Azure • SUMMER
5761 / 2001
The Road Back From Utopia
Joel Rebibo
Like many computer programmers in Israel’s burgeoning high-tech industry,
Yisrael sees himself as part of an ongoing revolution. Unlike others in his
field, however, Yisrael’s revolution has nothing to do with computers,
or with technology at all. His is a social revolution, one that moves quietly
forward every day when he goes to work.
Yisrael is haredi, a strictly observant Orthodox (or “ultra-Orthodox”)
Jew, in a country where only a minority of haredi men are employed. While
in the United States there is nothing unusual about a haredi computer programmer,
attorney, or accountant, in Israel the situation is different. Self-imposed,
ideological constraints have made it nearly impossible for haredi men to leave
yeshiva early enough in life to study a profession and find satisfying, well-paying
jobs. Most of them do not work at all, spending their days studying in yeshiva,
where extracurriculars such as vocational training are forbidden. Those who
enter the workforce only do so well into their thirties, and then find low-paying
work as teachers, scribes, or kashrut supervisors. The fortunate ones have
a family business to go into. Until he made his decision to leave the yeshiva
and study computers, Yisrael was part of what the sociologist Menachem Friedman,
a leading authority on the haredi community in Israel, calls a “learning
community” of some 150,000, which consists of students in kollel (advanced
yeshivot for married men) and their dependents.1 This rapidly growing community
includes families that have seen three generations—grandfathers, fathers,
and sons—who have never earned a living.
The result has been disproportionately high poverty among haredim, losses
to the Israeli economy amounting to billions of shekels a year, and growing
resentment from a secular public that feels it is being taxed unfairly to
cover the shortfall from the haredi sector and to pay for coalition promises
to the haredi parties. With every passing year, the poverty, dependence, and
resentment have deepened.
But there are signs of change. Vocational training programs for haredim,
in everything from computer programming to architecture, are having difficulty
keeping up with demand. A haredi army unit has been formed with the approval
of highly respected rabbis. Most significantly, haredi leaders have supported
the proposals of the Tal Commission, a body appointed in 1999 by Prime Minister
Ehud Barak to make recommendations concerning the exemption of yeshiva students
from army service. The most controversial of these proposals calls for a “year
of decision” that would allow students to leave the yeshiva at age 23
for a year of work or training, without losing their army deferrals as full-time
Tora students. For the haredim, this is a major departure from the thinking
of the past fifty years, according to which all men should aspire to remain
in yeshiva their whole lives, and all women to bear the double burden of raising
large families and supporting them financially.
The number of men who have taken advantage of the new opportunities is still
quite small. However, many insiders see a definite change in attitude on the
part of the leaders of Israel’s haredi community, including R. Aharon
Leib Steinman and R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, two leading rabbinic authorities
of the non-Hasidic (“Lithuanian”) Ashkenazi community, as well
as the rebbes of the Hasidic communities of Gur and Vizhnitz, whose opinions
set the tone for much of haredi life. Regardless of whether the Tal Commission’s
proposals eventually become law, the fact that rabbis of their standing have
given them tacit approval is taken by many to mean that something basic has
changed. If this assessment is correct, it could ultimately mean a dramatic
transformation of haredi life, improving the economic lot of tens of thousands
of families, enriching the national economy, and reducing tensions that have
bitterly divided secular and religious Israelis since statehood.
The phenomenon of so many learning in yeshiva for so long is unprecedented
in Jewish history. In the past, the vast majority of religious Jews, including
many of the greatest Tora scholars, worked to support themselves. R. Yehoshua,
a mishnaic sage who lived in Jerusalem in the first century and was a candidate
for the presidency of the Sanhedrin, eked out the barest of livings as a coal-maker.2
Rashi, who lived in France in the eleventh century and whose commentaries
on the Bible and Talmud are considered indispensable in yeshiva circles, was
a vintner. Maimonides made his living in the twelfth century as a doctor in
the Sultan’s court in Egypt. R. Joseph Karo, author of the Shulhan Aruch,
earned his living in sixteenth-century Safed through the fabric trade. And
this pattern continued well into the modern era: R. Yisrael Meir Kagan (better
known as the Hafetz Haim), who lived in Radin, Poland, in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, supported himself for many years as a grocery
store owner; R. Baruch Halevi Epstein, the twentieth-century Russian talmudic
scholar who wrote the Tora Temima, worked in a bank.
The reason for this was not solely economics. For centuries it was accepted
that a Tora scholar should prefer to support himself rather than take a stipend
for his studies. For some, such as R. Yohanan, the third-century sage who
lived in Tiberias, the motivation came from an ethic of self-sufficiency:
“Even make your Sabbath profane,” the Talmud quotes him as saying,
“but do not become dependent on other people.”3 For others, labor
was not only fundamental to one’s material well-being, but also an integral
part of one’s spiritual development: In the opinion of the Mishna, “All
study of Tora that is not combined with labor ultimately comes to nothing,
and causes sin.”4 It was such a belief that led Maimonides to declare
that “whoever decides to study Tora and not to work, but instead to
live on charity, desecrates the name of God and brings the Tora into contempt,
extinguishes the light of religion, brings evil upon himself, and deprives
himself of life in the world to come.”5
With the passage of centuries, however, work came to be seen as an economic
necessity, an activity that was worthy but nonetheless secondary to the ideal
of full-time Tora study. The European yeshivot which emerged in the nineteenth
century, including the famed academy of Volozhin, sought to create an elite
of Tora scholars who dedicated many years to full-time Tora study “for
its own sake,” supported by donations from a broad base of working householders
(ba’alei batim), who themselves studied during their free time. This
elite was never meant to be more than a small fraction of the population;
for the great majority of Orthodox Jewish men growing up in Eastern Europe,
delaying one’s entry into the workforce for even a few years in order
to study Tora full-time was simply not an option, and pursuing a living through
the work of one’s hands was not considered problematic in the least.
In recent times, this model has continued to guide Orthodox Jewry in most
parts of the world. As the waves of Jewish immigration reached North America
in the early twentieth century, the American haredi community fashioned itself
after the European pattern: A small number of yeshivot, in which an elite
of young Tora scholars studied full-time for several years, supported by a
base of working householders; a fraction of these scholars went on to rabbinical
careers, while the rest entered the workforce in other fields. A recent study
by Amiram Gonen, director of the Florsheimer Institute of Policy Studies in
Jerusalem, describes the attitude of the leaders of the haredi community in
the United States toward the passage of young men from the yeshiva into the
workforce:
Although the rabbis and yeshiva heads make extensive efforts
to widen the opportunities for full-time Tora studies, and encourage talented
students to deepen their learning as much as possible, they do not put any
pressure on those who want to go out and earn a living not to do so. They…
understand that the haredi world has a thriving yeshiva culture, in which
the most serious scholars have the opportunity to continue their study and
enter into leadership roles, and that it is important that there be a strong
component of ba’alei batim who not only support their own families quite
successfully but also may constitute a base of support for the society’s
institutions, particularly its yeshiva world.6
Among North American haredim, the age of entry into the workforce varies
according to the particular religious stream. In Hasidic communities, for
example, men tend to begin working in their late teens or early twenties;
in the Lithuanian communities, on the other hand, they leave yeshiva in their
mid- or late twenties. Overall, however, the pattern is a consistent one,
in which very few students beyond the age of thirty remain in full-time study.7
A recent study of the Hasidic community in Montreal, for example, shows that
of working-age males in that community, only 6 percent are studying in yeshiva
full-time.8
The need to prepare people for work has a profound impact on the education
of haredim in the United States. The assumption that students will go on to
gainful employment means that schools must conform to the rudimentary demands
of a modern economy: The American yeshiva high-school student studies an array
of secular studies, including math and English, and graduates high school
with a recognized diploma. In most haredi communities in the United States,
it is acceptable for a yeshiva student to attend college at night and earn
a degree in fields such as accounting or computers, or even to go on to graduate
school in practical subjects like social work, business, or education.9 Even
those yeshivot that do not allow their students to attend college at night,
such as Lakewood (New Jersey) and Mir (Brooklyn), arrange for them to receive
a bachelor’s degree from colleges that grant credit for Talmud, Bible,
Jewish thought, and Jewish law, enabling them to go on to advanced degrees
when they leave the yeshiva. According to one study, fully 86 percent of the
graduates of a representative haredi high school went on to pursue a college
education, with as many as 48 percent undertaking some graduate study as well.10
According to Gonen, the adaptation of haredi education to long-term economic
demands reflects a basic commitment to the value of parnasa, or economic
self-sufficiency, which has been an anchor of Orthodox communal life for many
generations. For this reason, the boys’ schools created by the Agudath
Israel movement in the early twentieth century in Russia and Poland dedicated
afternoon hours to studying the essential skills necessary for participation
in the workforce. When building their communities in the United States, Gonen
writes, haredi leaders insisted on secular studies in the schools, in an effort
“to build a haredi educational system that would ensure the continuity
of the haredi culture, yet at the same time allow the young generation to
take part in the American economic system, and to extricate themselves from
the economic hardship characteristic of many Jewish immigrants.”11 To
both the leadership and the general haredi public in America, it is clear
that without the full participation of the great majority in the workforce,
the haredi way of life cannot sustain itself.
In Israel, however, a different model has emerged, according to which a
far greater portion of working-age haredi men are engaged in full-time study—as
many as two-thirds, according to one survey.12 Following the rise of Nazism
and the destruction of European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s, a large number
of Orthodox Jews came to Israel, including many rabbinical students and rabbis
eager to rebuild the world of the yeshivot that had been lost. The most notable
of these was R. Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, better known as the Hazon Ish,
who arrived in Palestine in 1933 and was the foremost leader of the haredi
community in Israel until his death in 1953; Karelitz led an effort to recast
Orthodox life in a way that focused on stringency in observance of Jewish
law, isolationism, and, above all, Tora study.13 While many similarly minded
rabbis immigrated to the United States as well during this period (most notably
R. Aharon Kotler, founder of the Lakewood yeshiva in New Jersey), their influence
was far more decisive in Israel. One reason was the difference in size: By
the end of World War II, the haredi community in the United States was already
well-established and institutionally organized; the community in Palestine,
on the other hand, was tiny, numbering only a few thousand, and dis-organized,
giving the immigrant rabbis far greater say in shaping its ideological tenor.
Another difference stemmed from the powerful Zionist ideals that defined
the identity of secular Israel. From before the founding of the state, the
haredi community has been locked in an ideological battle with Zionism, which
its early leaders saw as a direct threat to the haredi way of life. Ya’akov
Weinrot, one of Israel’s leading attorneys, who served as one of the
Orthodox representatives on the Tal Commission, minces no words in articulating
this view of Zionism. “Zionism was never content with gaining national
independence,” he writes in his addendum to the commission’s report.
“The mainstream expressed a desire to create a new culture, a new identity,
of which a central tenet was the need to wipe out Orthodoxy as a precondition
to opening new vistas.”14
This Zionist “threat” was greatest in the early years of the
state, when Israel’s small haredi community, ravaged by the Holocaust
and competing for the future of its children against the compelling image
of the “new Jew” offered by Zionism, saw itself as struggling
for survival. R. Binyamin Secharansky, director of the Beit Ya’akov
girls’ seminaries in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, recalls the spiritual climate
in Israel in the early 1950s: “The haredi public in those days suffered
doubly: The great centers of Tora and Hasidism of Europe… had gone up
in flames, and those who survived had to rebuild from scratch; moreover, the
young state had new ideals and launched new symbols and flags to obscure their
uniqueness as Jews.… The image of the tanned sabra, smiling confidently
and speaking and acting brashly, whose whole being said youth and strength—this
was the image that symbolized the new identity.”15 Jonathan Rosenblum,
a well-known haredi columnist for The Jerusalem Post, describes the
sentiment shared by secular and Orthodox Jews alike in the early days of the
state: “In the early 1950s, there existed a virtual consensus concerning
the future of the haredi community in Israel: Except for a few pockets of
the old yishuv in Jerusalem, haredi Judaism would be a historical memory within
one generation…. Even within the citadel of the old yishuv in Me’a
She’arim, there was not a house in which someone had not been swept
up by the Zionist movement, which was viewed as the vanguard of the future.”16
Nowhere was the threat felt more acutely than with respect to compulsory
military service. According to the dominant Zionist vision, the army was meant
not only to defend the state against foreign aggression, but also to serve
as a central tool in forging a new national identity, through which immigrants
from disparate lands would shed their cultural and linguistic baggage and
adopt the language and customs of the new Jewish state. This was precisely
what the haredi public did not want—and, for the most part, still does
not want. Then as now, many haredi parents saw conscription as an attempt
by the state to strip their children of the standards of behavior they had
worked for years to inculcate. Retired Supreme Court Justice Tzvi Tal, who
headed the commission that bears his name, says the haredim “do not
want any contact between the yeshiva world and the dangerous—from the
religious point of view—army, where people have different values relating
to modesty and profane language.”17 The Post’s Rosenblum
concurs: “After guarding their children’s souls like a Ming vase
for eighteen years, haredi parents cannot be expected to expose them, at the
most vulnerable stage in their lives, to an environment of casual sexual mixing
and standards of modesty so at odds with their own.”18 A Gerrer Hasid
who did four months of army service before joining the workforce relates that
while he had no difficulty with the physical demands of basic training, he
was shocked by the late-night discussions, which focused on women, movies,
and sex. “Under no circumstances would I expose my son to a world”
like the one he found in the IDF, he says. “I can’t send my son
to be under the supervision of [then Defense Minister] Ehud Barak or [IDF
Chief of Staff] Shaul Mofaz. Barak doesn’t live my experience and doesn’t
know what’s important to me.”19
In the early days of the state, a settlement was reached between David Ben-Gurion
and the leadership of the haredi community, according to which yeshiva students
would be exempt from army duty so long as they were engaged in full-time study.
Students who declared that “their Tora is their trade” (toratam
umnutam) could continue to defer their enlistment indefinitely, but would
be prohibited from engaging in activities other than Tora study—including
teaching or even volunteer work—without first serving in the army.
Over the years, as the haredi community increased in size and the ideal
of full-time Tora study for as long as possible became increasingly accepted,
the number of people taking advantage of the deferments rose dramatically.
What began as a group of approximately 400 students exempt from army duty
at the founding of the state had grown by 1980 to around 10,000, and by 1999
had blossomed into a corps of over 30,000 men who were exempt from service,
a number that continues to grow by about one thousand each year.20 These men,
dedicated to full-time Tora study, are also bound to it by the threat of immediate
conscription should they attempt to enter the workforce. This fact alone constitutes
one of the most significant differences between the American and Israeli communities:
While an American haredi youth is free to pursue college or vocational training
without the worry of being drafted, his Israeli counterpart must remain in
yeshiva or face months or years in an army environment that is, in his view,
hostile to his way of life. The threat of army service, in the words of Justice
Tal, “imprisons” haredim in their yeshivot.21
Driven both by ideology and by the fear of army service, the haredi community
that has emerged in Israel is characterized by a far more decisive commitment
to full-time study of Tora than its American counterpart. According to a study
by Boston University economist Eli Berman, 77 percent of haredi men between
the ages of 25 and 29 in Israel are studying full-time in yeshiva; even for
men aged 41 to 44, this figure remains as high as 46 percent.22 Overall, about
two-thirds of working-age haredi men in Israel are full-time yeshiva students.23
The exclusive nature of the ideal of Tora study is felt especially strongly
among those haredim who end up pursuing careers outside the yeshiva. “Every
father wants his son to grow up and become a great Tora scholar,” notes
Moti Green, who left the yeshiva at 34 to become the first haredi attorney
to clerk in the Israeli Supreme Court. “Even though I’ve succeeded
as a lawyer, I’ve failed in terms of my ultimate goals in Tora.”
Reflecting the extent to which the haredi world has succeeded in driving home
the message of “Tora learning for all,” Green concludes: “This
is my tragedy… to go from a spiritual life to a life of work is a giant
waste.”24
This attitude is reflected in the haredi educational system in Israel, which
prepares young men for a life of Tora study, with a far smaller emphasis on
vocational training. From the age of three, when boys are sent to heder to
taste cakes baked in the shape of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and coated
with honey to symbolize the sweetness of Tora, until 13, when they graduate
from talmud tora (which parallels elementary and middle school), study of
subjects such as English, math, and science is a barely tolerated necessity.
“I was 12 the last time I had secular studies, and that was for 45 minutes
a day,” recalls Yisrael. “We used to say, ‘What do we need
this for? Are we going to be grocery store owners? We’re going to be
Tora scholars!’”25 Yeshiva ketana, the haredi equivalent
of high school, offers no secular studies whatsoever; boys as young as 14
are expected to study Talmud ten hours or more a day.26 Students move on at
age 17 or 18 to yeshiva gevoha, the equivalent of talmudic college,
and then, after marriage at 20 or 21, to kollel, where they continue
as long as possible; for some it is a lifetime, for many others it is until
their early forties and beyond.
Most girls attend Beit Ya’akov schools, where they are taught
that nothing is more important than the study of Tora, and that marrying and
supporting a scholar-in-the-making is the most noble mission of all—even
if it means a life of poverty.27 The success of the Beit Ya’akov system
in inculcating this message is largely responsible for the phenomenal growth
of the yeshivot. Some sixty years ago in Europe, R. Haim Ozer Grodzinski,
one of the leading figures of Orthodox Jewry through the start of World War
II, remarked that whenever he saw an unattractive or disabled girl, he would
stand in her honor, “for she is likely to become the wife of a Tora
scholar.”28 In those days, most of the women who would consider marrying
yeshiva students were those with no other option. Today, in the words of a
psychologist in Jerusalem who works with haredi women, “Grade A marries
Grade A”—the top girls want the top boys, which means someone
who will sit and learn for many years.29 Some 30,000 young women attend Beit
Ya’akov high school and seminary, a six-year program that offers
job training, mostly as teachers, and imparts a reverence for Tora and those
who study it.
The rabbis who crafted this model were not under the illusion that every
man is cut out for a lifetime of learning, or that every woman can bear and
raise an average of seven or eight children while being the sole breadwinner
in her family. But they nonetheless encouraged young men who had little chance
of becoming serious Tora scholars to pursue an education that left them few
opportunities to succeed in anything else, because this approach was seen
as the only way to rebuild the Tora world after the devastation of the Holocaust.
Only by creating a single track, it was believed, would the exceptional scholars
remain in yeshiva long enough to realize their potential. And only by demanding
compliance with a rigid model of what a Jew should be could the less-than-stellar
scholar be protected from the lures of secular society.
The result of all this is a pattern of haredi life in Israel that differs
markedly from the way religious Jews have ever lived, both in Europe before
the war and in America today. As Justice Tal points out, even the great yeshivot
of Lithuania never had more than a few hundred students—as compared
to the nearly 4,000 students who are now learning at the Mir yeshiva in Jerusalem
or the 1,500 at the Ponavez yeshiva in Bnei Brak. “This is how it always
was,” Tal says. “There was never a situation when a boy learned
his whole life. Even Volozhin, the flagship of the yeshiva world, only had
four hundred students at its peak…. The situation in Israel is an anomaly.”30
In recent years, however, it has become increasingly clear that the Israeli
model cannot sustain itself indefinitely. The foremost problem is economic,
resulting from the rapid growth in the size of the learning community. In
the past two decades, as the ideology of lifelong, full-time Tora study has
taken a firmer hold, the percentage of haredi men over the age of 25 choosing
to study in kollel rather than earn a living has increased dramatically—from
41 percent in 1980 to 60 percent in 1996, according to one study.31 At the
same time, haredi families are growing larger, and therefore the financial
burdens are increasing: In 1980, the average haredi woman would bear 6.5 children
in her lifetime; by 1995 that number had risen to 7.6, a 17-percent increase.
This means that the number of children growing up in conditions of poverty—and
the corresponding economic burden on Israeli society—is far higher than
in the past. According to Berman, the portion of Israeli children overall
whose fathers are studying in yeshiva full-time has more than doubled, from
2.7 percent in 1980 to 5.9 percent in 1996; according to one estimate, that
number could exceed 10 percent by the year 2006.32
These families tend to live in conditions of significant poverty and significant
dependence. According to Berman, the average haredi family in which the father
does not work has a total annual income of about $14,000, less than half that
of the average two-parent family in Israel, while supporting 4.5 children,
as opposed to the nationwide average of 2.1.33 Of this income, only 18 percent
is earned, almost entirely from the wife’s efforts, while the rest comes
from a variety of government stipends and transfer payments. As a result,
Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, cities with large haredi populations, consistently
top the poverty figures released each year by the National Insurance Institute.34
According to a recent study by the economist Momi Dahan of the Bank of Israel,
over 50 percent of haredi families in Jerusalem lived below the poverty line
in 1995.35
And yet, while the poverty and dependence of haredi families are increasing,
their traditional sources of income are showing signs of drying up. The three
principal sources are government subsidy, family assistance, and working wives.
Government subsidy takes up the lion’s share, coming in a number of
different forms: A monthly allocation per student in the amount of around
$200, paid by the Religious Affairs Ministry to yeshivot (and largely passed
on to students in the form of stipends); generous child allocations from the
National Insurance Institute, which increase with the number of children in
the family; and supplemental income for those below the poverty line, paid
by the National Insurance Institute. In 1998, this assistance included $219
million paid directly to yeshivot and $29 million in income supplements.36
Moreover, haredim receive generous discounts on municipal property taxes and
nursery-school fees. According to journalist Shahar Ilan, whose recent book,
Haredim, Inc., is a thoroughly researched account of the haredi community,
the average haredi family with six children, in which the father does not
work, received in the year 1999 between $17,600 and $22,500 in transfer payments,
tax relief, and other subsidies.37
As poverty deepens and the dependent haredi population expands, the politicians
of the religious parties press for more social spending that will benefit
their constituents, fanning what Menachem Friedman terms the “awesome
hatred of haredim” among the general public.38 The situation prompted
Vered Dar, deputy head of the Finance Ministry’s Economics and State
Revenues Department, to remark: “I don’t know where it will explode
first: Will the secular population say they are no longer willing to bear
the burden, or will the haredim say there is a limit to poverty?”39
According to Friedman, there is no way the government can continue funding
the haredi sector at current levels. The last two decades have seen a dramatic
shift away from the traditional statist economic policies in Israel, and an
increasing belief that there is something wrong with widespread dependence
on government transfers. As Friedman puts it, “People are sick and tired
of giving money.”
This problem will only get worse. According to Finance Ministry figures
presented to the Tal Commission, the total number of yeshiva students above
age 18 grew from 63,000 in 1995 to 77,000 in 1999, an increase of 22 percent
in just four years; the number of yeshiva students over the age of 40—mostly
heads of households with sizeable families—increased by 24 percent during
the period of 1995-1999.40 And these figures seem bound to continue rising:
Based on long-term demographic projections, Berman estimates that the haredi
population in Israel, which in 1995 stood at 280,000, or 5.2 percent of the
population, is likely to reach close to a million people, or 12.4 percent
of the population, by the year 2025.41 Given the rapid growth of the learning
community in Israel, retaining that community’s already low standard
of living will require an increase of government transfers to the tune of
4 to 5 percent each year, much higher than Israel’s rate of per capita
growth. “At current levels of transfers and taxes,” writes Berman,
“the ultra-Orthodox population growth rate will make Israel’s
welfare system insolvent and bankrupt municipalities with large ultra-Orthodox
populations. The status quo is not sustainable without transferring an increased
proportion of output to welfare programs”—a shift in spending
priorities that the Israeli public is unlikely to accept.42
The second traditional source of support has been family assistance. When
a couple marry, it is expected that both sides of the family will help get
them started; this means, among other things, purchasing and furnishing an
apartment. But the expectation is getting harder and harder to meet—especially
for those whose parents and grandparents have never worked. As Justice Tal
writes in his report: “If in the 1950s those who were learning had parents
who could support them, in the 1970s and 1980s there was a second generation
of Tora scholars, and in the 1990s a third generation. This latest generation
does not have the economic backing their parents had, and as a result the
economic situation among those learning full-time in yeshiva has become overwhelming.”
Again, this is a problem which will only become worse over time, given the
growth rate of the haredi population: According to Berman, the number of haredi
children in Israel under the age of 18 is likely to increase from around 150,000
in 1995 to over half a million by 2025—children who will have less and
less support from their increasingly poor parents as they come of age. As
summed up by Yishai Weiner, editor of the Bnei Brak haredi paper Kol Ha’ir:
“The generation of Holocaust survivors had money, from reparation payments
and other sources. My grandfather helped my father and my father helped me.
But the money’s run out. This third generation can’t afford to
support its children, marry them off and buy them apartments.”43
A third source of income for the haredi family has been working wives. Again,
the phenomenal growth of the yeshiva world was made possible by the Beit
Ya’akov educational system, which is now raising a third generation
of women who would rather endure financial hardship—and carry the double
load of raising and supporting their large families—than see their husbands
leave the study hall. The system has been so successful in imparting the message
of Tora study at all cost that it is often the women who plead with their
husbands to stay in yeshiva and “allow” them to carry the financial
burden. Today, says Rivka Rappaport, an American-born educator who opened
an innovative haredi elementary school in Jerusalem, poverty is honorable
for most haredi women. “It is a sign of one’s willingness to sacrifice
oneself for Tora.”44
But the woman who at 22 can support her husband and two children has a much
more difficult time when she is 30 and has six children (and many more expenses).
Though this is the role she has been raised to fill, and she enjoys a certain
status in her community for filling it, there comes a point where the responsibility
of making a living and raising a large family is so great she can do neither
in a satisfactory manner. According to economist Dahan, as many as 80 percent
of working haredi women can work only part-time jobs, as compared with 41
percent of working women nationwide.45 “Wives are overwhelmed by the
burden of being the main financial support,” says Rosenblum. As a result,
“they can’t raise their families properly.”46
Part of the problem stems from the kind of training women receive before
entering the workforce. Adina Bar-Shalom, daughter of R. Ovadia Yosef, the
most widely followed Sephardi rabbi and spiritual leader of the Shas party,
says the situation in the haredi community is “very difficult.”
The typical Beit Ya’akov graduate who has a degree in teaching—not
a great income-earner to begin with—finds that there are no jobs in
her field. “Last year,” she notes, “some eight hundred girls
graduated seminary in Jerusalem as teachers, but there were only thirty teaching
jobs available.” As a result, most women are forced to take even lower-paying
work as secretaries, nursery-school teachers, or aides to nursery-school teachers.
“They come home tired and worn out after taking care of other people’s
children and then are expected to take care of their own children,”
says Bar-Shalom, who is planning on opening a “Shas College” to
train women for better-paying work.47
The severe financial pressures are having an effect on marriages, as well.
“People are breaking down,” laments one mother who says that she
has no intention of supporting her newlywed daughter so that her son-in-law
can study. While the wife has to be up early for her job, even after a sleepless
night nursing a baby or caring for a sick child, her husband can get to kollel
at 9:15 or 9:30. “It is very hard for the women, and families are collapsing,”
says former Finance Minister Ya’akov Ne’eman, who is well connected
with the leadership of the haredi community. Dudi Silbershlag, publisher of
the weekly Bakehila, who is also close to R. Aharon Leib Steinman,
says there is increasing recognition that women cannot be expected to support
their families. “The bottom line is that women just can’t keep
doing this over time.”48
Economics, however, is only one reason the current model is unlikely to
hold up. Another is that many haredi men are simply not cut out for the rigorous
demands of full-time Tora study, isolation from the outside world, and poor
standards of living which define the Israeli haredi experience. There have
always been those who rebelled against the system completely—including
famous cases such as Efraim Schach, the only son of R. Eliezer Schach, perhaps
the most prominent Ashkenazi haredi rabbinic leader in Israel during the last
quarter-century. The younger Schach served in the army and earned a doctorate
in history and philosophy because he was “too curious” about the
outside world to remain in yeshiva and fulfill his “destiny” as
his father’s successor as head of the Ponavez yeshiva.49 In recent years,
the number of such cases has risen dramatically; and many of those who do
not fit into the yeshiva world do not make the successful transition into
a career in the way that Schach did. Moreover, a large portion of the men
who remain in yeshiva find their lives unfulfilling, a problem that has been
increasingly recognized by rabbinic figures, social workers, and laypeople
alike. “People are sitting there, in yeshiva, broken,” Yisrael
says. “I’d say 60 to 70 percent don’t belong there; they
feel they’re going nowhere. Psychologically, it’s rough. They
don’t want to be second-grade teachers in a talmud tora—the
only jobs that are available—and there are very few positions available
for lecturers in leading yeshivot.”50 Yosef Shilhav, a scholar at Bar-Ilan
University who studies the community, concurs. “There is tremendous
pressure in the haredi public coming from people who are in yeshiva but don’t
belong there. It’s only natural that most people are not capable of
learning all day; only the intellectual elite can handle it.”51
As a result, many younger haredim have adandoned their studies altogether.
Resigning themselves to failure at the only occupation they have been told
is legitimate, and prohibited by law from working, many youths spend their
days wandering the streets while remaining formally enrolled in yeshivot.
Rabbi Y., an independent counselor for these youths, known as shababnikim,
explained the phenomenon in a recent interview in Ha’aretz:
Shababnikim are simply kids who are unable to sit for a whole
day in yeshiva and learn Talmud. They need fresh air, to let off steam. The
problem is that from the moment they start hanging out on the streets, meeting
different people, girls, and perhaps coming into physical contact with them—things
that are quite acceptable in secular society but which are considered very
serious by the haredim—they are rejected by haredi society. From the
moment they view themselves as criminals, there is no difference in their
eyes between touching girls and much more serious things, like drugs, for
example.52
In many cases, these youths are no longer welcome in their own homes, and
wind up living on the street or in government-run youth hostels. According
to figures reported in The Jerusalem Post, of the 120 homeless youths
who received assistance in 1997 from the Jerusalem municipality, fifty were
haredim, and it is safe to assume that there were many others who did not
receive such aid. According to Shabtai Amedi, director of the municipality’s
Division for the Advancement of Youth, most of these simply could not handle
the demands of full-time study. “They can become homeless because they
just didn’t cut it in yeshiva. In the haredi sector, yeshiva dropouts
drop out of the entire community, because for them, if you’re not studying
in a yeshiva, it’s a problem. Sometimes the families are so embarrassed
by such a kid that they tell him to leave. And sometimes economic conditions
at home are so terrible that living in Lifta”—a shababnik
hangout in Jerusalem—“is better than living at home.”53
In recent years, the problem of the shababnikim has reached alarming
proportions. In May 1998, a number of haredi educators sent a letter to several
leading rabbis in which they stressed the dimensions of the problem:
We are not discussing a few dozen youths, or even a few hundred—but
rather thousands of former yeshiva students who have crossed the line, leaving
the yeshiva to wander the streets, movie theaters, city squares, and anywhere
that a yeshiva boy should not be…. We are not speaking about the marginal
types; even those from the best homes, the most promising students….
In recent times these youths have tarnished our name with the awful depths
they have reached—even to the point of committing murder, in the literal
sense of the term.54
This was no exaggeration. According to Shahar Ilan, of the three thousand
to four thousand shababnikim in Israel, several hundred have become
involved in serious crimes including extortion, armed robbery, male prostitution
and, in rare cases, murder—such as the August 1997 killing of an Arab
gas station attendant in the Sheikh Jarah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Ilan
tells the story of “Chupchik,” a haredi gang leader convicted
on twenty-one counts of auto theft, fraud, and disturbing the peace—all
committed within one year of quitting the Mir yeshiva in Jerusalem. And according
to Hanania Chulak, director of the Ezer Mitzion volunteer organization,
bands of roaming shababnikim have turned the city of Bnei Brak into
a “crime center reminiscent of New York City’s Harlem. People
are afraid to walk the streets. Violent, criminal gangs in this city do what-ever
they please.”55 Haim Walder, a columnist for the haredi daily Yated
Ne’eman, reports that after many attempts by the community to control
the hoodlums of Bnei Brak on their own, in the end they were forced to give
up. “Agents from the police anti-terror unit arrived, some on motorcycles,
and imposed order the way they know how—affording us a golden opportunity
to understand that we cannot control our fringe elements on our own.”56
One indicator of the inability of many people to handle the commu-nity’s
standards is the rise, in recent years, of people exiting the haredi world
entirely. “There’s been an explosion of kids leaving religion,”
says Sharon Slater, a psychologist who works with the haredi community in
Jerusalem. “Everybody knows a family it’s happened to.”57
While the numbers are very difficult to estimate and probably still quite
small, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that they are increasing
rapidly. For example, the Hillel organization, which assists haredim
who choose to leave the Orthodox way of life, reported that in 1999 its caseload
more than doubled compared to the previous year.58 Moreover, cases are often
highly publicized, adding to the sense of crisis in the haredi community.
The crisis has become too widespread to sweep under the rug. In a rare display
of openness on the subject, the haredi weekly Hamishpaha recently
ran a series of articles on the difficulties facing haredi youth, called “The
Fifth Son,” in which it referred to yeshiva dropouts as “the most
burning problem facing the haredi public, even if it is not discussed in public.”
According to Hamishpaha, as many as fifty-three organizations have
been set up to attempt to address the problem.59 One of these is Lev Shomea,
a hotline for troubled haredi youths, which offers young people a chance to
openly discuss things that were once considered taboo: Doubts about religion,
sexual desires and frustrations, questions about the legitimacy of the haredi
lifestyle. Every day, a small notice runs in the two daily newspapers that
serve the haredi community, Hamodia and Yated Ne’eman,
just below the notice telling readers where to call to hear the Talmud page
of the day, which reads: “For information relating to doubts and distress,
call…,” and telephone numbers are given (separate for boys and
girls) throughout the country.
R. Yoel Schwartz, a veteran educator who has been closely associated with
the haredi army unit since its founding in January 1999, says that the biggest
reason for problems such as the shababnikim and the decision of many youths
to leave religion entirely is the lack of legitimate alternatives to full-time
study. “With just a little more choice, we could have kept these kids
in the framework,” he says. Justice Tal, himself a product of haredi
yeshivot, agrees. “The yeshivot today are choking with those who are
burned out and cannot go on learning,” he says. “They cannot work
be-cause they haven’t done army, and they cannot learn because they’re
burned out. The situation is awful.”
The extent of the crisis is slowly becoming apparent among the leadership
of Israel’s haredi community, without whose approval little is likely
to change. In the past few years, a number of leading rabbis have changed
their tone with respect to key areas of policy, resulting in changes which,
while still modest, signify a recognition that the Israeli model of haredi
life, in which full-time Tora study is considered the only legitimate occupation
for most men, may ultimately be untenable.
One such development is the emergence of vocational education programs for
haredi men. The most ambitious effort so far is the Haredi Center for
Technological Studies, which opened in 1996 with thirty-five students
in a single Jerusalem branch and within four years had more than 1,400 students
in four locations (Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Ashdod, and Kiryat Sefer). “There
are few projects that have changed the face of haredi society in the way that
ours has,” explains R. Yehezkel Fogel, director of the program. “The
goal was to provide solutions for people who needed to earn a living and who
had no suitable program that could train them. If they don’t get any
training, they’ll be forced to find work that does nothing for their
minds.”60
The center offers courses in computer programming, graphics and multimedia,
accounting and bookkeeping, business and marketing, electrical engineering,
and architecture. Students can earn a certificate (after one to two years
of study), an engineering degree (three years), or a full-fledged B.A. issued
in conjunction with Bar-Ilan University. The center has received the approval
of some of the most important rabbis, including R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv,
the leading legal authority in the Lithuanian yeshiva world; R. Shmuel Wosner,
head of the Hachmei Lublin yeshiva in Bnei Brak; R. Aharon Leib Steinman;
R. Ovadia Yosef; and the Gerrer Rebbe, R. Ya’akov Alter, who is the
leader of the largest Hasidic sect in Israel.
Despite these endorsements, those in charge of the center have had to walk
a fine line; they can promote their program, but not so aggressively that
they could be accused of luring students away from yeshiva. To allay fears
that the center might nip the budding careers of young scholars, Fogel’s
policy is to accept only those men who are at least 25, married, and fathers
of four children. Courses for men are given at night, to allow them to continue
in kollel during the day, thereby easing their transition from the learning
community to the working world.
The fact that a branch has opened in Kiryat Sefer, a center of the more
ardent elements in the Lithuanian yeshiva world, is one sign that the idea
of men leaving the yeshiva to work is gaining acceptance. Another is the appearance
of favorable articles on the center in the daily Yated Ne’eman,
widely seen as a mouthpiece for the leading rabbis of the Lithuanian yeshiva
community. A lengthy feature ran in the paper’s English-language edition
in March 1998, followed by a similar piece in the Hebrew edition the following
October. “Virtually all the men who study there have spent many years
in yeshivot and kollels, and are married and have growing families,”
the paper stresses. “By equipping them with the skills that are needed
to obtain productive, well-paid jobs in the technical professions, the center
hopes to relieve some of the pressures on those who wish to work but lack
the necessary background.” The paper’s endorsement of the center
was outright, describing it as “a body that was set up with the blessing
and approval of the Tora sages.” The Hebrew article, which ran alongside
a picture of haredi men in a computer lab, notes that the English edition
received a hugely favorable response from its readers, and that “at
the request of the rabbis, and for the benefit of the community, Yated
is running a Hebrew story on the center, which has undoubtedly brought blessing
to many families.”61
Yated Ne’eman praised the center for the quality of its programs
and for its reputation among employers, particularly in the high-tech sector.
“People who didn’t know a word of English, who had never seen
a mathematical equation and didn’t know what a computer mouse was, have,
thank God, overcome these gaps through preparatory and enrichment courses
that enable them to complete matriculation exams,” Fogel tells his interviewer
from Yated Ne’eman. “Melem Systems, for instance, took
fourteen of our graduates and came back to ask for more. It’s been the
same story with other software companies and businesses like Telrad and Digital.”
In a clear message to the reader that there is work out there for the taking,
the paper quotes Hanan Achshaf, director of the electronics division of the
Israel Manufacturers’ Association, as saying: “The solution to
our manpower problems is in the haredi sector.”
The success of such programs is driven by the fact that haredi men are surprisingly
well-suited for work in high tech, particularly as programmers. Despite some
significant gaps in their education, their many years of talmudic study, which
stresses not only logic but also independence and study in pairs, or havruta,
have prepared them well for the intellectual demands of the job. “They
definitely have self-study skills,” says Meir Komer, who is in charge
of a computer-programming course catering to the religious community at Machon
Lev, a technological college in Jerusalem. “They learn in havruta
and need much less frontal teaching than others. Gemara prepares them well
for programming.” Laser Rotshtein, managing director of JBE, a high-tech
company in Jerusalem that has hired fifty haredi programmers, agrees. “The
system of havruta learning helps them in programming,” he says,
adding that while students require intensive remedial training in English,
the deficit in mathematics is not so difficult to overcome. “Boulian
algebra is relatively easy for someone who has learned Talmud.” Rotshtein
is not the only employer who is pleased with the quality of his haredi workers.
Shlomo Pe’eri, head of manpower at NDS in Jerusalem, a Rupert Murdoch-owned
company that produces smart cards for satellite and cable television, also
gives high marks to his company’s haredi employees. “Our haredi
workers have no trouble adjusting,” says Pe’eri. “They work
well with others and carry their weight. We’re very satisfied with their
work.”62
Hillel is a rising star at JBE. He studied computer programming at Machon
Lev after trying unsuccessfully to earn a living as a teacher of four- and
five-year-olds; he moved around to Safed, Beersheba, Migdal Ha’emek,
and Jerusalem, never earning more than a few hundred dollars a month, and
never being paid on time. In addition to his regular programming duties at
JBE, Hillel’s pet project has been to create a three-dimensional model
depicting Maimonides’ calculations on the rotation of the new moon.
“I taught myself three-dimensional trigonometric algorithms,”
he says, as he demonstrates the angle of the moon in relation to the earth
at different times of the year. “Without this model it’s very
difficult to understand what Maimonides is after. I wanted to break down difficult
concepts to a level people could understand.” Hillel took on the Maimonides
project because “I wanted even my secular work to have a holy dimension.”
But purely secular applications also have a spiritual dimension, he believes.
“Until you get involved in some kind of secular activity, you’re
not actualizing your Tora.”
No less important than the personal satisfaction Hillel has gained from
his “secular activity,” however, is the fact that he is also received
well in his community—an indication that the taboo on work has been
significantly eroded in recent years. “The guy who sits next to me in
shul in Beitar [a religious community south of Jerusalem] asked me how to
get into computers and then went and signed up at Machon Lev,” he says.
“Many people, from all walks of haredi life, ask me questions about
work. People even stop me on the street. There are people who are literally
hungry; they are suffering.” Those who suffer most, he says, are those
who have to pay rent because their parents could not afford to buy them apartments,
and as a result are taking one interest-free loan to pay another. That was
the life Hillel knew for years—hunting down new sources of loans, getting
calls from the bank manager about his overdrawn account and from the local
grocer about his monthly bill. Now, he says, “I have a chance to live
instead of just worrying about meeting my basic needs. I can give to others
financially. People look at you differently when you earn a salary.”
Vocational training, however, is not the only indicator of change. Another
is a new flexibility in the attitude of a number of leading rabbis towards
military service. The most striking example is the establishment in January
1999 of the Nahal Haredi, a military unit aimed at accommodating the particular
needs of haredi soldiers, including Tora study sessions, stricter standards
of kashrut, and minimized contact with female soldiers—a program that
could never have gotten off the ground without the backing of leading figures,
most notably R. Steinman.63 The three-year tour of service offers recruits
the opportunity to fill in the gaps in their secular knowledge and earn high-school
equivalency diplomas. Even before they finish their first stage of active
duty, two teachers are sent to their outpost to teach math, Hebrew, and other
basic subjects. After their first eighteen months of service, which include
a four-month basic training program, they are sent for a year to work in a
community and to learn a trade. Some of these soldiers have ended up at Machon
Lev. “When a person feels that he is worth something, then he’s
motivated to do better,” says R. Yoel Schwartz, a rabbi in Jerusalem’s
haredi neighborhood of Me’a She’arim, and one of the Nahal Haredi’s
supporters.
The number of haredi inductees is still quite small, attracting only a few
hundred out of the thousands of potential recruits who come of age each year.
However, because of the backing it has received from some rabbis, it has become
a matter of significant controversy within the haredi community. “The
Lithuanian rabbis are afraid that the Nahal Haredi will become highly popular,”
writes Shahar Ilan. “They are concerned that not only will the shababnikim
enlist, but so will the regular, less successful yeshiva students, who will
jump at the chance of going out and earning a decent living.”64 Both
advocates and opponents of the Nahal Haredi believe that if army service becomes
legitimate, the result could potentially be a flood of students leaving the
yeshiva; Dudi Silbershlag estimates that as many as 40 percent of yeshiva
students might sign up. For now, however, the importance of the Nahal Haredi
is mostly symbolic, a signal to the wider haredi community that alternatives
to full-time Tora study are gaining legitimacy, and that the army need not
be a hostile environment for haredi recruits.
A more significant indicator of the new openness to change has been the
acceptance by several leading rabbis of the proposals put forth by the Tal
Commission in the spring of 2000. In December 1998, the Israeli Supreme Court
ruled in the case of Ressler v. Minister of Defense that the Defense Ministry
had exceeded its authority by granting unlimited deferrals and exemptions
of military service to yeshiva students. The court allotted the Knesset one
year to pass legislation that would set forth rules governing the exemption
of yeshiva students; if it failed to do so, the Ministry of Defense would
be obligated to begin drafting them. (The one-year period has since been extended
several times, most recently by an act of the Knesset.) In August 1999, Ehud
Barak, acting in his capacity as defense minister, appointed a commission
to investigate the issue and propose relevant legislation; the commission,
headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Tzvi Tal, a religious Zionist who
favors military service, included representatives of the haredi community,
as well as the defense and legal establishments.65
After a careful investigation of the social, economic, and political implications
of drafting yeshiva students, the Tal Commission presented its report in April
2000. For the committed Tora scholar, the commission’s main proposals
amounted to a formal legalization of the present situation: An unlimited number
of full-time yeshiva students would be allowed to defer their army service
indefinitely, but would be obligated to complete their service as soon as
they chose to end their full-time study. What was to change, however, was
the introduction of a “year of decision,” according to which a
yeshiva student who had deferred his army service could, at age 23, take a
year off his studies to pursue work or vocational training without being drafted.
If, at the end of that year, the student chose to return to full-time yeshiva
study, he could continue deferring his military service indefinitely. Otherwise,
he would serve a shortened tour of a few months of army duty, and would then
be free to pursue his career or studies as he saw fit.66 The idea behind the
year of decision was to allow the serious students to continue their study,
while offering a relatively painless way out for those whose principal reason
for being in yeshiva was to avoid military service.
Predictably, the proposals met with strong opposition from secular activists,
who had seen the court’s ruling and the subsequent appointment of the
Tal Commission as an opportunity to compel at least part of the haredi community
to shoulder the burden of defending the country, and who now saw the commission’s
findings as nothing less than a sellout. MK Yosef Lapid, head of the anti-clerical
Shinui party, declared the proposed law to be a “shirkers’ law,”
with Meretz MK Mussi Raz chiming in that the Tal proposals “essentially
say that haredi blood is redder than secular blood.” Nehemia Stressler,
the respected economics editor of Ha’aretz, moaned that “the
injustice cries out to the heavens,” while Moshe Negbi, then Ma’ariv’s
legal affairs correspondent, called the proposed law “repugnant.”67
A student protest movement called Awakening (hit’orerut) arose
in response, and the poet Yehuda Amichai went so far as to declare that “the
struggle against implementing the Tal recommendations is equal in importance
to the struggle for the independence of Israel.”68
However, a number of people who had closely studied the haredi community,
including a few secular journalists with no particular affection for haredim,
understood that a breakthrough had been made in the Tal report. Most significant,
they noted, was that Bnei Brak mayor Mordechai Karelitz, a figure close to
R. Steinman, signed on to the report, and that it received the tacit approval
of R. Elyashiv, as well as the support of the leadership of the Hasidic communities
of Vizhnitz and Gur. “We should see it as a very positive thing that…
Karelitz signed on to the report…,” wrote Shahar Ilan in Ha’aretz.
“For the first time in many years, the secular majority has a partner
for dialogue on the haredi side—those who are prepared to agree to painful
concessions, to take the heat [from others in their community] and fight for
their beliefs.”69 Avirama Golan of Ha’aretz pointed out
that the concession of the haredim to a year of decision “is itself
a backhanded admission of the need to reduce the ranks of the yeshivot.”70
This is not to say that all, or even a majority, of the rabbinical leadership
has come out in support of the Tal proposals. While a few of the top communal
leaders have supported them, others, particularly the heads of the leading
yeshivot, have assailed them as a threat to the integrity of the yeshiva world.
Yated Ne’eman called the Tal report a “dangerous legal precedent,
a revolutionary reform in the approach toward the world of yeshivot, a diminution
of the value of Tora, and the advocacy of assimilation into secular society.”71
Fliers appeared in haredi neighborhoods accusing the Tal Commission of bringing
a “holocaust” upon the yeshivot. R. Asher Tannenbaum, chairman
of the Yeshiva Council, an umbrella organization representing the haredi yeshivot,
resigned from the Tal Commission in protest over the year of decision, and
did not sign his name to the report. R. Avraham Ravitz, a member of Knesset
for the United Tora Judaism party and himself a supporter of the Tal proposals,
explains the position of the yeshiva heads. “They don’t want to
institutionalize a system for leaving yeshiva at age 23,” says Ravitz.
“There’s no problem when people leave [yeshiva] as a matter of
individual choice, but the Tal Commission would standardize an exit from the
yeshiva world.”72
If this is the case, why have some leading haredi rabbis been willing to
support the Tal Commission’s proposals? Ravitz suggests that they had
little choice in the matter. “The Supreme Court ordered the Knesset
to legislate on the matter of deferrals,” he says, “and Tal was
the best offer.” Others, however, see in the new policy a recognition
of how hard things are getting economically for the haredi community. “What
the gedolim say is most important,” says elementary-school principal
Rappaport, who is a granddaughter of R. Moshe Feinstein, the leading Orthodox
rabbinical figure in the United States until his death in 1986. “If
they say the current situation of everyone learning should continue, people
will continue. But they apparently recognize the extent of the poverty, and
that’s why they went along with the Tal Commission.” Kol Ha’ir’s
Yishai Weiner expressed a similar sentiment. “The real revolution in
the haredi world relates to money,” he says. Weiner, who attended the
prestigious Ponavez yeshiva and served in the army, feels that the haredi
public supports the Tal Commission recommendations. “It’s too
hard for things to continue the way they have been. People want to go out
and work,” he adds, predicting that 30 to 40 percent will leave kollel
and go to work if the threat of army service is removed. Dov Elbaum, who grew
up in a haredi community in Bnei Brak and now covers haredim for the national
daily Yedi’ot Aharonot, agrees. In his view, the idea of a year of decision
“would never have gained the approval of the leaders of haredi society
were it not for the fact that the yeshiva world is in a deep state of crisis.
The commission’s secular members essentially offered a wide, convenient
lifeboat to a haredi society faced with the prospect of drowning.”73
Few moments in history were as precarious for Tora scholarship as the immediate
wake of the Holocaust. Not only had the great centers of Tora study been destroyed,
and most of their students killed, but the Orthodox way of life had come to
be seen by a great many Jews as vestigial, something that would disappear
within a generation. It is understandable, then, that the response of the
haredi leadership in Israel was uncompromising: The Tora must be studied,
as much as possible by as many as possible, at all cost.
But in their effort to regain what was lost, the haredim in postwar Israel
set in motion a project that took on dimensions undreamed of at the time.
What began as a response to catastrophe and immediate cultural threat transformed,
within a few decades, into a learning community far greater in size, and far
more demanding, than anything the Jews have ever experienced. This new model,
however, depended on assumptions that have grown increasingly questionable
with time: That a large and growing segment of society could stay out of the
workforce, living off government subsidy, the residual wealth of parents and
relatives, and the extraordinary sacrifices of kollel wives, without incurring
unbearable poverty and generating intense resentment from a larger Israeli
population that does not share its ideals and is not willing to continue its
own sacrifices in order to subsidize them. Sooner or later, the Israeli model
was bound to reach its limits.
Thus, the new developments in the haredi community signify not merely the
fine-tuning of an existing pattern of life, but the correction of an ideology—an
admission, in a limited way, that the effort to create a vast learning community
in which only the Tora scholar and his devoted wife are honored has run its
course. This is the beginning of what will probably be a slow and painful
awakening. It will likely catch on more quickly in Sephardi and Hasidic circles,
where the classical Jewish respect for those who work for a living still has
some currency, and will be most fiercely resisted in the Lithuanian communities.
But there is good reason to believe that once it has begun, the transformation
of haredi society in Israel will be difficult to stop: The increasing number
of skilled, successful, working haredim will act as a constant reminder that
a dedication to Tora study and a traditional way of life need not be equated
with poverty and dependence. As Justice Tal, who studied in haredi yeshivot
before going to law school, says: “It will be painful from a spiritual
point of view for people to leave the Tora world, but with time they will
see that it is possible to leave and still be okay.”74
The new openness to alternatives in the haredi world, born of necessity,
could have a far-reaching impact on Israeli society. The application of this
community’s disciplined minds in skilled professions such as programming
and communications would improve Israel’s already strong position in
these areas. Shifting thousands of men from the study hall to the workplace
would give a boost to economic growth, expand the tax base, and reduce demand
for social spending for the haredi sector. Most important, perhaps, would
be the interaction of haredim with the rest of Israeli society that is likely
to result from their participation in the workforce and their enlistment in
the military. According to Yisrael Segal, who left the haredi community as
a teenager and went on to become one of Israel’s most respected television
journalists, “The very contact between the two worlds will bring about
a greater degree of openness, and a shattering of preconceived notions each
side has with respect to the other.”75
But it is the haredim themselves who stand to gain the most from the change.
A rediscovery of the traditional pattern of religious life, along the lines
of the European and American models, would mean a restoration of the balance
between scholars and laymen. The immediate effect would be to ease poverty
and the accompanying social problems. The community would stop losing those
who cannot fit its mold of scholar-in-perpetuity, but who can remain within
its bounds once these are expanded to include good technicians, programmers,
or even soldiers. The yeshivot, whose leaders have staunchly opposed the Tal
recommendations because they make it easier for students to leave, would revert
to the role of elite institutions marked by intensive learning and an interest
in excellence. In addition, when the balance between scholars and laymen reached
a level that would allow the community to support its institutions, this would
reduce the dependency of the haredim on transfer payments.
For this rosy scenario to be realized, several things will have to happen.
The Tal proposals, or something like them, will have to become law, so that
yeshiva students can begin vocational training at a relatively young age.
The government will have to redirect much of the funding it gives to yeshivot
and invest it in job training programs and night school for haredim. Most
importantly, the first waves of young haredi professionals will have to prove
themselves, in two ways: To potential employers, that their talents and relatively
low salary requirements make it worth accommodating the workplace to their
needs; and to their own community, that it is possible to leave the yeshiva
without lowering one’s spiritual standard of living—that they
have not, in the talmudic phrase, “gained this world at the cost of
the next.” Without the cooperation of employers, politicians, and rabbis,
the community’s journey back from its Israeli experiment will be a long,
arduous one, and might even be delayed indefinitely. With it, the next generation
of haredim may be the most productive, self-sufficient, and socially responsible
that Israel has seen.
Joel Rebibo is a journalist based in Jerusalem.
Notes
1. Menachem Friedman, interview with author, October 2000. Most of the people
interviewed for this article refused to be pinned down on numbers relating
to the haredi community. Researchers once used the number of votes garnered
by haredi parties as an indication, notes Friedman, but Shas, a Sephardi haredi
party that draws support from many non-haredim, has made it impossible to
continue using that gauge. Examining the roster of kollels is also not accurate,
because they are not properly updated and monitored, and while it is clear
when people begin their studies, it is not at all clear when they end them—and
how many are full-time students with no outside employment.
2. Brachot 28a. Rashi brings a second opinion that he was a blacksmith.
3. Shabbat 118a.
4. Mishna Avot 2:2.
5. Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of Tora Study 3:10. For further material
and discussion on the concept of labor in the rabbinical sources, see Yosef
Yitzhak Lifshitz, “Secret of the Sabbath,” Azure 10, Winter 2001,
pp. 85-117.
6. Amiram Gonen, From Yeshiva to Work: The American Experience and Lessons
for Israel (Jerusalem: Florsheimer Institute, 2000), p. 90. [Hebrew]
7. Gonen, From Yeshiva to Work, p. 46.
8. Eli Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View of
Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1998),
p. 19.
9. Touro College in New York, for instance, offers a wide range of degree
programs at night. And students at the Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore
earn degrees at night from Johns Hopkins University, Loyola College (ironically,
a Jesuit institution), or a local community college.
10. William B. Helmreich, The World of the Yeshiva: An Intimate Portrait of
Orthodox Jewry (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 2000), p. 220. “Among the alumni
responding to the questionnaire, 48 percent had completed some form of graduate
training, 23 percent graduated college only, 15 percent attended but did not
graduate, while only 14 percent failed to go beyond high school. Although
no statistics are available, it is likely that even those yeshivas, such as
Lakewood and Telshe, which forbid college attendance for those in residence
at the school, have substantial numbers of alumni, perhaps even a majority,
who attended college either before they enrolled or after they left the yeshiva.”
The study was of
878 graduates of a haredi high school, located in its ideology somewhere between
the more extreme, haredi Lakewood yeshiva and the modern-Orthodox Yeshiva
University, “permitting but not specifically encouraging college studies.”
Helmreich, World of the Yeshiva, pp. 343-344.
11. Gonen, From Yeshiva to Work, p. 40. Cf. Menachem Friedman, The Haredi
Society: Sources, Trends, and Processes (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for
Israel Studies, 1991), pp. 26-29. [Hebrew]
12. Eli Berman and Ruth Klinov, Human Capital Investment and Nonparticipation:
Evidence from a Sample with Infinite Horizons (or: Jewish Father Stops Going
to Work) (Jerusalem: Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel,
1997), p. 11, table 4.
13. See Lawrence Kaplan, “The Hazon Ish: Haredi Critic of Traditional
Orthodoxy,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition (New York:
Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), pp. 145-173.
14. Report of the Commission for Forming a Suitable Arrangement Regarding
the Enlistment of Yeshiva Students, April 2000, appendix 3, p. 118 (hereafter,
“Tal Report”). [Hebrew]
15. Elad Peled, ed., Fifty Years of Israeli Education (Jerusalem: Ministry
of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1999), p. 1047. [Hebrew]
16. Jonathan Rosenblum, “In Defense of the Tal Commission,” The
Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2000.
17. Justice Tzvi Tal, interview with author, July 2000.
18. Jonathan Rosenblum, “Confessions of a Haredi Dad,” The Jerusalem
Post, December 11, 1998.
19. Interview by author with Gerrer Hasid from Jerusalem, July 2000.
20. See Tal Report, vol. i, table on pp. 64-65. In 1979, 9,084 yeshiva students
were exempt from military service; in 1989, the number stood at 20,762; in
1999, 30,414 students were exempt.
21. Makor Rishon, January 12, 2001, pp. 14-16.
22. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, p. 19.
23. Berman and Klinov, Human Capital Investment, p. 11.
24. Ma’ariv, July 21, 2000.
25. Yisrael, interview with author, August 2000. All subsequent quotes from
Yisrael in this article are taken from this interview.
26. In the 1980s, when a noted American haredi educator in Jerusalem opened
Ma’arava, a high school offering secular studies leading to matriculation,
he sparked a huge controversy. In the end, he was not allowed to set up shop
in Jerusalem or to call his school a yeshiva.
27. As R. Secharansky explained in an interview with the author in September
2000, “The girl understands that the study of Tora is the highest value
and she wants a husband who will be in this elite group of learners.”
28. R. Yoel Schwartz, interview with author, October 2000. All subsequent
quotes from R. Yoel Schwartz in this article are taken from this interview.
29. Secharansky recalls a condolence visit he received after the death of
his father, Meir, founder of the Beit Ya’akov in Tel Aviv. The visitors,
prominent heads of Lithuanian yeshivot with whom he had no close ties, explained
why they felt obliged to honor his father. “We arrived as refugees from
Vilna in 1941,” one of the rabbis said. “We looked around and
saw that we would have to go to work because we wouldn’t be able to
get a shiduch [match] if we learned. We came to your father and told him our
problem, and he responded, ‘Dear boys, listen to me; go and learn Tora
and let me worry about setting up a Beit Ya’akov that will supply you
with wives.’”
30. The members of the Tal Commission visited the Mir yeshiva and, as stated
in their report, were “deeply impressed by the concentration of so many
students who spilled out of the main study hall into the hallways and [even
occupied] the podium and the small platform in front of the holy ark, and
filled nearby houses… all were engaged in independent learning with
study partners.” Tal Report, p. 16.
31. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, p. 11.
32. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and SacriWce, pp. 8, 12; Berman and Klinov, Human
Capital Investment, p. 28.
33. Figures depicting the average number of children per family are naturally
lower than fertility rates. The former reflect the average number of children
in families at a given time, including those younger couples who have not
yet had many children; the latter reflect the total number of children the
average woman is likely to bear.
34. The National Insurance Institute figures for 1999 showed Jerusalem leading
the country with 33.3 percent of its residents living under the poverty line,
followed by Bnei Brak with 30.3 percent.
35. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, pp. 13-15; poverty line figures
from Momi Dahan, Ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Municipal Authority (Jerusalem:
Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1998), p. 50. [Hebrew]
36. These figures were presented to the Tal Commission by senior Finance Ministry
officials. Tal Report, vol. i, p. 37.
37. Shahar Ilan, Haredim, Inc. (Jerusalem: Keter, 2000), table 3:3. [Hebrew]
The lower figure refers to families in which the mother works, the higher
figure to families in which the mother does not work.
38. Friedman, interview.
39. Dar’s testimony to the Tal Commission; quoted from Tal Report, supplement
B:1, p. 151.
40. Tal Report, supplement B:1, pp. 160, 163.
41. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, p. 10.
42. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, pp. 13-15.
43. Yishai Weiner, interview with author, September 2000. All subsequent quotes
from Yishai Weiner are taken from this interview. Describing this phenomenon
as “the great tragedy,” Friedman, of Bar-Ilan, says, “You
have great wealth that disappears in a generation or two. The money has to
be divided among many people who only take and don’t put back.”
Friedman, interview.
44. Rivka Rappaport, interview with author, August 2000.
45. Momi Dahan, cited in Ilan, Haredim, pp. 272-273.
46. Jonathan Rosenblum, interview with author, October 2000.
47. Adina Bar-Shalom, interview with author, November 2000.
48. Interview by author with mother from Jerusalem, August 2000; Ya’akov
Ne’eman, interview with author, November 2000; Dudi Silbershlag, interview
with author, November 2000. Silbershlag is correct that the phenomenon of
women supporting their families began in the Lithuanian yeshiva world, but
it has spread over the years to Sephardim and Hasidim because of the Beit
Ya’akov education they are receiving. “The girls attend Beit Ya’akov
and won’t consider marrying someone who doesn’t learn full-time,”
says Bar-Shalom. Bar-Shalom, interview.
49. Shach, who was considered a talmudic genius, told Ma’ariv that he
had a “hunger for secular studies, so I started looking for it outside.
I used to sneak into bookstores and libraries in secular neighborhoods and
would devour books. I read history and poetry and philosophy. Through books
I learned math and English.” Ma’ariv, November 24, 2000.
50. Moti Green echoed this sentiment. “I reached a point at which after
years of learning in yeshiva I didn’t find a Tora position that was
fitting for me… I felt sharp distress. I had to do something. I could
have covered up the problem by taking a teaching job in a yeshiva ketana [high
school] in the boondocks, but I thought I should find something with a challenge
and satisfaction. I didn’t want to wake up in ten years with financial
hardships and look back bitterly. It’s possible that I’ll be confused
and angry with the way I’ve chosen, but at least I won’t be hungry.”
Ma’ariv, July 21, 2000.
51. Yosef Shilhav, interview with author, August 2000.
52. Ha’aretz, January 18, 2001.
53. Aryeh Dean Cohen, “‘Angels’ Whose Wings Droop from Cold,”
The Jerusalem Post, February 17, 1998.
54. Ilan, Haredim, pp. 175, 177.
55. Ilan, Haredim, pp. 181, 177.
56. Quoted in Ha’aretz, January 21, 2001.
57. Sharon Slater, interview with author, October 2000.
58. Daniel Klaidman, “Israel’s New Defectors,” Newsweek,
December 13, 1999, pp. 34-35. The Hillel organization bears no connection
to the Jewish campus education organization of the same name.
59. Hamishpaha, cited in Ilan, Haredim, p. 176.
60. Interview with Dov Elbaum, Yedi’ot Aharonot, May 12, 2000; R. Yehezkel
Fogel, interview with author, September 2000.
61. Yated Ne’eman, English-language edition, March 20, 1998; Yated Ne’eman,
October 30, 1998.
62. Meir Komer, interview with author, July 2000; Laser Rotshtein, interview
with author, August 2000; Shlomo Pe’eri, interview with author, August
2000.
63. Hillel, interview with author, August 2000. There was a similar Nahal
program for haredim until the mid-1970s, but it was disbanded in 1976 due
to opposition from the leading figures in the haredi community.
64. Shahar Ilan, “How to Resolve the Dispute over Drafting Haredim,”
Ha’aretz, June 9, 1999.
65. The Tal Commission was set up to formulate recommendations that would
lead to this legislation. It comprised Tal; Cabinet Secretary Yitzhak Herzog;
Bnei Brak mayor Mordechai Karelitz; R. Asher Tannenbaum, head of the Yeshiva
Council, the umbrella organization for haredi yeshivot; haredi attorney Ya’akov
Weinrot; Defense Ministry Assistant Director-General Haim Yisraeli; former
IDF Manpower Branch head Moshe Nativ; Defense Ministry attorney Rachel Stovetsky;
and Deputy Attorney General Yehoshua Shoffman.
66. At the end of the year, those who decide to return to the yeshiva will
be able to continue receiving their deferment, while those who want to pursue
work will have two options: Four months of army service in the Home Front
Command, to be followed by annual reserve duty; or civilian service in the
fire department, the traffic police, or rescue work, where they will subsequently
do their reserve duty. A third option relates to yeshiva students living in
areas deemed by the army to have special security needs. These students would
patrol in the communities’ civil-guard units for twenty-four days a
year, starting at age 21. After ten years they would be exempt from further
service.
67. Ma’ariv, July 7, 2000.
68. Ma’ariv, July 2, 2000.
69. Ha’aretz, April 14, 2000.
70. Ha’aretz, July 4, 2000.
71. Ha’aretz, April 13, 2000.
72. R. Avraham Ravitz, interview with author, July 2000.
73. Yedi’ot Aharonot, May 12, 2000.
74. Tal, interview.
75. Yedi’ot Aharonot, July 3, 2000.