2012
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS:
ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI
ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK
AND THE DUTY TO PROVIDE
WORK
By NOAM ZION
THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT
SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
2/23/2012
PART 1: THE THREAT FROM WASTED POTENTIAL
PART 2: THE HAREDI CHALLENGE
PART 3: THE ISRAELI ARAB CHALLENGE
PART 4: TOWARD THE FUTURE: SEEDS OF ECONOMIC
INTEGRATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
PART 1: THE THREAT FROM WASTED POTENTIAL
My child, do not lead a beggar’s life; it is better to die than to beg.
When a man looks to another’s table [for handouts],
His existence cannot be considered life. (Ben Sira 40: 29)
Ultra-Orthodox men from Israel travel to the United States to beg from door to
door at addresses that are handed (passed?) on from one beggar to the next. At
the home of Dr. Jerry Hillman in a modern Orthodox community in Detroit,
the beggars will often come with a copy of the cancelled checks written in a
previous season to their colleagues and demand that they receive no less a sum
of tzedakah.
Once Jerry greeted and invited into his home an 18-year-old yeshiva student
who announced he was getting married and needed funds. Jerry asked him if
he had considered getting a job to earn what he needed for the wedding. The
boy replied quizzically: “Then I would have to wait?!” “Yes,” said his host,
“like our father Jacob who waited 7 years and who worked for his father-inlaw for 14 to pay for his brides.” Then Jerry gave him one dollar and the boy
cursed him vociferously. Jerry said: “So give me back the dollar.” The
mendicant beggar refused to give the dollar back but finally left.
A Haredi guy gets on bus to Jerusalem with one open seat next to him. At the
next stop a scantily clad woman sits next to him. He hands the young woman an
apple. She says, "What's with the apple?" He says, "After Eve ate the apple she
realized she wasn't modest and put on clothes." The next day the woman gets on
the bus in somewhat more modest attire. She sits next to the same man and
hands him an apple. He asks "what is the apple for?" She says "after Adam ate
the apple he learned that he had to work for a living!" – Jerusalem Facebook
Humor (2012)
Israel, Zionist Israel, is facing a vexing double crisis with two large and fast growing
minorities – haredi ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Israeli Arabs. Both sectors, which
together constitute almost 30 percent of the general population, are for the most part
self-enclosed, voluntarily separatist communities speaking their own language,
maintaining their own religious traditions. Some Arabs and Haredim live in separate
villages and cities, and others in well-defined neighborhoods within larger mixed
cities.
These two communities not only lack much of the ethos of citizenship in a democratic
Jewish national state, they ideologically oppose it. Hence they do not, for the most
part, serve in the Israeli army, nor do they perform national service in other forms,
such as volunteering in hospitals or schools, which would also guarantee them special
financial benefits similar to those granted Israeli GIs. Some of their leaders articulate
rabid anti-Israel sentiments, which do not recognize the moral legitimacy of the
majority regime or the laws of the state, though on a daily basis they are law-abiding
citizens. Within each community there is a range of ideological positions vis-à-vis the
State of Israel, but zealous extremists are constantly pushing the more moderate
populations to greater extremism, especially with right-wing religiosity continuing to
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
pressure the next generation to take stands that are more religious than those of their
parents.
Both communities also experienced trends toward secularization or accommodation
with modern life in Israel. Already in the 1950s haredi ideologues moved to condemn
those trends and later, in the 1970s, the move toward great religiosity across the
Muslim world, led by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and reinforced by the Shiite
revolution in Iran, began to win more and more advocates for stricter piety among
Israeli Arabs. However, Muslim piety does not idealize full-time study at the expense
of employment the way Ashkenazi Haredim in Israel do.
Israeli Arabs do vote in Israeli elections, with the exception of some militant Muslim
religious sectarians. Those Israeli Arabsi who vote often split their support among
smaller parties, none of which has ever been invited to participate in the ruling
coalition with the extra funding for one's constituency that often goes with being in
power. By contrast, the Haredim usually vote for one of two united parties – one
Ashkenazi and one Sephardi (émigrés of Balkan, North African and Middle Eastern
Asian Jewish communities). Approximately 90% of them, higher than any other
sector in Israeli society – both men and women – participate in Israeli elections. The
Haredi parties almost always enter the ruling coalition thereby winning many benefits
as part of the coalition agreements.
These two marginal groups are growing rapidly and will soon – some say 30 years
hence – constitute 50% of Israel's citizens. Each sector has more than average size
families (Arabs average 3.24 children per family. Jews average 2.33, but Haredim as a
subgroup among Jews in Israel average much more, approaching seven).ii
These reproduction rates far outstrip Israeli citizens – Zionist religious and secular –
who do serve in the army. In 2009, the Taub Center, under Professor Dan Ben-David,
forecast that by 2040, 78% of the children in elementary school will be Arabs or
Haredim and only 14% secular Israelis. Today, they are already 26% of the
elementary school population.
Israeli Arabs and Haredim are the most poorly educated in Israel in terms of
marketable skills, even though the Haredim study more Talmud and devote more total
hours to education and more years than anyone else. Both sectors also have the
highest unemployment rates. Now the official Israeli unemployment rate is very low
at 5.1% from those actively seeking employment (ages 25-64), yet only 72% of this
age bracket are employed.
Significant numbers of male Haredim are not seeking employment at all. In 2009,
approximately 35%-38% of Haredi men were employed, as were 57% of Haredi
women,iii and 58% of the Arab population. Arab employment among males has
declined in the last 30 years from 85% to 73%, while Haredi male unemployment has
declined from 79% to 35%. Non-Haredi Israeli Jewish men have only a 15%
unemployment rate, slightly above the 12% in Western countries.iv Most Arab
unemployment is involuntary due to the mismatch between their skills and the
economy as well as the anti-Arab biases in hiring, while most Haredi male
unemployment is voluntary.
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
Dan Senor and Saul Singer have pointed out in Start-Up Nation how the wasted work
potential of the Israeli Arab and Haredi men and women threatens Israel's otherwise
amazing hi-tech economy.
Economist Dan Ben-David is sounding the alarm on Israel’s continued economic
growth. The problem is that while the tech sector has been surging ahead and
becoming more productive, the rest of the economy has not been keeping up. “It’s like
an engine,” he says. “You have all the cylinders in the engine. You have all the
population in the country. But we’re using fewer and fewer of the cylinders to move
this machine forward.”
This underutilization brings us to what we believe is the biggest threat to Israel’s
continued economic growth: low participation in the economy. A little more than half
of Israel’s workforce contributes to the economy in a productive way, compared to a
65 percent rate in the United States. The low Israeli workforce participation rate is
chiefly attributable to two minority communities: haredim, or ultra-Orthodox Jews,
and Israeli Arabs.
Among mainstream Israeli Jewish civilians aged 25-64, to take one metric, 84 percent
of men and 75 percent of women are employed. Among Arab women and Haredi
men, these percentages are almost flipped: 79 percent and 73 percent, respectively,
are not employed.
Because of the high birth rates in both the haredi and the Arab sectors, efforts to
increase workforce participation in these sectors are racing against the demographic
clock. According to Israel 2028, the report issued by an official blue-ribbon
commission, the Haredi and Arab sectors are projected to increase from 29 percent of
Israel’s total population in 2007 to 39 percent by 2028. Without dramatic changes in
workforce patterns, this shift will reduce labor-force participation rates even further.
My conclusion is that Israel, in the name of a Jewish and a democratic "ethics of
economy," must commit itself to policies that enable all – Arab and Jew alike – who
wish to work to gain the skills and opportunities to work. At the same time, they
ought to provide powerful disincentives to those who do not wish to gain the
marketable skills and incentives both financial and social acknowledgment for
citizens willing to enrich themselves by their industry and to contribute their fair share
to the "commonwealth." We can learn from the wisdom of a member of the French
Revolution from the dawn of Western democracy:
Every man has a right to subsistence. The duty of society therefore is to seek
to prevent misfortune, to relieve it, to offer work to those who need it in
order to live, to force them if they refuse to work, and finally to assist
without work those whose age or infirmity deprive them of the ability to
work. (Francois Rochefoulcauld Liancourt, the leading member of the
Revolutionary Assembly, 1790) v
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
PART 2: THE HAREDI CHALLENGE
The Haredi world’s challenge to Zionism and Judaism, in terms of the ethics of
economics, derives from its educational system. The Haredi educational system,
whose lion's share is financed by the State of Israel, refuses to teach mathematics,
geography or civics, let alone English, modern literature or history.
Some efforts to address these issues have been voiced by the Likud Minister of
Education Gidon Sa’ar, but no reforms have yet been enacted. Besides the lack of
cultural identification with the Jewish national state, graduates of the Haredi schools –
even after four or more years in post high school yeshivot – have, as we mentioned,
no marketable skills.
In fact, very often they are uninterested in entering the job market even after gaining
an exemption from military service by having studied in yeshivot until the age of 26
or so. (Some enter the job market earlier and others do not enter until after 30. If they
stay in yeshiva until after 27, the most military service they will do is three months of
secondary military training).
Thus, voluntary and involuntary unemployment of men is extremely high, and those
employed are poorly remunerated because of their low level of economic skills. Even
with the contribution of working Haredi wives and mothers, it is the Israeli welfare
system that bears the brunt of economic support of Haredi families provided by the
working population of Israel.
Dan Senor and Saul Singer, authors of Start-Up Nation, have warned about the drag
on Israeli economic success by the burgeoning Haredi community:
The ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, generally do not serve in the military. Indeed, to
qualify for the exemption from military service, Haredim have to show that they are
engaged in full-time study in Jewish seminaries (yeshivot). This arrangement was
created by David Ben-Gurion to obtain Haredi political support at the time of
Israel’s founding. But while the “yeshiva exemption” first applied to just four
hundred students, it has since ballooned to tens of thousands who go to yeshiva
instead of the army.
The result of this has been triply harmful to the economy. Haredim are socially
isolated from the workforce because of their lack of army experience; plus, since
they are not allowed to work if they want a military exemption – they have to be
studying – as young adults they receive neither private sector nor military
(entrepreneurial) experience; and thus Haredi society becomes increasingly
dependent on government welfare payments for survival.
Israeli Government Collusion: The Often Unintended Consequences of Financial
Support for the Haredim
In his recent book, The Unmaking of Israel (2011), Gershom Gorenberg traced in
detail the way Israeli policy over the last 60 years has, for the most part
unintentionally, brought the economic issues of Haredi to crisis proportions by freeing
men of some of the consequences of their religious decision to remain voluntarily
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
unemployed rather than entering the workforce to support their families. Let us quote
just a few of his insights:
Israel's present-day version of ultra-Orthodoxy is a creation of the Jewish
state. Policies with unexpected effects fostered this new form of Judaism, at
once cloistered and militant. So did successful measures by Haredi leaders to
revive a community that was shrunk by modernity and then devastated by the
Holocaust. (p. 166)
In other words, Haredim in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust and Haredim in
Belgium and United States do not oppose making a living for the majority of ultraOrthodox men after college age. But Israel has been subsidizing this new and extreme
choice to develop a full-time study community for the majority of men for the
majority of their lives.
The first government decision that led to this phenomenon was the conditional
exemption from army service granted by Ben-Gurion in 1948. That meant that
Haredim who did not want to serve in the Israeli army, as they were instructed by
their teachers, must stay in full-time yeshiva programs until their age 41 to avoid the
draft. Also marrying early and having many children early will exempt Haredi men
from all or part of their military service. A father of five is exempt from age 31 even
if he is no longer studying in a yeshiva.vi
In 1974 only 2.4% of the soldiers enlisting to the army that year were exempt because
they were yeshiva students. This number has reached 9.2% in 1999. In 1999 there
were 30,414 exempted yeshiva students, and by 2005 the number grew to 41,450. It is
anticipated that this percentile will reach up to 15% by the year 2012. By comparison,
in the year 2025 the ultra-Orthodox sector in Israel is expected to reach 12.4% of the
total population, whereas the children of this sector would reach 22.4%.
Besides the dampening effect on democratic participation in national service, the
economic consequence is that these yeshiva students are not allowed to do job
training in this period lest they lose their exemption. Some initiatives have been taken
of late to allow yeshiva students to work or get part-time vocational training while
still studying in the yeshiva without being drafted.
The second government decision was to adopt the Haredi schools as government
schools without reforming their curriculums to teach democratic values or
economically necessary skills. Gorenberg explains:
This is a story full of ironies. The critical, unnoticed catalyst of the
transformation of ultra-Orthodox society in Israel was the 1949 law instituting
free, compulsory education. State funding made it possible to open new ultraOrthodox schools and pay steady salaries.
As the Israeli economy modernized, high school education became the norm.
The state helped fund ultra-Orthodox secondary schools along with others, but
the high schools for Haredi boys were yeshivot devoted entirely to religious
studies. (pp. 167-169)
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
Thus for men there were new jobs teaching Talmud to an ever-growing number of
Haredi boys. For girls' education young Haredi women could finish teacher-training
seminaries by age nineteen and get elementary school jobs and support their
husbands' studies at the state's expense. Gorenberg describes how this helped create a
whole community of life- long learners:
Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karlitz, used these changes to promote a
transformation in the name of extreme conservatism: Haredi men and women
would marry young. Men would keep studying Torah in kollel after marriage,
supported by their teacher-wives. Their working parents would help out. (p.
168)
The marriage age for both men and women dropped: between 1952 and 1981, the
average marriage age of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel fell from 27.5 to 21.5. At the
beginning of that period, the typical Haredi groom was slightly older than the average
for Israeli Jewish society. By 1981, he was four years younger than the Israeli Jewish
average. Among Haredi women, marriage before age twenty became the standard.
Ultra-Orthodox couples started having children early and continued to have them often. This, too, made leaving Haredi society much more difficult, for women as well as
men. (p. 169)
Third, the social democratic governments of Israel, out of their concern for social
justice and for the welfare the children in large, poverty-stricken families, especially
African-Asian immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s, provided graduated child-support
grants. Under Menachem Begin, as part of his collation agreements with the Haredi
parties in 1980, child-support regulations changed so that after the second child the
benefits grew geometrically so that a family of seven had significant income from
child support. Thus, Haredi families, while remaining very poor, could still feed their
families with this government aid. The benefits were not offered as tax deductions so
the heads of the household did not have to work at all to receive them.
Fourth, the government has refused to enforce the Knesset law mandating core studies
in every Israeli public school including math and civics, so that one may become a
self-supporting citizen in a modern democracy and economy. In this regard,
Gorenberg notes the bitter irony of conflicting trends in Israeli politics:
Twice in the last decade, the High Court of Justice has ruled that to uphold the
State Education Law and the principle of equality, the government must set a
core curriculum for high schools and cease funding Haredi yeshivot that refuse
to teach it. The second ruling was needed because the state ignored the first
one. The latter ruling, however, came a few days too late. While the justices
were preparing to deliver it in July 2008, the Knesset passed a preemptive law,
allowing the Education Ministry to fund secondary schools serving "unique
cultural groups" - explicitly including Haredi schools that only teach religious
subjects. (p. 189)
Thus coalition politics, social welfare rights and multiculturalism and very savvy and
zealous Haredi political and rabbinic leadership have created new Haredi Judaism of
Jewish learning without economic responsibility. They have miraculously reversed
the rabbinic saying in Avot: "If there is no flour, there is no Torah," which meant one
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
must make a living as well as study, because they have brought down manna from the
Israeli government supplied by the labor of non-Haredi Israelis. These ultra-Orthodox
leaders have also overturned the ideal of the founder of modern Orthodoxy, Rav S.R.
Hirsch that we must pursue "Torah with Derekh Eretz" - with ways of the world.
Modern Orthodox and Zionist Orthodox follow Rabbi Ishmael who said:
Perform worldly occupations (derekh ezetz) together with (studying Torah).
These are the words of Rabbi Ishmael.
However the Israeli Haredi world has realized increasing, what Professor Menahem
Friedman calls, "the economy of the next world." To what may Friedman be referring
with his intriguing quip? The next world as a messianic image may refer to the world
which is "all Shabbat" (Birkat HaMazon), so one never has to work and God supplies
our needs as God did with the manna in the desert. Or he may being referring to the
views of the extremist Talmudic rabbi, Shimon bar Yochai, who rejected Rabbi
Ishmael's moderate notions and insisted that Jews even in this world concentrate all
their efforts on Torah study for its own sake and let others support them. Rabbi
Ishmael understood that the Torah teaches us to work the land alongside studying
Torah. But what Bar Yochai says rejects all compromises:
RASHBY [Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai] says, "Is it possible that a man plow in
plowing season, sow in sowing season, harvest in harvest season, thresh in
threshing season, winnow when the wind blows!? - Then what will become of
Torah?
But when Israel fulfills the will of God, their work is done by others, as it
says, “Strangers shall stand and pasture your flocks; [aliens shall be your
plowmen and vine-trimmers] (Isaiah 61:5). When they do not fulfill the will of
God, their work is done by themselves, as it says, “You shall gather in your
new grain" (Deuteronomy 11:14).
Abaye said, "Many acted in accordance with Rabbi Ishmael and
prospered; in accordance with RASHBY and did not prosper." (TB
Berakhot 35b)
Today Israeli Haredim have at least partially disproven the observation of Abbaye, the
Babylonian rabbi. They may not be prospering, but with the subsidies of the Israeli
government and their devoted wives' employment, they are surviving at subsistence
with large families and devoting most of their lives to their understanding of Torah.
The Internal Jewish Debate over the Value of Work, the Dignity of Economic
Self-reliance, and the Religious Ideal of Bitachon, Trust in the Divine
This problem of Haredi voluntary unemployment is ethical and religious, not merely
economic. The Haredi leadership in Israel, much more than in the United States,
defends its communal policies that discourage work and the learning of marketable
skills by men. It argues that those who study Torah full-time are a spiritual elite who
serve God in the name of the community. However, the social revolution after World
War Two was to raise the percentage of Haredi men engaged in lifelong study from
5% to 90%, regardless of their level of talent or the needs of the community for such a
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
"service." Gradually that goal is being realized. It recalls the Talmudic exemption of
rabbis from taxation, especially when concerned with defense of the city. It often
insists that Torah study by "earning" Divine favor contributes more than its fair share
to the defense of the land and its material blessings that depend directly on God. The
Haredim rely on the Talmudic halachic position that “Torah scholars need not
protection since Torah protects them.”vii Therefore they do not have to pay for
security expenses or serve in the army.
But even scholars are obligated to pay their fair share for economic benefits such as
fixing roads or digging wells. In any case the law did not assume that most of the
male Haredi community would devote the majority of their time to studying Torah.
The law may well have regarded the teachers and elite halakhic scholars as exempt
because of their communal service just as “all those engaged in mitzvah needs,”viii
like the cantor ought to be exempt. But not those studying for their own sake.
The Hazon Ish, who set the tone for many Israeli Ashkenazi Haredim in the 1950s,
praises the value of bitachon, reliance on God for financial support, not investing too
much effort in one's own business pursuits, since Divine providence has already
allocated what we will earn, no matter our efforts. Against this reliance on miracles,
we need to reaffirm the Jewish value of self-reliance and the dignity of labor as well
as condemn the sins of parasitism. This turn toward self-reliance has long been a
central national value of secular and religious Zionism both in term of military selfdefense and the return of the Diaspora bourgeoisie to the ideal of physical labor.
However, it is now essential to reinforce the religious argument for economic
independence. Let us examine some key sources.
First, there is the parental duty – which many in the Israeli Haredi community have
sought to escape – the mitzvah to prepare our children for adult life as self-supporting
citizens.
“Our Rabbis taught: The father is bound in respect to his son to (1) circumcise
him, (2) redeem him, (3) teach him Torah, (4) take a wife for him, and (5)
teach him a craft. And some say, to teach him to swim too.
R. Judah says: Whoever doesn’t teach his son a craft teaches him to rob.”
(Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 29a) (Tosefta Kiddushin 1:11).
The refusal of Haredi schools to teach civics appears to oppose the added parental
duty promulgated by the all important head of the Sanhedrin in the Galilee under the
Romans in 200 CE: “Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi teaches one’s child statecraft [to settle a
new city]” (Mekhilta on Exodus 13:8).
The parental obligations are defined broadly as preparation of the child for full
independence as an adult including job training and according to one source – civic
education for full participation as a citizen. Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi would, I believe,
have insisted on teaching civics in Haredi schools for he himself was not only the
greatest Torah scholar of his generation, responsible for the canonization of the
Mishna, but also the wealthiest man and the political leader representing the Jews of
Eretz Yisrael Judea to the Roman authorities.
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
But why is swimming so important? Allow me to extrapolate from a concrete case to
a much broader generalization as the rabbinical tradition is wont to do. It appears that
swimming is an emergency survival skill for a community living on the
Mediterranean. On a state level, that would be military training. Maimonides
complains that the Jews lost their war of independence against the Romans (66-70
CE) and the Second Temple was destroyed because they devoted their time to
studying astrology rather than the arts of war (Letter to Rabbis of Montepellier)
Second, the Talmudic Rabbis themselves praised labor as an imitation of Divine
creativity in making the world:
Love labor. One is obligated to love labor, melacha, and engage in labor. It is
learned by analogy from the Master of the Universe to whom the whole world
already belongs, yet ....God did his labor (Gen. 2:2), so even more so must
human beings do so.” (Avot D’Rabbi Natan B 21)
Thus most of the Talmudic rabbis were themselves skilled laborers. In early 2011 a
political ad appeared on the side of Jerusalem buses in opposition to a budgetary law
to expand support for Haredi yeshiva students studying Torah but not employment
skills. The ad showed a page of the yellow pages where one could find listings for
doctors, carpenters, weavers, vintners and coal carriers – each with the name of the
one of the famous rabbis of the Talmud and the Middle Ages who practiced this
profession proudly. Maimonides (12th Century Egypt) himself became a physician to
the Sultan to avoid taking any remuneration as a rabbi of Egyptian Jewry. He wrote
passionately against rabbinic parasitism:
The greatest rabbis were cutters of wood [Hillel, TB Yoma 35b), carriers of
beams and drawers of water for gardens, blacksmiths and makers of coal,
rather than asking the public for aid and even when the public gave them
[tzedakah], they refused to accept it.
One should always pressure oneself and manage somehow with privation
(distress) rather than be dependent upon [literally, than to need] other people
or cast oneself upon the public [by taking tzedakah]. (Maimonides' Mishneh
Torah, Gifts to Poor 10:18)
No labor should be considered beneath one's station, when the alternative is
exploiting communal charity.
Rav said to Rav Kahana: "[Be a tanner!] Work in the [stinking and degrading]
occupation of stripping skins off carcasses in the market, earn your salary and
do not say: 'But I am a priest' or ‘I am a great man. This is demeaning to me!”
(TB Baba Batra 110a)
A tanner was a stinky job, for urine was used to cure the hides and that put this
occupation at the bottom of the social totem pole. Being employed as a tanner
constitutes grounds for divorce in Rabbinic society, if the wife cannot stand the smell
(see Mishna Ketubot 7:10). Nevertheless the Rabbis urged that even engaging in this
occupation was preferable to living off of others.
THE ETHICS OF ECONOMICS: ISRAELI HAREDIM AND ISRAELI ARABS - THE DUTY TO WORK AND THE DUTY TO
PROVIDE WORK | NOAM ZION | THE ENGAGING ISRAEL PROJECT AT THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE
Third, the Israeli government ought to translate the Jewish value of labor into a policy
that provides disincentives to parasitism. Compassion for poverty-stricken families
including those with many children who suffer through no fault of their own stands in
tension with revulsion from parents who refuse to be breadwinners when they could
be.
Rabbi Aharon of Lunel (14th century Provence, France): "It is disgusting before God
to be one who benefits from the tzedakah fund because s/he would rather not make an
effort to benefit from his/her own labor." ix
In December 2012 Professor Trachtenberg said it is difficult to feel sympathy for
Haredim who neither work nor pay taxes. Trachtenberg is responsible for changing
economic priorities in the Israeli budget by taxing the wealthy at a higher rate
(instituted Jan. 1, 2012) and then increasing social support to young families, with
programs such as free childcare and education and lower taxes. He was appointed by
PM Benjamin Netanyahu last August in response the 450,000 demonstrators who
demanded greater social justice and solidarity and greater equality in the sharing of
the national wealth and national burden of work and service in the military.
Sensitivity to the needs of the poor is central to this broad social movement, which is
critical of unrestrained free market capitalism. Yet it does not necessarily mean that
welfare benefits are rights independent of the duty to contribute to the nation
economically and in terms of national service.
The policies that must be considered go back to medieval rabbis who established a
rule that formally denied any welfare to those who are destitute – if they could have
learned a profession and could have worked to support themselves:
If you encounter a pauper who knows the craft of the scribe or one who is
suited to learn this craft [or another gainful skill] yet refuses to make the
effort, this person is unworthy of tzedakah."(Judah HeHasid, Sefer Hassidim
#1035, Germany, 13th century)
Rabbi Yechiel bar Yekutiel (13th century, Rome): “Just as people are expected
to care for their own interests, so are the poor expected not to impose
themselves excessively on the community, except in extreme circumstances,
in order not to ‘turn off’ people from giving Tzedakah who might be tempted
to slam the door in the face of the poor… One who depends on the community
dole is stealing from the poor. It is entirely fit and proper to withhold
support from such a person and to shame them into seeking
employment.” x
Finally, since we are recommending a policy that limits welfare support to the
families of those who refuse to work or to educate themselves to be able to find jobs,
let us consider the value of tzedakah and its relationship to the duty to work. Without
doubt, the Haredi community is one of the most generous to the needy on a per capita
basis. One of the greatest contributions to Israeli society has been what began as a
Haredi institution in Jerusalem – Yad Sarah which lends medical equipment to the ill
at no charge. It now serves all Israelis. However while sharing is admirable, someone
must increase the pool which can be shared by productive labor in a modern
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economy. Rabbi Shimshon Refael Hirsch, the founder of modern Orthodoxy but also
a major leader and inspiration for separatist Haredi Orthodoxy in Germany and
Middle Europe in the 19th century, explains the Biblical mitzvah of strengthening the
needy as follows:
You strengthen him to live with you (Leviticus 25:35) means with you in
independence by joining you in economic activity to support and live with
him, with you in the moral sense [of trying to support himself].
To live with you means his development of his life is intertwined with the
development of your life. You do not live just for yourself but for him. True,
you worry about yourself first, but you acquire the means and tools to fulfill
the calling of your life, but helping him is also one of the callings of your life.
You must acquire the means and tools necessary to aid him for he is your
brother connected to you socially, therefore you must help him, so as to
fulfill your calling in life. His life is connected to your life. That is what
makes you one people…This is free connection – strong, eternal of mutual
help. (S.R. Hirsch, Commentary on Torah, Leviticus 25).
I agree heartily with Rav Hirsch, who sees in job training not just a pragmatic solution
to financial needs but a "calling," a profession, a vocation, to support oneself as value
and society as a mitzvah. Economic independence allows you to fulfill your moral
calling to help the needy become independent. In the Birkat HaMazon blessing after
eating we pray for the dignity afforded by economic self-sufficiency so we will not be
dependent on the loans and handouts of others. Yet we seek an even higher valuation
to labor. All Israeli citizens are invited to see in their own individual and national
efforts to achieve economic self-sufficiency, not merely a guarantee of national selfpreservation, not merely an avenue to greater material comforts or professional
satisfaction, and not just a way to avoid parasitic dependence on others. S.R. Hirsch
proposes that acquiring economic skills be valued as a part of the moral calling to
help one another.
Maybe what the State of Israel needs to do relative to the Haredi community, who will
not soon listen seriously to the Jewish values and texts cited here, is to apply a stricter
system of reward and punishment in the Biblical sense. In the desert God brought all
of us manna and quail from Heaven. But as soon as we crossed the Jordan River, it
says:
On the day after Passover, on that very day, they ate of produce of the land,
unleaven bread and parched grain. On that same day, when they ate of the
produce of the land, the manna ceased. The Israelites got no more manna."
(Joshua 5:11-12)
Self-reliance is the rule in God's promised land. Those who will not work the blessed
land cannot expect manna from those who do – neither out of mercy for their selfinflicted poverty nor out of short benefits from their convenient collations. While
Haredim like the Hazon Ish may preach about bitachon, reliance on God to provide
without human effort, other Haredim know better. In December 2011, Minister of the
Interior Rabbi Eli Yishai, the head of the Sephardic Haredi party, Shas, who is
responsible for municipalities, opposed the idea of solving the recent conflict between
Haredim and non-Haredim in Beit Shemesh over a mixed religious primary school by
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splitting the city into two separate municipalities. He warned realistically that an allHaredi municipality would not be able to collect enough taxes to support itself.
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PART 3: THE ISRAELI ARAB CHALLENGE
In the case of Israeli Arabs, many of them in smaller towns on the periphery of Israel's
economic centers, the low level of education and employment has not been
ameliorated sufficiently by government interventions, including their policy of
subsidies.
Systemically, for political reasons, they have received less than their per capita share
in educational, municipal and economic resources allocated to this sector for the last
sixty years, as well as the suffering from ad hoc discrimination against Arabs by
employers in higher wage categories. In addition, Israeli Arab parties do not
participate in the ruling coalition, whether right, left or center – both because of their
ideology and because of Jewish parties' discrimination – therefore their interests are
not represented in special governmental allocations for sectors that are party to
coalition agreements.
Too slowly and haphazardly, the Israeli judiciary has been forcing the Israeli
executive – the government and civil service – to close these gaps. In 2001, the Israeli
Supreme Court ruled, concerning budgetary discrimination against Arab
municipalities, that the state was not allocating budgets objectively in regard to
Project Renewal housing, improvements to low-income families:
The principle of equality is binding on all the country's public bodies. It is
binding, above all, on the State itself. The principle of equality applies to all
areas in which the State operates. It applies, first and foremost, to the
allocation of the State's resources. The State's resources, whether land or
money or other resources, belong to all citizens, and all citizens are entitled to
enjoy them according to the principle of equality, without discrimination on
the grounds of religion, race, sex or any other improper consideration….
Discrimination on the basis of religion or national affiliation in the allocation
of the country's resources is forbidden even if it is done indirectly, and, a
fortiori, if it is done directly." (Israeli High Court 1113/99 Adallah, the Legal
Center for Arab Minority Rights v. Minister of Religious Affairs, 2001)
As a result, for example, the lion's share of budgets for building schools in Jerusalem
has gone to build desperately needed schools in the Arab neighborhoods. If this
process of upgrading the educational levels of the Arab citizen and residents of Israel
continues, then the quality and quantity of employment should improve, though the
gap compared to most Israeli Jews may still grow. From a value point of view –
democratic, Jewish and Zionist – this is a moral imperative. The voice of democracy
rings out in the aforementioned Israeli Supreme Court decision. Now we will add
voices of Halakhic Judaism in the former chief Sephardi rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi
Haim David Halevi (1924-1998), and of Socialist Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, which
are in this case in agreement.
Rabbi Haim David Halevi rules that the mitzvah of tzedakah obligates the Israeli
government to provide jobs for its citizens and here he explicitly includes citizens,
resident aliens and strangers who are not Jews.
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It is most obvious that inasmuch as Joshua and the chieftains of the
community had sworn to them [the Gibeonites] that they [the leadership of the
people Israel] would sustain them (Joshua 9:20-21), i.e., that they [the
leadership of the people Israel] would accomplish this by supplying them
work whereby they could earn a livelihood, that it is therefore the obligation of
every government to be concerned for the subsistence of its citizens, whether
they are permanent residents or strangers. And this is all the more so [in an
instance such as this] where they [the leadership of the people Israel] had
sworn [such concern].
The great moral to be derived by every government among the people Israel is
that it possesses an obligation to conduct itself towards its minorities and those
who are strangers in its midst with integrity and fairness. In so doing, it will
sanctify the Name of Heaven and the name of Israel in the world.” (Aseh l’kha
Rav 7:70-71)
One of the most articulate Zionist voices for inclusion of Arab citizens in the full
benefits of citizenship was David Ben-Gurion himself, the author of the Israeli
declaration of Independence:
How the Jewish State behaves towards its citizens will be an important
factor—although not the only one—in our relationships with the Arab
countries. To the extent that Arab citizens feel at home in our state … and
their status in no way differs from that of their Jewish counterparts, and is
perhaps better than that of an Arab in an Arab country, and as long as the State
honestly and consistently helps [the Arab sector] to catch up with the Jewish
population's standard of living in economic, social and cultural terms, then
Arab suspicions will shrink and a bridge will be built to a Jewish-Arab Semitic
pact in the Near East. (1957)
No less committed to the rights of Israeli Arabs was Zeev Jabotinsky (died 1940),
head of the Revisionist Movement that later produced the Likud Party. Though he
believed in extending the borders of Israel to include both the West and East bank of
the Jordan River, the original area of the Balfour Declaration, he maintained that the
Arab nations emerging from Turkish Imperial rule deserved their own nation states
but not in the historic area of Israel. Those Arabs who stayed in the Jewish state
should have full political rights, as he wrote in his draft constitution for the Jewish
state (1934). The Arab minority would be on an equal footing with its Jewish
counterpart "throughout all sectors of the country's public life." The two communities
would share the state's duties, both military and civil service, and enjoy its
prerogatives. Jabotinsky proposed that Hebrew and Arabic should enjoy equal rights
and that "in every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership
shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa."
There are two primary reasons why Israeli Arabs have low participation rates in the
economy. First, because they are not drafted into the army, they, like the haredim, are
less likely to develop the entrepreneurial and improvisational skills that the IDF
inculcates. Second, they also do not develop the business networks that young Israeli
Jews build while serving in the military, a disparity that exacerbates an already longstanding cultural divide between the country’s Jewish and Arab communities.
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The authors of Start-Up Nation detail the causes of wasted Israel Arab labor that raise
moral and social, as well as economic issues. There are two primary reasons why
Israeli Arabs have low participation rates in the economy, they said. First, because
they are not drafted into the army, they, like the haredim, are less likely to develop the
entrepreneurial and improvisational skills that the IDF inculcates. Second, they also
do not develop the business networks that young Israeli Jews build while serving in
the military, a disparity that exacerbates an already long-standing cultural divide
between the country’s Jewish and Arab communities.
Each year, thousands of Arab students graduate from Israel’s technology and
engineering schools. Yet, according to Helmi Kittani and Hanoch Marmari, who
codirect the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development, “only a few manage to
find jobs which reflect their training and skills…Israel’s Arab graduates need to be
equipped with a crucial resource which the government cannot supply: a network of
friends in the right places.” And in the absence of those personal connections, Israeli
Jews’ mistrust of Israeli Arabs is more likely to hold sway.
Another problem is the bias within the Israeli Arab community against women in the
workplace. “Arab society is predominantly patriarchal, where men are perceived as
the decision-makers and women as inferior and ideally subservient…A man who
treats his partner other than [according to] the acceptable norm endangers his social
standing.”
Taking a step in the right direction, the former Labor party Minister of Social
Welfare, Isaac Herzog, grandson of the first Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, sought
to integrate academically educated Arabs in Jewish businesses and law firms, and the
New Israel Fund and the Abraham Fund have devoted resources to the Arab sector to
enable it to organize for self-help initiatives for financial success and for advocacy for
governmental aid, but much, much more remains to be done. Both democracy and
economics demand more initiatives and changed attitudes among the employers.
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PART 4: TOWARD THE FUTURE - SEEDS OF ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
In practice some programs have begun to emerge to ease the economic integration of
Haredim and Israeli Arabs into gainful employment situation, but worrying trends
have not been reversed. To achieve these changes will require political, economic and
educational changes. Lest we despair about present trends and their projected
development, consider a scenario of hope and seeds of countertrends to be
encouraged.
Dr. Tal Becker, an experienced legal advisor to the Israeli governments of the last 15
years, sketches how change in collation pattern might develop. This requires
significant revision of political conceptions about the art of the possible in Israeli
coalition politics and the reinforcement of Jewish values that honor economic selfreliance alongside the study of Torah.
In terms of coalition politics, foreign policy and security issues cannot be allowed to
sideline all other socio-economic issues. For example, Israeli Zionist parties have
refused to invite non-Zionist Arab parties to join the coalition, which would bring
their community's economic needs front and center in budgeting priorities. Further,
the secular Zionist parties – Likud, Labor Yisrael Beitenu and Kadima – have in the
past traded their concessions to Haredi economic support (as well as conversion and
divorce issues) – without demanding Haredi national service or vocational training –
in order to get their support on foreign policy issues.
If the overwhelming majority of secular and religious Zionist parties were to make
such reforms central in exchange for funding Haredim, then much could be done.
Politicians must think more imaginatively if for no other reason that the fact that as
the percentage of Haredi children increases the economy will not be able to support
the burden, thus becoming a security issue as well as leading to backlash among
voters who carry the state’s military and economic burden. In fact, twenty years ago,
it was then-Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu who cut back drastically on
government coalition grants to Haredi yeshivot and on state allowances per child that
mainly support Haredi families.
Becker notes that we need not take Haredi political clout and its attitude toward
employment as a simple given. Sephardi Shas party has had as low as 11 seats (2009)
and as high as 17 seats (1999) in the Knesset, compared to the Ashkenazi Aguda
party's five (2009). That is less than 15% of the Knesset. Within the Haredi Sephardi
community there is a small minority calling for a return to Sephardi traditions like
Maimonides that positively value work alongside Torah study. Many of the Shas
voters are traditional Orthodox Sephardim who do work, though fewer and fewer of
their adult Haredi children do.
Rav Haim Amsallem, a former member of the Shas party, has called publicly for the
rejection of the Ashkenazi Haredi influence on Shas regarding this issue. He calls
himself a "proud and level-headed haredi [ultra-Orthodox] rabbi." I come from a
moderate, sane Judaism and want to stay there, period. I'm a Zionist, I'm Sephardi, I'm
ultra-Orthodox and I'm reasonable." He was ejected from the party in 2010 after he
publicly called for integrating Haredim into the work force and including the core
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studies required by law but not taught in Haredi schools, such as mathematic, English
and civics:
I said that you can't sustain tens of thousands of yeshiva students who study
Torah within a framework where they aren't actually studying Torah. You are
essentially sentencing them to a life of poverty and making entire families
miserable. This isn't fitting for the Sephardi tradition. I also said that Shas had
become a Lithuanian-Sephardi mutation."
Earning a living and not needing to rely on the kindness of others was once a
supreme value, as is says in the Talmud: ‘Better you should work skinning
animal carcasses in the market than beg for tzedakah.
Rav Amsallem has created a movement called "Am Shalem" (The Whole People), a
name derived by punning on his name, "Am-sallem," which promotes a moderate
Haredi Judaism, state Haredi schools that teach core curriculum including skills
necessary for higher education. He declares it a disgrace that Israel has so many
children living in poverty, especially Haredi ones and has created a forum with hi-tech
executives to integrate Haredim into the work force, promotes collaboration with the
army and hopes to develop a Haredi university like Yeshiva University. In his
judgment, the low educational and economic level of Haredim has lowered the honor
of Torah in the eyes of many Jews who would otherwise respect Judaism. Therefore,
he is developing a campaign to legitimize the idea of Haredim who work, serve in the
army and seek higher education in the Haredi public sphere.
Rav Amsallem admits:
I'm not mainstream ultra-Orthodox, I'm a little avant-garde, and in the current
insanity, there's a need for this voice to steady the rocking boat. The Torah and
religion are being presented in a completely distorted light right now. As an
Israeli rabbi who studied Torah his entire life, and served as a rabbi in Jewish
communities both in Israel and around the world, I say to them: You are
distorting the Torah's image. This doesn't represent our religion. This isn't my
forefathers' religion. This hurts me because we were always the most
progressive religion that produced scientists and philosophers and pre-eminent
adjudicators of Jewish law like Maimonides, and now we're viewed as a
primitive religion. We've gotten into a situation we never should have.xi
Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman points out that despite strident ideology among
Ashkenazi Lithuanian Haredim, the social reality of their followers is changing. Due
to the enormous growth in the numbers beyond what can be supported by government
subsidies. Haredim are finding their niches in Israel society de facto (such as going to
malls, speaking Hebrew, not Yiddish). Women are already getting higher education,
going to work and bringing in money, power and hence different attitudes. Many
Haredi drops out from higher yeshivot are going to work in the army. More than
3,000 Haredim study at Kiryat Ono Academic College (established by Donniel's
brother, Ranan Hartman), alongside many more non-Haredim, but in separate
programs.
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Several promising programs toward integration of Haredim into the economy have
begun of late. Haredim aged 18 may now choose two years of combat duty in separate
units – without women officers or trainers – and then receive third year for
occupational training (while the regular male recruit serves three years). Many of
these are dropouts from Haredi yeshivot, though not from the Haredi lifestyle. Since
2007, the Israeli army has also been trying to integrate young Haredi men aged 22
into the technical corps in the Air Force, Navy, Intelligence Corps and more. Recruits
for one and half to two years may study new technologies that will later help them
support themselves after the army. Although they serve in units only with other
Haredi men they are, all the same, serving the Israeli army. In 2010, 13% of the
Haredi men of that age bracket served in the army and another 14% volunteered for
civilian jobs in the army.
So, too, the secular teacher’s college, Achva, near Rehovot, has opened separate
programs for pre-academic training for Haredi men who come in a separate entrance
in the evening for night school after studying all day in the yeshiva, use the library
after it is closed, and are taught by men alone. They will study math and English,
which are not taught in their schools, and then hopefully continue for academic
degrees. Achva is also known for its professional training of Arab citizens, especially
in the field of education, including training for very religious Muslim women.
A program to upgrade Haredi women's participation in the workforce, and thereby
raise their social standing overall, is an initiative by Adina Bar Shalom, the daughter
of the greatest Sephardic rabbi in Israel, Rav Ovadiah Yosef, former chief rabbi and
the unrivaled halakhic authority of the Shas Sephardic Haredi party. She has
organized the first Haredi degree-granting women’s college in social work and is now
developing courses for psychology degrees, which her father has approved.xii
The journalist Yair Ettinger (Haaretz, December 30, 2011) has much to teach us about
how to read the extremist phenomena in the Israeli Haredi community – against the
grain. The more the extremist protest, the more they are worried about losing control.
They are not the avant-garde but the rearguard trying to hold back a natural process of
Haredim becoming more "Israeli" and more interested in a higher standard of living
that can only be achieved by working more and in better quality jobs. He had this to
teach us about the extremists – on the fringe of the Haredi community who spit a little
Zionist-Orthodox girl attending school in Beit Shemesh. Those extremists, together
with the old guard of rabbis, are moving toward greater self-ghettoization precisely
when and because the Haredi rank and file are moving to greater economic
integration.
Yair Ettinger reported that the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman's banner
headline just recently, on Hanukah 2011, was an open letter signed by Rabbi Yosef
Shalom Elyashiv, considered the leader of the non-Hasidic, "Lithuanian" ultraOrthodox: “We must protest and warn of all sorts of trends from outside to strike at
the cruse of pure oil, to alter the spirit and the essence of the ultra-Orthodox public,"
blared the headline. The letter called for boycotting all the new study tracks
designated for Haredim in academia and employment programs in the army and civil
service, since they were intended to form "a group of ultra-Orthodox subordinate to
persons who have thrown off the burden [of obedience to the commandments], their
rule and their culture.
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Even the former spokesman of the extremist Eda Haredit, Shmuel Pappenheim, is
studying for a degree at Bar-Ilan University and heads an office encouraging ultraOrthodox employment in Beit Shemesh. Pappenheim argues:
Israel's ultra-Orthodox public has begun to understand that it needs to take its
fate into its hands. There are thousands of ultra-Orthodox in the army, in
academia, in the free professions. The religious public is heading toward
something great, and the rabbis' attempts to stop this are like the rooster
running in circles after being beheaded." "I'm not seeing any students dropping
out of ultra-Orthdox colleges" [due to Rabbi Elyashiv's letter.] "That isn't
going to help anymore."
The Beit Shemesh extremists are acting out of frustration, not ideology. They
see society around them progressing and are frustrated. They do not really
think; they just act violently for the sake of causing action and chaos.
Yair Ettinger interviewed Aryeh Goldhaber, an activist in the ultra-Orthodox
reformist movement "Tov," in Beit Shemesh. He says, "We are happy to be active
partners in the larger Israeli society – in employment, the army and studies, but the
more openness there is, the louder the extremists shout."
These pragmatic developments to improve the integration of Israeli Arabs and
Haredim in the economy need an ideational base – not primarily for either of the
minorities – but for the majority who are truly responsible for the economy. The
country must take the ethics of the economy more seriously and they will discover
that it will pay off socially and economically, even in the short term.
If the leadership wishes they can easily find the votes for cutting off the extravagant
counter-productive support for Haredi refusal to serve in national service or to work
in the economy. Ideology or no ideology the overwhelming majority of Haredim – as
their colleagues in America and Belgium and England – will seek employment. The
leadership is always very sensitive to economic pressures and so they can certainly
protest that they have "no choice" but to cut back stipends for those who do not work
and for schools that do not teach basic economic skills.
Most important, an active civil society that turned out 450,000 people to protest for a
budgetary adjustment to advance social justice can also turn out to demand more
equality in the workplace for Arabs and more appropriate work opportunities for and
from Haredim. If the majority strengthens its ideals, then the minorities can be
accommodated and the sense of common purposes and solidarity across Israeli society
enhanced.
We must reinforce the leaders' and the citizens' broad vision of their responsibilities
for the common good, rather than to sectorial politics. We have a nation to build and
that means – in the oldest Zionist sense – working on the land or in the land toward
economic development of the country for the benefit of all its citizens. If modern
Israel is about a celebration of the Jewish values of independence and self-reliance,
and therefore of mutual responsibility for rich and poor, then it must enhance the
opportunity and the duty to make a contribution to society – economic as well as
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military. Perhaps in this sense, even without agreeing with all his economic and
welfare policies we can agree with the quip attributed to President Reagan: “We
Americans do not get together to celebrate Dependence Day.”
Acknowledgments: With invaluable research help by Yonatan Zlotogorski, and helpful
comments by Tal Becker, Yossi Klein Halevi and Gil Troy – Noam Zion
NOTES
i
Most Arab citizens of Jerusalem, one third of the capital city's residents, opted not to become Israeli
citizens in 1967 when captured in 1967. But they have municipal voting rights. Still they almost never
choose to vote (less than 5 per cent) in the municipal elections and lacking representative they have not
had the political clout to demand a fair share of city services.
ii http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton62/st05_11.pdf
iii http://www.bankisrael.gov.il/deptdata/mehkar/doch10/heb/p5.pdf
iv
http://www.idi.org.il/events1/CaesareaForum/Documents/CF_2010/Employment_of_Arabs_in_Israel.pdf
v William Cohen, “Epilogue: The European Comparison”, in Charity, p. 397-8
viThe IDF grants the yeshiva-bocher a 6 month deferment of service, which needs to be extended every
6 months. Students postpone again and again until age 41, when they finally receive a permanent
exemption. Fathers of at least 5 children are granted this final release at age 31. Minimal duty is
required when a father who has not yet served has 2 children and to all the others from age 29.
viiArukhHaShulkhanHoshenMishpat 163:15
viiiArukhHaShulkhanHoshenMishpat 163:15
ix Orkhot Hayim, Vol. 2
x Maalot HaMidot 16
xi (Interview in Israel Hayom, Dec. 30, 2011)
xii The Jerusalem Haredi College JHC (www.mcy.org.il) was established by Adina Bar Shalom in 1997–
the first academic institution for the Haredi community in Israel. BA’s and advanced degrees in Social
Work, Educational Counseling [MA], Conflict Resolution, Communications, and Computer Science [for
Men]) to both men and women and teaches the sexes separately. The college also offers courses in
religious studies (Talmud, Torah etc.) for those who wish to enroll in them during their studies.Links to
articles about the college: http://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.1368417,
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4090601,00.html, http://www.kikarhashabat.co.il/-‫של‬-‫השלום‬-‫יוזמת‬
‫שלום‬-‫בר‬-‫עדינה‬.html, http://www.inn.co.il/Besheva/Article.aspx/5391,
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