Ultra-Orthodox Jews reasonably consider themselves to be the best Jews, and so arouse feelings in secular Jews reminiscent of anti-Semitic sentiment toward Jews. Just as anti-Semites hate us because we believe ourselves chosen—and thus higher than they are—so atheist Jews despise the ultra-Orthodox for their proud superiority. It is obscene that ultra-Orthodox Jews, our religious beacons, don’t pay their dues to society. The Israeli military budget is $5 billion, a thousand dollars per every Jew. Ultra-Orthodox Jews have to pay their share. The anti-Zionists among them cannot argue that they would be at peace with the Arabs if not for the Zionists, who should thus bear the financial burden. Arabs killed ultra-Orthodox Jews even in the nineteenth century, when there was no Zionism, and terrorists kill them now.

There should be a minimal tax obligation for every citizen; no able person must be allowed to pay less. Just as everyone has to pay municipal expenses, so everyone must pay IDF’s expenses.

There’s no need to discuss the point that Arab citizens of Israel must pay lump-sum taxes, too. Rather, they must be expelled.

If illegal immigration is dangerous, the problem can easily be solved by force. Illegals can be shot at the border just like any other infiltrators. If they claim refugee status, Israel can transfer them to UNRWA camps in Gaza and East Jerusalem. Aiding refugees is UNRWA’s reason for existence.

Still simpler, Israel can work with Sinai Bedouins to stop the illegal immigration. Bedouins earn about $600 per head for sneaking Africans into Israel. At the present rate of infiltration, that comes to about $12 million annually. Okay, we will pay the Bedouin clans twice as much to stop the trafficking and police the Sinai against infiltrators. That is negligible compared to the cost of dealing with African crime in Israel or building a Great Wall of China on Israel’s border with Egypt. The same approach can stop arms trafficking to Gaza.

But let’s consider the matter a bit more deeply. Why do we not want Africans here? They are unlike us; we do not want a culturally alien mob in our towns. They tend to be criminals because our punishments do not deter them: Israeli jails are more comfortable than most Sudanese hotels. They crowd Jews out of the low-end job marketplace. They may eventually naturalize and vote on Jewish matters in the Knesset. They place a heavy burden on social services.

These problems are easily solved. Grant all illegals temporary labor visas and withhold a significant part of their wages: they can receive the accumulated amount only if they depart from the country before their visas expire. If they are convicted of any crime, including immigration crime, their entire deposit is forfeited. If they go to jail, offer them the minimum living conditions comparable to jails in their native countries. According to the Torah and liberal theory, we must not oppress those who possess visas, but we need not treat them to the same perks (including very nice jails) granted to citizens.

The Africans―and indeed all labor immigrants―must live in separate communities. They are here to work, not to hang around. These are not labor camps; think of them as gated communities. In a very small country like Israel, isolated living creates no logistical problems.

Immigrant laborers must not be entitled to the Israeli minimum wage. Such a wage is the highest indirect tax consumers pay. It is a subsidy given to unskilled domestic workers. There is no conceivable reason to subsidize foreigners likewise. To pay the Africans very low wages and let them live in crowded conditions is not oppression: they are free to come here and to go back to their native countries. If they accept our terms, they are welcome to stay; if not, they are free to leave. By refusing them minimum wages we do not oppress them, but only refuse to subsidize them indirectly.

Naturalization must be closed to labor immigrants absolutely, as a matter of constitutional law. If they beget children here, we wish them all the best and deport them. They were allowed into this country strictly to work, not for any other activity.

Labor migrants must have no share in social services. Generations of Jewish taxpayers built these services for their children, not for African migrants. Free schools and semi-free hospitals are not really free. We allow foreign laborers here for our benefit, not for theirs. They must not be allowed even in our parks, which were built in the desert by our hands and our money. The parks are our property just like our homes; temporary migrants have no share in them.

All migrants must also be required to purchase medical insurance, which must be sold to them at private rates without averaging their high-risk occupations with less risky Jewish lifestyles. It must be a preconditions that the inability to work would be cause for deportation. Jews need not subsidize migrants’ health insurance by providing it at uneconomically low rates.

On such terms, labor migrants would be a boom to Israeli economy and politics. They will provide a huge source of cheap labor and crowd Israeli Arabs out of the low-end jobs. Even in a tax-free black market for employment, Arabs won’t be able to compete with Africans whose wages are not pegged to the minimum wage. A lot of jobless Arabs will find Israel too expensive a place to live, especially if unemployment benefits are limited sharply.

Even African infiltrators can be useful, if only Jews have the guts to make use of them.

And no, Dubai’s great endeavors are not about oil wealth. The emirate pumps meager 80,000 bpd, an amount comparable to the Sinai oilfields, which Israel gave away to Egypt for a piece of paper titled “peace treaty.” And yes, Dubai is actually very smart to incur $80 billion in unserviceable debt, it is the investors who are stupid, and there is never lack of stupid investors. The people who invested for years in Bernie Madoff’s obviously fraudulent schemes are not in a position to preach business morality. Also consider that America built itself by milking European investors through stock market bubbles and crushes: the money entered the American economy, never to be repaid. Or, for something more official and closer to home, you may have heard about Mossad’s “power plant” scam in Bangladesh, which netted the security service upwards of half a billion dollars.

Dubai’s type of luxurious mega-project is not necessarily economically inefficient, but luxurious goods only thrive in booming markets. The Palm Island’s villas were sold in advance, though hotels there had little chance for full occupancy. It boils down to hype: if the destination is sufficiently fashionable, both buyers and investors will flock to it. Israel has many qualities that could enable it to become such a fashionable destination: it’s close to Europe, yet exotic; its climate is hot, yet sufficiently mild most of the year; salaries are low enough to offer economic opportunities to investors, but people possess substantial work ethics; all parts of the country are close to its airport and seaports, yet there are many secluded retreats, and the population is interesting and friendly. Only two things are lacking: a business-friendly government and a perception of security. In the Emirates, business friendliness is staggering. It is not only about a tax-free environment, but the government’s policy of going an extra ten miles to help businesses. Once you’re well-connected—and you have to be for any large project—there is no red tape whatsoever. That situation is changing slowly for the worse as the country acquires its own bureaucracy, but any upper-level decision can still be pushed through very quickly. This friendliness is not only enjoyed by big businesses. It is customary for the top manager of a free zone to call his tenants once in a while to see if they need any help, even with such matters as visas for their employees or government contacts for their owners. New factories are welcome: all permits in free zones are issued within days, electricity substations are installed the next day, and sea containers often cleared through port and customs within one hour.

Jews are very good at nearly everything they do. When they embarked on creating a bureaucracy, they created the best bureaucracy in the world, one which small entrepreneurs find Kafka-esque, and which even large investors overcome only with great difficulty. Did we have to abandon Jericho to build a casino there? What was wrong with building casinos in Israel?

I visited a friend in Egypt once, and returned eight months later. On the second visit, I saw a new building at his factory. He was surprised when I told him that eight months in Israel isn’t even long enough to get a building permit. Why do we need building permits? Once a certified architect has signed the project documentation, who is some government official to second-guess him? Why should there be zoning for commercial construction? The land owner has a strong economic interest in not offending neighborhood sensibilities because he depends on his neighbors for sales. Why can agricultural land not be used for construction, why is subsidized, grossly inefficient agriculture more important to society than inexpensive housing?

The great numbers of Israelis who emigrate to developed countries do so not because of the downfall of Zionist values in the Jewish state; they won’t find more Jewish values in Canada. Rather, they are making the simple and eminently sensible human decision not to waste their lives. If purchasing-power-parity wages in American hi-tech are five times higher than in Israel, that means that an Israeli immigrant to the United States earns in one day what he used to earn in a week. If one can work only on Thursday, why he should work Sunday to Wednesday as well, for the same money?

There is no cure for Israel’s economic problems short of abandoning all permits, banning trade unions, and delegitimizing monopolies. Then Israel would be a great country for any activity.

We should give the United States back its two billion dollars in aid, and sell our own perfectly good weapons to whoever asks for them. We don’t care who kills whom with what; if not with our weapons, they would be killing each other with Russian ones. Any dictator is welcome to shop for the best bombs here. Any revolutionary movement heavy on blood diamonds is welcome to receive top-notch training here. This is the best peripheral strategy, the best way to befriend governments and gain their support in the UN. We would be able to do anything to the Arabs without the least fear of sanctions: our best export markets, the rogue ones, wouldn’t care about UN policies. Moreover, we would make many good friends among Muslims. Israel was very, very close to establishing excellent working relations with the ayatollahs on two separate occasions after the revolution, when we supplied them with weapons. Our stupid government sent Iran faulty arms in addition to expired American rockets, which we transshipped to them. Israel has refused opportunities to cooperate with several significant subversive movements in Arab countries, movements which had a significant chance of coming to power. Would that set us on a collision course with America? Unlikely, since the Americans often support the same rogue regimes they don’t want us to sell weapons to. Even if America were to protest, Israel could always switch to buying Russian weapons, which would also be a reliable way to stop Russia from selling weapons to Arabs.

Israel must pick up the fallen banner of bank secrecy from Switzerland, which is repealing many of its formerly famous bank protections. It started by disclosing accounts in corruption and money-laundering cases (and how many large accounts are not related to corruption?), and wound up turning over tax evaders to the United States. The only reason the US has the power to pressure Swiss banks is because they conduct vast activities in America. Insular Israeli banks are objectively not susceptible to such pressure, although many have complied with American rules preemptively. Jewish people enjoy a good reputation in the financial sphere, and foreign tax evaders would be glad to keep their money in Israeli banks. Corruption and money-laundering transactions are slightly more difficult because FATF sanctions can paralyze foreign transfers by Israeli banks. Two solutions exist. The harsh solution is to disregard FATF and conduct questionable transactions in the currencies of less picky countries, such as yuan. A milder solution would nominally ban the dirty money, but require an Israeli court’s decision for every account’s disclosure. A special branch of courts must be created for such cases, and with sufficient laxity toward the proceeding and exceedingly rigorous standards of proof, the account holders can be given practical impunity. Why, indeed, should we care if a Russian official obtained his fortune through corruption, if he stores his money with us?

Israel makes a better and potentially safer transshipment point for Middle Eastern oil to the Mediterranean than Syria or Turkey. That, of course, is contingent on the Israeli government finally settling things with the Arabs. And why not? Good business requires excellent security. The Arabs have long been eager to finish their confrontation with Israel: it used to be a vent for domestic radicals, but has now become a rallying point for them. The Saudis would be only too happy to sign a treaty with Israel. Even Iran would be politically unable to resist normalization if a Palestinian government were to reach an agreement with Israel. Iran and its clients Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq continue to oppose peace with Israel, but investors won’t put much stock in the positions of rogue states. In Western media and to the Western investor’s mind, the bulk of Israeli insecurity caused by the Palestinians. That, of course, is untrue: terrorists do not inflict on us nearly as much damage as traffic accidents, but the image persists. Israel need not agree with the Palestinians on everything: it would be enough to withdraw behind borders which we consider acceptable. Just as with Gaza, the Western public will see the message of Israeli withdrawal and fail to understand the concomitant complications. True, Hamas will quickly take over the West Bank, though probably not through elections, since the Islamic movement has lost its popularity even in Gaza. But Hamas has already seen our response to rocket barrages, and won’t be eager to repeat the experience for years to come. On the contrary, the 2009 Gaza war will attain mythical proportions in Arab folklore, and discourage massive terrorism against Israel.

Security issues are simple if we realize that the economy comes first.

There is a critical difference between Swedish and Israeli socialism. Swedes are a relatively homogenous crowd, while Israelis have well-defined groups of spongers: Haredim, Arabs, blacks, and elderly immigrants. The corruption is especially heinous in regard to blacks: besides direct subsidies (financial rather than a fixed number of bananas per family), they hugely benefit from minimum-wage laws, which means that hardworking Jews are subsidizing those falashas. Many Jews don’t even understand that minimum wage is the largest tax they pay.
It is this corruption that allows government to perform its anti-Israeli tricks. Haredim accepted the Gush Katif eviction after Sharon threw their leaders a bone of slightly bigger subsidies. Settlers keep silent about the destruction of outposts because the government subsidizes settlements.

But aren’t subsidies natural for a state? Not at all. The government does not obtain the funds miraculously. It taxes and distributes. The nation as a whole receives no favor from government for which people should reciprocate gratefully. Rather, government bribes them and pushes them into compliance with their own money. The absurdity of the situation lies in the fact that government legally robs decent, hardworking Jews to buy the support of others for policies detrimental to those Jews. Their own money is taken away and turned against them.

In classical Athenian democracy only people of certain means were allowed to vote. In Israel, tax-negative citizens must be barred from voting. Incidentally, that would disenfranchise Arabs, and also discourage government from politically motivated subsidies.

Since Rousseau, academic social theories have become increasingly actionable. Never before have states had the power to rule people’s minds. Bodies, yes, but minds have only become governable with the advent of ideologies, propaganda, and especially mass media.

Since the demise of aristocracy in the nineteenth century, merit is largely based on education. A person with no university degree has very little chance to become a prominent politician. Academia has thus replaced aristocratic background. Politicians are brainwashed in leftist academic theories before they reach office. Politics, therefore, has become predominantly leftist, and remains so even when nominally conservative parties are voted into power. The entire educated class, including the media, is similarly geared toward leftism.

The situation may correct itself in an inconspicuous way. Traditional colleges suffer from the same problems as any other bureaucratic organizations: they sell credence goods, lack immediate market response to their actions, and can continue to operate in an extremely ineffective manner for a long time. By the time the market response kicks in, it is already too late for correction. The Church learned this a hard way: when that monopoly drove the cost of observance through the roof, reformism arose.

Back to colleges: they tend to grow without restraint, like any bureaucratic organization. They grow faster than their customer base. The only solution for them is to increase the number and length of academic courses.

Both high schools and colleges are utterly useless. Hardly anyone who has graduated remembers anything from their courses, much less uses it in practice. Perhaps 95% of courses in colleges and 50–70% in universities are proudly useless. Not to mention the many degrees which are totally useless, and provide those who earn them with no prospect of employment and nothing of any relevance to future employment. I’ve yet to understand why “social workers” need university diplomas or nurses need college degrees.

Here come the for-profit colleges. Today, they address mostly those who fail in “normal” universities. The reasons for failure are several. Some applicants are too stupid to be admitted into “normal” universities, but there are many others, mostly adults, who seek a degree for fun, and do not expect to learn anything relevant to future employment. They are conscious about time and costs, and opt for simpler and cheaper for-profit outfits. It is they who might change eventually the face of the educational system as for-profits will streamline their courses to reduce time and cost and offer truly relevant knowledge.

In such down-to-earth education programs, there will be no time for the nonsense of social theories. As young people become aware that they can receive a meaningful education at any time, fewer will enter traditional colleges, which cost dearly, waste precious time, and most importantly, come too early in a modern person’s life, at a time when he cannot yet make a meaningful choice of profession. Colleges will lose their power to brainwash the policy-setting educated class.

Medicare artificially increases the number of retirees and thus the ratio of retirees to working-age people. Just as working adults struggle to support the retirees, better healthcare continuously increases their age and further tilts the ratio. The older the retirees, the more expensive healthcare they need. Accordingly, they consume even more medical resources than their already high ratio of the population suggests. Most healthcare costs are incurred within the last six months of a person’s life. A person is perfectly entitled to struggle to extend his life for a few days with private resources, but society has zero interest in prolonging his life a little bit at tremendous cost.

Just as retirees become the biggest indirect buyer of health services, drug companies concentrate R&D resources on drugs for old age instead of combating the illnesses typical for working-age people. It is not uncommon for an insurance company to spend more on keeping a retiree alive for a few additional months than was spent on him during all his years of work. Faced with increasing health-care costs, working adults can afford still fewer children, and the population grows increasingly old. The society changes its voting patterns. Politicians become responsive to non-productive but voting retirees rather than busy working adults. Subsidies to retirees increase further. Democratic politicians with a four- or five-year perspective cannot change the dead-end medicare system: economic interests and the country’s survival take a remote second place after election results, which are heavily influenced by retirees.

It is one thing to kill one’s retirees as the Eskimos allegedly did, and another thing to subsidize them with all your resources. If people want to live longer, they must save sufficient funds, raise children to support them in their old age, and choose the least expensive health care. The right to live longer, just like the right to live better, or to eat, or just about any other right, is contingent on the person’s ability to pay for it. When a state embarks on the dubious path of subsidizing or redistributing healthcare, it will end up providing free food.

Democratic states have no right to expropriate private real estate because states must act as people’s attorneys rather than sovereigns. They represent private landowners rather than benevolently concede the right of ownership to public, to be rescinded when necessary.

Societies, however, cannot operate with unhindered right of private property. Most countries do not accept an owner’s right to destroy a valuable painting or historically significant building. Sometimes the prohibition is implicit: the owner must have a new building approved rather than being barred from destroying the old one. The assumption is that a rational person won’t destroy valuable property unless he can build something more valuable in its place. Similarly, societies can restrict the right of private possession to benefit the public at large. But eminent domain is simply a bad tool to that end.

In Israel, where private property safeguards are very strong, particularly in politically sensitive issues such as Arab absentee properties, an old shack in the middle of a block of high-rises is a common sight. The politicized application of eminent domain creates public inconveniences. The solution lies in downgrading the issue from state-private to private-private relations.

If an entire community refuses to relocate in order for some spectacular shopping center to be built on their land, their attitude is perfectly legitimate. But take a more common situation in which the developer had already acquired most of the land plots in the neighborhood and cannot proceed because of a few recalcitrant homeowners. Here we have a conflict between owners over what is essentially shared property—the larger land plot. On a micro level, both the homeowners and the developer each own their land plots. On the macro level, they jointly own a community-size land plot. The question before them is twofold: how to enjoy their private property but also how to make the best—most profitable—use of their joint property? By refusing to sell their homes, recalcitrant owners make the otherwise highly feasible redevelopment of joint property impossible. Thus, they harm the owners of neighboring land plots. This is a straightforward case: a dispute between joint owners over the disposal of their common property. Courts routinely hear such cases and decide them in a way that would maximize rational benefits to owners.

Legally treating communities as jointly owned properties would have the important political consequence of allowing them to set their own standards. Just like a house’s owners can decide whom to allow in it, so a jointly owned community must be able to bar entrance to Peace Now members or Arabs.

Moshe Dayan, a legendary warrior, was a simple defense minister in 1967, which is largely an administrative role. Far from saving Israel, he stopped the Arabs fleeing from the West Bank and gave the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs to our Muslim enemies. If not for him, we could have had a depopulated West Bank and full control over our holiest places.
Golda Meir, a grandmother of all Jews, is singularly responsible for thousands of Jewish deaths in the Yom Kippur War because she procrastinated and postponed the preemptive strike until after the holiday.
Yitzhak Rabin, a paragon of honesty, campaigned on promises of tough measures against Arabs. At the same time, Beilin negotiated on his behalf with the PLO in Cairo.
Arik Sharon, the king of Israel, won elections by ridiculing the leftists’ plan to disengage from Gaza—only to carry it out himself with unprecedented brutality.

Lieberman never intended to follow through on the “No loyalty, no citizenship” slogan that won him elections. His own version was more down-to-earth: “No national service, no national insurance.” The popular slogan was invented by Birnbaum’s marketing guy. Lieberman knew that there was no way the leftist and center parties would vote to disenfranchise Arabs, their biggest constituency. Neither did he put into effect his other electoral promises. A Palestinian state, far from taboo as he promised, is being negotiated away by his own ministry.

Bill Clinton’s press secretary famously and undiplomatically described Netanyahu as a “liar and cheat,” a view shared by Bibi’s relatives. He lied on every one of his electoral promises. Oh right, we can understand that, he is under American pressure.

Israeli mythology is not limited to leaders. Take the water issue. We know from economic theory that the cost of any goods is pegged to the cost of producing the last unit. If a company spent a lot on R&D for a particular product, but faces competition from its low-cost re-engineered version, it will have to sell at the same low price. Alternatively, when the supply is finite, the relation is reversed: coal is valued at the cost of extracting it from the least feasible mines, despite the fact that there are mines with lower production costs; their owners are said to obtain rent—an unearned income. What has that to do with Israeli water? Very simply, the price of water in Israel is pegged to the cost of desalinated water, which is the most expensive water. Never mind that desalinated water is a small part of the total supply. Essentially, the Israeli government and the water company sell us water from Lake Kineret at the price of desalinated water. The higher are desalination costs, the higher are their rent profits.

The personal consumption of working adults stands between 100 to 200 liters per person per day. Arabs wash less, but let’s allow them the same generous consumption. That brings the Israeli total to less than one cubic kilometer per year, a very small amount even for a drought period. Most water is consumed by economically inefficient agriculture. There is a legend that Israeli agriculture is super-efficient, but that’s nonsense: even European agriculture, which has lower water and transportation costs, is heavily subsidized. Water, like all natural resources, belongs to human citizens, not to corporations. Farms have no claim to our water, certainly not at subsidized prices. They should pay more than individuals, rather than vice versa, as is the case now. The figure of one cubic kilometer shows the nonsense of the official figure of just fifty million cubic meters supplied to our Arab enemies. By any measure, they must be receiving from Israel four to eight times that much, both officially and through semiofficial theft.

Democracy can only survive if people are interested in truth.

Israel asks rhetorically why Palestine needs tanks and aircraft. Why does any country need them, including those not threatened or unable to defend themselves, such as Switzerland? In the mad world of nation-states and conscript armies, tanks are a part of national masculine pride, on par with flags. Israel has no right to demand that her neighbor be demilitarized. Indeed, it is not up to Israel to refuse statehood to the Palestinians, who have a de facto state which can become de jure any moment, regardless of Israel’s position.

Bereft of Judaism and moral tradition, Jewish leaders cannot bring themselves to say simple words: this land won’t be given up to the Palestinians because it is ours by divine decree and by virtue of us having taken it with us into Exile and having kept it in our hearts.

Besides the fake security issue, Palestinian statehood brings up a real problem—the economic one. Palestine will leech off Israel. Israeli Arabs will register their cars in Palestine to skip the high customs duties. Given the high customs duties in Israel and the long, porous border with the West Bank, Palestine will become a smuggling base. While Iranians finance Palestinian terrorists, Zionist consumers will finance Arab crime syndicates engaged in the smuggling of hard goods, drugs, and women. Palestinian migrant workers will descend on Israel in even higher numbers than Mexicans descend on the United States because Palestine, a society addicted to aid, just cannot develop an economy of its own. Palestinian residents will swarm Israel by marrying her Arabs, and the High Court will not long be able to uphold the government’s implicit ban on Arab family reunions in Israel. The Jewish state will be pushed to economically support Palestinians through free-trade agreements, which will inundate Israeli markets with tax-free Palestinian produce. In the absence of army control, the Palestinians will steal water and electricity transiting to their territory. Palestine will receive half the Dead Sea. Since Jordan had already taken its part, Israel will be left with one quarter to one sixth of the sea. Palestinians will engage in predatory pumping of minerals from the sea. They will also have access to Lake Kineret, and they will overpump it. Given the way they pollute the West Bank riverlets, there is no doubt that very soon Israel’s only significant aquifer will become undrinkable. That’s in addition to abandoning Israel’s only developed commercial gas field to Hamas in Gaza. Lacking ecological standards, the Palestinians will pollute the air with industrial smog miles from Israeli cities, and enough dishonest Jewish entrepreneurs will move their factories to Palestine to avoid Israeli pollution controls. Israel already has huge problems with illegal radio broadcasts in Palestine, which endanger air traffic. In the absence of IDF crackdowns, the spectrum will be made unusable. Non-vaccinated Palestinian cattle add yet another hazard.

Jewish and Palestinian coexistence in this land is economically impossible, and the Arabs must be evicted.

The shift in the proportion of the religious population will be mitigated to a yet-unpredictable degree by the secularization of religious communities. In the age of the Internet, they cannot remain as closed as they were before, and the opening of their communities drives their values to the lowest common denominator with the surrounding milieu, thus secularization. Israeli religious communities are treading the path followed by Jewish religious communities of Eastern Europe 150 years ago.

Religious communities will become more radical. One reason for this is the prevalence of male births caused by the low frequency of intercourse. Biologically, significant delays in sexual relations slightly increase the probability of conceiving a boy. An excess of unmarried males greatly radicalizes communities.

Another factor is ideological: when the leaders of a community which opens itself to the outside world moderate their values to preserve their connection to the flock, radical teachers gain prominence. The Catholic Church today has a more extreme stance on moral virtues—notably its opposition to abortion—than two hundred years ago. Wahhabism, an unusually fundamentalist teaching, is the fastest-spreading movement in Islam today, challenged by the even more radical Salafist version. When ancient Israeli society fell apart, rabbis radicalized Judaism by erecting “a fence around the law” with many additional prohibitions. Jewish religious radicalism can take two forms: legalistic halachic and nationalist, the last being more probable. Halachic regulation became so expansive that it regulates every smallest action of a haredi Jew, making it impossible for any single man to learn all of his halachic obligations. Just at the time when the number of ordained rabbis has skyrocketed and the pressure for them to invent more halachic norms is at its peak, there is no room for expansion. We might expect, therefore, a tide of rabbis who concentrate on political issues rather than halacha.

The rabbinical establishment will efficiently oppose them with its money power. By keeping its flock from holding jobs, haredi rabbis control them through social welfare distribution. This is how the Soviets controlled their subjects. Radical rabbis will lack funding and thus remain on the fringes. The absolute number of their adherents, however, will increase tremendously. They will destabilize the moderate Israeli society for its own good.

At the same time, the religious population will be further pauperized. Religiosity exhibits a positive correlation with poverty. Paupers are religious, while affluent people, immersed in consumerism, rarely ask themselves existential questions. In the modern world, income is increasingly related to secular education, which despite Rabbi Soloveitchik’s efforts, remains largely off-limits to religious Jews. Secular education provides answers to existential questions which are contrary to religious postulates; therefore affluent and educated people generally leave religion. Paupers, on one had, tend to be radical, but on the other they depend on the government for welfare handouts. As the religious population grows and society’s mainstream increasingly opposes subsidizing it, the religious community might find itself financially ostracized and turn radical.