Religious Group That Survived Self-Sufficient For Centuries Warns Of Collapse Without Generous Gov’t Subsidies

“We cannot focus on the words of ancient great men such as Rabbi Yitzhak the Blacksmith, Rabbi Yohanan the Shoemaker, or Rabbi Elazar the Pitch-Maker, if we must devote our days to earning a living.”

Jerusalem, March 17 – Legislators representing the Haredi sector of the Israeli Jewish community railed today against impending proposals in the Knesset to curtail financial assistance to large families, to limit exemptions from the military draft, and to cut back on welfare payments to able-bodied adults, arguing that such moves will undercut the Torah-study-centered lifestyle of the Haredi world, which somehow thrived for hundreds of years before the advent of welfare, child subsidies, and publicly-funded avoidance of working for a living.

MKs from the United Torah Judaism alliance’s Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael factions held a press conference Wednesday to criticize several pieces of impending legislation that several Coalition lawmakers intend to introduce in the coming weeks, laws that would expand military service to all but several hundred yeshiva students, instead of the tens of thousands who currently study instead of train or fight; that would slash spending on monthly stipends to parents with more than four children; and that would deny financial support to those capable of gainful employment but who choose instead to devote themselves to full-time Torah study. The MKs predicted disaster for the Torah-observant world if such policies become law, as they would restore the status quo ante of early statehood and before, when, for more than two thousand years, Torah scholars and students labored to support their families in addition to mastering Jewish lore, a clearly unsustainable model.

“It’s impossible to maintain a Torah-true society if everyone is forced to find a job,” lamented MK Moshe Gafni. “We cannot focus on the words of ancient great men such as Rabbi Yitzhak the Blacksmith, Rabbi Yohanan the Shoemaker, or Rabbi Elazar the Pitch-Maker, if we must devote our days to earning a living. The People of the Book must study the Book and not become mired in earthly pursuits such as making good on the commitment in every Jewish marriage contract that the husband will support his wife financially.”

An agreement between then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Haredi groups during the State of Israel’s infancy allowed draft exemptions for full-time Torah scholars, who, by the criteria in place at the time, numbered in the hundreds. High birthrates and generous government welfare programs have facilitated exponential growth of the Haredi sector in the ensuing decades, creating a drain on the state’s resources as the rosters of eligible yeshiva programs have swelled more than a hundredfold. Haredi leaders continue to sound the alarm over attempts to limit the phenomenon, citing the thousands of years of Jewish life in which only the most select few advanced and gifted enjoyed communal financial support.

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