J. is the media partner of the 2025 Z3 Conference at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto on Nov. 9. This week, we are publishing a trio of op-eds from speakers at this year’s conference, just a slice of the diverse perspectives on the Israel-diaspora relationship that attendees will be able to hear at the event. They were solicited and edited solely by J.
The haredi education system in Israel stands at one of the most defining moments in its history. Born as a response to the secular Zionist project, it was designed to protect the sanctity of Torah life from the turbulence of modernity.
For decades it served as a spiritual fortress: strong, self-contained and suspicious of the outside world. That fortress succeeded. It preserved faith, identity and continuity. But its very success has created a paradox.
A community that once measured itself in thousands now numbers over a million. Today, more than 294,000 haredi children attend elementary schools and over 120,000 study in secondary institutions. When one in five Israeli children is haredi, isolation is no longer sustainable. The dilemma facing haredi educators is not whether to open up, but how to do so. The primary question: Can a system built to defend faith also prepare its students to live it confidently in a world that is open, technological and complex?
In recent years, a quiet revolution has tried to offer an answer. Thousands of parents seek a form of education that remains loyal to Torah while embracing essential knowledge. This desire has produced the mamlachti-haredi (state-haredi) stream, or schools under government supervision that combine full academic studies with a genuinely haredi spirit.
The numbers tell the story: In 2020, fewer than 5,000 students were enrolled; today there are more than 20,000 enrolled in over 100 such institutions. In cities like Beit Shemesh and Safed, around one-fifth of haredi students already attend such schools. What began as a small experiment has become a test case for a new possibility — that a haredi child can remain fully devout while mastering knowledge of the modern world.
This change does not reflect the erosion of faith but its deepening. A generation of haredi educators now understands that ignorance does not protect holiness; ignorance weakens it. In a global, digital society, separation can lead to fragility, while education cultivates strength. True fidelity to Torah requires giving young people the tools to live their values in reality, not to hide from it.
The new ethos draws on a long Jewish tradition that sees learning itself as a sacred act. Study, inquiry and curiosity are not threats to belief. They are its natural expressions. Haredi education is beginning to rediscover that truth.
Within this transformation, the Netzach Educational Network, a group of state-haredi schools that I founded in 2017, illustrates how renewal can grow from within tradition.
With around 20 schools and yeshivot across Israel, Netzach integrates rigorous Torah learning with a full general curriculum and strong digital literacy. Its classrooms are built around a single principle: that faith and knowledge are not opposing forces but complementary paths to understanding.
Students are encouraged to approach both Torah and the sciences with seriousness, curiosity and integrity and to see learning itself as an act of avodat HaShem, serving God. In doing so, Netzach cultivates a generation that is both deeply rooted and outward-looking, showing that haredi education can evolve without losing its inner clarity. That renewal, when grounded in conviction, becomes a form of continuity.
The implications extend far beyond the haredi world. Integrating haredi youth into frameworks of knowledge, skill and civic responsibility is not a cultural concession but a national necessity. An Israel that invests in haredi education invests in its own social cohesion. Empowering haredi students to thrive in the broader society does not weaken their faith. It strengthens the moral fabric of the state.
The haredi education system is no longer only a guardian of the past. It is also becoming a laboratory for the future. Its challenge is not how to resist change, but how to guide it to transform separation into connection and preservation into renewal.
This is the meaning of Netzach, the Hebrew word for “eternity.” What endures is not what refuses to change, but what changes without losing its essence. If haredi education succeeds in this transformation, it will not merely survive the modern world — it will illuminate it.