Treasury officials on Tuesday, presented the Plesner Committee formulating the new draft law for the chareidi tzibur with its plan, one that includes a new funding framework for yeshivos. The plan includes fiscal consequences towards compelling total compliance with a law that seeks to draft most of the eligible chareidi community into the IDF. A small number of avreichim categorized as “ilui’im” and “masmidim” will be permitted to continue full time torah study while all others will be expected to enlist or join a government approved national service program.
According to the plan, those talmidim in compliance with the law will receive full funding but those who seek to hide under the radar, their government funding will be cut. That means those talmidim who are expected to enlist and do not, will lose government subsidies for the rent, arnona property tax and other supplementary income. There will also be fines levied against violators.
Roshei yeshiva expressed outrage the daily HaMevaser reports, accusing the treasury of “declaring war against the torah community”. The roshei yeshiva are quoted as adding that if the national government believes for a moment that it will compel a change in torah study and the chareidi tzibur’s priorities it is sorely mistaken. “There is no force in the world that will pull the talmidim from the benches of torah study”, the newspaper quotes rabbonim as saying.
Rabbi Meir Porush expressed outrage over the meeting and the items presented to the committee, accusing the “haters of yiddishkheit” of working overtime to destroy the level of torah study in Eretz Yisrael today. Porush spoke of the overall “anti-chareidi campaign” that has been launched in the country, a campaign that attacks the yeshivos around the country.
Porush added “there are those who believe they will use money as a leverage to destroy the torah world. We have already endured inquisitions which sought to extinguish the light of torah, albeit without success, and here too the efforts will not succeed”, adding “bnei torah will continue without any change”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
None of them should be taking any money from the State. Learning Torah is no excuse for taking money from the State.
The fact that so many are taking money is harming the image of Bnei Torah immensely and is causing a tremendous Chillul Hashem.
The average Israeli Zionistic Tax payer has no appreciation for those learning instead of going to the Army. The fact that frum Jews keep demanding the Tax money does not do anything to increase the Zionistic tax payer’s appreciation for them.
There is every good reason not to want to join the Army and become part of the “Israeli” melting pot. But in order to do it correctly one has to be principled. One can’t sit and demand money for it and still stay principled. Their demand for money is causing untold Bizoyon for our holly Torah.
What ever happened to the spirit of Avrohom Avinu amongst us? What ever happened to the honorable rejection of “not a string or a shoe lace”??
The dogs bark and the convoy keeps rolling. No Jew will join their army.
Word of Truth, there’s a difference between being principled and being disembodied. All of us in EY, no matter what we think about the medinah, pay a 16% tax on almost everything we buy, plus many more taxes and duties etc. Those tax revenues are divided up among all sorts of treifos while Torah, which should have first claim on everything, gets a pittance. That’s the real chillul Hashem. But in a few years’ time, your “average Israeli Zionistic Tax payer” will have nothing to say about it.
#3 Jews over the past two millenias of Golus had to pay MANY taxes for just being Jewish. They were indeed disembodied in the most horrific ways. That would not permit them to take money from Avoda Zoro.
The State that you live in (assuming you live in EY) is an institution of Kfiro. By taking money from them and ESPECIALLY for institutions of Torah you are legitimizing the State and enabeling them to have a monopoly of representing the Jewish People. You can scream all day that you are against the State, but your actions of taking money from them are what really counts.
The Satmar Rov in the end of “Ma’amar Yishuv Eretz Yisroel” writes that most people may not able to withstand the nissoyon of taking money from them (a very hard nissoyon) and they should certainly not live in EY if they cannot withstand that nissoyon.
#4, I mean no offense to the Satmar Rov, but I did ask Torah before making aliya and that was one of the questions. The medinah is not only an institution of kfiro, it’s an institution of meilo that has no more right to money than a mugger in Brooklyn. I don’t “take” money from the medinah, I reclaim some of what the medinah stole. Torah institutions here don’t legitimize the medinah by taking its money because that money belongs to them in the first place.