Don’t Draft the Ultra-Orthodox

you love your country enough to want to live there then you should be willing and required to serve and to defend it.

I don’t think anyone really wants to force haredim into the IDF. What we Israeli taxpayers want is to deny haredi the “pork” they steal via their coalition-hogging MKs. This includes monthly stipends, exemption from arnona taxes, free medical care, and child supplements.There is something sick and perverted about Israeli taxpayers who serve in the IDF having to pay for tens of thousands of families whose fathers refuse to work or even gain the basic skills to hold down a job. It is outrageous that a ‘kolel man who takes no exams, shows no proof of progress, contributes zero to the treasury and will not work to put food on his table, gets a monthly stipend from the government while a combat veteran has to pay tuition to go to university where he is studying to become a productive member of society. And the ONLY reason we citizens suffer this grand larceny is because the twisted system of coalition politics makes it expedient for the supposed party in office to trade our money for haredi votes. Has there ever been a worse example of the tail wagging the dog?

While the article makes some good points about issues that the State
will have to address, there are always issues of how best to use people
with different levels of fitness or different skill sets. These
challenges do not mean that Israel should continue to exempt the
Haredim.

From a fairness perspective, especially with a growing Haredi (and Arab)
population, Israel should ensure that all of its citizens share the
obligation of serving in its military or other form of national
service. If some of these Haredim are better suited to computer roles,
there are certainly available options in the Army or in other forms of
national service. It is offensive to say that Conservative and Reform
Jews are trying to coerce the Haredim into giving up their religious
beliefs. The Torah is filled with laws pertaining to the obligation to
defend Am Yisrael.

Further thoughts about this:

http://www.torontotoranana.blogspot.ca/2012/06/israel-to-draft-ultra-religious-and.html

Are you insane? The ultra-orthodox are the biggest threat to Israel’s safety. Put them in the trenches and they come down to earth.

Hear, hear to all the excellent comments below. No more free ride for the ultra-Orthodox!.

”
Like most countries in the world, Israel, too, is experiencing a severe shortage of qualified software savants who can write code; it has at its disposal 50,000 preternaturally gifted candidates for this job precisely.”

I agree that the Haredim need not go into the army but they should be obligated to perform some kind of service. Writing code is a worthwhile and very useful occupation, but they should also perform some kind of service in the outdoors.

Going from reading the Talmud all day to writing code is not much of a change.

There are I am sure many tasks they can perform which would expose them to outdoor life.

May I explain why putting the Haredim to code software is a non-starter.

As anyone who has ever coded 10 lines of Basic knows, it requires some basic skills the Haredim do not have, by and large:

- To start, you have to know the Latin alphabet
- If you learned the letters, you need at least a smattering of English: “Store”, “Delete”, “Shift”, whatever
- You actually need to be able to read English, for all those technical manuals and bulletins.
- You need to know how the world actually works! Can someone who’s never started a car, write software to control a drone?

I could go on and on, but there’s a reason Tzahal spends a fortune cherry-picking graduates from technical high schools to send them through programmer school.

So maybe there really isn’t an instant solution to integrating the Haredim into the Army. But yes, they should be made to work – they and all the other healthy, young, childless freeloaders in this country. We should stop importing Chinese, Romanians, Filipinos, etc. to work in construction and agriculture, and also stop handouts to all those who, having dependents, can work but won’t. You don’t need a college degree to work in a hothouse. You don’t need to know English do drive a truck. Etc., etc. We trust market mechanisms to regulate a large part of our economy. It’s time we applied that to the labor market. Hey, without all that unfair competition from the Third World, it might even result in higher wages and less inequality.

Huh? Why should they be obligated to be outside? My husband served for 13 years as an upper level intelligence tech developer. He rarely saw the light of day in all those years. Why does that lessen his service in any way?

How you can so blithely ignore the inherent and profound unfairness in the exemption of Charedim from the army is beyond me. The army does NOT have more than enough soldiers – with the Charedim serving, service could be reduced from 3 to 2 years, for instance, and people like my sons (and myself years ago) could do much less reserve duty, and have it easier at work or university. Most Israelis are suffering under the strain of the current situation – it is unthinkable that Charedim can hide behind a false, self-serving, profoundly un-halachic understanding of Judaism to ignore and escape the basic Jewish obligation to serve in the Israeli army. Which, by the way, is a virtue: it is always a virtue to do your fair share of shouldering your society’s greatest burdens.
Also, where do you get that “Charedim are less than 20% of all Israelis who do not serve” statistic? I guess you are including Israeli Arabs, who, by the way, should most certainly be treated as full citizens of Israel, which they quite correctly demand, and serve as well. There is no other way that they, or the Charedim, will ever be integrated into Israeli society, nor should there be.

Accommodating mandatory paid national service is roughly equivalent to accommodating conscientious objectors, and has a long and honorable history.

The key words are “mandatory”, “paid” and “national service”.

The only places in a post-zionist society where Jewish patriotism is actually taught and learned are yeshivos. Thus, the contribution of hareidim to the Israeli society as a Jewish society is met by no other. Ideally, everyone should both learn guemara and fight in צה”ל, like in the hesder yeshivot system but if one wants to contribute to Israel by learning AND teaching what makes us Jewish instead, then he/she should be encouraged to do so. It’s the highest form of civil service, when teaching is involved. Now, if one wants to contribute to Israel by serving in the army, he/she should also be encouraged to do so. Those are two legitimate and necessary forms of national service, and should be recognized as such by the arba-minim of the Israeli society.

Here are
the facts of the matter…

The State
of Israel has approximately 6.4 million Jews. How many Rabbis and Yeshiva
students should be on the payroll ?

A Rabbi’s
job includes : Officiating at services for Shabbat; Holy Days; Counselling,
Mentoring; Being a fixed point of reference for a community; and assisting with
life cycle events like births, shidduchs, weddings, brit milahs, bar/bat
mitzvahs and deaths. If one Rabbi is needed per 1,000 people then this means
Israel currently needs 6,400 “Doctors of the Law”. (Rabbis’
remuneration : 40 weeks p.a. at Shul; 4 weeks Training; 8 weeks Holiday. Pay
$125,000 p.a.) You also need a reserve group of Rabbis to fill in when
permanent Rabbis take a break from their shuls. (1,000 in number). You also
need schochets, sofers and Rabbis skilled in divorce and funerals. (1,000 in
number). Not all Yeshivah students go on to become Rabbis so let’s say 1,000
spots could be reserved p.a. for those interested in becoming Rabbis. Some
attrition would be allowed to take place as people drop out of the course. Only
the best and the brightest, like with scholarship programs in the West would be
accepted. No more ersatz training by pseudo “important” institutions.
Lastly you need a core group of head Rabbis, i.e. A Sanhedrin of 71, plus an
administrative, management group to oversee the others of say 500. Total
Rabbis/Yeshiva Students needed p.a. = Approx. 10,000 (Should Diaspora Rabbis be
trained in Israel first ? Interesting question which would add to this number.
Funding issues arise also.) So if the State/Kingdom is to fund the education of
these yeshivah students the budget for this section of the population is
limited. (The private/public partnership model of funding for Rabbis and
institutions also has gotten messy. Too many crossed boundaries. The Sanhedrin,
Rabbis and Yeshivah Students should be true “Public Servants”, not
able to be or willing to be compromised.) These 1,000 Yeshivah Students would
be exempted from national military service. It is all about getting the balance
right. The 54,000 “exempted person’s” figure is out of kilter. The current
ratio is not what Ben Gurion envisaged at the time of the founding of the
state. In 64 years it has really blown out. It also is not the ratio that Moses,
if he was alive today, would recommend for a modern nation state/kingdom.

A nation
or kingdom needs to constantly monitor what types of jobs are necessary to keep
things ticking over. The financial relationship between the taxpayer sector and
the dependent sector which includes : Special Needs People; The Elderly;
Homeless; Prisoners; Sick and Injured; Infants; Adolescents; and Students also
needs to be monitored and managed properly so that resentment doesn’t build
between different sections. People don’t mind paying their taxes or
contributing “a shekel to the upkeep of the Temple” if everyone is contributing
to the best of their abilities.

The key
to a healthy economy and community is for everyone to contribute to the
national effort in some way, shape or form. If everyone shares the load the
burden becomes easier to shoulder.

Also, if
the State of Israel makes the right moves in the coming days, weeks and months
then the existential threats will diminish and the defence budget will be able
to be trimmed. (Think the Isaiah “Swords into plowshares” dynamic
kicking in.) So the Tal Law issue is connected to the larger geopolitical
picture.

The stipends are 450 NIS/month for yeshiva students, that’s $1363/year.
Kollel stipends are 1040 NIS/month, that $3150/year.
But don’t forget that religious families FAR OUT PACE secular contributions to State coffers since they pay far more value added tax by virtue of much bigger families than secular folk. Secular political parties have managed to RUN AFTER religious parties in EVERY single kenesseth AND offer them “deals.” Is it stealing when leftist parties demand money for their “cultural” institutions which no one attends or do you only apply the term “theft” when religious Jews are involved?

Religious Jewish Israelis contribute by paying a much higher value added tax in volume due to their large families. Surverys show that ORTHODOX Jews around the world are far more likely to support Israel than nonorthodox Jews. Jewish demographics around the world show that nonorthodoxy is rapidly disappearing so soon, out of necessity, the Israeli army will HAVE to become orthodox in order to accommodate orthodox standards. I assume that female soldier abortion rates will drop sharply then.

17% of charedi youth went to the army last year. 14% of charedim serve in civil service. Our mishna says the world stands on 3 things: Torah, divine service/prayer & kindness. For some reason “real jobs” didn’t make the list, while Torah did!

Combat units are already filled. Most of the army is made up of jobniks.

Orthodox Jews are hardly getting a free ride. The secular parties pursue their votes for coalition purposes. Orthodoxy is not living in riches, but in poverty, where is the free ride?

It’s never happened historically.

This chutzpadik, intolerant essay is reminiscent of “white man’s burden”, condescending as it does to prescribe what secularists ought to impose on observant Jews to force them to “improve themselves”. Like the slaveholders of American yore, this bigoted blogger stereotyped Orthodox Jews as a physically unfit, mechanically thinking welfare camp. It’s a crying shame (though no longer a surprise) that Tablet affords such hateful slander a soap box.

Some of the posters here should be careful what they wish for. If, by
chance, tens of thousands of haredim were to be incorporated into the ranks of
the IDF, then you would soon hear complaints about how the haredim are seeking
to impose their own standards and values on the army (for instance, in regard to
gender segregation).

Secular protesters might then ask the Supreme Court
to intervene with, and declare illegal, any IDF accommodations with its haredi
recruits that could be deemed to violate principles of gender equality.

Under such a scenario, many haredi leaders are
correct in fearing that the issue of universal recruitment is being used by some
quarters as an agenda to undermine the demographic viability of the haredi
community in Israel, mostly by imposing secular values and standards through the
institution of mandated army service.

On a fundamental level, you can’t escape the issue
of segregation. If members of this community are to perform their allotted
share of national service – as they should – the state must ensure that they
can actually contribute valuable services while being assured that their
communal needs are safeguarded from unwanted secular influences.

One way to organically achieve that is to employ
orthodox recruits as programmers and engineers for the high tech sector,
alllowing them to contribute to the IDF’s technological base, while providing a
platform to integrate them into the economy.

And rather than enforce such recruitment drives –
which could be counter-productive in practice – simply make family stipends
conditional on this kind of service.

In the end, it is in Israel’s interest to ensure
that the haredim thrive with their large families. It’s all about Jewish
demography, and frankly, they’re the engine that keeps the Jewish population
robustly growing in the forseeable future. In the meantime, the national
religious continue to disproportionately fill the elite combat positions in the
IDF.

The main priority now is to resist the
self-destructive and myopic policies of radical secular leftist Israelis who
don’t fully appreciate why the children of the haredim are the future backbone
of the State of Israel. Yes, the current status quo isn’t viable – but let’s be
constructive and assure the haredim that we have their (and our) best interests
in mind – to help them contribute and thrive in Israeli society while protecting
the viability of their cohesive and growing communities.

I doubt this is true, but even if it was, it’s as the author points out – most haredim are in nowhere near the physical shape and stamina required of combat service.

You’re referring to federal income tax – the 51% who don’t pay that still pay sales taxes and likely various local taxes. But either way, most of that 51% is not demanding regular paychecks from the government for doing nothing while refusing to get jobs or learn any skills, and instead popping out a dozen kids per pair for the state to have to support, while trying to impose their restrictive beliefs and codes of dress and behavior on others.