Monday, May 27, 2013

I feel like it's 1984 ...

when I read the Charedi newspapers these days. The Charedi press is simply inventing a story and writing about it. The Charedi press is full of headlines "The destruction of the Torah world" and "Israel is the only country in the world which restricts Torah learning" etc. when it is nothing of the sort. As I wrote here this is simply ridiculous. The current proposal allows those who want to sit and learn to do so until 21. At the age of 21 they need to serve. After their 2.5 years of service time they are free to do whatever they want. They can go back to the Yeshiva and sit and learn 18 hours a day for the next 50 years. No one is going to stop them, period. The only thing they need to is figure out on what whey are going to live on (like everyone else). This is exactly what R' Elyashiv did, he sat and learned all day until his kids were literally starving (see here and here), and then he got a job as a Dayan for the Rabbanut.

In reality, the Charedi world has 2 problems with the proposals:
1. Freedom of choice - Believe it or not, the Charedi leadership loved the fact that you could not work without going to the army. This forced everyone to stay in yeshiva/kollel to avoid the army. The current proposals free people up at a much earlier age which means that many more people will leave the yeshiva/kollel by choice. It also give people much more educational choice, they will be able to actually get a higher secular education.
2. It's all about money. The Charedi world as currently constituted cannot survive without government money (see this post for the details). If the government takes away the money the Charedi world will have no choice but to change and have more people go to work.


3 comments:

Yehudah P. said...

The statement that paints Rav Eliyashiv as being oblivious to his daughter's malnutrition is somewhat unfair--I could guess that it wasn't easy for anyone to make a living here in Israel (Palestine) at that time.

bluke said...

If you had read the whole article (not just that one quote) about R' Elyashiv you would understand that the statement was not unfair. I will post more of the article later.

bluke said...

Here is a link to more of the Mishpacha article about R' Elyashiv, judge for yourself what is fair and what is unfair.