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Jun 16, 2010
Are the Haredim really the ones benefitting from inequality?
They make it sound like the haredim have the highest level of quality of living and economic wealth in the country, and it is all through taking advantage of government funding.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the way the supplementary "Havtachat Hachnasa" is structured in the budget is discriminatory and illegal and must be canceled (beginning with the 2011 budget). Since then people, articles, opinion pieces, editorials, are talking non-stop about how important this is. As if this measly little part of the budget is so important and everything in the country that has been going wrong has been because of that, and now everything will be ok.
I get that equality is important, but some proportion is in order.. The welfare payment was a measly welfare payment. nobody was getting rich off it and almost nobody clamors for welfare payments unless they are absolutely desperate. This is not the big savior of Israeli society nor of creating equality. It is a measly welfare payment. it might have been necessary, under the banner of equality, to cancel or restructure, but let's not make it out to more than what it actually is.
Beyond that, now that the rabidly anti-haredi are so happy that this Havtachat Hachnasa has been canceled and our society is now nearly perfect, we can move on to resolving the final remnants of inequality in society. Sure enough, the haredim are squeezing the rest of the country again with disproportionate budgets that they take advantage of and don't allow anyone else to benefit from. And we have to resolve that inequality immediately.
Now being suggested is that the Haredim benefit by learning in kollel because they do not have to pay for their higher education - they even get paid a stipend for it - while college students have to pay for their higher education!
The shame! Kollel students are not paying the tuitions of college students. What inequality! How unfair. We must either force the kollels to start charging people to learn, and then we'll see how many of those haredim would really be so inclined, or we should cancel the tuition charged in university and have the government provide all the funding.
Yes, that will finalize the equality in Israeli society - start charging tuition to kollel men, or cancel university tuition. Everybody, no matter what they are doing and no matter how different they are, should either have to pay for it, the same amount I assume, or nobody should have to pay for it.
In the meantime, the State refuses to recognize kollel and yeshiva study as higher education and recognize it in the form of granting a degree, akin to a BSc of Judaic Studies or something similar, while someon ein college who studies ancient Chinese languages, or any other topic that has little or no practical use, is just as unqualified for any practical job yet he holds a recognized degree.
So you refuse to recognize his studies at a university level, but you want to compare him to university students and start charging similar tuition?
The kollels are largely not funded by the government. Stipends are provided and some of the general funding is provided by the government, but the bulk of the kollel budget is made up by the Rosh Kolel, or someone else, traveling the world a few ties a year and raising money to run his kollel. The university is funded far more by the government than a kollel is. Also, look at the universities and see their campuses and buildings. Then look at the mostly run down batei medrash in caravans in which kollels learn and still tell me with a straight face that it is comparable to the university, and it is the haredim who benefit form the inequality.
Read the annual comptroller reports, whether national or local cities, and you will see how the inequality is almost always against the haredim. Their education system is funded using numbers far lower per student than the general educational system. The money given for religious services (there is no separation of shul and state in Israel, and until there will be this will remain an issue) is a pittance compared to the money given to the arts and cultural activities.
And it is the Haredim who are benefiting form all this inequality?
I would recommend that the haredi politicians get together some people who are good with numbers, along with some good lawyers, and file a suit in the Supreme Court to demand equality. Let the cat out of the bag. Take it to the public and show that it is almost always the haredim that suffer from the losing side of unequal funding, and if the courts and public insist on equality, it works both ways.
Let's keep it in proportion. People have been making this court decision out to be the salvation of equality in Israeli society. At the end of the day, all it is is a measly little welfare payment.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the way the supplementary "Havtachat Hachnasa" is structured in the budget is discriminatory and illegal and must be canceled (beginning with the 2011 budget). Since then people, articles, opinion pieces, editorials, are talking non-stop about how important this is. As if this measly little part of the budget is so important and everything in the country that has been going wrong has been because of that, and now everything will be ok.
I get that equality is important, but some proportion is in order.. The welfare payment was a measly welfare payment. nobody was getting rich off it and almost nobody clamors for welfare payments unless they are absolutely desperate. This is not the big savior of Israeli society nor of creating equality. It is a measly welfare payment. it might have been necessary, under the banner of equality, to cancel or restructure, but let's not make it out to more than what it actually is.
Beyond that, now that the rabidly anti-haredi are so happy that this Havtachat Hachnasa has been canceled and our society is now nearly perfect, we can move on to resolving the final remnants of inequality in society. Sure enough, the haredim are squeezing the rest of the country again with disproportionate budgets that they take advantage of and don't allow anyone else to benefit from. And we have to resolve that inequality immediately.
Now being suggested is that the Haredim benefit by learning in kollel because they do not have to pay for their higher education - they even get paid a stipend for it - while college students have to pay for their higher education!
The shame! Kollel students are not paying the tuitions of college students. What inequality! How unfair. We must either force the kollels to start charging people to learn, and then we'll see how many of those haredim would really be so inclined, or we should cancel the tuition charged in university and have the government provide all the funding.
Yes, that will finalize the equality in Israeli society - start charging tuition to kollel men, or cancel university tuition. Everybody, no matter what they are doing and no matter how different they are, should either have to pay for it, the same amount I assume, or nobody should have to pay for it.
In the meantime, the State refuses to recognize kollel and yeshiva study as higher education and recognize it in the form of granting a degree, akin to a BSc of Judaic Studies or something similar, while someon ein college who studies ancient Chinese languages, or any other topic that has little or no practical use, is just as unqualified for any practical job yet he holds a recognized degree.
So you refuse to recognize his studies at a university level, but you want to compare him to university students and start charging similar tuition?
The kollels are largely not funded by the government. Stipends are provided and some of the general funding is provided by the government, but the bulk of the kollel budget is made up by the Rosh Kolel, or someone else, traveling the world a few ties a year and raising money to run his kollel. The university is funded far more by the government than a kollel is. Also, look at the universities and see their campuses and buildings. Then look at the mostly run down batei medrash in caravans in which kollels learn and still tell me with a straight face that it is comparable to the university, and it is the haredim who benefit form the inequality.
Read the annual comptroller reports, whether national or local cities, and you will see how the inequality is almost always against the haredim. Their education system is funded using numbers far lower per student than the general educational system. The money given for religious services (there is no separation of shul and state in Israel, and until there will be this will remain an issue) is a pittance compared to the money given to the arts and cultural activities.
And it is the Haredim who are benefiting form all this inequality?
I would recommend that the haredi politicians get together some people who are good with numbers, along with some good lawyers, and file a suit in the Supreme Court to demand equality. Let the cat out of the bag. Take it to the public and show that it is almost always the haredim that suffer from the losing side of unequal funding, and if the courts and public insist on equality, it works both ways.
Let's keep it in proportion. People have been making this court decision out to be the salvation of equality in Israeli society. At the end of the day, all it is is a measly little welfare payment.
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I take issue with one point in your post:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote,"The State refuses to recognize kollel and yeshiva study as higher education". You contrasted that with someone who studies the useless topic of ancient chinese.
That is not a fair comparison. The state does fund higher education in UNIVERSITY of Judaic studies i.e. Talmud, Tanach etc.
The state does not recognize it as higher education when it is studied in a non-academic setting using non-academic methodology.
There is another problem with this argument. I assume that state funding of university programs is limited to a specific budget which limits it to a certain number of students and staff.
Whereas the kollel system is taking per student with absolutely no limit on how many students.
your point #1 is really just saying what I am saying clearer. These are two different systems and not an issue of equality. I am not saying they should recognize kolel as university for a degree (Moshe Gafni argues that all the time when defending haredi lack of participation in the workforce), but they should also not compare and equate how the different systems are treated by the government. They want to equate the funding of stipends with the universities, but they dont want to equate the recognition of studies. My example of ansient chinese was just to get around an argument of people in university studying things that will put them in the workforce while kollel does not. I was saying even in university plenty of people study topics that have nothing to do with future earning potential.
ReplyDeleteyour second point do you mean the kollel system as a whole has no limit? each individual kollel does have limits. The universities have limits? I dont know what the numbers are, but lets say for arguments sake that 65% of all post-army 22 year olds study in university, and lets say for arguments sake that that 65% translates to 6500 students. According to you, there is a limit somewhere - 75% (7500 students)? 85%? If 9000 students would register one year, you are suggesting that the universities would be forced to tell 2500 of them (in my example) that there unfortunately is not enough room and they will have to find somethign else to do instead of going to university?
Excellent post.
ReplyDeleteI've lived in Ramat 04, a Jerusalem chareidi neighborhood, for 25 years and I can give myriad examples of blatant discrimination in municipal services, everything from covered bus-stops to garbage pick-up and street cleaning.
Years ago, a chiloni even burst into a chareidi minyan meeting in the miklat of a school and screamed: "This neighborhood [Ramot 03] should be for chilonim and dati'im -- no chareidim." He went on to argue and spew venom on everyone in the shul.
Interestingly, this guy runs the minhal kehilati, a group in charge of a large budget for things like the swimming pool, etc. Over a decade ago the chareidim of Ramot took them to the Supreme Court to force them to hold elections. The minhal kehilati lost.
Guess what, they ignored the Supreme Court ruling, and to this day, no elections. Real democratic values, right?
Why weren't they jailed for contempt of court, like the chassidim in Emanuel?
If anyone knows why they can defy the Supreme Court and not hold elections, please post.
i think that your arguements are based on a lot of scare crow arguments. i don't know who you are reading but it really doesn't matter. if some rabid anti hareidi writes something dumb, that doesn't subtract from the essential issue. and the essential issue is not this budget or that budget.
ReplyDeletein many different ways, the hareidi world has been trying to, and in some ways succeeding, establish some sort of semi autonomy. we see this particularly in education where they get a budget and yet there is almost absolutely no government oversight on said budget. this doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. in their opposition to autopsies they are essentially saying that they will determine which deaths are investigated and which aren't.
this community doesn't want the state to have control over many aspects of their lives, and yet at the same time they demand the right to rule over the lives of others (shmitta, conversions, shabbat, etc).
the court's decision was not a case of judicial activism into an area that they have no place being. it was a classic case of a court determining that a government policy is discriminatory.
one other point: the last thing in world the hareidim want is equality. you want equality, fine we give equality to everyone. we let hareidi and reform rabbis perform marriages. we allow the eida hareidit beit din and the beit din of tzohar perform conversions. we force places like beitar to accept non hareidim, just like non-hareidim, just like efrat accepts anyone. the state enforces municipalities to grant land for cemeteries not controlled by the hevre kadishot. and i am sure that i can find plenty of other examples.
The issue of equality is just a symptom. The real issue is bigger.
ReplyDeleteThe government (that means us the tax-payers) is paying for and thus enabling, an ever growing group of people who are unproductive to the economy. People who are not contributing to yishuvo shel olam or to pay their way. The measly NIS 1000 stipend they get is not the real issue, but just another detail in the list of all the things the State spends money on for its citizens. I work hard and pay for my bit. They assume that it is their God-given right for others to support them and their families.
Lets start with the fact that a large number of people in Israel don't believe in God. Of those that do, many more don't believe that God ever required that people live a Haredi lifestyle or that they need to pick up the bill for it. At the end of the day, nearly all of the people who believe that the Creator of the Universe mandated that all Jews should be learning in kollel are those self-same people who are learning in kollel.
Your argument equating this to the study of Ancient Chinese is totally falacious. How many students of Ancient Chinese are there in Israel? Half a dozen if you're very lucky. That's just about as many as you need. How many kollel students? I rest my case. Academic study is not entirely about economic return. You need arts and esoteric humanities and sciences. They are essential to the human enterprise. Similarly we need people who specialize and make their life's work in Torah study. How many? The exceptional Talmidei Hakhamim, the number of people it takes to be professional poskim, mashgihim and all the rest. This is far far fewer than learn in kollelim today.
This unilateral incarnation of the yissachar-zevulun myth cannot be perpetuated. It is inherently unsustainable. Do they really think that when the Haredi minority will grow to be a sizable part for the population that we will continue to be able to support hundreds of thousands and millions of ideologically driven free-loaders? Can they not understand the resentment they cause and the incredible hillul hashem that results?
This is only compounded by a total lack of humility and gratitude by the Haredi community and its leaders. When a poor person comes looking for tzedakah because he cannot afford to support himself, he is ingrated to those help him in his time of need. Not so the Haredi community or at least its leadership who kick back at those who enable its lifestyle.
The guys driving cars down the street on shabbat and those they call shiktzes who buy in the shopping center are the ones who are paying to support the kollel, provide municipal services (which are degraded because the kollel families use them but don't pay for them), provide streets, policing, government, everything they use. Where is one word of gratitude, one overture to contribute to the common good? Just insults, holier-than-thou patronization and political strong-arming to get more and more for their people.
That is why I am happy that the stipend has been taken away.
Hmm, I wish your comments had a "like" button. I'd press it for Angry in BS.
ReplyDeleteRafi, I'm really surprised at your recent charedi posts. I can't tell if you're playing devil's advocate or you really believe these things. You usually have a much clearer eye about these issues.
David
ReplyDeletesomeone has to follow up on these things and go back to the supreme court and demand that elections be held or the minahal be held in contempt of court.
(Rafi not G)
ReplyDeleteBTW, there is a cap on the number of students who can enter university. They control it by setting higher or lower criteria to be accepted to a course and if necessary also use a quota. For higher degrees and for ongoing open-ended study (masters, doctoral and post doctoral) there most definitely is a cap on the number and quality of people who can do this.
In terms of equality of services - you get what you pay for. Higher end, high tax paying neighborhoods get better services than lower end lower paying ones. Ones where people would-like-to-pay-but-can't get better services out of pity, than voluntarily-impoverished-not-paying ones.
They make it sound like the haredim have the highest level of quality of living and economic wealth in the country, and it is all through taking advantage of government funding.
ReplyDeleteOf course not! But that isn't the issue.
The issue is that the Charedim are the only segment of society that in a deliberate and planned manner forces (via not permitting kids to get a proper education that can lead to a job) its population into poverty and thus forces its population to be dependent on the state. This is contrary to Torah values, bad for the people, bad for society, it threatens the overall stability of the state, and is just plain wrong.
This particular ruling is only tangentially relevant, and is only a tiny step (which may not even work) towards correcting the big issue by attempting to reduce the funding of the very institutions that are steering all the Charedi youngsters into lifelong poverty and dependence.
And this above statement holds true even without discussing the issue of massive evasion/exemption from national service while most other segments of society are reasonably well represented (when possible). It also holds true without discussing the issue of kfiya datit (which I support to some extent to maintain Israel as a Jewish State), and worse the kfiya of some mistaken notion of "authenticity" of Judaism.
Though as we know, these issues are related to the first issue of poverty (and control, etc).
Mark
what I see happening right now is what is called "piling on". The guy is down, the guy with the ball has been tackled, and more and more players are still jumping on to the pile.
ReplyDeleteThe haredi community is getting hit from every direction right now. This issue sat in the courts ignored for 10 years, and suddenly they found the urgency to wake up one morning, perhaps because the atmosphere of everyone recently being upset at the haredim is appropriate, and and make a decision.
I, as anyone who has been reading here for more than a few days knows, am completely in favor of fixing what is wrong with haredi society and encouraging people to be productive and not live on handouts.
But is this the way to do it? Take away 70% of the already meager stipend? That will not encourage people to go get educated and work. That will simply create poverty and force people to go knocking on doors. The people affected by this will not suddenly go out and get jobs, nor will they suddenly register for vocational training. They will suddenly not have enough money to feed their families even the basics and will be forced onto the communal tzedaka systems.
I am all for fixing society and for getting the guys who shouldnt be in kollel out to the workforce. but that has to be a long term project with ways of encouraging people to go study in training programs and change the educational system. not by suddenly taking away the little money they get. That is not hwelpful, and you dont change opinions and society by forcing change in extreme fashions. You just cause them to make their opinions more extreme as well.
Doing this might help the younger guys starting out in kollel - they will see now that in the future they will not have enough, and maybe they will make important decisions earlier in life because they will know what the future has, or doesnt have, in store for them. But the majority of people in the system already are just going to be destroyed by this.
This is not something that is going to fix the haredi system. This is going to destroy the people in the system.
"That will not encourage people to go get educated and work."
ReplyDeleteI totally disagree. The proliferation of Charedi technical colleges occurred only after Netanyahu made the first initial cuts to the welfare system, which hit the charedi community the hardest. When you have no choice but to go to work, you go to work.
the 1000nis is not really the issue though. The issue is the really the claim to be looking for equality. The haredi community are the greatest victims of inequality. It happens to be in this one case and maybe you can find another one or two spots where the haredim get more.
ReplyDeleteSure, they dont normally make a big deal out of it, because they dont have much power, they know that they cant demand too much, and that their contribution is disproportionately small. They contribute, via chessed organizations, but that is small compared to dedicating 3 years of your life to serve in teh army, the years of miluim, and the paying large chunks of your salary to the tax man. So they dont complain much, but if you are looking to make budgets treat everyone equally, the haredim are usually holding the short of the stick. Rightfully so in most cases perhaps, but to pick a fight on the one or two instances and say the fight is for equality is a red herring. That is not the fight because the secular majority is not suffering from inequality. Say you want to take it away because you think it encourages the wrong values and behavior, but dont claim equality
if you take away the little money they have for buying bare necessities, they will not have the money to go study and get educated and trained.
ReplyDeleteTo do that they need to figure out a way to encourage people to study. perhaps via stipends and tax benefits, subsidized training programs, etc, and the like. This is not going to do that.
they will not have the money to go study and get educated and trained.
ReplyDeletethen go work in construction, in a resturant, in wherever.
they put themselves in this situation and then demand that i pay for their way out?
Rafi - perhaps this is piling on, but it's most certainly deserved. Additionally, when you're in an arguement/fight with someone, you don't ease off when they're reeling - you press your advantage. Right now, the Chareidi community - and the Eida in particular - overplayed their hand in Ashkelon and lost. Now that they're in a weekened position, of course those who oppoese them will continue to attack.
ReplyDeleteCharedim don't complain and demand too much? What country of Israel are you living in? What do you think is the raison d'etre of charedi political parties is? Just to have an excuse to hang around the Knesset and ogle the interns? It's to demand what they believe is the charedi population's "due" and use every political maneuvering to get what they want, including blackmail, complaining, whining, horsetrading, whatever it takes.
ReplyDeletePlease, stop painting the charedi community as this poor, put-upon population that just wants to learn Torah and get through the day. That's so far from the truth it's shocking that you seem to believe it.
Charedim presently demand and receive far more than they give to society. The 1000 shekel is the tip of the iceberg.
My only beef is that Kharedi activists ought not sue to end inequality. they should raise consciousness that inequality is a fact. That there MUST be Havdala Consciousness that sets Qodesh on a higher plain than Khol. It may be a far off miracle but I dream of a society in the Holy Land where superiority defines the relationship between Kollelim and Universities...not parity.
ReplyDeleteAbbi - I agree they should be contributing more and dictating less. They are not in Knesset however demanding the world. Perhaps we think they are getting more than they deserve because of how little they tangibly contribute, but they dont really demand much.
ReplyDeleteThey demand far less than the equal standing any minority sub-culture would get.
I am not justifying what they do or dont do, and alot of the problem is because of their holier than thou attitude and the demand to tell everyone what they can or cannot do, rather than the problem dealing with how much money they are or are not taking.
And by the way, this is not a fix society situation. This is a legal point here. The courts are sayign there is a lack of equality. They are not interested in telling the haredim to go to work or continue learning. they are correcting a legal problem.
To fix the haredi society the politicians need to be working on solutions. A court decision is a legal issue. I am 100% sure they will find another way top get the money through some other budget allocation. This legal technicality will not help anything other than cause more wrangling come next budget prep time.