Following a number of recent attacks against the chareidi community, targeting their “ignorance”, “lack of [secular] education” and lack of skills, labeling them “worms and leeches”, the Ministry of Trade & Industry released figures that paint a slightly different picture, one indicating the chareidi community does comprise a higher percentage of the nation’s workforce than one may be led to believe. The figures indicate that low salaries may be the cause of the 56% poverty rate among chareidim, and not unemployment.
According to the ministry, 48.5% of the chareidi community is part of the nation’s workforce. 65% of the unemployed chareidim have indicted an unwillingness to accept a job in a setting that compels compromising one’s modest standards or in a place of work in which most employees are non-chareidi. Only 8% of the nation’s employers report having chareidi employees.
The average chareidi salary is significant lower than the national average with the average chareidi family monthly income holding at NIS 6,100, half of the average NIS 12,000 reported in non-chareidi homes.
According to HaMevaser, the low salary is the result of the state’s unwillingness to recognize one’s Torah education. Statistics show that while many chareidim invest years in Torah study, only 9.5% have a matriculation diploma or academic degree which would contribute to a higher salary.
According to national standards, 56% of working chareidim are classified as ‘working poor’ due to their low monthly salary. While chareidim represent 8-9% of the national population, chareidim represent 19% of the nation’s poor, perhaps indicating the need for additional academic of vocational education. There are about 650,000 people classified as ‘chareidim’ in by the ministry.
The numbers indicate that 95% of employers explain that the lack of modesty [on a chareidi standard] make accepting chareidim for employment difficult.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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19 Responses
Salaries are mostly based on the skill set required for a job. Unfortunately, many Charedim lack even basic skills in math and science, therefore they are employed in the less skilled, and lower paying jobs.
This is NOT discrrimination, but the realities of the business world.
1. If someone is in a kollel and is recieving money rather than paying tuition, they are employed. That the Israelis count people learning in kollel, and in many cases teachers, as being “unemployed” renders their statistics meaningless.
2. Because of the rules governing kollel “salaries” as well as the rules governing exemption from conscription, a great many frum people work “off the books” – in addition to the fact that many Israelis work “off the books” for a variety of reasons.
3. Israeli bureaucrats and academics have an amazingly naive, and quite unjustified, faith in their own statistics. To determine unemployment among frum Jews one should look for people hanging around street corners being bored.
R’ Yechiel, do you think we could find out how many of the 48.5% are male vs female? I wonder if that would tell an interesting story.
akuperma stop giving excuses for the un acceptable lifestyle we have to educate our kids and learn a parnassay like the gemarah says clearly its not open for interpretation
I just wrote this elsewhere as well, regarding the same issue:
Huldai is completely correct. There is nothing wrong with what he said. I foresee a huge disaster if the state does not FORCE those chareidim who do not work, whose children do not learn anything useful, to either start learning, studying and working for real OR leave the country.
A small minority (like maximum 10%) may be allowed to continue studying and receive stipends for a maximum of 4 or 5 years – just like university students receive in most European countries (this should be the same in Israel as well).
Instead of granting university students NOTHING while chareidim can live their entire lives with just useless kollel study subsidized by the state, the state should grant every student – whether in yeshiva, university or college – a grant lasting 5 years.
Everyone who finished secondary education should be eligible for this grant. What one does with it – prepare himself for a financially independent succesful future by studying secular studies, or dive into Gemara (Talmud) all day – is their choice.
I know of no other country in the western world that pays hundreds of thousands for religious people to just sit and learn. Some countries pay something to state-recognized religious clerics, but this is limited to perhaps 1 cleric out of a few thousand inhabitants – actual rabbis, priests and imams who actually do something other than just learning non-stop.
If private individuals wish to come along and subsidize others who want to learn their entire lives (yes such kollelim exist!), that’s fine with me, I have absolutely no problem with that. But do NOT expect the state to finance your eternal useless studies.
And yes – this is from a black and white (c)haredi. (Though as of lately doubing whether he still belongs in that dress….)
And regarding the fact that chareidim earn less than seculars: given the amount of education most seculars have in comparison with the amount of education most chareidim have, I don’t see anything strange in the fact that chareidim earn half of chilonim.
What is wrong with a lifestyle that provides adquate income (have you observed starving Hareidim wearing rags)? There is more than to life than trying to maximize income. Indeed, if everyone decided on a career based on earning as much as possible, huge areas of the economy would collapse (no teachers, no librarians, no soldiers, and probably, no mothers since having children is from an economic perspective the worst thing a woman can do).
The Hareidim in Israel are largely excluded from the most lucrative parts of the Israeli economy by both institutional and deliberate discrimination. However unemployment is negligible, and almost all, given the choice, have decided that learning and family are a lot more important than getting rich. This should surprise no one. Any Jew who wants to maximize income would have long since given up Shabbos and kashrus, and would have assimilated into the far more lucrative secular economy. We are who we are because we decided that frumkeit is more important than gelt.
It is acceptable but not to you mutif. Since when are you giving the right to say what is acceptable. This is simple arrogance. I could say worse but I will not lower myself to your standards. By the way I myself am a Lawyer and learn everyday and have great respect for those who sit and learn which 3 happen to be my sons.
This isn’t communist Russia and it isn’t a kibbutz. Jobs nowadays are based on education – jobs that pay beyond minimum wage require minimal education. Like computers, basic math, ability to write a report or other modern document in a universally acceptable way, knowledge of how government process works (for government jobs), etc. In other words, all the material in the Israeli bagrut exams.
The funny thing is, Chazal knew very well that jobs require preparation. That’s why there’s mitzva (that I at least try to keep) of teaching kids a trade. Even later poskim debated the difference between a trade and “general business skills,” concluding that kids needed to be taught a trade because having a skill that people will pay for is the necessary level of preparation.
Other issues such as whether we count kollelim as work are not relevent to the discussion of helping chareidi “working poverty.” If the poverty is acknowledged (and to anyone here in Israel I think it’s indisputable), the source is not complaining about the world not giving jobs to people without preparation. Chazal’s answer is to prepare for jobs so that when you need them you can get them.
“But do NOT expect the state to finance your eternal useless studies.
And yes – this is from a black and white (c)haredi. (Though as of lately doubing whether he still belongs in that dress….)”
Excuse me, Mr. Breslauer, but until you wrote “eternal useless studies”, I was thinking that you may be a believing Jew who belongs in the comment section of a frum website. But after reading your blasphemous words about Tora study, you definitely SHOULD HIGHLY doubt whether you belong in frum dress, as your mind seems to have left Tora-true Yiddishkeit…
daniel breslauer, are you sure that you are on the right website?
you compare torahstudy with secular study in university, calling learning in kollel for more than 5 years useless studies, you should be ashamed to call yourself a chareidi jew.
but i will be melamed zechus on you, then you got your rabbinical advise probably from a rabbi who finished his studies after 5 years.
How can anyone say Cheredim who learn do not know math?
Isn’t there plenty of math in learning halacha and Gemarra?
Calculating the new moon and figuring out how many amos is the tchum or how high an eiruv can be
or all the halachos of business dealings, how much over the wholesale price a store owner may charge etc….
That is all math, isn’t it?
To Daniel Breslauer: I suggest you learn the Nefesh Hachaim – sha’ar daled, in order to rid yourself of the perception that learning Torah is “useless”, chas veshalom. The Torah learners are providing the “shefa” for you and me and every one else who is working.
In other words, The Torah considers those who WORK to be the parasites, not the other way around.
#5-“Eternal useless studies”- Are you a Jew who believes in Chazal? Chazal call a person just like you – whoever says “Mah ahany lei rabonnan”,(Of what use are Torah scholars) an Apikorus(see Sanhedrin 99b-100a).Torah study is what brings all life and blessing to the world,its the people who study Torah who really support everyone else.
Mr. Breslauer, calling Torah study “useless” is bona-fide apikorsus( look in perek Heilek, Sanhedrin). Also, since when are we to follow the course of the western countries or the universites?
It is true,however, that, generally speaking, you can have all Jewish men in kollel forever, and that if you want to support your family – you have to learn a profession. This is Das Chazal.
Correction: I meant to say: “you can not have all Jewish men in kollel forever”.
Some people make a living studying literature or music or the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers. The hilonim do not object. Such people could do something more profitable (imagine a world in which such people spent their time following the career track of Bernie Madoff or the sages of Lehman Brothers).
Israel is the best place for Torah study. Just as Harvard or Oxford are the best places for the subjects they specialize in. In fact, the yeshiva world draws so many people to Israel that it has become a major employer, and has a significant macroeconomic impact (much to the annoyance of the hilonim, who would prefer that Israel be famous for his world-renown “night life” (which one can’t mention on YWN since women and children read this site).
Akuperma, please, do not overlook the fact that the Israeli Chareidim are supported for life by government subsidies. It is done in the face of the open resentment of the majority of the country. Even if the whole country and the government were frum, they woud not be obligated to support them like that. There is a major shaila of Chillul HaShem R’l here.
Isn’t limud HaTorah Lishma by definition “useless” ?
Isn’t there an issur beferush leHalacha to make use of Torah study?
I wouldn’t have written what Mr. Breslauer wrote, but in the context of people being unable to get a job, it’s a valid comment that Torah study does not teach what needs to be “use”d for jobs that pay more than minimum.
The government should encourage more hareidi businesses and devote some government offices to be all hareidi. Just look at B+H photo. In a good environment religious people also thrive.