This time it is about funding for old-age homes. According to the report, Pensioner Affairs Minister Uri Orbach has drawn up criteria for the funding of institutions that provide care for the elderly. The new criteria say that institutions that want government funding must have "enrichment centers dealing with Jewish-Zionist heritage". Another condition is that these institutions must include men and women learning together.
Gafni is upset that this discriminates against haredi institutions of elderly care - both for the lack of Zionist programming and because in Haredi centers men and women don't learn together.
Another issue Gafni is upset about is a new requirement for the appointment of rabbis to public institutions. Deputy Minister Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan is requiring for public institutions, if they want to receive government funding, to hire rabbis that ave performed military service.
Obviously this means that more Dati Leumi affiliated rabbis will win these positions and less Haredi rabbis will.
I have no problem with BY finding ways to give jobs to their rabbis over haredi rabbis. When the haredi parties were in the same position, there was a proliferation of haredi rabbis and a decline in the number of DL rabbis. and if-when the haredi parties rise again and get their positions back, they will do what they can to move their rabbis back into those positions. What goes around comes around. That is politics. it is unfortunate, but that is the way it works. The basis for Gafni's problem is that they can no longer put their own people in like they used to, so by the very statement he makes, he shows that he played the same game and is just upset that right now he is holding the short end of the stick.
That being said, I find it unfortunate (in both directions) that a candidate for any given rabbinical position is not decided based on the candidate's merit or qualifications, but on party affiliation.
Regarding the elderly care issue, funding for old-age homes shouldn't be dependent on Zionist heritage being taught or mixed-gender classes. This isn't grade school. these are elderly adults. In grade school and high school, one could say there is an educational element to teach about the State and its heritage. I can understand that. In a home for the elderly, I do not believe this is a major necessity by any definition. They have already been educated, one way or another. They want to keep busy, they want intellectual stimulation... they aren't at the point in life where we have to preach to them and try to change their ways.
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I don't think requiring army service is solely political. It says a lot to the public about the values of the individual; and also about his ability to understand their lives.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was on a board looking at rabbi candidates in hut laAretz, I opined that any candidates from Israel should have served in Tzahal or be able to explain why not. Mind you, I also think that most modern rabbinim working with the public should have secular education, preferably university.
Now that I think of it, this isn't entirely new; though it may be for rabbinical positions.
DeleteThe year I got my teaching certificate, our certificates were held up because some of our class hadn't done/finished their army service. So Misrad HaHinuch held up the certificates for all of us until the next year (we were cleared to work anyway). Forget the job; it was a condition for our teudot more bachir to have completed the army. It may be that was a specific condition they attached to yeshivot hesder. My point is simply that such conditions aren't merely political. They can be considered part of the value system required of the candidates.
This has nothing to do with anything, but all for one reason: the deJudaization of the State. Plain and simple. Everything is about the secularization of the old, young....... and that's it!
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