NYT: Israel's ultra-orthrodox and welfare

[2xx1xy1JD]

There are definitely full time learners at kollel in the US. However as far as I know, in the US the chassidic men usually tend to work (sometimes they do the kollel learning for a few years - think grad school, I guess - but then get jobs when they start having kids).

It's more the non-chassidic ultra-orthodox, certain of the extreme yeshivish types, that do the "stay learning forever" thing. Google around Lakewood and BMG, you can find lifelong learners and people who will talk about how supposedly the best man to land is someone who won't work, people saying certain of the more selective religious elementary schools looking down on kids whose fathers work.

Anyway I find the situation (in both countries) interesting just because it's another example of what is actually a fairly NEW culture clothing itself in tradition, and something that's likely to be unsustainable in the long term. People with tiny incomes having tons of kids and now having moved far enough "rightward" religiously that public (i.e. free) school is not an option, it's just not sustainable. As it is a lot of them are getting aid from previous generations of the family, the in-laws all went to college and have high paying careers but then the kids moved "right," etc, but that's not going to be there a few generations in, etc (in Israel there's similar talk about in-laws buying apartments).

Some people have always studied forever or been monks, etc. But when everyone tries to do it, it's just not sustainable.

I will say though that from my heathen POV, the lack of all secular studies after bar mitzvah for boys just boggles my mind. That's after not having exactly rigorous secular studies before that age either, in a lot of the "better" religious schools. Those schools in NYC that prohibit people getting a Regent's diploma, those in Israel that don't offer any studies for bagrut... at least the US ones are private. In Israel I hear there's talk of the state pulling funding for any schools that won't teach the basic curriculum (including things like MATH and MODERN HEBREW), it's definitely not anything up to me but it sounds like a good idea.

Hey, pretty perceptive for someone who's not Jewish!

ITA with the bolded part. In many ways, they are recreating a world that never existed. In the shtetls (little Jewish villages in Eastern Europe) that they say they revere, people WORKED. It was that, or starve. They weren't happily choosing poverty. They were oppressed, and when they could, many chose to either become revolutionaries or to flee to North America. Traditionally, communities didn't rely on government assistance - governments were usually hostile and the most they could hope for was a break from active persecution. Instead, there was a strong tradition of mutual aid societies and charities. Parents didn't buy apartments for young couples - in the past, everyone lived together in cramped quarters.

To a certain extent, greater economic opportunities for women makes some of this possible. Some of these groups DO give a somewhat decent secular education to women, and encourages them to seek employment that will allow them to support a family. Much of the system functions as a result of their work.

[fundyfunland]

I never can understand haredim voting influence when only they have 20% of the Israeli people. And some neighborhood of haredim dont even believe in vote because they against the zion.

Theres a mix feeling for haredim. They economic parasites yes. But they are the keepers of the religion when we the secular Israelis dont, so haredi not really parasites that they give to the people some thing even if we dont care about it. May be some where in side our hearts we do care, Im not sure because I dont comtemplate this idea too often.

Except they're keepers of a certain branch of Judaism. Ask your regular Modern Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Jew and I'm pretty sure they'd tell you that they too, are keeping the religion and society alive. They may be considered secular in Israel, but they're certainly as religious as the chareidim, IMO.

[fundiefun]

I wonder how this is gonna play out once they realize that they need to merge into society and work and not expect a handout for doing nothing while leaving their wives to shoulder the burden of their income. If your family is going hungry and needing assistance when you're capable of working but choose not to that is being a parasite. The state shouldn't be paying for them to study religious texts when there are families out there who truly do need it. To me that falls in line with abusing the system when they have the ability to work and provide for their families, but choose not to.

[Mama Mia]

Where do the kids go while the wife is at work and the husband is studying ?

[2xx1xy1JD]

Where do the kids go while the wife is at work and the husband is studying ?

Daycare. It's not considered a bad word in those circles, and many of them are subsidized.

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

This definitely happens in the US. The family lives off the wife's (minimal) earnings and food stamps, Section 8, etc.

I worked for a year at a Jewish Family Services. They would do stuff like provide a maid free of charge for a month or two for families that had just had a baby so the wife could get back to work immediately. (I think they cut that service after I left. It was controversial among donors at the time.) One of my coworkers worked tirelessly to bring Jews over from Russia. They were given paid for apartments, fully furnished, and set up with food stamps, etc. and they would find the wife a job so the husband could continue studying. Supposedly, these Russian Jews were experiencing persecution requiring their immigration to the US, and maybe some were, but mostly the persecution seemed to be that the Russian government wasn't subsidizing their Torah study. They picked the US over Israel because of Israel's mandatory army service.

It was very, very odd to watch secular, feminist Jews work so hard to allow Hasidic Jews to continue their misogynistic, fundamentalist lifestyle.

Hmmm....I don't know where and when you worked at an JFS, but I am a Jewish immigrant from Soviet Russia (1990) and in my area (greater Boston), about 99% of the Jewish families who came here and got full assistance from the JFS upon arrival were secular, like my family. We used the assistance to get on our feet. I don't know a single family that used it indefinitely so that the husband could study Torah. For many years the US gov't had a deal with the USSR to let Jews come here and receive refugee status, which is different from immigrant status because you get more assistance upon arrival. That's because Russia was more than happy to get rid of us.

And yes, Russia is an extremely anti-Semitic place and always has been, whether you are Haredi or an atheist with one Jewish grandma. Persecution is alive and well; the only time it wasn't was the early years of the USSR. My uncle was the first of our family to leave, in the late 70s, after he was denied a teaching job at a university (he is BRILLIANT) based, blatantly (they told him) on his Jewish last name. When I was a kid in the 80s, I went to Hebrew school on Sundays and we moved every few weeks because whoever was renting us a space would find out what we were doing and kick us out. Nobody wanted to deal with Jews, let alone ones who were teaching kids to pray.

I know you probably didn't mean it, but your post came off sounding like all Jews who came here and got services through JFS are Haredi moochers faking their persecution, and I just wanted to offer some additional info.

[darareaksmey]

This definitely happens in the US. The family lives off the wife's (minimal) earnings and food stamps, Section 8, etc.

I worked for a year at a Jewish Family Services. They would do stuff like provide a maid free of charge for a month or two for families that had just had a baby so the wife could get back to work immediately. (I think they cut that service after I left. It was controversial among donors at the time.) One of my coworkers worked tirelessly to bring Jews over from Russia. They were given paid for apartments, fully furnished, and set up with food stamps, etc. and they would find the wife a job so the husband could continue studying. Supposedly, these Russian Jews were experiencing persecution requiring their immigration to the US, and maybe some were, but mostly the persecution seemed to be that the Russian government wasn't subsidizing their Torah study. They picked the US over Israel because of Israel's mandatory army service.

It was very, very odd to watch secular, feminist Jews work so hard to allow Hasidic Jews to continue their misogynistic, fundamentalist lifestyle.

I thought haredi had an automatic exemption from military service in Israel? Or at least they used to. I remember a 60 MInutes episode about this from a number of years ago highlighting the tension between the ultra-orthodox and less-intense Jews in Israel, and this was a big hot-button issue.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I thought haredi had an automatic exemption from military service in Israel? Or at least they used to. I remember a 60 MInutes episode about this from a number of years ago highlighting the tension between the ultra-orthodox and less-intense Jews in Israel, and this was a big hot-button issue.

They do, but it's not an automatic exemption based on belonging to a specific group.

It's more like college deferments during Vietnam - if you're studying full time at a religious school and can prove that, you get an exemption to continue doing it. But you have to (at least on paper) actually be doing it. You can't work instead (which is at the root of a lot of the problem).

So if you ideologically don't agree with the entire concept of serving in the army (because it's serving the Zionist state or for more "it's not religious enough" reasons, it varies) then you need to be a fulltime student, which means you can't be working, and you need to keep it up until you age out of the range where they'll make you serve, which is somewhere north of 40 if I recall correctly. So yeah, anyone doing that path is necessarily not going to be working during their normally most productive ages.

Of course plenty of people doing that plan claim that their studying is what really protects the country (all based on religious arguments of course) and not the army, which as you can expect pisses off people who served in the army and whose kids serve in the army. Like okay, fine, go study on your hill without any army protecting it then and see how that works out...

[2xx1xy1JD]

I thought haredi had an automatic exemption from military service in Israel? Or at least they used to. I remember a 60 MInutes episode about this from a number of years ago highlighting the tension between the ultra-orthodox and less-intense Jews in Israel, and this was a big hot-button issue.

Here's a Jerusalem Post article explaining that the old law was struck down, leading to a legal limbo:

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Tal-Law-ex ... egal-limbo (not breaking link because it's a newspaper site)

The old law was one of the reasons that haredi men often did not work. In order to qualify for the exemption, a man had to be in full-time religious studies.

[anjulibai]

What is interesting to me about the Haredi is that they really wouldn't have existed as is in ancient Judea. If you were a religious scholar back then you were either part of the rich priestly class or you were celibate. There were no poor, married religious scholars. Torah study was reserved to an elite few, with the rest of the people as farmers and shepherds and general workers.

The Haredi say they are tradition but which tradition? If a Third Temple were established, still only a few would be able to serve in it.

Just seems odd to me.

[2xx1xy1JD]

To be really clear:

I am not calling individual families, who may be facing financial hardships, parasites. Children don't ask to be raised in poverty, and many of these folks are trapped in a system not of their making.

I am calling the ATTITUDE of some Haredi leaders - which encourages their group to benefit from the financial and military sacrifices of other Israelis while refusing to contribute anything and in fact being overtly hostile toward them - the attitude of parasites.

Here's a prime example:

http://www.mishpacha.com/Browse/Article ... The-Burden

[Arete]

I'm reading that article as implying that if Jews do not follow the Torah in the way the ultra-Orthdox interpret it, God will punish them and the land will vomit them out. So it is more important to be observant in the ultra-Orthodox way than to serve in the army in terms of securing the state of Israel's survival.

This does not sound like many degrees of separation from the Christian fundementalists who rail that terrorist attacks, gun nuts, and natural disasters befall the US because we are not following Biblical law.