In the aftermath of World War II, ḥaredi Judaism emerged in Israel in its present form as leaders came to the conclusion that, after the onslaught of the Holocaust, the only way to defend against the onslaught of modernity was to create communities of intense religious devotion that were sealed off from outside influences. These communities grew and flourished beyond the wildest dreams of their founders, let alone of their detractors. But, writes Yehoshua Pfeffer, today’s Ḥaredim are hardly immune from outside influences, and suspiciousness toward secular ideas has left them without the intellectual armor to defend themselves against values antithetical to their own—what he terms “the liberal threat.” Pfeffer, himself a ḥaredi Jew, thus calls for a major change:

My contention . . . is that [the] current situation calls us to reexamine our strategy in the struggle against the liberal threat. Days of a militant secularism that seeks to destroy all things good while defying God and His Torah are long behind us; the 21st century is not a repeat of the 20th.

The traditional Ḥaredi strategy of raising the barricades is hardly a viable defense against the liberal threat; our fences can no longer keep out the influences we fear. Conversely, the prevalent approach today—completely ignoring the issue, hoping naively that we can ride out the liberal wave and emerge in one piece on the other side—leaves us exposed to great danger.

Reading ḥaredi literature dealing with parenting and marriage reveals clearly how deeply liberal messages have been internalized, often with full backing from traditional religious sources. Even when it comes to pluralism—the question of one Truth versus multiple truths—it seems we have been deeply influenced by common liberal views. “I am a liberal and a pluralist,” say many Ḥaredim who wish to be viewed as “open-minded” and not “fanatical.”

[But] the reason we are so threatened by liberal moral views is that we live in a vacuum: lacking our own moral-human language, we adopt the foundations of liberalism, only later understanding the depth of the challenge they pose to a Torah life.

Meanwhile most Ḥaredim have no notion of those ideas from the non-Jewish world that could provide a bulwark against progressive assumptions. The remedy to this situation involves not greater isolation, but engagement with conservative ideas:

Conservatism, without a doubt, is not Judaism. . . . However, there is much in the conservative conception of the good that could serve as important tools for the believing Jew to validate his belief in the Torah, providing a vital alternative to liberalism’s conception of the good. While obviously not a substitute for belief in the Torah, conservative thought can provide fortification for the Torah way of life, utilized in the same way that Torah leaders of the past made use of the philosophy and thinking of their time to strengthen the Jewish religion.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.