Standing at an iron gate at the side entrance to a Hasidic synagogue in Ramat Bet Shemesh on Sunday afternoon, two young men clad in the ultra-Orthodox garb of black pants, white shirts and velvet skullcaps, stood checking people’s names against a list on a tablet computer.

Those allowed through descended a ramp to an underground event space beneath the synagogue, where workers and volunteers were bustling about, setting up tables of kosher food ahead of the launch of The Charedi Public’s 2026 Knesset run.

One of several ultra-Orthodox parties recently established to challenge the longstanding duopoly of the Ashenazi United Torah Judaism (UTJ) and Sephardic Shas, The Charedi Public is hoping to win over voters tired of the status quo and provide, in the words of one senior official, “a real and viable alternative” to what many see as a disconnected and ineffective Haredi political elite.

The Charedi Public advocates for secular studies, workforce participation, and IDF conscription for anybody who does not study full-time in yeshiva. It has yet to announce its full electoral slate.

The several dozen people who attended the event on Sunday evening represented a cross-section of ultra-Orthodox society, English-speaking immigrants and Israelis, Hasidim with long peyot and “Lithuanians” in black fedoras, and even a sprinkling of soldiers enlisted in the IDF’s dedicated Haredi service tracks.

Highlighting the unprecedented nature of the challenge to the existing rabbinic and political power structure, many of the guests had received messages asking them not to share the address of Sunday evening’s launch in order to prevent the kind of violent demonstrations that have disrupted previous events by pro-conscription Haredim.

With the lights dimmed, supporters in attendance were presented with the new party’s first campaign video, a gloomy elegy complaining that the Haredi community had allowed “the extremist factions to dictate our agenda” and turn its children into “the poorest in Israel.”

Ascending the stage, party chairman and Beit Shemesh Deputy Mayor Moti Leitner launched into a heated speech arguing that the current Haredi political leadership had “forgotten what responsibility means.”

“For the past three years, the State of Israel has been at war on multiple fronts against enemies who rise against us to destroy us, a war that began with the terrible massacre that reminded every single one of us what responsibility truly is. Thousands of Haredim stepped up and enlisted, coming to assist and trying to help in any way they could, yet it seems the heavy disasters passed over the heads of the detached........

© The Times of Israel