Israel’s Haredi Future

The big news in the Jewish community today is the protest of Bibi Netanyahu’s speech at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations by some college kids.

Bibi and his case for Israeli security are completely superfluous at the GA.  Who among the delegates there is opposed to Israel’s security?  Who really needs to hear from the prime minister one more time about his commitment to secure borders?

It would be more interesting for American Jewish leaders to discuss what’s going on in the state we are asked so hard to defend.  How many American Jews are aware that the Jewish state is slowly losing its liberal democratic character?  Haredi Jews, the most backward and fanatically religious people in Israel, are quickly emerging as the dominant force.

J.J. Goldberg addresses it in this week’s Forward:

The numbers tell the story. According to recent studies…fully 65% of adult Haredi men are registered as full-time yeshiva students and don’t work for a living — up from 20% in 1980, when the stipends were introduced. In some families the wives work, but most live on a basket of government welfare stipends, child allowances and direct grants to yeshivas. More than 50% of Haredim live below the poverty line.

…Fertility among Ashkenazic Haredim is estimated at an average of 8.8 children per woman, compared to 4.5 in the Modern Orthodox community and 2.6 among non-Orthodox Jews. Simply put, the population is exploding.

The growth is straightforward. In 1992, Haredim made up 5% of the draft pool — that is, 5% of that year’s 18-year-olds claimed yeshiva-student deferments from army service — while among incoming first-graders, 11% were Haredi.

Thirteen years later, in 2005, Haredim were 11% of draft-age youth and 23% of first-graders. This year’s first grade is 27% Haredi. At the current rate of growth, which shows little sign of change, more than a quarter of 18-year-olds will be claiming a yeshiva deferment by 2023. By 2040, if nothing changes, deferments will top 50%, leaving a dwindling pool of stalwarts to defend the country’s borders.

You think Iran is a threat to Israel?  What happens when Israel turns into Iran?  What kind of Israel will there be to defend?

This is the kind of question that the American Jewish community should be asking about Israel.  There is a solution to this, and if we want the Jewish state to remain a successful democracy, someone over here needs to start paying attention to the kind of Israel we’re supporting.

If you think there’s no reasonable or ethical way out of this, you’re wrong.  It doesn’t involve forcing the Haredim to become Reform Jews or atheists (although the more who leave voluntarily, the better).  For starters, it would involve making them learn some math:

Lack of skills also hinders Haredi entry into the labor force. The Haredi school systems — there are three, with some 150,000 students in all — refuse to teach the core curriculum required by law, which includes math, English and civics. Lacking the basics, even those Haredim who want to work find few jobs they’re qualified for.

The standoff over core studies has been batted back and forth between the Knesset and the Supreme Court for years. It finally exploded in mid-October, within days of the stipend protest, when Israel’s education minister threatened to cut funding from schools ignoring the curriculum, leading the Council of Torah Sages, the top Haredi rabbinic authority, to compare his action to the anti-Semitic policies of pre-World War II Poland.

This, by the way, is the standard revolting retort by the Haredim to anyone who opposes them.  They shout, “Antisemite!” any time they face political opposition.

Goldberg concludes his article with this:

Despite the size of the challenge, optimists about Israel’s first-world future believe that the fledgling reforms now underway will eventually take root. In time, with patience, the Haredi world will adapt and embrace a Western educational and work ethic. The Israel of 2050 will probably turn out more straitlaced, less tolerant of religious, cultural and sexual diversity, and more restrictive in dietary habits and Sabbath travel and entertainment, but it will survive and thrive as a modern nation and a center of world Jewry. That is, if enough non-Orthodox Jews stick around to see the outcome.

Pessimists, on the other hand, fear that determined rabbinic opposition will prevent Western knowledge from entering the Haredi bloodstream. Over the next three or four decades, they say, a Haredi majority will inherit an Israel that has gradually lost its high-tech economic edge and settled into a poor but pious — some say Third World fundamentalist — equilibrium. If, that is, it still has an army capable of defending its borders.

Either of these possible futures is still going to be problematic when it comes to nurturing Israel-Diaspora relations.  But that’s for another post.