Over the course of the past year, it has become clear that much-vaunted government efforts to transform ḥaredi society have come to naught: yeshiva students still receive draft deferments, laws increasing the secular-education requirements at ḥaredi schools have been repealed, and subsidies have been reinstated. However, argues Yedidia Stern, this return to the “status quo ante” doesn’t mean stagnation; it’s only a reminder that governments can encourage social change, but can’t bring it about:

Politics and the law have only a limited role to play: to permit [beneficial social] change, support it, and not impede it.

[C]hange from below is already taking place. Today, about half of all ultra-Orthodox men hold jobs; the number of ultra-Orthodox individuals enrolled in colleges and universities has grown several-fold; and the percentage of “modern” ultra-Orthodox families who want their sons to receive a general, and not only Torah, education has expanded. . . .

Going forward, the public purse must be used intelligently. . . . Economic benefits to those who do not serve in the IDF and do not work should be curtailed, on the one hand; but the coffers should be opened to pay for employment-oriented higher-educational programs and the promotion of jobs in the ultra-Orthodox sector, on the other.

Rather than reduce the total budgetary outlay for these categories, funds should be distributed in a different fashion than they have been until now. The ultra-Orthodox public will both understand and support this.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.