Editor – Joel Katz
Religion
and State in Israel is not affiliated
with any organization or movement.
According to a Channel
10 report confirmed by both parties, Lapid agreed to Bennett’s request to
increase the number of haredim who would be given draft exemptions from 400 to
2,000. He also acquiesced to haredim being drafted at age 21 rather than 18.
Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu is furious at what he believes is a conspiracy by Yesh Atid
leader Yair Lapid and Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali Bennett to try to prevent
Shas and United Torah Judaism from joining the coalition, Likud sources said on
Sunday.
Representatives from
both parties have spent the past few days working on the proposal and it
appears that it shares many guiding principles with Lapid's initial plan.
In
his original plan, Lapid demanded 400 exemptions in total. The new proposal
will likely see 1,500-2,000 exemptions.
The basic
terms of Kandel's proposal ask for much less than what former Kadima MK Plesner
tried to have implemented. Kandel, like Lapid, talks about a five-year
transition.
After this period, more than 60 percent of young ultra-Orthodox
men, ages 18 to 24, would be drafted into either the IDF or national service.
The benefits of
gradual integration of the haredi population in mandatory military service are
obvious while maintaining the status quo will cause increasing damage to the
economy, hurt motivation to serve among non-haredim and undermine social
cohesion.
The following
recommendations by Professors Avi Ben Bassat, Momi Dahan, and Mordechai
Kremnitzer are intended to achieve the following goals: to equalize the burden
of military service in the Israel Defense Forces gradually, to shorten the period
of compulsory service for all soldiers, to increase motivation for military
service among the Israeli population as a whole, to strengthen solidarity among
all sectors of Israeli society, to increase Haredi participation in the
workforce, and to promote respect and tolerance for Torah study.
Above all, the
proposed arrangement is intended to comply with the provisions of the Basic
Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, as interpreted by the courts.
Any coercion in
cutting down the number of Torah students or cutting their stipend will cause
greater alienation of the hareidi public and widen the rifts in the nation, and
contribute nothing to equality in bearing the burden of citizenship,"
Rabbi Melamed said.
Crucially, Kandel’s
proposal does not include quotas for the number of yeshiva students able to
gain exemptions from national service, as demanded by Yesh Atid and draft
reform campaigners, but provides incentives and financial sanctions to boost
enlistment.
"The
document is an insult," said a political source of Kandel's proposal.
Kandel offered a negligible disincentive for draft-age Haredim, which would do
nothing to convince them to join the army.
That
"negligible disincentive" is an NIS 160 per month cut from government
allowances – roughly 2 percent of an average Haredi family’s monthly income.
Yishai added:
"What's the question, really? Are we a people's army or not. We have to
eat kosher, we need proper conditions, and whole range of things the State
Comptroller said the army didn't fulfill for the haredi public."
Among Jewish Israelis,
44% of those questioned said it was most important that the ultra- Orthodox
join the workforce but not necessarily serve in the army, 31% said it is most
important that the ultra-Orthodox serve in the army, 19% said serving in the
army and joining the workforce are equally important and 5% said neither are
important.
The IDF
incurs much higher costs for Haredim serving in the Shahar program, which is
targeted at ultra-Orthodox men between the ages of 22 and 26.
Participants of
the Shahar program have shorter military service terms, study academic subjects
and receive vocational training. These soldiers cost the IDF an average of NIS
9,500 per month – NIS 5,500 a month more than the average IDF conscript.
The
program calls for drafting more than 60 percent of ultra-Orthodox men up to the
age of 24, while offering government incentives to these conscripts and the
yeshivas from which they they were drafted.
At the same time, the state would
deny allowances to Haredi men who falsely claimed to be yeshiva students in
order to receive government benefits and avoid army service.
By Benny Porat
My starting point,
which I hope goes without saying, is that there is no point in imposing legal
measures that would force certain groups to engage in activities that are
against their beliefs.
Attempts to draft the ultra-Orthodox by means of
legislation, threatening to send military police to their yeshivot, or forcing
the study of the core curriculum through court orders, will simply achieve the
opposite results: further Haredi introversion, protests under the banner of
"whoever is for God, follow me," and threats of self-sacrifice to
protect the holy Torah.
By David
M. Weinberg
Here’s how: We draft
the haredim into the Israeli army or into national service – when they’re on
vacation.
Haredim will serve
only during their semester breaks, when they are anyway not “studying their
hearts out” in yeshiva (or in the literal Hebrew phrase they like to use:
“Studying to death in the tents of Torah”). No haredi youngster or married
kollel man has to miss a day of yeshiva classes, any time, any year.
By Dr. Benjamin
Brown
After all, everyone
agrees that whatever happens, the process cannot take place overnight.
If so,
why hasten the end? Why impose "decrees" instead of quietly
supporting processes that have already begun in any event?
It is difficult to
escape the fact that beyond a desire to see ultra-Orthodox military recruits
and productive ultra-Orthodox members of the workforce, there seems to be a
desire to "show them what's what."
IDF Senior Staff
signed official orders regulating service conditions for hareidim integrated
into the IDF.
Based upon the newly
signed agreement, the IDF is officially ordered to provide the soldiers with
strictly kosher food, optimal Sabbath observance and complete gender
segregation, in addition to regular Torah study and ample time for prayer three
times a day.
“We want to allow
between five and ten percent of the haredi community each year to study
Torah with the support of the state,” Mordechai Kremnitzer, of the Israel
Democracy Institute told The Media Line. “But this must be limited to the crème
de la crème. All others should serve in the army.”
His plan calls for
drafting ten percent of eligible ultra-Orthodox men this year and adding ten
percent each year, to a total of 80 percent. Religious institutions which fail
to comply would lose their government funding.
For the Beit Shemesh
women’s council, which has existed for almost five years, the central challenge
of the conflagration in 2011 was preventing ongoing conflict within the group.
After months of lingering tension, the women brought in mediators last year for
three months of weekly meetings.
Brenda Ganot, a Modern
Orthodox council member, said that while the sessions were generally conducted
in a spirit of mutual respect, they are unlikely to solve much.
“People are still afraid,”
Ganot said. “The greatest fear is that the city will become a haredi city.
There’s not a day I don’t wake up and say, ‘Why am I still in Beit Shemesh?’”
By Barry Gelman
How
Ophir will react to a very strict interpretation that ostracizes her by
marginalizing other, equally valid, interpretations, in anyone’s guess. What is
so disappointing here is that Halacha is being used to drive people away from
observance instead of being used to bring them closer.
You won.There was a competition in Israel for Israeli-ness that lasted over a century, since the second wave of immigration, and in the end you won.We lost and you won.For decades it was a Mexican standoff, where each one waits for the other guy to give in,about which Avi Ravitsky, a religious man, wrote: “The status quo was based on the false assumption” which was accepted by both sides, “that the opposition camp was doomed to dwindle away “and perhaps even disappear.”
It turns
out, Haaretz learned yesterday, this wasn't the first time the Philatelic
Service censored a stamp for fear of offending the religious public.
After being criticized
in recent years for concealing girls' faces for "modesty reasons" or
replacing them with dolls, this year some Israeli toy stores have decided to
completely remove pictures of girls from their advertisements.
By Israel Harel
In light
of the Haredi rabbis’ disqualification of his conversions and disparagement of
him and his public (“clowns” is the usual
Haredi term for Zionist rabbis), Drukman’s willingness to
be dragged from admor to admor was an insult to his dignity and that of many
members of the community he represents.
By Jeff Barak
Ever since, Netanyahu
has closely allied himself to the reactionary haredi world, even though their
welfare-dependent way of life runs totally against his deeply held free-market
beliefs.
Netanyahu knows there is no logic in the state investing billions of
shekels in the independent Shas and United Torah Judaism school systems, where
pupils receive no secular education, and are left unfit to join the modern
workforce and thus condemned to a life of government-subsidized poverty.
By Meirav Arlosoroff
The most
critical aspect of equality is actually in the economic sphere, and that’s
where Haredim are really good at manipulating the country.
By Yori Yanover
In an
article titled “Maybe the Secular Are Right?” that was published this winter in
the Haredi Kikar Hashabbat, Rabbi Bloch asks: “Why is it so common for Haredi
pundits and public figures to pin the motives for secular hatred against
Haredim only on the formers’ bad qualities, their emptiness, anti-Semitism and
the ignorant man’s hatred for the scholar?
And another question we should ask
ourselves is whether, in some cases, the value benefits from this conduct or
another are worth the consequent heavy price of hilul Hashem. Rabbi Bloch then
poses 12 questions which he encourages his Haredi readers to ponder.
By Amir
Mizroch
The majority of Israeli voters
have spoken: they demand an equal sharing of the national burden. Even if that
means Torah study in secular schools [which I think is a great idea but which
the haredim apparently believe is a catastrophe]. Any government that arises
here now and does not significantly change the status quo will be an
illegitimate government.
1. Compel haredi schools to teach the core curriculum, including
English and math, so that their children can one day join the workforce.
2. Compel
haredi adults into the workforce so that they are not such a heavy and growing
financial burden on the secular middle class.
3. End
the haredi monopoly on the institutions of religion and state so that Judaism
becomes more inclusive and less degrading for the non-haredi.
4. Lower
the cost of living, with a special emphasis on the cost of housing, and to take
the Housing and Construction Ministry out of haredi hands.
VIDEO: (How) Can we count Haredim? or “Everything you wanted to know about Haredim, but were afraid
to ask”
By Anshel
Pfeffer
The
ultra-Orthodox community is facing two major crises − the more immediate one is
the new Israeli political landscape that is about to force on them a new
national-service law that threatens to prise thousands of yeshiva students away
from their Talmud volumes, breaking the rabbis’ monopoly over the young men’s
lives.
The wider crisis is the irrevocable exposure of the entire younger
Haredi generation to the outside world through the Internet and the unavoidable
question marks being raised on the most fundamental articles of faith.
The two groups are
responsible for most poverty in Israel, mainly because they are 1-income
families; 60% of Haredi men do not work, while 80% of Arab women stay at home.
And the Haredi women and Arab men who do work tend to earn less than other
groups.
In addition, both Haredim and Arabs have more children on average than
most Israelis, so even families where there is a decent income can find
themselves close to the poverty line.
Netanyahu tries to entice the other party heads to join his coalition
Speaking later in a
Knesset faction meeting, Bennett said that the term “equality in the burden of
service” should also relate to the “burden of Torah,” as well as that of work
and military service.
He also stated that
“the current situation cannot continue,” especially in light of the greatly
increasing size of the haredi population which, he said, necessitates change
from the current reality.
The move is likely a
ploy by the ultra-Orthodox party to pressure the Bayit Yehudi party and its
leader Naftali Bennett into scaling back its rhetoric on the issue of haredi
enlistment.
MK Yair Lapid ruled
out that his Yesh Atid party would join Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government
together with Shas, according to a report on Channel 10 Thursday night.
Veteran Channel 1
religious affairs correspondent Uri Revach exclusively broadcast a clip
Thursday night from Rabbi Eyal Amrami, the rabbi of a Sephardi synagogue in
Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood, threatening Lapid.
By Aluf Benn
Yesh Atid
and Habayit Hayehudi reflect the anxiety of the Zionist mainstream that these
communities are taking over the country. They fear that the changing
demographics are creating a different reality here than what our parents
dreamed of, and they believe they have to put the minorities back in their
place before it’s too late.
The number
of ultra-Orthodox students in institutions of higher learning has doubled in
the last six years, going from 3,000 in the 2005-2006 academic year to 7,350 in
2011-2012, but the potential for increasing the number has yet to be exploited,
the Technion's Samuel Neaman Research Institute says in a report published this
week.
http://www.jpost.com/
By Rabbi Dov Lipman [Op-Ed from June 2012]
By Rabbi Dov Lipman [Op-Ed from June 2012]
Schools should talk more
openly about God, Knesset gatherings should begin with a prayer, all national
ceremonies should include specific mention of God, and we should be searching
for ways to increase discussion regarding spirituality instead of shying away
from it. Doing so will transform our country for the better and will reaffirm
our very reason for choosing to live and fight for this land.
Let Israel become the
beacon of light to the entire world from where Jews openly and proudly declare
to be one nation under God.
By Ilana Blumberg
The place
where I have chosen to spend the most time studying is Elul, a Beit Midrash around my street corner. Its name
draws upon the rabbinic ideas: “Elu v’elu divrei elohim hayim,” which means
“these words and those words are both those of the living God.” Elul is devoted
to inclusive study for both secular and religious Jews, and everyone in
between.
Dance instructor Raquella Siegel dreams
of creating a Modern Orthodox hip-hop scene in Israel, with nationwide
competitions.
Minister
Meshulam Nahari (Shas) hid a conflict of interest when he submitted a funding
request to the Prime Minister's Office tenders committee for an exemption. The
nonprofit to which Nahari requested the government transfer NIS 15,000 is
chaired by the grandfather of Nahari's daughter-in-law.
Former MK
Nino Abesadze (Labor) received a letter
containing death threats on Thursday. The apparent basis for the letter, which
arrived at the Knesset, was a hatred of Russians.
The
envelope contained a news clipping dealing with Abesadze’s protest against a TV
ad put out by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party during the recent election
campaign.
By Avi Shafran
Left unexplained is how allowing women to make fully informed
decisions about babies they are carrying – yes, babies; Israel permits
abortions even into the third trimester of pregnancy – is discriminatory. An
equally over-activated Nurit Tsur, the former executive director of the Israel
Women’s Network, scoffed that “the Chief Rabbinate… has been infiltrated by
haredi elements,” as if any authentic Jewish approach condones abortion for
financial considerations.
By Ed Rettig
To judge from
historical experience with previous waves of immigration, the path to full
integration is at least a generation long and achingly difficult, as many of us
who live in Israel with our foreign accents and histories of acculturation can
testify. Israeli society today is much better at integrating immigrants than it
was decades ago, and there are positive signs today.
"As a child who
was raised in a small Jewish village who survived the rigors of Aliyah via
Sudan and fulfilled the dream of 'Return to Zion,'" he concludes, "it
is a great honor to be here as the official representative of the State of
Israel, in order to help full the dream of the 'Return to Zion,' for others,
who also hope to fulfill the age-old Zionist dream."
By Tamar Sternthal
A
serious journalist covering the widespread use of Depo-Provera among Ethiopians
would have taken into account women’s desire for discreet birth control. Gabai
interviewed the head of the Israeli Society for Contraception, who noted the
cultural preference for injections, but she completely discounted this point in
her conclusion.
Asher
Seyum, an Israeli consul and Jewish Agency director of operations, led the
procession. Some 30 years ago, as a young teen, Asher undertook a more
difficult exodus march. He and members of his family walked some 500 miles from
Gondar to Sudan on their journey to reach Zion.
By Robby Berman
Consider the infamous case of Avi Cohen. Cohen had gotten a donor card in earnest, but Rabbi Yaakov Ifergan (who
pretends to have supernatural powers and is known as “the X-ray rabbi”) told
his wife not to allow the donation of his organs, claiming Cohen would be the
first person in history to wake up from brain death (he didn’t).
Confused Satmar rebbe promises to pay Meretz voters $100 [Purim Sameach!]
The Institute for the
Advancement of the Deaf and the national-religious rabbinic association Tzohar
joined together on Purim to hold for the first time a sign-language megila
reading for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Editor – Joel Katz
Religion
and State in Israel is not affiliated
with any organization or movement.
All rights reserved.
