During the last week of January 2021, Israeli Khareem protested and rioted in B'nai B'i B'nai B'iq,

a city just east of Tel Aviv, where a great many Israeli Khareem live. In the midst of the riot,

a bus driver was thrown from his vehicle,

and the bus was burned to its metal skeleton. The rioters of B'nai Brock were angry at the government's

public health efforts to enforce a lockdown, not the country's first, and of course, a source of

great frustration for everyone. Well, several days later, over 10,000 Khadim congregated, again, in violation of the government's lockdown, to mourn the late Rabbi Mechulam David Soloveitchik.

Reflecting on these events, the lead political reporter in the times of Israel, Kaviv Rettigur, described how, for all of the frustration that the Khadim in in Israel may feel, they have in turn stimulated

an equal measure of frustration and resentment on the part of non-Kharati Israelis.

The Khareidim in Israel are over a million strong.

They are a force in Israeli politics, and despite their cultural isolation from the Israeli

mainstream, there are a force in Israeli culture.

The coronavirus has

brought the heat, generated by the tensions, between the Haredim and Israeli society, to a boiling

point. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. This week, we look at an

essay by a Haredi leader who wishes to repair the relationship between his community and Israel at large.

Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer has been a guest on the show several times before.

He's a Dayan, a communal halakhic decisor, an educator, formerly a law clerk at the Israeli

Supreme Court, and the editor of Tsarich Ioun, a journal of Khareedi ideas.

In an essay that he wrote earlier this month, he conceptualizes a religious basis for a new

way for Haredim to relate to civil society, a framework for citizenship rooted in rabbinic

sources, a framework that he hopes can serve as the foundation for Haredi civic virtue.

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