11 Responses

1. “Do Chareidim Have the Right to Breath?”

   If the Israeli Supreme Court authorizes it. Alternatively, the Netanyahu government can provide temporary authorization for chareidim to breath until the court issues a definitive ruling.

2. I think you meant breathE

3. Does he not understand that the whole idea of zionism, going back to the late 19th century, was to get rid of the hareidi community and turns Jews into “normal” people? The raison d’etre for the medinah is to create a Jewish alternative to Torah – a place where Jews can exist as Jews while being a people free from the yoke of Torah (unlike America where Jews who reject yiddishket inevitably assimilate into the mainstream non-Jewish population).

   Is question makes one think of some secular jews in Europe who were genuinely shocked by the holocaust since they could never imagine that their beloved goyish neighbors wanted to kill them (frum Jews were upset, but not shocked)?

4. You take government funds, you do what the government wants.

   You don’t like it? Nobody is holding a gun to your head to accept the government funds.

5. And remember that free countries can and do force religious people to serve in their armed forces. In the US, conscientious objectors can serve as medics and chaplains, or do alternative civilian service. And two future popes served in the Italian Army during World War I.

6. The Steipler Gaon served for some time in the Russian Army. Some people might feel that he remained observant.
   One of the Chafetz Chaim’s first sephorim, Macahne Yisroel, was written to assist those Jews here were serving in European armies.

7. Charlie hall (no. 4) says: “Nobody is holding a gun to your head to accept the government funds.”

   WRONG, CHARLIE!

   When Ben-Gurion recognized the need to allow hareidim to study the Torah, in order to maintain the heritage of the Jewish People, and in order to justify the very existence of a Jewish State in Palestine, he set a trap:

   He stipulated that any hareidi who accepts his offer will be forbidden to work, to make a living.

   So, you may learn Torah all you like, so long as you agree to tak a vow of poverty–to let your family starve.

   I guess Ben-Gurion, the Lamdan, was thinking of the Mishna in Pirkei Avoth “Pas Bamelach Tochal!”

8. The right to get a mortgage is not being taken away. Mortgage incentives are being taken away. So if you can’t afford the mortgage you need to either buy a less expensive apartment or rent.
   Which means that less people will be buying apartments, so maybe the prices will come down and then everyone will benefit from the lower prices.
   Before 2008 easy mortgages was what led to the housing bubble in the US. Then the bubble burst and led to the great recession.

9. To Deepthinker who wrote: “Ben-Gurion recognized the need to allow hareidim to study the Torah: — He recognized nothing of the sort. He realized that if the hareidim opposed the state, it would seriously undermine the zionist cause, and most likely would have led to the United States supporting a permanent United Nations trust territory for Palestine, or at least for the Jewish parts of Palestine. He was bribing them (or alternatively, being blackmailed by them).

   To CharlieHall: My point entirely. The “hareidim” who have been trying to be part of the zionist movement are the ones complaining. Real hareidim never accepted zionist money. Real hareidim have no reason to prefer a Jewish secular state over an Islamic one – and should be seen as conscientious objectors. They can’t be threatened by cutting off funds since they never took any, and will not hesitate to turn to international human rights groups since over the last 65 years human rights has evolved and the conscription of hareidim over religious objection would now be considered a crime under international human rights law (discussing the world in the past is irrelevant – “genocide” wasn’t even illegal until the London Charter of August, 1945). The zionists are in effect shooting themselves int he foot by persecuting the pro-zionist hareidim, and thereby strengthing the hand of the anti-zionist hareidim who stand to move from being a minor footnote to a major player, again, for the first time in almost a century.

10. The international human rights groups are very atheistic and often antisemitic.
    They cannot be counted on to support any Charedim, especially not when it is themI VS a secular government.

11. Torahrocks: The international human rights groups will be anxious to condemn Israel. So will all the left wing groups who are anti-Israel because it is politically correct to be so, but don’t want to be accused of anti-Semitism. An added complication is that most of Israel’s support in western country’s has a strong religious element, and see the most obviously and openly religious people in Israel complaining about persecution (and perhaps supporting an Islamic state replacing Israel -which is really the only solution that will result in peace), will undermine their support for Israel.

    In many countries, hareidim from Israel will be eligible for asylum (i.e. a “green card” or the local equivalent) since they will be refugees from political persecution. Remember also that no western country engages in conscription, and that respect for religious objections to military service were built into international standards after World War II – a non-zionist hareidim clearly meet the standard of religious objectors (unlike the pro-zionists). Persecution of hareidim who don’t accept government money will seriously undermine Israel’s international position.

    The zionist believed they had an agreement for a few hundred hareidim to be exempt from the army to ease their community’s gradual assimilation into hiloni society, and the haredim broke the agreement by not assimilating into zionist society. The zionists also thought most hareidim were simply machmir religious zionists whose yeshiovos existed only because of state funds – whereas many if not most hareidim are closet supporters of the Badats who were ripping off the state and were willing to stifle their anti-zionism in return for zionist gelt.

    Eretz Yisrael is a train wreck that is about to happen.