Editing Haredi Judaism (section)

=== Political controversies involving Haredi communities and parties in Israel ===
In January 2023, the Times of Israel reported that Haredi citizens in Israel pay just 2% of the country's total income tax revenues, despite making up 13% of the nation's population. Furthermore, the article's author described their communities as an "epicenter of poverty", with over 60% of Haredi households classified as "poor" on the government's socio-economic index, with that figure remaining nearly constant in every Haredi community.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gur |first=Haviv Rettig |title=Are Haredi parties standing in the way of their community's prosperity? |url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/are-haredi-political-parties-standing-in-the-way-of-their-communitys-prosperity/ |access-date=2023-04-25 |website=www.timesofisrael.com |language=en-US}}</ref>

While this disparity has been present in Israel for decades, it has garnered more attention since December 2022 for numerous reasons. First, Haredi families have the highest fertility rate in Israel, at 6.6 births per woman. In comparison, the average fertility rate in Israel is much lower, at 2.9 per woman. Current projections estimate that the Haredi population will double by 2036, and they will comprise 16% of the total population by 2030.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Haredim set to make up 16% of Israel's population by 2030 - IDI report |url=https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/article-726394 |access-date=2023-04-25 |newspaper=The Jerusalem Post |language=en-US}}</ref>

The second aspect of the controversy surrounds their political connections to Israel's Religious Zionist alliance. Historically, they have remained politically uninvolved, but since the 1990s, they have continuously engaged more. Today, members of Israel's ultra-Orthodox community have long enjoyed benefits unavailable to other Israeli citizens: exemption from army service for Torah students, government stipends for those choosing full-time religious study over work, and separate schools that receive state funds, even though their curriculums often do not fully teach government-mandated subjects. Today, many Israeli Haredi men do not work, preferring to study the Torah full-time, thus resulting in their high poverty rate.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Leon |first=Nissim |date=January 2023 |title=Soft Ultra-Orthodoxy: Revival Movement Activists, Synagogue Communities and the Mizrahi-Haredi Teshuva Movement in Israel |journal=Religions |language=en |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=89 |doi=10.3390/rel14010089 |issn=2077-1444 |doi-access=free }}</ref>