torah and of the study hall themselves

Another example of the benefit of integrating the bourgeoisie into Haredi society is reflected in the following story. Years ago, a newly observant Jew whom I had accompanied in his journey approached me in puzzlement. He lived in a small and rather closed Haredi community, and people criticized him for riding a bicycle, for carrying a student backpack, for his modern Israeli name, and the like. All these things, he was told, are not suitable for people devoted to Torah. Better to walk, to carry one’s things in a plastic bag, and to change one’s name to a more ‘Jewish’ one. He asked me where these strange demands came from, and also wondered about the tendency to be stringent in Jewish law with stringencies that have no real basis. As we spoke, an important insight took shape in my mind. When a legal stringency or a certain mode of conduct arises that seems to people to be the proper path in the service of God, it may happen that it is not accepted by a considerable part of the public. In such a case, the Sages teach us (according to my proposal above regarding an enactment that did not spread) that there is probably something mistaken and incorrect in it. The public sends critical feedback back to the decisions of the study hall and puts them in their proper place. But in the Haredi world, when something like this happens, people quote the Chazon Ish’s remark that, for our purposes, what matters is what the oylem says, not what the world says. That is, anyone who is not a ‘Torah person’—his opinion does not count in any case. As a result, every whim, however baseless and however detached from common sense, does not receive the feedback the Sages required. When such feedback does arise, instead of understanding that there is important criticism here of the ruling or the mode of conduct in question, it is dismissed with the claim that lay opinion is irrelevant. When the bourgeoisie cannot express its opinion, a situation arises that in engineering is called ‘positive feedback.’ That is, every stringency or custom receives only reinforcement, and all opposition (at least that which comes from outside the study hall and represents common sense) is rejected out of hand. Thus a one-way development is created in the stringent and elitist direction, and often also in directions that are detached and incorrect. The Sages’ instruction that there must be acceptance among the majority of Israel has lost its significance, because whoever does not accept the new invention is by definition not ‘Israel’—that is, not a ‘Torah person’—and therefore his opinion need not be taken into account. This is how Haredi society lost the checks and balances created by bourgeois (lay) criticism of the Torah thinking of the study hall—checks and balances that are so very important.

From this it follows that accommodating the bourgeoisie on the part of religious society is not merely passive and one-sided accommodation, but the addition of an important shade to Torah thinking and to the service of God. This accommodation is not only a need of the bourgeoisie, but a need of Torah and of the study hall themselves. And again, the question arises whether such an ideological and intellectual shift—giving up the ethos that ‘the outlook of laymen is the opposite of the Torah outlook,’ or that of ‘Noah’s Ark’ versus the stormy world outside—will leave the society Haredi, or whether it will erase it and blur its distinctiveness.

***

There is, of course, a connection between the two points I have discussed. In the first, I argued that introducing the bourgeoisie into Haredism will change Haredism itself at the sociological level; in the second, I showed that the direction of change may also be substantive on the Torah plane. The conception of Torah and Torah thinking, as well as greatness in Torah, will change. My conclusion is that the proposal to view the bourgeoisie as a legitimate part of Haredi society threatens to shatter several of its most fundamental ethoses. I personally am entirely in favor, but it seems important to me to point out the broader and deeper implications of this proposal. In practice, Rabbi Pfeffer proposes to bring modern conceptions in through the back door into the Haredi ‘Noah’s Ark,’ and to some extent heralds the undoing of Haredism itself.

Main image: Bigstock

[1] There are several sentences from which one might infer that he is proposing a different model of excellence, but a close reading of his remarks shows that his intention is to introduce the bourgeoisie in a legitimate way in order to save the existing model of excellence, and not to change the definition of excellence itself.

[2] Very often, admiration for the Haredi Torah greats comes together with contempt for experts in other fields. That contempt is usually based on ignorance and unfamiliarity. Sometimes the unfamiliarity also causes the opposite phenomenon: exaggerated admiration and feelings of inferiority—sometimes not explicit but implicit—toward scientists, researchers, and the like.

[3] When I write this, I am reminded of a joke from the Communist era. Comrade Brezhnev, the party secretary who stands at the head of the Politburo, takes his elderly mother and shows her the full extent of his greatness and splendid glory. He shows her his magnificent dacha with its lawns, and she is silent. Then he shows her his luxury car, the ZIL, and again she is silent. Lavish meals and a splendid house, servants, a private plane—and the mother does not utter a word. Brezhnev cannot restrain himself and asks, ‘Mother, are you not proud of me for all this?’ And then his mother replies, ‘Very much so, my son. But what will we do if communism returns?’

[4] It may be that this is part of what lies at the root of the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon, on the one hand, and Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, on the other (Makkot 7a): ‘Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: Had we been in the Sanhedrin, no person would ever have been executed. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: They too would increase bloodshedders in Israel.’ Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon were not in the Sanhedrin. They were scholars of the study hall, and the burden of practical leadership did not rest upon them. Therefore they indeed had a profound understanding of Jewish law and legal reasoning, but it was entirely unpractical and unfit for implementation.

And I think this is also what George Orwell meant when he said: ‘There are ideas so absurd that only intellectuals can believe them.’ This means that such detachment characterizes intellectuals as such, and not only rabbis and Torah scholars. But unlike what is customary in the broader world, where academic expertise is separated from positions of practical leadership, in the Haredi-Torah world the same people who lead the public and make the practical decisions are also the ‘intellectuals.’

[5] For the practical ruling, see, for example, Maimonides, Hilkhot Mamrim 2:2.

[6] See Bava Kamma 14b, and Maimonides, Hilkhot Geneivah 3:8.

[7] This also explains the rule of ‘he saw witnesses approaching’ (Shevuot 49a, and Maimonides there 3:9), according to which if the offender confesses after he sees witnesses on their way to the court, the confession does not exempt him. Here too the scholars see this as a kind of biblical safeguard intended to prevent confessions whose purpose is to scheme and escape the fine (and why should a person not want to escape it? If he confessed, he is indeed exempt). But in light of the explanation we have proposed here, this rule is entirely simple. This is a confession that does not come out of a process of repentance, and therefore it does not exempt him. Much more could be said about this, but this is not the place.

Source (Tzarich Iyun): https://iyun.org.il/article/%d7%9c%d7%a7%d7%a8%d7%90%d7%aa-%d7%9e%d7%a2%d7%9e%d7%93-%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%97%d7%a8%d7%93%d7%99/%d7%94%d7%91%d7%95%d7%a8%d7%92%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%aa%d7%a9%d7%a0%d7%94-%d7%90%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%97%d7%a8%d7%93%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa/

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