Q&A: Employing a Person Trained in the Laws of Kashrut and Purity as a Building Inspector in the Azor Council
Employing a Person Trained in the Laws of Kashrut and Purity as a Building Inspector in the Azor Council
Question
The Ministry of the Interior forced the Azor Council to include among the required qualifications for the position of building inspector in the engineering department also a person whose training is in the laws of purity and kashrut. Does this seem publicly appropriate to you? Instead of encouraging general studies in order to integrate the Torah-study public into the workforce in this country, they encourage ignorance and force their way into the labor market without suitable training. It is an enormous waste of public money. Clearly they will be forced to add to the candidate selected on the basis of his qualifications in purity and kashrut a skilled professional who studied and was trained in construction management and engineering, at public expense. I understood from council representatives that this is a standing directive of the Ministry of the Interior, so that people who are not suitable, whose entire knowledge is in the field of religious services, can apply for positions they were never trained for, on the instructions of rabbis, at the expense of those who worked hard, studied, and acquired knowledge in the required field.
Answer
I also got this viral WhatsApp message. Cheap demagoguery. It does not mention job requirements at all, only an academic degree in some field (with an advantage for certain fields). In other words, the degree is not required as professional training but as a screening device. So they were entirely justified in adding rabbinical ordination as equivalent to a degree. There is no problem here aside from the demagogic claims running around the internet to prove how much religious coercion and stupidity we have here. We have enough of both as it is, and let us not add to them.
Discussion on Answer
If you want to insist, then fine by me. I gave a very logical answer. I don’t see why a bachelor’s degree in Talmud or gender studies is useful there but rabbinical ordination is not.
I think this is improper conduct: employing someone in an engineering position whose qualifications are in kosher slaughter. They’re paying someone who is just lip service. You wouldn’t want to hire a master’s student in a physics department who has training in the laws of ritual impurity and purity.