MK (Yahadut Hatorah) Rav Moshe Gafne on Sunday, 5 Elul 5773 attacked the Ministries of Finance and Education for “hounding chareidim”. He explained he is “horrified” by what he hears and sees, commenting during a meeting of the Shaked Committee which is responsible for finalizing the chareidi draft bill.
What sparked Gafne’s anger were statements from Amos Tzeida, who heads the Mosdos Torah unit of the Education Ministry. The senior ministry official proudly told committee members that he and his colleagues have decided to be stricter in their inspections of mosdos, referring to inspections to ascertain if avreichim are truly learning or simply draft dodging.
To improve statistics from the ministry’s perspective, an avreich absent without reason from beis medrash will be recorded as such. Any yeshiva with 15% or higher absenteeism in two consecutive inspections will lose a portion of its funding. What sparked the anger is that sitting shiva chas v’sholom, one’s wife giving birth or even IDF reserves (miluim) service are going to be viewed as inexcusable absences! Needless to say this angered Gafne and his colleagues beyond description.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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14 Responses
Piron HaRasha along with his Master Lapid and their lapdog Lipman have a special place in Gehenim reserved for them.
Tzeida needs to take a hike. “Tzeida–laderech”
am I missing something here. 15% is more than 40 days . in the real world if a person misses 40 days of work even if it’s for shivah or his wifes giving birth will lose his job. And being that this is the whole yeshivah it would mean that cumulatively they cant miss more than 40 days. for two inspections, sounds reasonable to me- but then again what do I know I am not in kollel.
Is there some similar attendance standard which is used for students in the secular university system? Perhaps this comparison would be of use to us.
The YWN dest in israel is notorious in reporting and printing misleading articles and here we have another example. I dont believe for one moment that sitting shiva or reserve duty will be causes for “inexcusable absences”. Add to that the misleading and insulting headline (how piron’s boys plan to play the attendance game….) and you understand that whoever mans the “israel desk’ of YWN has ulterior motives and has no credibility at all.
Rabbiofberlin, if I understood you correctly: 1) if its misleading why do you read it. 2) it’s not a matter of belief, what you want to do is to check it out. 3) how can you then accuse YWN of having ulterior motives just because you “don’t believe”?
YITZCHOK2(No.3): Please try to use your brains before writing nonsense. It means if 15% of the amount of avreichim registered in that yeshiva/kollel are not there at the time of the inspection. To clarify further, if 100 avreichim are registered to be learning in Yeshiva A and during an inspection only 85 or less are in attendance (ie 15% are missing) then Yeshiva A has failed the inspection. Before this new system, any avreich who can be shown as being away with a valid reason such as sitting shiva or ill in hospital or on reserve duty etc. would not count so in the example above, if 10 avreichim were shown to have a valid reason for their absence then it would count that only 5 were missing (ie 5% in that example) and the Yeshiva would pass the inspection.
Rabbi of Berlin (No.5): Your despicable hatred of chareidim is sickening. You believe every half-truth which is anti-chareidi and comment quickly with your double-faced mussar. Anything that shows up your beloved zionists in a not perfect light must of course be untrue. Pathetic and sad.
I actually saw the same facts printed in The Jerusalem Post (hardly a chareidi paper!!), yet the “Rabbi” insists that it must be untrue and YWN has no credibility.
Well I know who has no credibility in my eyes and who is rabidly anti-chareidi…..
he is just mad that many yeshivas will be caught in fraud which happened before
Now that Truehonesty was able to explain it to me I now believe that they should take away the funding even if they fail 1 inspection. the soldiers are depending on the avreichim’s learning and 15% of them will be absent. I doubt very highly that all 15% will be sitting shivah and attending a wife’s delivery. an
Truehonesty: I checked the JPost and went back a full week and did not see this item at all. Please let us know where you found this miraculous quote. I am not sure where you see my so-called “hatred” for chareidim. All I said was that YWN Israel desk is biased in its reporting and headlines. This is far from the first time this happened. I buttressed thsi with my belief (yes-tzvitzvi- belief) that the quotes and headlines are misleadning and I do not believe the so-called item of news. Prove me wrong.
‘Greater is the hatred which the am ha-arez hates the talmid chocham than the hatred which the goyim hate
the Jews.’ pesachim 49
how very true
To #4 – Universities do not require that attendance be taken, so no such statistic exists. University students are in class around 15-20 hours per week, but are given a lot of homework, so there really is no comparison. Mandatory attendance is required in grammar school and high school, so it is possible to get a general idea of the fairness of this proposal from those attendance records.
For the Florida Cohort that was in 6th grade in 1997/98 and graduated in 2003/2004, the absence data was separated into five parts: Top 20 % = 3 days per school year, second 20% = 6 days per school year, third 20% = 9 days, fourth 20% = 15, bottom 20% = 28 days.
The minimum number of school days per year in Florida is 180. http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/06/68/10668.pdf
Therefore the bottom 20% miss 28/180 = 15.6 % of the year.
“4. frum not crum says: Is there some similar attendance standard which is used for students in the secular university system? Perhaps this comparison would be of use to us.”
By and large, students attending secular university in Israel have already served in the army for three years. And they pay tuition. So, if they want to register for university but miss every day, fail every class and not get a degree, it stinks but it’s understandable that we won’t do anything.
In the yeshivas, though, there are some people that are registered so they can avoid army service. It would be one thing if they are actually learning to avoid service (many students did that in Vietnam). But if they’re only _registered_ to learn, but not learning at all, and they’re avoiding military duty, and lying about it, then that’s fraud. If every yeshiva in general had a 98% attendance rate, then there would be no need for these inspections. But you and I both know that that’s not the case. This is fair and reasonable.
M already gave an excellent answer and lets not forget that the avreichim are getting a stipend to be in Kollel, so if they aren’t there without a good reason that is similar to an employee not showing up (however measly the stipend may be).
(And a student who doesn’t finish fast enough ends up paying more tuition and tuition also gets raised, so there is some level of “punishment”)