Hamodia today published an article suggesting that the Charedim set up an autonomous self governing region in Israel. Autonomous meaning full self governance except for foreign affairs. The region would have police but no army. The writer believes that this will work economically as well as Charedim will be able to work without the having to obtain academic degrees and with no problems of tznius in the workplace.
IMHO, this is absolutely ridiculous for a number of reasons. Leaving aside the fact that the government would never do this, this could never work. Where would the money come from? Who would work? You can say that you don't believe in academic degrees but the fact is that a lot of vital jobs in society require a lot of secular education. Who will serve as the doctors in such a society? Who will run the power plants? Will everything be run on Shabbos with Shabbos goyim? It is nice to say that the Charedi autonomy will have no foreign policy and no army, so who will protect it? The Israeli army? If so they will need to pay for that. The bottom line is that Charedi society in Israel today has no way to generate anywhere near the sums of money required for autonomy.
Another big question would be who would lead this autonomy? The Chasidim or the Litvaks, or the Sefardim? Who will provide the Daas Torah, The Rebbe's or R' Shteinman or R' Ovadya? There is so much internal fighting and politics in the Charedi world today I don't see how this could ever work.
