The Useful Idiots of Hatzibur Hacharedi

A new party is using our name, our votes, and our sons. The people cheering loudest are the ones who have wanted the Torah world broken for seventy years. And we have seen this all before.

Before we start, one thing has to be said clearly. This article is not about any one person in Hatzibur Hacharedi. We believe most of them mean well. Some of them are carrying real pain, and we have written about that pain in our own pages. This article is about something else. It is about how a group of sincere people is being used — by the campaign against the Torah world, by the media that built that campaign, and by donors from the one party in Israel that made drafting Charedim its whole career.

There is an old name for sincere people who end up serving the goals of those who despise them. We did not pick it to be cruel. We picked it because, by the end of this article, you will see that it fits — and because our own history shows, with painful clarity, where this road ends.

Part 1 — What makes a Charedi a Charedi?

The party calls itself "The Charedi Public." That is not even its legal name. The name filed with the state's Parties Registrar is Lema'an Achai — Mifleget Klal Yisrael. "Charedi" is the brand on the poster. So before we let anyone wear that word, let's remember what it means.

Forget the hat. Forget the color of the shirt. Being Charedi comes down to three things.

1. You live inside the mesorah. The chain from Moshe Rabbeinu to us has never been broken. It is not one opinion among many. It is the whole foundation. New ideas, new "isms," new voices from outside that chain do not get a vote on what Hashem wants from us.
2. You live by the gedolim. Every generation has its leaders, and the Torah tells us lo sasur — do not turn aside from what they tell you, "right or left" (Devarim 17:11). Rashi says even if they seem to tell you that right is left. A person who follows the gedolim when he agrees with them, and goes looking for new rabbis when he doesn't, is not following the gedolim. He is following himself.
3. You live for Torah. Yiras Shamayim is the measure of a life. Learning Torah is the highest thing a Jew can do. Our whole community builds its life around that belief — and lives this life happily— because we truly believe it is what protects Klal Yisrael.

Litvish, chassidish, Sefardi. Yerushalayim or Lakewood. None of that is the test. These three are. If you hold them, you are part of a family that is 3,500 years old. If you let them go, you may still look like a Charedi — but you have stepped outside the thing the word means.

Part 2 — Does Hatzibur Hacharedi meet the cut?

Let's be fair and judge them by their own words. Everything here is from their website or from what their leaders said in public.

The mesorah. The party says its guiding principle is “taking responsibility and facing challenges directly — instead of digging into hopeless battles against reality.” Pay attention to that word: reality. What are they calling “reality”? The High Court’s rulings. The arrest warrants against bochurim. The yeshiva budgets that were frozen. In other words, every attack on the Torah world is now simply “reality” — a fact of life that we have to accept, and anyone who keeps fighting it is being foolish. That is the whole message, and it is exactly backwards. None of these things are facts of life. Every one of them is a decision that a human being made. A judge signed the ruling. An official signed the warrant. A minister froze the budget. And anything a person decided, a person can also reverse — by a new law, a new government, or simply by refusing to give in until they give up. Our gedolim have always understood this. When Ben-Gurion told the Chazon Ish that the secular state was the new reality and the Torah world would have to make way for it, the Chazon Ish did not accept that. He answered with the famous mashal of the full wagon and the empty wagon: the wagon carrying Torah does not step aside for the one carrying nothing. He did not treat Ben-Gurion’s power as “reality.” He treated it as a test. Seventy years later, who was right? A party that tells you to stop fighting because the fight is “unrealistic” is not teaching you realism. It is teaching you surrender, and calling it maturity.

And what does their “responsibility” actually get us? The party tells you itself. In its platform — not once but twice, in two separate chapters — it explains that sending more Charedim to serve “has the potential to gain the acceptance of the broader Israeli public and the legal authorities.” Read that slowly, because it is the whole deal in one sentence. We give them our sons. In return, we get their “acceptance.” That is the trade. Now ask yourself: who is on the other side of this trade? Who is it that will finally “accept” us if we hand over our boys? The same media and public that spent years turning the word “Charedi” into an insult. The same courts that tore up every agreement we ever signed — in 2012, in 2017, in 2024. The party is asking you to pay the highest price a Jewish father can pay, to buy the approval of the very people who have been attacking us. And there is no guarantee the approval will even come. This is not standing up to the state from a position of strength and saying, “Here is what the Torah requires; meet us there.” It is walking into the state’s house, on the state’s terms, and hoping they will like us enough to stop hurting us. Our grandparents had a name for that. It is called: if you can’t beat them, join them. The Torah has never once told us to do that.

The gedolim. This is the test that decides everything, and here the party fails in broad daylight. Not one rosh yeshiva of a recognized yeshiva has endorsed them by name. Not one rebbe. Not one member of any Moetzes. At their launch in Beit Shemesh on August 23, chairman Moti Leitner was asked which rabbanim stand behind him. He said the names "will be revealed later." Weeks later he told Kikar HaShabbat that "instead of 150 rabbanim we see a smaller list" because many "were afraid," and that his supporters "have chosen not to announce their support publicly." Think about what that means. A Daas Torah that will not sign its name is not Daas Torah. The whole point of Daas Torah is that a gadol stands up in front of the tzibbur and takes responsibility.

But it gets worse than silence. The head of the party's rabbinic committee is Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer. He is also the paid director of the Charedi division of the Tikvah Fund — an American foundation whose own materials describe his job as building "intellectual foundations for the Haredi integration into Israeli public life." At the launch, as the Times of Israel reported, he told the crowd that Charedim were always taught that voting for the Charedi parties was "a sanctification of God's name" — but that this was no longer the case.

Stop and feel that for a moment. He admits it was true. He admits our grandparents' votes were a kiddush Hashem. He admits the gedolim of every generation since the state was founded said so. And then he announces that it has expired. Who decided it expired? Not a new generation of gedolim — the party cannot name a single one. The man who decided it expired is an officer of the party that needs it to expire in order to get your vote.

Then the chairman himself: "A vote for United Torah Judaism and Shas is a vote for the thugs of the Jerusalem Faction." One sentence. In it, the Rebbes of Gur, Belz, and Vizhnitz, the roshei yeshiva of Degel HaTorah, and the Moetzes of Shas are all turned into a fringe that they — and we — have condemned for years. That is not criticism of a few askanim. That is contempt for the gedolim themselves.

Torah. The platform promises that "anyone who is genuinely committed to Torah and dedicates his life in practice to full-time study will learn with dignity." Beautiful. Now read the next sentence: this protection is "a fundamental, non-negotiable condition for any cooperation between the movement's representatives and the governing authorities." A condition for cooperation. In other words, a bargaining chip. The gedolim say the Torah of Klal Yisrael is not for sale at any price — and bochurim are sitting in military prison tonight for that principle. The party says it is the opening offer.

And everyone outside that protected circle? "Every individual that does not devote his life completely to Torah study will be required to serve." Required. Not a Charedi brigade, Leitner told the launch — "a Charedi division," with "mandatory-service tracks" in the Shabak, the Mossad, and the police. Who decides which nineteen-year-old is "genuinely" learning? Not his rosh yeshiva, who knows him, knows his struggles, knows his neshamah. A government office with a file. The boy who is wobbling, the boy who needs one more year and a rebbi who believes in him — that boy is on the wrong side of the party's line. By their own definition.

Three tests. Three failures. All from their own website and public speeches.

Part 3 — If you vote for them, what actually happens?

Put feelings aside for one minute and just do the math. Elections run on numbers, and numbers do not care how sincere anyone is.

Your vote goes nowhere — and then it goes to the other side. In Israel a party needs 3.25 percent to enter the Knesset. Fall short by even a hair and you get nothing. And your votes do not come back to you — the system hands them out to the parties that did get in. Here is where Hatzibur Hacharedi stands with nine days to go. Channel 14's poll on September 28: 0.2 percent. The i24NEWS poll filed with the Central Elections Committee on October 1: under 1 percent. Askaria, which polls only Charedim, found them at best around 4 to 5 percent of the Charedi public — "at most one mandate, and far from what is needed to pass the threshold." And this week Kikar HaShabbat reported that someone senior and close to the party admits privately they probably won't make it. The party's only answer is a private poll from April, never published, that supposedly showed six and a half seats. Every real pollster says otherwise.

So here is what your vote for them actually does. First, the obvious: it is a vote taken away from Gimmel and Shas — the only thing standing between the yeshivos and the full enforcement of the 2024 ruling. But look closer, because the damage is wider than that. Who is actually showing up for this party? Look at the photos from their own events. You will struggle to find a minyan of actual Charedim in the room. And look at where they are holding those events: Modiin. Efrat. Alon Shvut. Tekoa. Neve Daniel. Binyamina. Tel Aviv. These are not Charedi cities. There is hardly a Charedi in some of them. A party that truly represents “the Charedi public” does not spend its campaign in towns where the Charedi public does not live — unless it is there for something other than Charedi votes. Money, perhaps. Or voters who are not Charedi at all.

Because that is who they are really pulling from. The Anglo olim in those towns, who lean right and would otherwise vote for a right-wing party. The Dati Leumi voter whose single biggest issue — thanks to two years of media saturation — is the draft, and who would otherwise be voting right. The moderate who feels good about voting for a “responsible Charedi party” and feels he has done his part. Every one of those votes was going to the right-wing bloc. Now it is going to a party polling under one percent — which means it goes nowhere, and then, by the counting formula, gets handed out to the parties that did cross the threshold. In this election, that includes the parties that want to draft your sons and defund your yeshivos. The party is not just pulling from the Charedi vote. It is quietly draining the right-wing bloc from the inside, in towns where no one is watching, under a Charedi name. 

You hand the draft campaign a kosher certificate — for free. This one costs us whether the party gets four seats or zero. For seventy years, the people trying to draft Charedim had one problem: they were outsiders. Everyone could see it was an attack from outside. What they never had was a party dressed like us, named after us, standing up to say the attackers were right all along. Now they have it. And the party's own website shows you who is collecting. On its homepage, under "The Interviews," it proudly lists Channel 13, i24NEWS twice, Kan 11, and Channel 12's Rafi Reshef — under the title the party itself reprints with pride: "Revolt on the Charedi street." No Charedi party in history has been welcomed by these studios like this. Ask yourself why. Airtime is not a gift. It is a payment.

You stand against the gedolim. This is not our opinion. The party's own rabbinic chairman admitted from the stage that voting for the Torah lists was always taught as a kiddush Hashem. The Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Agudas Yisrael met on July 23 and, as Bechadrei Charedim reported, decided to issue an especially sharp kol koreh for this election — one that stresses the prohibition against staying home. The gedolim of every camp, Litvish, chassidish, and Sefardi, have done what they do every election: told us to vote for the Torah parties. A vote for a party built on the announcement that this instruction has "expired" is not a protest. It is turning aside from lo sasur.

You feed a machlokes that is not l’shem Shamayim. Look at the calendar, because the calendar tells the whole story. On July 29, Leitner said on the radio that he was not starting a new party — he just wanted spots on the Shas or UTJ lists. On August 4, he sent Deri, Gafni, and Goldknopf a letter with a deadline: answer by Friday, or we will “convene for consultation with the gedolei haTorah.”

Stop right there. Since when does a Charedi Jew issue an ultimatum to the Torah parties and use the gedolim as the threat? In our world, the gedolim come first. You go to them before you do anything, you ask, and you do what they say. In this letter the order is reversed. The gedolim are not the ones giving instructions. They are the stick being waved: give us seats, or we go to the gedolim. That alone tells you this did not come from the mesorah.

Now ask the obvious question. Did they actually go to the gedolim? Did any gadol b’Yisrael tell them to start a party against Gimmel and Shas in the middle of the arrest crisis? If one had, you would know his name — they would have printed it on every billboard in the country. Instead, two and a half months later, the party cannot name a single gadol who approved any of this. Not one. The “consultation” they threatened produced no name, no letter, no psak. It produced a rival party.

And here is the detail that gives the game away. As the Jerusalem Post reported, by July 19 — before the ultimatum, before any “consultation,” before there was even a candidate — more than two million shekels of campaign billboards were already up at the entrances to Bnei Brak, Yerushalayim, and Elad. Think about what that means. The posters were designed, printed, paid for, and hanging weeks before anyone supposedly asked the gedolim anything. Nobody spends two million shekels on a campaign they are still waiting for permission to run. The decision had already been made. The money had already been raised. The “consultation with the gedolim” was never going to change anything — it was a line in a letter.

A machlokes that is l’shem Shamayim begins with a sheilah and waits for the answer. This one began with a deadline and a printing press. The posters were up before the letter was sent. The party was built before anyone was asked. The “consultation with the gedolim” was never a real question — it was a formality written into an ultimatum, so that when they went ahead anyway, they could say they tried. That is not a movement born of conviction. It is a decision that was already made, dressed up afterward as a response to being turned away.

Now do one simple thing: look at who is cheering. You do not need us to name names. Open X. Open the Anglo-Jewish blogs. Open the opinion pages. Then ask yourself one question about each person celebrating this party: what were they writing about Charedim last year? And the year before that?

You will find the answer is always the same. The loudest supporters of "The Charedi Public" are the people who have spent years — in some cases decades — attacking Charedim, mocking our gedolim, and calling our way of life a failure. Writers whose books were banned by the gedolim are now urging you to vote for this party. Rabbis from Beverly Hills and Los Angeles who have never lived a day under this state's decrees are calling it "a revolution." Columnists whose entire body of work is a case against the yeshiva world are suddenly its biggest fans. One of them wrote, in the very same article where he endorsed the party, that he is "strongly opposed" to its promise to protect full-time learners — and that he celebrates "charedim openly not caring about what the gedolim decree." Read that twice. He rejects what the party says it stands for. He wants it to win anyway. Why? Because he is not buying the platform. He is buying the breakage. He said so himself.

Now flip it around. Try to find one person of real standing who is actually Charedi — a rosh yeshiva, a rebbe, a posek, a mashgiach whose picture hangs in Charedi homes — publicly backing this party. You will not find one. The party itself admits it cannot produce one. Its friends will not sign their names, and the strangers who have attacked us for years cannot stop signing theirs.

A party is known by its friends. When every open enemy of the Torah world is cheering, and no one inside it will stand up, you do not need a detective. The verdict is already in.

And then there is the money. On August 10, journalist Yaki Adamker reported the names of the five men who guaranteed the party’s first million shekels. Four of them were described as Charedi businessmen — but look at the descriptions. One is “a graduate of Charedi yeshivos,” which tells you where he came from, not where he stands today. Another is the father of one of the most vocal public advocates for Charedi enlistment in the country. A third lives in America. We make no judgment about any of them personally; we have never met them. But a reporter calling a man “Charedi” does not make him one and the one family on that list whose views are a matter of public record has already come down firmly on the side of the draft. Then there is the fifth name, which needs no interpretation: Yair Shamir, the former Yisrael Beiteinu minister who entered the Knesset as Avigdor Liberman’s number two. Liberman. The man whose entire political career is built on drafting Charedim and cutting the yeshivos. A party calling itself “The Charedi Public,” guaranteed by Liberman’s former deputy and by men whose Charedi credentials are a journalist’s label rather than any gadol’s — that is not us. It is telling you exactly what it is.

Part 4 — We have been here before, and it ended in a grave

Here is the part the party's supporters hope you don't know. This has happened before. In this country. To sincere, well-meaning, Torah-observant Jews who were certain that the gedolim were too stubborn and that working inside the state was the responsible thing to do. Their story is the story of Poalei Agudas Yisrael, and every Charedi voter should know how it ends.

Poalei Agudas Yisrael — PAI — was founded in Poland in 1922 as the workers' wing of Agudas Yisrael. These were not secular Jews. They were frum, shomer Shabbos, Torah-observant working men who believed in "Torah and labor." They built kibbutzim — Chafetz Chaim and Sha'alvim. They were a real party, with real voters, in the earliest Knessets. Their argument will sound very familiar. The gedolim, they said, were too removed from the realities of the new state. Charedim needed to be in the system, not fighting it from outside. Working people deserved their own voice. Why should the yeshiva world dictate to the man who gets up every morning and earns his bread?

Then came the moment of truth. In August 1960, PAI decided to join David Ben-Gurion's government — the government of the man who was then pressing to draft Charedi girls and to reshape the Torah world — and its leader, Binyamin Mintz, took a ministry. The Israel Democracy Institute's own history of the party records, in plain words, that this move "violated a decision of the Council of Torah Sages." The Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah said no. PAI said: we know better, we are being responsible, we are facing reality. And they went in.

What happened next is a matter of record. PAI's share of the vote in 1961 was 1.9 percent. It never grew. Election after election it shrank, until in 1981 it got 0.9 percent, fell below the threshold, and lost its last seat. By 1988 what was left of it was folded back into Agudas Yisrael. By the 1990s it was gone as a political force. Today, most Charedim under fifty have never heard of it.

But the real ending is not in the Knesset. It is in the kibbutzim. Sha'alvim, built by PAI as a Charedi community of Torah and labor, is today home to a hesder yeshiva and a Dati Leumi community. The grandchildren of the men who broke with the Moetzes to work inside the Zionist state did not become a new kind of Charedi. They became Religious Zionists. The "responsible" path did not create a stronger Charedi public. It created a doorway out of the Charedi public, and a generation walked through it.

Now hold that story against Hatzibur Hacharedi. A party of working Charedim. Frustrated with the established parties. Convinced the gedolim are out of touch. Certain that the way forward is to serve, to integrate, to work inside the state's institutions, to earn its acceptance. Breaking publicly with the instruction of the gedolim because it is "no longer the case." We are not guessing where this ends. We watched it end. The men of PAI were sincere. Their grandchildren, for the most part, are not Charedi. Sincerity was never the question.

And this was not even the first time. Two hundred years ago in Berlin, the first maskilim were not heretics. Many were learned, observant Jews who sincerely believed that if the community would just modernize a little — a little secular education, a little integration, a little less dependence on the rabbanim — the Jews would be accepted and their suffering would end. Their wounds were real too: poverty, discrimination, closed doors. They too called the gedolim stubborn and out of touch. Within three generations their descendants were, overwhelmingly, no longer Jews at all. Against that whole movement the Chasam Sofer raised one banner: chadash assur min haTorah — the new is forbidden. He was not talking about grain. He was saying that a community whose entire existence is built on an unbroken chain cannot survive letting "new" become an argument. The Jews who followed the new became something else. The Jews who stood with the gedolim became us.

Every Charedi child alive today (besides from balei teshuva) is the descendant of someone who refused. That is not a figure of speech. It is demographics.

Part 5 — Is there an answer to the draft?

Yes. The gedolim gave it. And this party exists only because it needs you to believe that answer has failed. It has not failed. It is working.

They will never draft the Charedi community by force. Not because of any law, but because of who we are. The secular world does not understand this, and honestly, much of the Dati Leumi world does not either. We say the next sentence with real love for our Dati Leumi brothers, whose courage and sacrifice we honor completely: when the state pulled them out of their homes in Gush Katif in 2005, they cried, and they went, because in the end they are tied to the state. We are tied to Hashem and His Torah, and to nothing else. We do not fear the Knesset. We do not fear the courts. We have outlived empires that were certain we would disappear. Today sixty-six thousand bochurim and avreichim have no exemption, no draft order, and no stipend — and the batei medrash are full. That is the answer. It has already been given.

"We'll take every shekel." Liberman says it. Bennett says it. Our answer: deal. The Gemara teaches that a person's parnassa for the year is set on Rosh Hashanah (Beitzah 16a). Your budgets do not frighten us, and money was never something we worshipped. But understand what you are doing to yourselves. You already cut. How did that work out? You are not weakening us. You are stripping zechusim away from a nation at war. Every tefillah, every kapitel Tehillim, every act of chesed done in this land is credited to every Jew in it — including the soldier in Gaza who has never seen the inside of a beis medrash. We will be fine. Will you? Look at what has happened to the state's standing in the world since it declared war on the Torah. Britain recognizes a Palestinian state. Europe turning cold. The whole world repeating the lie of "genocide" about you — with the same ease that your newspapers repeat the lie of "parasites" about us. We give far more than we take. We laid out the numbers in our white paper on "sharing the burden." Mida k'neged mida is not hard to see.

They don't need us. They want to change us. Here is the proof. After October 7, about four thousand Charedi young men walked into recruitment offices on their own. Nobody made them. According to Knesset Research Center data published by former minister Chaim Ramon, the army declared 3,120 of them "unfit" and took 540. That is 13.5 percent. An army that is desperate for soldiers does not turn away 86 percent of the men who volunteer. And then there is the Finance Minister himself, Bezalel Smotrich — a man who spent two years demanding we enlist — standing at the Katif Conference and saying: "There is no greater lie than saying that the burden on those serving depends on drafting Chareidim." We put all of his testimony on the record in "There Is No Greater Lie."

So if it was never about soldiers, what is it about? It is about changing who we are. Compulsory service. State-run Charedi schools "in every city." Reporting rules on the yeshivos ketanos, enforced by sanctions. Read the Hatzibur Hacharedi platform and you will find every one of those things. That is the campaign to remake us — offered to us in our own accent. It is exactly what was offered to the men of Poalei Agudas Yisrael. They took it. Look where their grandchildren daven.

Part 6 — What to do on Election Day

Go vote. Don't stay home. We need to do our hishtadlus. The Moetzes has made it an obligation, and what is on the line is the yeshivos themselves. Vote Gimmel or vote Shas, according to your kehillah and your rav — but vote for Torah. Vote for the mesorah. When the call of Mi laHashem eilai goes out, be standing on the right side.

Don't fall for the billboards. Hatzibur Hacharedi tells a very good story. The story is that we don't care about soldiers, we don't want to work, and we don't take responsibility. Do you think we don't care about the soldiers? Every shul in this country davens for them. Do you think we don't want to support our families? It is the state that blocks a Charedi man's path to parnassa at every turn, and then blames him for being poor. We agree with the party about many of the wounds. The dropouts are real. The poverty is real. The discrimination in mosdos is a chillul Hashem. We said all of it before this party was born. The argument is not about the wounds. It is about who is holding the knife they are offering as a cure.

Don't be naive about the state. The party's whole plan rests on one hope: if we offer "truly Charedi" frameworks in good faith, the state will keep its word. Go ask the Dati Leumi soldiers how that works. Their own roshei yeshiva no longer believe the Chief of Staff. Rav Ohad Tirosh of Eli, after twenty years of watching the army write a religious-protection order and then refuse to enforce it, said: "I don't believe a single word." Twenty-five hesder yeshivos stopped sending boys to the Armored Corps. A rosh mechina who objected was struck off the invitation list. If this is how the army treats the religious Jews who serve it most faithfully, what do you think it will do with us?

Then go ask the Charedi soldiers of Tomer. That was a Charedi track in Givati that existed since 2014. This summer the army dissolved it with a memo. The boys were dropped into a regular unit — music on Shabbos, kitchen duty next to female soldiers — and told that refusing meant discipline. "We feel betrayed," they said. They were. Every track the state ever built for us has been degraded, strangled, or shut down. And when you ask this party what will make the state keep its word this time, their own FAQ answers: "We are not relying on promises from the army" but on "experience in the field." The experience in the field is Tomer.

That is the heart of it. Sincere men, real pain, and a trust in the state that the state has broken every single time. That is what makes them useful — not to us, but to the people who are laughing. And the people laughing are not in Beit Shemesh. They are in the TV studios that cannot book these men fast enough. They are in the columns celebrating the shattering of the "monolith." They are in the offices of a campaign that has waited seventy years for Charedim willing to say exactly what it wanted said.

Our history is painfully clear about what happens when a generation follows a beautiful argument away from its gedolim. It happened in Berlin. It happened in 1960. And before any of that, it happened in the midbar. Korach was a talmid chacham. He was sincere. And his argument — kol ha'eidah kulam kedoshim, the whole congregation is holy — was true. The earth did not open because what he said was false. It opened because of whom he said it against.

The men of Poalei Agudas Yisrael were sincere. They thought they were taking responsibility. And their grandchildren are not Charedi. We are not predicting anything about anyone. We are only pointing out that this exact path — frustrated with the Torah parties, convinced the gedolim are out of touch, certain that the answer is to work inside the state and earn its acceptance — has been walked before, by good men with good intentions, and we know where it led. That is not our prophecy. It is our history. And a Jew who knows his history does not need to walk the whole road to find out where it goes.

Stand with the mesorah. Stand with the gedolim. Nine days from now, vote like you mean it.

Further reading on Charedim.com: Why Do Charedim Always Listen to Their Rabbanim? · What Is the Charedi View on Voting in Israeli Elections? · Are Charedim Really Needed in the Army? · Why Is "Mesorah" Such an Integral Part of Judaism?

Sources

• Hatzibur Hacharedi website (hatzibur-haharedi.org): "Who We Are," "Charedi Service," "Torah World," and FAQ pages; "The Interviews" homepage section; Parties Registrar entry for Lema'an Achai — Mifleget Klal Yisrael
• Times of Israel, launch coverage, Beit Shemesh, August 23, 2026 — Leitner's "thugs of the Jerusalem Faction" and "Charedi division" statements; Rabbi Pfeffer's "no longer the case"
• Kikar HaShabbat interview with Moti Leitner — "instead of 150 rabbanim," supporters who "chose not to announce publicly," the unpublished April poll; Kikar/Srugim report of a senior party-linked figure conceding low odds (October 2026)
• Haaretz, July 19, 2026; Leitner's July 29 broadcast remarks; the August 4 letter to Deri, Gafni, and Goldknopf as published in the Charedi press; Jerusalem Post, July 2026, on the NIS 2 million campaign
• Yaki Adamker, August 10, 2026 — the five guarantors including Yair Shamir
• Channel 14 / Next Data poll, September 28, 2026 (0.2%); i24NEWS / Direct Polls survey filed with the Central Elections Committee, October 1, 2026 (below 1%); Askaria Charedi-sector polling via JDN, October 2026
• Bechadrei Charedim, July 23, 2026 — Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Agudas Yisrael decision on the election kol koreh
• Public endorsements of the party, September 2026, by English-language writers and rabbis with long records of criticism of Charedi society and its gedolim (quotations on file); Tikvah Fund / Jewish Leadership Conference materials on Rabbi Pfeffer's role
• Israel Democracy Institute, "Poalei Agudat Yisrael" party history — the 1960 entry into the Mapai government that "violated a decision of the Council of Torah Sages"; vote share 1.9% (1961) to 0.9% (1981); the party's dissolution. Religious Torah Front split of August 9, 1960; Binyamin Mintz as Minister of Postal Services; PAI kibbutzim Chafetz Chaim and Sha'alvim
• Charedim.com: "There Is No Greater Lie" (Smotrich at Katif; Knesset Research Center data via Chaim Ramon), "Betrayed… Again!" (Tomer Company), "Their Most Devoted Soldiers Just Found Out the Truth" (Rav Tirosh, hesder boycott), White Paper: "Sharing the Burden"
• Devarim 17:11 and Rashi ad loc.; Beitzah 16a; Bamidbar 16; Chasam Sofer, chadash assur min haTorah (Responsa Orach Chaim 28, 181)