Aharon Ariel Lavi’s essay, “Are the Ultra-Orthodox the Key to Israel’s Future?” is a welcome contribution to what has become a crowded field. Indeed, the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community in Israel has become something of a Jewish obsession of late—and for perfectly understandable reasons. Living for the most part in insular neighborhoods, wearing exotic clothes and adhering to exotic practices, this large and rapidly growing group of strictly traditionalist Jews provides a tantalizing subject for journalists as well as filmmakers, fiction writers, and television producers. The news media are particularly committed to exposing the foibles—the more salacious, the better—of the so-called “haredi world.”