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PDF FormatThis 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
