In a by-now familiar cycle, the more powerful the chareidim are in a given Netanyahu government, the harder they fall in the next election
“WErefused to accept the limitations of power, so we learned it the hard way,” says United Torah Judaism MK Meir Porush, minister of heritage and Jerusalem affairs, summing up 5783.
As the scion of a long line of Yerushalmi askanim, Porush understands the distinct characteristic that has enabled the chareidi community to survive as an insular and autonomous society through the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, and the State of Israel.
Chareidi Jewry in modern Eretz Yisrael has always known how to hold its ground. It operates from the position of a disadvantaged minority, seeking only to live by its own laws and customs, without striving to impose those values on the broader public.
But from election to election, as the chareidi parties’ political importance has grown, those basic principles have gradually eroded.
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