And people wonder where the Burka ladies come from ...

When Yated Neeman this week published a front page קול קורא form women to be מתחזק in their צניעות.

It says that for women צניעות is one of their fundamental mitzvos and therefore they should be מתחזק in their צניעות. It isn't hard for me to imagine a Charedi woman who already dresses צניעות to look at this and feel that they have to do more and burkas are just the logical conclusion if we take this קול קורא at face value.

4 Minim at a subsidized price, is this a good thing?

For the first time in all the years I have lived in Israel, I am seeing ads all over the place for subsidized ד' מינים. Many chesed organizations are organizing sales at cost or even subsidized prices. Below are 2 of the many ads that I saw.

I assume the reason for this is the government cutbacks in kollel stipends and child payments and therefore many people simply cannot afford it. While at first glance this seems like a great idea, it may have negative consequences. There are a lot of people who make a good part of their yearly income by selling ד' מינים. This year it will be very hard for them to compete with chesed organizations undercutting their prices by as much as half. In essence, this will be depriving the sellers of their parnassa.

In fact, I am seeing this kind of sale happen for more and more items, meat, clothing, etc. If this trend continues then Charedi stores will simply have to go out of business, there is no way they can compete against the prices that these organizations offer. This may set off a vicious cycle, people are poor and therefore can't spend money in the stores, which makes the stores unprofitable, making the store owner and all his workers poor which makes the Charedi community even poorer.

Starting Selichos on Time

Last night was the first night of selichos and in Israel חצות was about 12:40 so selichos also started around 12:40. Many shuls have a minhag where the Rav speaks for a few minutes before selichos to inspire the people. This is a very fine minhag, however, the Rav should realize that it is very late and that people want to start selichos on time and go home and go to sleep. Sunday in Israel is a regular workday and people can't really sleep late. For the Rav to plan to speak for 15 minutes and then speak for an extra 10 minutes is really not right. No one would be upset if the Rav spoke for 25 or even 30 minutes if he started 25 or 30 minutes before the scheduled time for selichos. However, to start speaking 15 minutes before the scheduled start and then go over 10 minutes and start selichos 10 minutes late  is a tremendous טרחא דציבורא at such a late hour.

There is a famous saying that to speak for 10 minutes is much harder then to speak for an hour. When you have a short time you need to really hone your message and measure your words. When you have an hour you have much more leeway. Unfortunately, there are some people who can never fit what they want to say in the allotted time. If you give them ten minutes they speak for 20-25. If you give them an hour they will have enough material for an hour and a half.

This really bothers me. Many times it points to a lack of discipline and preparation. I speak publicly every so often, and when I do so, I go over exactly what I am going to say a number of times before I actually speak and I time myself. If I have 10 minutes to speak then I will make sure that I have enough to say for 10 minutes and not more. The same goes for 40 minutes or an hour. I don't understand how you can prepare a speech that is allotted 15 minutes and take 25 minutes. That is almost double the time.

The Charedi education dominos have started to fall

Kikar Shabbat is reporting that 2 Chassidish high schools, "חידושי הרי"מ" in Tel Aviv and ישיבת נדבורנה in Bnei Brak have agreed to teach the core curriculum in exchange for full funding.

Now we will see if this creates a domino effect and who else decides to take government money.

Is a Yeshiva boy/Kollel Avreich חייב in Parshas זכור?

This is quite amusing

Yated Neeman - Secular studies aren't for Jewish kids

In yesterday's Hebrew Yated Neeman the following was published as part of an editorial.

My translation (starting from end of the first line):
The Mashgiach R' Yechezkel Levenstein wrote the following in a letter to one of his close students: "My wish is to see the children growing in Torah and fear of Heaven, secular studies are not for Jewish children when our wish is that they became God fearing. Hashem gives bread to everyone and there is no one who is starving to death because Hashem gives food to all the animals of the Earth, "famine" kills in the next world, and regarding parnassa (income) in this world we have faith in Hashem. The main thing is the next world, praised be those who merit Torah and fear of heaven".

Is this really the Torah perspective? What happened to the Gemara in Kiddushin about teaching your son a trade? What happened to the Gemara in Bava Basra "“A person should hire himself out for any work rather than requiring assistance from others”? What about the Gemara in Berachos that many did like R' Shimon Bar Yochai (learned all day and didn't work), ולא עלתה בידם, they failed? Is there no chiyuv hishtadlus to make a living?

What really struck me was that a few pages earlier they had the following ad:

This is but one of the many ads found in the newspaper and in my mailbox and in shul every day about people who have no money for basic necessities. Yes, no one is starving to death, but there are many many Charedim who are in very bad financial shape and it has a very bad effect on both the kids and shalom bayis.

The Charedi response to Egged's ad about stealing bus rides

Some Charedim have come up with some very cute takeoffs of the Egged ad

Unfortunately these responses seem to justify stealing because Egged's service is so bad. However the fact is that however, bad Egged's service is, you still aren't allowed to steal from them. 

Why is the Charedi leadership silent about attacks on Charedi soldiers?

There was another attack on a Charedi soldier yesterday (Dozens attack haredi soldier in Jerusalem) and yet we hear nothing from the leadership. Nothing from the politicians and nothing from the Gedolim. In fact, the Charedi website Kika Hashabbat had the gall to public an article today, נתניהו אשם באלימות, blaming Netanyahu and the secular politicians for the violence. Why the silence? When it comes to the draft, to secular education we hear them loud and clear. However, when it comes to violence against other religious Jews suddenly silence.

This is exactly what happened with קמצא and בר קמצא. The Gemara (גיטין נ"ו) says that בר קמצא thought the following after he was thrown out of the party :
 אמר הואיל והוי יתבי רבנן ולא מחו ביה ש"מ ניחא להו
The Chachamim were sitting at the party and saw what happened and kept quiet it must be that they agree with what was done thus setting in motion the chain of events.

The same certainly applies today.

There is something terribly wrong with charedi chinuch if this is the result.  In addition, there is something very wrong with Charedi society if the reaction to anything bad that happens is to blame someone else. What happened to introspection, looking for faults in yourself? What happened to taking responsibility for your actions? I am sorry, but the only one responsible for the violence in Charedi society is Charedi society.

What does this ad from Egged say about the Charedi population in Israel?

This ad appeared in the Charedi newspapers last week. The ad states that riding the bus is like taking a Challah in the grocery store, just like you wouldn't steal the challah you shouldn't steal rides from Egged.

IMHO this ad is embarrassing and a chillul hashem. This is not a bombastic anti-Charedi politician saying this, this is a for profit company that is spending a lot of money on full page ads in Charedi newspapers. Egged is only spending the money because there is a problem of Charedim not paying for bus rides.

Comparison of Haredi education in Israel and the US

The Charedi leadership has rejected the idea that the government have any control over what is learned in Haredi schools. Any government intervention/control is a gezeras shmad. Let us compare the Haredi schools in NY and those in Israel to see whether government mandates are really shmad.

The following table describes the current situation:

	NY Haredi Schools	Israel Charedi Schools
Budget from the Government	No	Yes 55% of public schools
Elementary School standardized tests	Yes	No
High School Standardized tests	Yes (Regents)	No (Bagrut)
State Curriculum	Yes Instruction given to a minor elsewhere than a public school must be substantially equivalent to the instruction given at the local public school	No
Option to opt out	No	Yes

As we can see in NY State the government provides no funding and yet, mandates a standardized curriculum and standardized acheivement tests. In Israel, on the other hand, the government provides partial funding but mandates no requirements.

The following table describes what the government is proposing in order for a school to get government funding:

	NY Haredi Schools	Israel Charedi Schools
Budget from the Government	No	Yes 55% of public schools if the school teaches the state curriculum (full math,english and hebrew, 55% of the rest), otherwise 30% funding
Elementary School standardized tests	Yes	Yes
High School Standardized tests	Yes (Regents)	No (Bagrut)
State Curriculum	Yes Instruction given to a minor elsewhere than a public school must be substantially equivalent to the instruction given at the local public school	Partial
Option to opt out	No	Yes, any Haredi school that doesn't take government funding doesn't need to fulfill any government requirements.

What is fascinating is that there is much more government control/intervention in the US then what is being proposed in Israel let alone what exists now. Yet no one is calling teh US government evil and shmad.
Source for NY State Data: http://www2.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/regprivschl/regprivschl.pdf

R' Chaim Kanievsky: Men are not allowed to wear watches

because of the prohibition of לא ילבש.

Source: Kikar Shabbat

I believe that this opinion of R' Chaim has not bee accepted by any of the poskim and in fact there are pictures of many great Rabbanim including R' Elyashiv his father wearing a watch.

Does Stanley Fisher hate Charedim?

Stanley Fisher (the outgoing Head of the Bank of Israel) commented today that the State of Israel is facing a demographic problem, given the current projections the Chiloni population in Israel will be a minority in 50 years due to the growth of the Charedi and Arab populations. Given the low participation level of both of those populations in the workforce, this will cause economic issues and affect the quality of life in Israel.

The Charedi politicians immediately attacked Fisher as a racist and hater of Charedim and that he wants to destroy the Charedi population.

IMHO, they are completely wrong. Fisher remarks were not predicated on hate or racism, but based on cold hard facts. At some point as the Charedi population grows larger and larger, the shrinking tax base will be unable to provide the social benefits. The money will simply not be there. This has nothing to do with hate, it is pure economics.

Can you believe anything said in the name of the Gedolim?

I would have to say that the answer today is probably not.

As many of you know, there was an anti-draft rally in Manhattan yesterday sponsored by Satmar. Satmar tried very hard to get other groups to join, and because of that over the past week, there was much discussion about what R' Chaim Kanievsky's opinion was. Was he for or against the rally?

R' Elya Ber Wachtfogel, Rosh Yeshiva of South Fallsburg wrote in a letter on Thursday that R' Chaim Kanievsky was for the rally.

However, on Friday, R' Chaim's sons publicized a letter saying that he did not support the rally.

Even more interesting is that on Sunday at 3PM some people produced another letter supposedly from R' Chaim Kanievsky supporting the rally.

This letter turned out to be forged.

The bottom line is that it is impossible for the average person to know what is true and what is not. 

There needs to be a better way for the Gedolim to get their message out to the people because the current system is just not working.

Great billboard on the Prospect expressway in Brooklyn

Daylight savings in time in Israel will now be until the last Sunday in October

I think this is a reasonable setup, however, it will cause some problems with early morning minyanim in October. At the end of October actual sunrise in Israel is about 6:50, however, many are machmir for נץ הנראה which is 10-15 minutes later. What this means is that those who are machmir will not be able to daven before approximately 6:45.

The woman is erased but her feet remain

Yated Neeman has a policy not to show any pictures of women so when they get a picture with a woman that they want to print, they simply photoshop her out. However, sometimes they do a bad job and leave over small parts of the woman's body like in the case below where the woman's feet and shoes are clearly visible under the man's body.

Source: Kikar Shabbat

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.

Women's names on Coke bottles cause a big storm in the Charedi world

Coke has R' Landau's Hechsher and is the drink of choice for many Rebbe's at their tishes. However, they are running an ad campaign which features peoples names on the bottle labels as you can see below.

Some bottles have women's names on them (Tali, Savta) and some have men's names on them (Shay). The Charedi world is up in arms, how can they serve the Rebbe from a bottle with a women's name on it? R' Landau is putting pressure on Coca Cola to not distribute these bottles in Charedi areas. In the meantime here is 1 solution.

I wouldn't hire Charedi women either

The Mishpacha newspaper had a long article this past Tuesday on the problems that Charedi women have in finding good paying jobs. IMHO, they downplayed the major reasons Charedi women have problems:

I. Pregnancy

Charedi women are almost always pregnant. If you hire a 23 year old Charedi women she probably has 1 child already and is pregnant with another. Over the next 15 years she will probably have a baby every 18 months to 2 years. This raises a number of serious issues for any employer:

1. Maternity leave - Every 18 months to 2 years the woman will take off at least 3 months, the employer has to figure out how to replace her for those 3 months, it is not simple. If you have a number of Charedi women, the odds are that at any given time at least one will be out on maternity leave.
2. In Israel it is practically impossible to fire a pregnant women. I saw this happen more then once where I work (a major American company with tens of thousands of employees around the world). Management decided to discontinue a product that was not selling and therefore laid off the entire team, directors, manager, programmers etc. Everyone except for the one woman who was 5 months pregnant. The company paid her not to come to work for the duration of her pregnancy she then took her 3 months maternity leave and then they paid her another 3 months until they could fire her. While no one hires employees with the intention of firing them, the ability to fire workers is important. Charedi women are very hard to fire because they are generally either pregnant or just had a baby much of the time. 
3. Pregnancy itself - Being pregnant is not easy (each stage has it's challenges) and there is no question that for at least some women it will affect their productivity

II. Large Families

Charedi women generally have large families and large families make it harder to work for a number of reasons:

1. If you have 5, 6,7 or more kids, someone is always sick and someone needs to stay home and take care of them.
2. Someone needs to watch the kids during school vacations 
3. School ends late afternoon, someone needs to watch the kids until teh mother gets home for work, or she needs to leave work early.
4. Taking care of a large family is exhausting and a full time job. 
5. Travel is very difficult if not impossible. 

III. It's a job not a career

Charedi women are brought up that work is a necessary evil to support their husband while learning and that they should not be career women. This means that they are generally not looking to get ahead etc. and will do their jobs but nothing more. It makes for good low level workers but does not provide much path for advancement.

IV.Cultural Issues

Charedi women want to work in an all female Charedi environment. What that means is that they have nowhere to advance and are severely limited in what and where they can work. If a Charedi women shows great promise it is very hard to promote here because she will then have to work with men, chilonim, and non-Jews. These days the workplace is all about teamwork. If you have nothing in common and can't relate to your co-workers it is a problem.

V. Education

Charedi woman may be well educated in the Beis Yaakov's but they generally don't have real academic degrees and in the secular world that is what counts. In all of the hi tech companies that I have worked for in Israel, they can't even get in the door because the minimum requirement is a degree from a University. Without a University degree they are limited to lower paying jobs.

In short, IMHO Charedi women have a hard time finding good paying jobs not because of discrimination but because of legitimate business and financial reasons. If I was running a business/managing a group, I would have a very hard time justifying hiring a Charedi woman because of all the issues mentioned above. 

Lakewood has no religious test for admission???

Anyone who knows anything about Lakewood knows that that statement is ridiculous. Yet this is exactly what Moshe Gleiberman, vice president of administration at Beth Medrash Govoha, said in an interview defending the states decision to grant Lakewood a $10.6 million grant to build a library:

there is no "religious test" for admission, but it does have rigid education standards.

However, people are starting to ask questions, see this article:

Now the state’s top Assembly Democrat says she is concerned about public dollars going to a college with admission standards she says resemble a "religious test." Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said students who want to go to the college must speak Hebrew, know the sacred texts and agree not to date within the first six months of schooling.

"I will tell you that I am extremely surprised by this," Oliver said. "This is not a secondary institution that is open to the general public."

Oliver sees a distinction between Beth Medrash Govoha — known in Hebrew as a yeshiva — and private Catholic schools like Seton Hall University and St. Peter’s University that she says should qualify for public money.

"Seton Hall is open to anyone — Jewish, Christian and Muslim. They have an open admission process, and any student in New Jersey can attend." Oliver said. "Not every student can attend the yeshiva."

If a qualified non-jew or a woman takes them at their word and applies for admission to make a point what is Lakewood going to do? The Charedi world attacked YU very harshly when it came to various compromises in order to get government money, yet it looks like Lakewood is basically doing the same thing for the same reason, to get government money.

With money tight and the economy bad, I guess anything goes when it comes to money.