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PDF FormatHowever, a number of people who had closely studied the haredi community, including a few secular journalists with no particular affection for haredim, understood that a breakthrough had been made in the Tal report. Most significant, they noted, was that Bnei Brak mayor Mordechai Karelitz, a figure close to R. Steinman, signed on to the report, and that it received the tacit approval of R. Elyashiv, as well as the support of the leadership of the Hasidic communities of Vizhnitz and Gur. “We should see it as a very positive thing that… Karelitz signed on to the report…,” wrote Shahar Ilan in Ha’aretz. “For the first time in many years, the secular majority has a partner for dialogue on the haredi side—those who are prepared to agree to painful concessions, to take the heat [from others in their community] and fight for their beliefs.”69 Avirama Golan of Ha’aretz pointed out that the concession of the haredim to a year of decision “is itself a backhanded admission of the need to reduce the ranks of the yeshivot.”70
This is not to say that all, or even a majority, of the rabbinical leadership has come out in support of the Tal proposals. While a few of the top communal leaders have supported them, others, particularly the heads of the leading yeshivot, have assailed them as a threat to the integrity of the yeshiva world. Yated Ne’eman called the Tal report a “dangerous legal precedent, a revolutionary reform in the approach toward the world of yeshivot, a diminution of the value of Tora, and the advocacy of assimilation into secular society.”71 Fliers appeared in haredi neighborhoods accusing the Tal Commission of bringing a “holocaust” upon the yeshivot. R. Asher Tannenbaum, chairman of the Yeshiva Council, an umbrella organization representing the haredi yeshivot, resigned from the Tal Commission in protest over the year of decision, and did not sign his name to the report. R. Avraham Ravitz, a member of Knesset for the United Tora Judaism party and himself a supporter of the Tal proposals, explains the position of the yeshiva heads. “They don’t want to institutionalize a system for leaving yeshiva at age 23,” says Ravitz. “There’s no problem when people leave [yeshiva] as a matter of individual choice, but the Tal Commission would standardize an exit from the yeshiva world.”72
If this is the case, why have some leading haredi rabbis been willing to support the Tal Commission’s proposals? Ravitz suggests that they had little choice in the matter. “The Supreme Court ordered the Knesset to legislate on the matter of deferrals,” he says, “and Tal was the best offer.” Others, however, see in the new policy a recognition of how hard things are getting economically for the haredi community. “What the gedolim say is most important,” says elementary-school principal Rappaport, who is a granddaughter of R. Moshe Feinstein, the leading Orthodox rabbinical figure in the United States until his death in 1986. “If they say the current situation of everyone learning should continue, people will continue. But they apparently recognize the extent of the poverty, and that’s why they went along with the Tal Commission.” Kol Ha’ir’s Yishai Weiner expressed a similar sentiment. “The real revolution in the haredi world relates to money,” he says. Weiner, who attended the prestigious Ponavez yeshiva and served in the army, feels that the haredi public supports the Tal Commission recommendations. “It’s too hard for things to continue the way they have been. People want to go out and work,” he adds, predicting that 30 to 40 percent will leave kollel and go to work if the threat of army service is removed.Dov Elbaum, who grew up in a haredi community in Bnei Brak and now covers haredim for the national daily Yedi’ot Aharonot, agrees. In his view, the idea of a year of decision “would never have gained the approval of the leaders of haredi society were it not for the fact that the yeshiva world is in a deep state of crisis. The commission’s secular members essentially offered a wide, convenient lifeboat to a haredi society faced with the prospect of drowning.”73
Few moments in history were as precarious for Tora scholarship as the immediate wake of the Holocaust. Not only had the great centers of Tora study been destroyed, and most of their students killed, but the Orthodox way of life had come to be seen by a great many Jews as vestigial, something that would disappear within a generation. It is understandable, then, that the response of the haredi leadership in Israel was uncompromising: The Tora must be studied, as much as possible by as many as possible, at all cost.
But in their effort to regain what was lost, the haredim in postwar Israel set in motion a project that took on dimensions undreamed of at the time. What began as a response to catastrophe and immediate cultural threat transformed, within a few decades, into a learning community far greater in size, and far more demanding, than anything the Jews have ever experienced. This new model, however, depended on assumptions that have grown increasingly questionable with time: That a large and growing segment of society could stay out of the workforce, living off government subsidy, the residual wealth of parents and relatives, and the extraordinary sacrifices of kollel wives, without incurring unbearable poverty and generating intense resentment from a larger Israeli population that does not share its ideals and is not willing to continue its own sacrifices in order to subsidize them. Sooner or later, the Israeli model was bound to reach its limits.
Thus, the new developments in the haredi community signify not merely the fine-tuning of an existing pattern of life, but the correction of an ideology—an admission, in a limited way, that the effort to create a vast learning community in which only the Tora scholar and his devoted wife are honored has run its course. This is the beginning of what will probably be a slow and painful awakening. It will likely catch on more quickly in Sephardi and Hasidic circles, where the classical Jewish respect for those who work for a living still has some currency, and will be most fiercely resisted in the Lithuanian communities. But there is good reason to believe that once it has begun, the transformation of haredi society in Israel will be difficult to stop: The increasing number of skilled, successful, working haredim will act as a constant reminder that a dedication to Tora study and a traditional way of life need not be equated with poverty and dependence. As Justice Tal, who studied in haredi yeshivot before going to law school, says: “It will be painful from a spiritual point of view for people to leave the Tora world, but with time they will see that it is possible to leave and still be okay.”74
The new openness to alternatives in the haredi world, born of necessity, could have a far-reaching impact on Israeli society. The application of this community’s disciplined minds in skilled professions such as programming and communications would improve Israel’s already strong position in these areas. Shifting thousands of men from the study hall to the workplace would give a boost to economic growth, expand the tax base, and reduce demand for social spending for the haredi sector. Most important, perhaps, would be the interaction of haredim with the rest of Israeli society that is likely to result from their participation in the workforce and their enlistment in the military. According to Yisrael Segal, who left the haredi community as a teenager and went on to become one of Israel’s most respected television journalists, “The very contact between the two worlds will bring about a greater degree of openness, and a shattering of preconceived notions each side has with respect to the other.”75
But it is the haredim themselves who stand to gain the most from the change. A rediscovery of the traditional pattern of religious life, along the lines of the European and American models, would mean a restoration of the balance between scholars and laymen. The immediate effect would be to ease poverty and the accompanying social problems. The community would stop losing those who cannot fit its mold of scholar-in-perpetuity, but who can remain within its bounds once these are expanded to include good technicians, programmers, or even soldiers. The yeshivot, whose leaders have staunchly opposed the Tal recommendations because they make it easier for students to leave, would revert to the role of elite institutions marked by intensive learning and an interest in excellence. In addition, when the balance between scholars and laymen reached a level that would allow the community to support its institutions, this would reduce the dependency of the haredim on transfer payments.
For this rosy scenario to be realized, several things will have to happen. The Tal proposals, or something like them, will have to become law, so that yeshiva students can begin vocational training at a relatively young age. The government will have to redirect much of the funding it gives to yeshivot and invest it in job training programs and night school for haredim. Most importantly, the first waves of young haredi professionals will have to prove themselves, in two ways: To potential employers, that their talents and relatively low salary requirements make it worth accommodating the workplace to their needs; and to their own community, that it is possible to leave the yeshiva without lowering one’s spiritual standard of living—that they have not, in the talmudic phrase, “gained this world at the cost of the next.” Without the cooperation of employers, politicians, and rabbis, the community’s journey back from its Israeli experiment will be a long, arduous one, and might even be delayed indefinitely. With it, the next generation of haredim may be the most productive, self-sufficient, and socially responsible that Israel has seen.
Joel Rebibo is a journalist based in Jerusalem.
Notes
1. Menachem Friedman, interview with author, October 2000. Most of the people interviewed for this article refused to be pinned down on numbers relating to the haredi community. Researchers once used the number of votes garnered by haredi parties as an indication, notes Friedman, but Shas, a Sephardi haredi party that draws support from many non-haredim, has made it impossible to continue using that gauge. Examining the roster of kollels is also not accurate, because they are not properly updated and monitored, and while it is clear when people begin their studies, it is not at all clear when they end them—and how many are full-time students with no outside employment.
2. Brachot 28a. Rashi brings a second opinion that he was a blacksmith.
3. Shabbat 118a.
4. Mishna Avot 2:2.
5. Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of Tora Study 3:10. For further material and discussion on the concept of labor in the rabbinical sources, see Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz, “Secret of the Sabbath,” Azure 10, Winter 2001, pp. 85-117.
6. Amiram Gonen, From Yeshiva to Work: The American Experience and Lessons for Israel (Jerusalem: Florsheimer Institute, 2000), p. 90. [Hebrew]
7. Gonen, From Yeshiva to Work, p. 46.
8. Eli Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1998), p. 19.
9. Touro College in New York, for instance, offers a wide range of degree programs at night. And students at the Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore earn degrees at night from Johns Hopkins University, Loyola College (ironically, a Jesuit institution), or a local community college.
10. William B. Helmreich, The World of the Yeshiva: An Intimate Portrait of Orthodox Jewry (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 2000), p. 220. “Among the alumni responding to the questionnaire, 48 percent had completed some form of graduate training, 23 percent graduated college only, 15 percent attended but did not graduate, while only 14 percent failed to go beyond high school. Although no statistics are available, it is likely that even those yeshivas, such as Lakewood and Telshe, which forbid college attendance for those in residence at the school, have substantial numbers of alumni, perhaps even a majority, who attended college either before they enrolled or after they left the yeshiva.” The study was of 878 graduates of a haredi high school, located in its ideology somewhere between the more extreme, haredi Lakewood yeshiva and the modern-Orthodox Yeshiva University, “permitting but not specifically encouraging college studies.” Helmreich, World of the Yeshiva, pp. 343-344.
11. Gonen, From Yeshiva to Work, p. 40. Cf. Menachem Friedman, The Haredi Society: Sources, Trends, and Processes (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1991), pp. 26-29. [Hebrew]
12. Eli Berman and Ruth Klinov, Human Capital Investment and Nonparticipation: Evidence from a Sample with Infinite Horizons (or: Jewish Father Stops Going to Work) (Jerusalem: Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel, 1997), p. 11, table 4.
13. See Lawrence Kaplan, “The Hazon Ish: Haredi Critic of Traditional Orthodoxy,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), pp. 145-173.
14. Report of the Commission for Forming a Suitable Arrangement Regarding the Enlistment of Yeshiva Students,April 2000, appendix 3, p. 118 (hereafter, “Tal Report”). [Hebrew]
15. Elad Peled, ed., Fifty Years of Israeli Education (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, 1999), p. 1047. [Hebrew]
16. Jonathan Rosenblum, “In Defense of the Tal Commission,” The Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2000.
17. Justice Tzvi Tal, interview with author, July 2000.
18. Jonathan Rosenblum, “Confessions of a Haredi Dad,” The Jerusalem Post, December 11, 1998.
19. Interview by author with Gerrer Hasid from Jerusalem, July 2000.
20. See Tal Report, vol. i, table on pp. 64-65. In 1979, 9,084 yeshiva students were exempt from military service; in 1989, the number stood at 20,762; in 1999, 30,414 students were exempt.
21. Makor Rishon, January 12, 2001, pp. 14-16.
22. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, p. 19.
23. Berman and Klinov, Human Capital Investment, p. 11.
24. Ma’ariv, July 21, 2000.
25. Yisrael, interview with author, August 2000. All subsequent quotes from Yisrael in this article are taken from this interview.
26. In the 1980s, when a noted American haredi educator in Jerusalem opened Ma’arava, a high school offering secular studies leading to matriculation, he sparked a huge controversy. In the end, he was not allowed to set up shop in Jerusalem or to call his school a yeshiva.
27. As R. Secharansky explained in an interview with the author in September 2000, “The girl understands that the study of Tora is the highest value and she wants a husband who will be in this elite group of learners.”
28. R. Yoel Schwartz, interview with author, October 2000. All subsequent quotes from R. Yoel Schwartz in this article are taken from this interview.
29. Secharansky recalls a condolence visit he received after the death of his father, Meir, founder of the Beit Ya’akov in Tel Aviv. The visitors, prominent heads of Lithuanian yeshivot with whom he had no close ties, explained why they felt obliged to honor his father. “We arrived as refugees from Vilna in 1941,” one of the rabbis said. “We looked around and saw that we would have to go to work because we wouldn’t be able to get a shiduch [match] if we learned. We came to your father and told him our problem, and he responded, ‘Dear boys, listen to me; go and learn Tora and let me worry about setting up a Beit Ya’akov that will supply you with wives.’”
30. The members of the Tal Commission visited the Mir yeshiva and, as stated in their report, were “deeply impressed by the concentration of so many students who spilled out of the main study hall into the hallways and [even occupied] the podium and the small platform in front of the holy ark, and filled nearby houses… all were engaged in independent learning with study partners.” Tal Report, p. 16.
31. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, p. 11.
32. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, pp. 8, 12; Berman and Klinov, Human Capital Investment, p. 28.
33. Figures depicting the average number of children per family are naturally lower than fertility rates. The former reflect the average number of children in families at a given time, including those younger couples who have not yet had many children; the latter reflect the total number of children the average woman is likely to bear.
34. The National Insurance Institute figures for 1999 showed Jerusalem leading the country with 33.3 percent of its residents living under the poverty line, followed by Bnei Brak with 30.3 percent.
35. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, pp. 13-15; poverty line figures from Momi Dahan, Ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Municipal Authority (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1998), p. 50. [Hebrew]
36. These figures were presented to the Tal Commission by senior Finance Ministry officials. Tal Report, vol. i, p. 37.
37. Shahar Ilan, Haredim, Inc. (Jerusalem: Keter, 2000), table 3:3. [Hebrew] The lower figure refers to families in which the mother works, the higher figure to families in which the mother does not work.
38. Friedman, interview.
39. Dar’s testimony to the Tal Commission; quoted from Tal Report, supplement B:1, p. 151.
40. Tal Report, supplement B:1, pp. 160, 163.
41. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, p. 10.
42. Berman, Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice, pp. 13-15.
43. Yishai Weiner, interview with author, September 2000. All subsequent quotes from Yishai Weiner are taken from this interview. Describing this phenomenon as “the great tragedy,” Friedman, of Bar-Ilan, says, “You have great wealth that disappears in a generation or two. The money has to be divided among many people who only take and don’t put back.” Friedman, interview.
44. Rivka Rappaport, interview with author, August 2000.
45. Momi Dahan, cited in Ilan, Haredim, pp. 272-273.
46. Jonathan Rosenblum, interview with author, October 2000.
47. Adina Bar-Shalom, interview with author, November 2000.
48. Interview by author with mother from Jerusalem, August 2000; Ya’akov Ne’eman, interview with author, November 2000; Dudi Silbershlag, interview with author, November 2000. Silbershlag is correct that the phenomenon of women supporting their families began in the Lithuanian yeshiva world, but it has spread over the years to Sephardim and Hasidim because of the Beit Ya’akov education they are receiving. “The girls attend Beit Ya’akov and won’t consider marrying someone who doesn’t learn full-time,” says Bar-Shalom. Bar-Shalom, interview.
49. Shach, who was considered a talmudic genius, told Ma’ariv that he had a “hunger for secular studies, so I started looking for it outside. I used to sneak into bookstores and libraries in secular neighborhoods and would devour books. I read history and poetry and philosophy. Through books I learned math and English.” Ma’ariv, November 24, 2000.
50. Moti Green echoed this sentiment. “I reached a point at which after years of learning in yeshiva I didn’t find a Tora position that was fitting for me… I felt sharp distress. I had to do something. I could have covered up the problem by taking a teaching job in a yeshiva ketana [high school] in the boondocks, but I thought I should find something with a challenge and satisfaction. I didn’t want to wake up in ten years with financial hardships and look back bitterly. It’s possible that I’ll be confused and angry with the way I’ve chosen, but at least I won’t be hungry.” Ma’ariv, July 21, 2000.
51. Yosef Shilhav, interview with author, August 2000.
52. Ha’aretz, January 18, 2001.
53. Aryeh Dean Cohen, “‘Angels’ Whose Wings Droop from Cold,” The Jerusalem Post, February 17, 1998.
54. Ilan, Haredim, pp. 175, 177.
55. Ilan, Haredim, pp. 181, 177.
56. Quoted in Ha’aretz, January 21, 2001.
57. Sharon Slater, interview with author, October 2000.
58. Daniel Klaidman, “Israel’s New Defectors,” Newsweek, December 13, 1999, pp. 34-35. The Hillel organization bears no connection to the Jewish campus education organization of the same name.
59. Hamishpaha, cited in Ilan, Haredim,p. 176.
60. Interview with Dov Elbaum, Yedi’ot Aharonot, May 12, 2000; R. Yehezkel Fogel, interview with author, September 2000.
61. Yated Ne’eman, English-language edition, March 20, 1998; Yated Ne’eman, October 30, 1998.
62. Meir Komer, interview with author, July 2000; Laser Rotshtein, interview with author, August 2000; Shlomo Pe’eri, interview with author, August 2000.
63. Hillel, interview with author, August 2000. There was a similar Nahal program for haredim until the mid-1970s, but it was disbanded in 1976 due to opposition from the leading figures in the haredi community.
64. Shahar Ilan, “How to Resolve the Dispute over Drafting Haredim,” Ha’aretz, June 9, 1999.
65. The Tal Commission was set up to formulate recommendations that would lead to this legislation. It comprised Tal; Cabinet Secretary Yitzhak Herzog; Bnei Brak mayor Mordechai Karelitz; R. Asher Tannenbaum, head of the Yeshiva Council, the umbrella organization for haredi yeshivot; haredi attorney Ya’akov Weinrot; Defense Ministry Assistant Director-General Haim Yisraeli; former IDF Manpower Branch head Moshe Nativ; Defense Ministry attorney Rachel Stovetsky; and Deputy Attorney General Yehoshua Shoffman.
66. At the end of the year, those who decide to return to the yeshiva will be able to continue receiving their deferment, while those who want to pursue work will have two options: Four months of army service in the Home Front Command, to be followed by annual reserve duty; or civilian service in the fire department, the traffic police, or rescue work, where they will subsequently do their reserve duty. A third option relates to yeshiva students living in areas deemed by the army to have special security needs. These students would patrol in the communities’ civil-guard units for twenty-four days a year, starting at age 21. After ten years they would be exempt from further service.
67. Ma’ariv, July 7, 2000.
68. Ma’ariv, July 2, 2000.
69. Ha’aretz, April 14, 2000.
70. Ha’aretz, July 4, 2000.
71. Ha’aretz, April 13, 2000.
72. R. Avraham Ravitz, interview with author, July 2000.
73. Yedi’ot Aharonot, May 12, 2000.
74. Tal, interview.
75. Yedi’ot Aharonot, July 3, 2000.
