"We Yeshiva Students Barely Study"

Ynetnews received a call from an anonymous haredi man. This fellow has been calling and sending letters to the media and to politicians and other people of influence, to try to get his agenda in motion.

Ynetnews interviewed him. Well worth a read. The basic idea, in brief, of what he has to say is that most yeshiva students barely study. There are some who do, but most do not. Most simply do not have the ability to sit and study gemara so much.

The anonymous fellow is trying to get support for his agenda that the haredi politicians should be rejected, and their requests and political deals should be rejected. He says it is their fault that the yeshiva students are stuck in yeshiva even though most of them should not be there. He goes on to call the secular people suckers and friars for supporting the kollel life, along with fighting in the army and putting their lives on the line, while giving the haredim the ability to avoid the army.

He goes on and points to some of the sham arguments made by the haredi politicians. One of those is the argument that yeshiva study should be considered equal to university study and get credits for it. He says it is a ridiculous argument because there is no supervision over yeshiva study - no tests, no oversight, no classroom hours, etc. You just register in yeshiva and the rest is up to you how diligent you would be or not. Another sham he points to is how many haredim are using the Internet. He uses that to show how the haredim are not really studying when they should be.

Is it true? Who knows. No studies have been conducted, there is no real oversight, as he says, so nobody really knows what is going on. In small yeshivas they have better control and you usually have to perform better, study, participate in shiurim, etc. more so than in the big yeshivas where it is easier for a poor student to hide out and get by without anyone noticing his absence or lack of participation.

However, this is article/interview is based on an anonymous report. Who is to say this guy knows anything more than what occurs in his immediate circle. Maybe he is in a lousy low-end yeshiva. Who says this guy is even real and not the figment of some journalists imagination who concocted a whole story, and throws in a  number of offensive quotes to provoke some more people.

Sure there are people who use the yeshiva as a haven and don't study much of the time. Is it a majority? Not in my experience.

Does the haredi yeshiva system need to be changed - in my opinion yes. People are locked in for too long, and when they finally have the courage to break out, they are unskilled and untrained and at a point in their lives where it is difficult to get the necessary training and skills to make a respectable living.

Are people staying in yeshiva not studying rather than going to the army? yes. Anybody who was ever in yeshiva knows that there are guys that should really be in the army because they barely study and use the yeshiva as a haven. But to say that most yeshiva students don't study is untrue and a fabrication.

Unless this fellow took a tour and studied what happens in each of a majority of the yeshivas in the main haredi yeshiva, there is no way he can extrapolate from his personal experience, if such an experience even exists, to society as a whole.