Q&A: How to Deal with the Haredi Danger
How to Deal with the Haredi Danger
Question
As extreme as it sounds, in the long run the Haredim are an existential threat to the State of Israel. When you have a public that makes up 30 percent and doesn’t work or study anything useful, then automatically you won’t have an army, and even if you do, it will have to take money from other places, and it will simply be a catastrophe. We’ll turn into a Jewish Iran. The question is: aside from trying to convince those fools that this is not the way of the Torah and not even a humane way to live at all, do you think there are active steps that can be taken so they stop being a threat to us?
Answer
Obviously there are ways. Simply stop supporting them. But no government will do that.
Discussion on Answer
There’s no problem doing that. Daycare centers for the children of kollel students. Funding for kollels and yeshivot. Discounts on municipal tax. And more and more. This is a huge amount of money that sustains Haredi parasitism and draft evasion. Once that ends, the issue will be solved.
I agree with everything. Just for the record, it’s worth being precise:
The Haredim are about 12%, not 30%, and roughly half of them work.
Taking other factors into account, they are still an existential threat, but a somewhat milder one.
Maybe the ideology can’t be eradicated, but at least we can stop encouraging it.
I didn’t really understand. At the end of the day, the main money they receive isn’t the stipend of 700 shekels for a kollel student or 400 shekels for a yeshiva student, but health care, education, and security. And in my view those things are far too general—that is, you can’t really say and pass a law that Haredim won’t be entitled to health care or protection (even though they deserve it because of their draft evasion).