Israelis voted in national elections this week. There have been dozens of discussions about what the elections portend, what they reveal about the country and its future, the inadequacy of polling, the person of Benjamin Netanyahu, the political identity of Israeli Arabs, and much else. The larger question of who will form the next government remains unsettled.
But there is one conclusion that can be drawn definitively, and it contains an interesting political puzzle. The haredi population of Israel has grown, and continues to grow, both in absolute terms and in terms relative to the rest of the country. It would follow then, that with each election their political power would grow. Yet despite being, for decades, one of the most durable and significant forces in Israeli politics, the haredi parties emerge from the October 2026 elections significantly weakened. How did this happen? And what does it show us about the state of Israel’s most politically interesting demographic?
For our analysis of the Israeli election, we’re looking inside the haredi bloc with Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, who leads the Iyun Institute and chairs the rabbinic committee of Hatzibur HaHaredi, one of four new haredi parties that entered this race. Readers of Mosaic will know his important essay, “Israel’s Haredim Confront the Burdens of Jewish Self-Government,” which makes the case for this new party’s coming into being. In conversation with Mosaic‘s editor Jonathan Silver, he explains how the haredi parties went from kingmakers to fixed members of Netanyahu’s coalition, why Shas lost so much of its traditional Mizrahi following to Likud and to Otzma Yehudit, and why, at a moment of such evident disillusionment, none of the new parties, his own included, came close to the threshold.
This conversation was recorded on October 29, before the final results were certified and before efforts to form a government have officially begun.