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PDF FormatIn recent years, the problem of the shababnikim has reached alarming proportions. In May 1998, a number of haredi educators sent a letter to several leading rabbis in which they stressed the dimensions of the problem:
We are not discussing a few dozen youths, or even a few hundred—but rather thousands of former yeshiva students who have crossed the line, leaving the yeshiva to wander the streets, movie theaters, city squares, and anywhere that a yeshiva boy should not be…. We are not speaking about the marginal types; even those from the best homes, the most promising students…. In recent times these youths have tarnished our name with the awful depths they have reached—even to the point of committing murder, in the literal sense of the term.54
This was no exaggeration. According to Shahar Ilan, of the three thousand to four thousand shababnikim in Israel, several hundred have become involved in serious crimes including extortion, armed robbery, male prostitution and, in rare cases, murder—such as the August 1997 killing of an Arab gas station attendant in the Sheikh Jarah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Ilan tells the story of “Chupchik,” a haredi gang leader convicted on twenty-one counts of auto theft, fraud, and disturbing the peace—all committed within one year of quitting the Mir yeshiva in Jerusalem. And according to Hanania Chulak, director of the Ezer Mitzion volunteer organization, bands of roaming shababnikim have turned the city of Bnei Brak into a “crime center reminiscent of New York City’s Harlem. People are afraid to walk the streets. Violent, criminal gangs in this city do whatever they please.”55 Haim Walder, a columnist for the haredi daily Yated Ne’eman, reports that after many attempts by the community to control the hoodlums of Bnei Brak on their own, in the end they were forced to give up. “Agents from the police anti-terror unit arrived, some on motorcycles, and imposed order the way they know how—affording us a golden opportunity to understand that we cannot control our fringe elements on our own.”56
One indicator of the inability of many people to handle the community’s standards is the rise, in recent years, of people exiting the haredi world entirely. “There’s been an explosion of kids leaving religion,” says Sharon Slater, a psychologist who works with the haredi community in Jerusalem. “Everybody knows a family it’s happened to.”57 While the numbers are very difficult to estimate and probably still quite small, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that they are increasing rapidly. For example, the Hillel organization, which assists haredim who choose to leave the Orthodox way of life, reported that in 1999 its caseload more than doubled compared to the previous year.58 Moreover, cases are often highly publicized, adding to the sense of crisis in the haredi community.
The crisis has become too widespread to sweep under the rug. In a rare display of openness on the subject, the haredi weekly Hamishpaha recently ran a series of articles on the difficulties facing haredi youth, called “The Fifth Son,” in which it referred to yeshiva dropouts as “the most burning problem facing the haredi public, even if it is not discussed in public.” According to Hamishpaha, as many as fifty-three organizations have been set up to attempt to address the problem.59 One of these is Lev Shomea, a hotline for troubled haredi youths, which offers young people a chance to openly discuss things that were once considered taboo: Doubts about religion, sexual desires and frustrations, questions about the legitimacy of the haredi lifestyle. Every day, a small notice runs in the two daily newspapers that serve the haredi community, Hamodia and Yated Ne’eman, just below the notice telling readers where to call to hear the Talmud page of the day, which reads: “For information relating to doubts and distress, call…,” and telephone numbers are given (separate for boys and girls) throughout the country.
R. Yoel Schwartz, a veteran educator who has been closely associated with the haredi army unit since its founding in January 1999, says that the biggest reason for problems such as the shababnikim and the decision of many youths to leave religion entirely is the lack of legitimate alternatives to full-time study. “With just a little more choice, we could have kept these kids in the framework,” he says. Justice Tal, himself a product of haredi yeshivot, agrees. “The yeshivot today are choking with those who are burned out and cannot go on learning,” he says. “They cannot work because they haven’t done army, and they cannot learn because they’re burned out. The situation is awful.”
The extent of the crisis is slowly becoming apparent among the leadership of Israel’s haredi community, without whose approval little is likely to change. In the past few years, a number of leading rabbis have changed their tone with respect to key areas of policy, resulting in changes which, while still modest, signify a recognition that the Israeli model of haredi life, in which full-time Tora study is considered the only legitimate occupation for most men, may ultimately be untenable.
One such development is the emergence of vocational education programs for haredi men. The most ambitious effort so far is the Haredi Center for Technological Studies, which opened in 1996 with thirty-five students in a single Jerusalem branch and within four years had more than 1,400 students in four locations (Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Ashdod, and Kiryat Sefer). “There are few projects that have changed the face of haredi society in the way that ours has,” explains R. Yehezkel Fogel, director of the program. “The goal was to provide solutions for people who needed to earn a living and who had no suitable program that could train them. If they don’t get any training, they’ll be forced to find work that does nothing for their minds.”60
The center offers courses in computer programming, graphics and multimedia, accounting and bookkeeping, business and marketing, electrical engineering, and architecture. Students can earn a certificate (after one to two years of study), an engineering degree (three years), or a full-fledged B.A. issued in conjunction with Bar-Ilan University. The center hasreceived the approval of some of the most important rabbis, including R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the leading legal authority in the Lithuanian yeshiva world; R. Shmuel Wosner, head of the Hachmei Lublin yeshiva in Bnei Brak; R. Aharon Leib Steinman; R. Ovadia Yosef; and the Gerrer Rebbe, R. Ya’akov Alter, who is the leader of the largest Hasidic sect in Israel.
Despite these endorsements, those in charge of the center have had to walk a fine line; they can promote their program, but not so aggressively that they could be accused of luring students away from yeshiva. To allay fears that the center might nip the budding careers of young scholars, Fogel’s policy is to accept only those men who are at least 25, married, and fathers of four children. Courses for men are given at night, to allow them to continue in kollel during the day, thereby easing their transition from the learning community to the working world.
The fact that a branch has opened in Kiryat Sefer, a center of the more ardent elements in the Lithuanian yeshiva world, is one sign that the idea of men leaving the yeshiva to work is gaining acceptance. Another is the appearance of favorable articles on the center in the daily Yated Ne’eman, widely seen as a mouthpiece for the leading rabbis of the Lithuanian yeshiva community. A lengthy feature ran in the paper’s English-language edition in March 1998, followed by a similar piece in the Hebrew edition the following October. “Virtually all the men who study there have spent many years in yeshivot and kollels, and are married and have growing families,” the paper stresses. “By equipping them with the skills that are needed to obtain productive, well-paid jobs in the technical professions, the center hopes to relieve some of the pressures on those who wish to work but lack the necessary background.” The paper’s endorsement of the center was outright, describing it as “a body that was set up with the blessing and approval of the Tora sages.” The Hebrew article, which ran alongside a picture of haredi men in a computer lab, notes that the English edition received a hugely favorable response from its readers, and that “at the request of the rabbis, and for the benefit of the community, Yated is running a Hebrew story on the center, which has undoubtedly brought blessing to many families.”61
Yated Ne’eman praised the center for the quality of its programs and for its reputation among employers, particularly in the high-tech sector. “People who didn’t know a word of English, who had never seen a mathematical equation and didn’t know what a computer mouse was, have, thank God, overcome these gaps through preparatory and enrichment courses that enable them to complete matriculation exams,” Fogel tells his interviewer from Yated Ne’eman. “Melem Systems, for instance, took fourteen of our graduates and came back to ask for more. It’s been the same story with other software companies and businesses like Telrad and Digital.” In a clear message to the reader that there is work out there for the taking, the paper quotes Hanan Achshaf, director of the electronics division of the Israel Manufacturers’ Association, as saying: “The solution to our manpower problems is in the haredi sector.”
