Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni spoke from the Knesset plenum on Monday amid discussions regarding the approval of the state budget.
Gafni addressed the rampant incitement in recent days against the Chareidi sector, noting the hypocrisy of opposition politicians, who refrained from any criticism of the Chareidim prior to the elections when they still had hope that the Chareidi parties would join them.
“In the last elections, there wasn’t a word against Charedim,” Gafni said. “They said I was a leftist and met with Lapid and Gantz and hoped that we would go with the left. If we would have gone with them, we would have seen numerous reports about why Israel needs lomdei Torah! How can you say that you want democracy? We live in a dictatorship – I have to do what Haaretz says.”
“Yair Lapid talks about the army. With all due respect, I didn’t see Lapid in combat [Lapid filled his army service in an office position at the IDF newspaper] but Lapid who sat at the IDF newspaper and gossiped about officers and civilians.”
Gafni continued: “My Chareidi brother, more Chareidi than me, was in the Shalom HaGalil War (Lebanon War in 1982). He’s a type of Chareidi that if you would see him, you would scream at him: ‘Parasite, go to the army!’ That’s what happened – we lived in Tel Aviv and that’s what they called him. He returned from the Battle of Sultan Yacoub, his friends were killed there. His children receive half the budget of those of Yair Lapid, the one that served at the IDF newspaper.”
Gafni also spoke about his adult granddaughter [who recently gave birth to her first child and turned Ganfi into a great-grandfather]. “I have a granddaughter who works in high-tech, earns well – together with her Chareidi friends who studied with her at Wolf high-school in Bnei Brak.”
‘But her school is budgeted for half of what a state school receives. It is a school that is completely supervised by the Education Ministry – they study the core curriculum, the graduates go to high-tech. But there are people sitting here who say she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t just study the core curriculum – chemistry, algebra, she also studies Judaism. And her school still gets only half of the budget other schools get. Why?”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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20 Responses
Nice anecdotes, if true, but why should government policy be based on the .001 % outlier cases, rather than the societal norms, which are nothing like the outlying cases he describes?
The bit about Lapid working at the IDF newspaper is disingenuous. Soldiers don’t just choose where in the army they serve. Tzahal, just like every other army, figures out their needs and new soldier’s abilities etc and figures out where it helps them most to have them. Tachlis, Lapid might be a bum, but he gave three years of his life to the army and to the country.
That’s the price for RELIGOUS ZIONISM
You tell them Gafni
Great rabbi once said there is no answer for answers speaking to the bad minded is not good as says in mishleh also “do not talk to someone when he is angry” it is hypocritical to go a place that never respect torah and argue with them about who is getting better chocolate cake they do not care about sense or have any mercy the people that choose to hate Torah because they was born from bad blood but know of the Jewish religion are just like esav and have no internal future in the of Israel not for me maybe for aguda people I only pray that they’re ugly clause and gehenom Torah won’t hurt my purpose in life of the true God not one that exist with selling yourself to that Torah haters and having to argue with them
Silly speech.
The fact is that the vast vast majority of Chareidim don’t serve. They are privileged.
But his job is to Shnorer more and more money.
M,
It helps the idf choose a non combat job if the person’s father is TOMMY LAPID
If he returned from war, he wasn’t very haredi. Unless he was a chabadnik putting tfillin on soldiers.
Also M: soldiers have a lot of input in where to serve, and someone who is fit for combat duty will always be sent to combat.
Perhaps all this sniping from both sides would be mitigated if there weren’t these recurring demands from certain MKs for more funds to support those who are not working. They should eliminate subsidies for ALL segments of the population, religious AND secular and provide a social safety net using rigorous tests for those unable to work due to disability, illness, single parents caring for young children etc. The Bank of Israel has forecast dire financial outcomes under the current trajectory of government spending versus projected revenues from taxes and other sources. It is not a viable path although political hacks on both sides will push for greater spending until they cannot print enough NIS w/o triggering massive inflation that will destroy the economy.
why are we giving avigdor leiberman gan eden everyday for the zechussim for supporting torah😉
Serving as IDF newspaper writer counts – and serving as Learner of Torah does not.
Why ?
@Doom
It’s very clear he was healthy for combat and he had all the protection he needed to get out of combat. It is VERY common for people to get out of combat positions. There is currently a shortage of combat soldiers because of the average secular Israeli not wanting to go combat.
Combat positions are definitely critical to the IDF’s mission, and many soldiers are very eager to go into such units. But soldiers in hundreds of other positions are also critical to the IDF’s mission. Who knows, maybe Lapid faked his physical to obtain a non-combat position, or perhaps his father pulled some strings, or perhaps he just said he wanted to do something at the newspaper and they said ok, or perhaps he just wasn’t cut out to do a combat position. Whatever the reason, he ended up giving up three years of his life to the army and to the country.
To enlighten the ignorant and call out the haters:
Myth #1: Chareidim are parasites; they don’t work.
Yes they do. In almost every chareidi household there is at least one employed adult. Often it is a female (i.e., wife/mother), which should be lauded by the progressive left, but plenty of men work as well, and many more would if their military exemption would allow them to. It is a well known secret that Chareidi men are needed in the workforce way more than in the army but their hands are tied.
Myth #2: Chareidim are the only draft-dodging share-the-burden shirkers.
More and more Chareidim are serving in the army despite the spiritual challenges IDF culture presents them. As a minority group, the percentage of its enlisted members is relatively high compared to Muslim, Christian, and radical self-hating leftist, and other societal groups. They would be higher still if the IDF was solely an Israel Defense Force and not dominated by progressive leadership to be shaped into an Israel Diversity Forum.
I feel that Gimmel/UTJ does little to serve the communities it represents but in this case we have an MK actually advocating for the people who elected him, in championing the rights of Chareidim to a fair and funded education. Kudos to him.
And maybe if the secular/left would at all acknowledge the contribution and sacrifice of Chareidim to Israeli society, instead of maligning and demonizing them, maybe we could have all the conversations that we desperately need. And please don’t say “well, Chareidim should respect the sacrifice made by Chayalei Tzahal” because they absolutely do!
dbrim: Your claims that “plenty” of Haredi men work and that ‘more and more” Haredim are serving in the army are FALSE. The Times of Israel reported the following on January the second of this year:
“the unemployment rate among Haredi men is three times that of their non-Haredi Jewish counterparts in 2021: 49% compared to 14%.
“Haredi men also do not serve in the Israel Defense Forces in significant numbers, with roughly 1,200 doing so in 2020 — nearly half as many as in 2015.”
In other words, nearly half of all Haredi men in Israel don’t work.
As for national service: The current Haredi population in Israel stands at around 1.175 million. Let’s be conservative and say that the number of able-bodied Haredi men stands at 50,000. This means that no more than 2.4% of able-bodied Haredi men serve in the IDF. (And that number is half of what it had been back in 2015.)
These statistics are a matter of record, and people have begun to take notice. Just under 90 percent of all tax payments are made by non-Orthodox Israeli Jews while members of the Haredi community only contribute 2 percent of all income tax payments.
And we’re shocked and appalled that non-Haredi Israeli Jews are fed up?
Many Israelis who serve in the IDF and become active members of the workforce resent the fact that they pay NINE times more in income tax and SIX times more in overall tax than their ultra-Orthodox counterparts who neither serve nor work. These numbers come from the Central Bureau of Statistics and Finance Ministry.
If you wish to obfuscate reality, please try to do so more adroitly.
And in the USA, we get NOTHING!
maybe free bussing?
“If you wish to obfuscate reality, please try to do so more adroitly. “
Did you want to discuss this or just insult me and accuse me of lying?
It seems that this is personal to you, as it is to me as a chareidi woman who works, whose husband works, and whose children work or are in school getting degrees in chareidi michlalot.
As a researcher, I can certainly appreciate your skepticism of anecdotal data, but I would also caution your readily accepting survey data presented by biased sources with an agenda. In addition, some of the polls you mention are dated.
I noticed that you didn’t address the point I made about nearly every Chareidi household having at least one employed adult – are you against women working outside the home, do you disagree with women being the primary financial household providers?
Currently, most Chareidi women (feel free to check these statistics) are entering higher paying fields including computers and technology, the “therapy” fields (speech, OT), optometry, social work, bioengineering, as opposed to classroom teaching, early childhood education (not that there is anything “wrong” with these fields) and will bring in income substantial enough to support their families. So the comparison you would want to make is the percentage of employed adults (not just men) across sociological groups, and also mean income. Additionally, I would think you would be supportive of any initiative that facilitates higher education among chareidim so that they can work to support their families.
I’m not sure where all those tax numbers are coming from (source please?) but if you believe that chareidim somehow pay less tax, that is patently absurd. And the subsidies they received in the past for children have decreased dramatically.
And speaking of children, you may not agree with this but I believe (needs to be researched) that many secular Israelis are happy to have 2.3 children and let the chareidim worry about the real existential demographic threat of Arab population growth, which is fine by us. They are also okay with going to the beach on Shabbos, washing their cars, etc. and assuage their consciences with the knowledge that the religious are taking care of the Jewish identity of the country. Also fine. I think that it is a small minority of loud secular leftists that feel tremendous animus toward chareidim for reasons only their therapist understand (not poking fun at therapy) – most secular Israelis are not resentful, and there is more acceptance and ahavat yisroel than you imply.
Regarding the army, the comparison I made was of chareidim with other minority groups which I think is reasonable because these are the groups that do not enlist due to ideological considerations.
The numbers of Chareidim enlisting does wax and wane, but see this year’s statistics. You did not address the sociocultural challenges faced by chareidim in the army and to that point, neither does the IDF itself because they desire the status quo secular progressive army culture and don’t particularly want chareidim to fell comfortable in the army.
Hope we can agree to disagree respectfully. Chag someach.
dbrim: Your assumption that this is personal is a trite attempt at discrediting the facts I have presented. Of course, Haredi women work. They must work in order to put food on the table. This is a disgrace for the men who are in breach of the kesubah by not providing material support for their wives.
You obviously have a wonderful family. Respectfully, though, yours is something of an outlier among Haredi Israelis.
To call the statistics “patently absurd” without having seen the numbers, or to dismiss a statistic because of where it was published, is to play a zero-sum game. Are we now to trust only the press releases of our own organizations? And you are a researcher?
As an Orthodox Jew, I am overjoyed that the frum community in Israel is burgeoning. This is obviously the will of Hashem. However, selfishness and a dull social conscience are not the classical traits of righteousness. Some among us (present company excluded, of course) treat differently observant Jews as gentiles. Much more can be said, but this is enough for now.
Here are sources for the statistics:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-population-will-be-16-of-israelis-by-decades-end/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20employment%20rates%20among%20Haredi%20women,Jewish%20counterparts%20in%202021%3A%2049%25%20compared%20to%2014%25.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-12-27/ty-article/.premium/secular-israelis-pay-six-times-more-in-taxes-than-ultra-orthodox-govt-report-shows/00000185-53ce-d481-abc5-d7fee2c30000
A few thoughts on reliability/validity in research: Haaretz has neither. The article you cite is at best a tertiary source that quotes, of all people, Yair Lapid, the Anti-chareidi, capital A, rambling about numbers that clearly don’t add up, and is nothing more than is a political hit piece aimed at incitement against the religious (see Norm’s comment in the comment section – you don’t need to have taught college statistics (which I did) to understand that there are more than a few pieces missing from the pie, as in the pie chart). Also, the data reported in this poor excuse for an article on supposed differences in the amount of taxes paid by chareidim versus chilonim does not at all refer to how much each individual household pays, chareidi or chiloni, which you implied differed from each other, which IS patently absurd, and misleading. Your position is based on confirmation bias and invalid data sources. You do not approve of Chareidim and,well, that is your prerogative.
But you are correct: I do try to love and respect all Jews, to focus on all that we have in common, to increase my ahavas yisroel, to appreciate the sacrifices made by chayalei yisroel, not to rely on matnas basar vadum, and I am not all that much of an outlier in my chareidi community, if you scratch beneath the surface.