Who Is Haredi?

Just last week we had one government office telling us how to define "who is Haredi", and that was by using the bagrut exams as the deciding factor. Anybody who graduated high school with full bagrut is clearly not haredi, and one who graduated without full bagrut is Haredi. It does not seem like such a good test to me, but it seems to work enough of the time...

Now a government office is giving different criteria for determining who is Haredi.

According to the Ministry of Economics, the following is the criteria, of which one must apply:

for a Haredi woman:
 * her children, until age 18, learn in haredi schools, specifically mukar she'aino rishmi
 * her husband had learned in a yeshiva ketana
 * she herself has learned in a seminar

for a Haredi man:
 * children, until 18, in Haredi schools (as above)
 *he himself learned in yeshiva ketana
 * served in civil service, as a yeshiva student under the law of deferring army service
 * qualified in past five years, for at least one full year, for a stipend for education in a program to integrate into the workforce.
source: Ladaat

There is no way any criteria can be perfect. This criteria leaves out many people, such as baalei teshuva, or others who became Haredi later... but if the Haredi community wants to get treated with special rules, be it stipends or affirmative action or deferring army service o whatnot, the government has to have some way to determine who qualifies and who does not qualify. If the Haredi community thinks too many people are being cut out of the qualifications, it should suggest a better list of determining factors, because the alternative is not just to let anyone say they are Haredi and thereby qualify. When the government, or anybody, hands out money for something specific, it wants to know that it is going to the intended place...

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