Opposition Leader Yair Lapid continued his attack on Charedim and specifically Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s declaration that Charedim would “go abroad” if forcibly enlisted in the IDF, saying that they would find it difficult to adjust to life outside of Israel.
“If the Charedim go abroad, they will find that the ultra-Orthodox there work for a living, not even dreaming that someone will finance them,” Lapid told Army Radio.
Lapid’s comments were met with criticism from Shas, which accused him of “inciting against the Charedi community.”
In response, Lapid released a statement arguing that the enlistment of 66,000 Charedi youth would result in 105 new battalions for the IDF.
Clearly, Lapid has no clue that there is an incredible number of Yungerleit sitting and learning in the United States. Not to mention that America loves to fund people who choose to be unemployed, especially migrants.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
17 Responses
This privileged white elitist bum never served a day in the IDF. Who is he to lecture others? Do as I say not as I do.
This is a pretty poorly thought-out article. There is a limit to how many men can be supported in a Kolel without government subsidies as are provided in Israel – and the last crack about supporting unemployed migrants is really I called for.
an Israeli Yid
The analogy between kollel yungerleit and, l’havdil, illegal, Third World trash is a bizoyon l’kavod haTorah that should be repudiated by anyone with a Yiddishe neshoma.
Everyone in Israel receives government aid not just charedis. It’s a socialist country. Almost every job in Israel other than hi tech is kept afloat by the govt one way or another. Everyone gets what we call Medicaid. Charedim love to work as entrepreneurs. Look at ny London Brussels etc. Israel’s economy does not support these kind of jobs. Fix your economy and you’ll see charedis will thrive. Also now is not the time to revamp the entire idf so as to make it work for cheredi families. Do that in times of peace.
He happens to be 100% that 98% of men here in the United States work for a living especially in the Chasidesh and non yeshivish world!!.
this guy is the biggest freeloader himself.
105 battalions, fully armed, consisting of soldiers who hate the government and are disinclined to follow their non-hareidi officers would be a recipe for a disaster. Mutiny in wartime often leads to regime change (cf: Nicholas Romanov in 1917). Lapid not only doesn’t realize the importance of non-state funding for Torah institutions, but assumes that once drafted yeshiva students will give up Torah and Mitsvos and become good secular zionists (and note that those yeshiva students who are zionists, already serve in the army, so once is talking about those who see that zionist states as less than legitimate).
If the worldu started seeing yeshiva students and rabanim trying to flee the country, and requesting asylum (as refugees from religious persecution and more importantly, as conscientious objectors rejecting military service), it would seriously undermine the status of the State of Israel. Under international law, Israel’s claim on its territory is very weak since international law does not recognize the Israelis as an indigenous people reclaiming their homeland, and no one ever got permission from the Arabs for partition – and so Lapid wants to build on these challenges by throwing into doubt whether the Zionist Israelis have any claim to be the “real Jews” by chasing the most Jewish of Israelis into exile. The Zionists do not understand that most support of Israel in the western world is not in admiration of Israeli “startup nation” or its secularism or its support for its own LGBTQ groups – western support reflects the view that Israel is a Jewish homeland and the Am ha-Torah are the indigenous people returning from exile. Expelling large number of frum Jews for being too authentic would undermine that support (and note that the secular left in the west cheered Hamas’s attacks, so in spite of Israel going to great lengths to get left wing support, even those who would be persecuted by the Palestinians are cheering on genocide of Jews).
The zionists could get away by applying a single standard for granting benefits and privileges to all who refuse to serve in the army, whether they be Muslims or Hareidi Jews or secular zionist cowards. They could tie substantial economic benefits to military services (as many countries do). The government could cut its financial support to yeshivos of non-veterans (though they have a problem as Bnei Torah are not as addicted to a 1st world standard of living as are the hilonim, and probably could go back to managing on private donations from golus as was the case for the two thousand years). However trying to close down the yeshivos and draft the students would probably set the stage for the final collapse of the zionism movement.
Torah study is only as good as a person allows it to transform from self-centeredness to love of others and the Creator.
@ilovetora – you don’t seem to know much about Israel. There is a per child payment to parents that goes to all, but there are specific government payments made to those learning in Kolel that others don’t get. There are also subsidies that are paid for daycare for those studying or with lower-income jobs – but the justification for those is that they’re mainly temporary, until people get a job or are earning enough to pay on their own; they’re not intended for lifelong students. And as to health care – it’s far from Medicaid. Every working individual has to pay 5% Mas Briut to cover this health insurance.
It is true that Israel started as a socialist country, but it has not been one for the last 20-30 years. It is true too that the red tape around running one’s own business is more onerous than in the US, but it’s about in line with most of Europe. It’s not the government’s tax policies that keep Chareidim from being entrepreneurs – it’s the addiction to government handouts, encouraged by Askanim and leaders who don’t want to lose control of their power base.
an Israeli Yid
Israel is a socialist country. That’s what you get.
My brother and his wife are BOTH high level software engineers, and their total take hone pay is less than one low level software engineer in the US of A.
Overthrow the socialist government and everyone will be better off.
is this guy even jewish? mechyche teysa
“..Not to mention that America loves to fund people who choose to be unemployed, especially migrants.”
that was the best one so far by ywn
All of you that don’t want to support the government of Israel, you can go to Uganda and be as frum as you want. There is no need for you to continually take from others while contributing nothing to society.
Puhleeze stop with your self righteousness. I am a therapist in a Charedi Kehila, I know what the Bochurim and married men are dealing with. And its not a kosher subject. So stop feigning to be such a שייגמר.
גענוג מיט די נארעשקייט
*שטייגער
In Israel the government subsidies to avreichim is not much, maybe around 500- 700 shekel a month. To say that the government “supports them” is a little bit of an exaggeration to say the least.
Moshe, that’s selective bias. Frum Jews don’t go to therapy (what do we have in common with Freud and Yung?), so if a Bachur or a married man goes to a therapist, he is already pretty damaged, so no wonder many of your customers have unkosher issues. Question: why did you choose to go into the field where you get to deal with people’s unkosher issues? Don’t have to answer us here, just think about it…
Anyway, the handouts issue is a red herring and has nothing to do with joining the IDF. The IDF clearly and unambiguously tells anyone who is willing to hear, that the reason they want to enlist the haredim is not because they think that Yossi Eizenbach is going to be a killer special ops warrior, or even a useful truck driver, but in order to “integrate charedim into the wider society” which is open code for “secularize coercion”. You don’t need to be anti-Zionist to understand that drafting Charedi youth is the de-religiozation by brainwashing, or simply — shmad.
As a personal anecdote — I grew up in a religious zionist community in Shomron, and out of all of my pre-Army friends who went to the IDF, nearly all threw off their kippas during their term. I was super enthusiastic to join the IDF too, but when I saw this, I threw my tzav rishon in the garbage. This is why I am so aware of the danger of the bakum (draftee base).
I think it is important to know that the notion that all are ideally meant to spend their entire lives learning full time, as`in EY is contrary to the hashkafa of the American Gedolim who we revere.
Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky as well as Rav Hutner, were very outspoken about it.
It was not a concession to “America”. It was their fundamental Torah hashkafa.
In this regard, they would agree with Lapid.
Anyone who knew Rav Hutner, or even had one conversation with him, knows that he would bristle at the notion that a working person could not be a Ben Torah in the full sense of the word.
*Doom777* open your eyes to the real world. There are many Haredi therapists and there are rampant problems throughout the Haredi world that need skilled trained helpers. Anyone who, from the inside, who honestly looks at the Haredi world knows that there is a very sizeable percentage of “heilige bochurim* and “avreichim” who whilst not serving in the IDF are also not serving in any Yeshiva or Kollel. those who are in the wider world also know that there are serious issues of “non-kosher” behaviour in our world. It is simple to blame “the Internet”, which you are using to see this message, but the days when the Rabbonim could simply say NO and be listened to have long since past. Fresh enlightened strategies are needed. As long as those nominally leading our communities simply carry on saying NO and don’t look outside their own sheltered daled amos, things are only going to continue getting worse.