Why Shas fails its own constituency
THE JERUSALEM POST
The cabinet is scheduled to vote today on the 2009 budget, and the outcome may hinge on the issue of child allowances. These monthly stipends the state provides to families for each child under 18 carry an annual multi-billion-shekel price-tag.
Shas, the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party, which has 12 Knesset seats and is an integral component of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coalition, says it will vote against the budget if the stipends are not increased. That would leave matters on hold until after the Kadima primary. But Shas has also made clear that it will join a post-Olmert Kadima-led government only if the stipends are increased.
Shas’s stance has the potential of forcing new elections sooner rather than later.
We can understand Shas’s insistence. Families with eight or more children are four times more likely to live under the poverty line. And in 2006 the average haredi household had 4.1 children, compared to the general population of 2.1. So a large chunk of Shas’s constituency stands to benefit from boosted child allowances.
Less money for child allowances appears to have had a regrettable, negative impact on the number of Jewish babies born. The number of children under two years of age in haredi families is marginally down and the average number of children has fallen, from 4.3 in 2001 to 4.3 in 2006. In heavily ultra-Orthodox cities like Beitar and Modi’in Illit, there has been a 10% drop in the birth rate.
AND YET it would be a mistake to let Shas have its way.
Cuts in the stipends were originally initiated in 2002 during the tenure of prime minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud government, by finance minister Silvan Shalom, and continued in 2003 by Binyamin Netanyahu. This reduced the monies channeled to households blessed with children, but it also set in motion a process nothing short of revolutionary. Haredim, who embrace an insular lifestyle, were forced to get off the dole and into the labor market.
In 2001, roughly 23 percent of haredi men worked legally; by 2006, the figure had risen to 28%. Among haredi women the change has been even more dramatic: In 2006, 49% were employed, compared to 42% in 2001. Since many haredim work off the books, the actual number of those employed is probably higher still.
Meanwhile, in response to the need felt by haredi parents to compensate for child allowance cuts, a whole network of colleges and job training programs geared exclusively to the community has sprung up. Thousands of young haredi men and women are flocking to these institutions to learn skills that can gain them entry to the labor market.
Even if a significant portion of haredim go out to work, there will remain, we trust, an elite group of gifted Torah scholars devoting themselves to fulltime Torah studies, thus keeping the embers of Jewish learning glowing.
Perhaps even more important than the change on the ground, however, is the change in perspective among haredi spiritual leaders. The rebbe of the Belz hassidic dynasty, Issachar Dov Rokeach, has called on his followers to find gainful employment – as a matter of religious obligation. A daughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Adina Bar-Shalom, has established a successful job training program for women.
The Lithuanian yeshiva world, meaning non-hassidic (‘mitnaged’) Ashkenazi haredim, remains the primary stronghold of resistance. But this, too, is changing.
SHAS’S CLAIM that augmented child benefits would save tens of thousands of children from poverty is simply unconvincing. Who is to say that the stipends – directly deposited into parents’ bank accounts – benefit their children? Better to earmark such funds for programs aimed directly at children, such as school hot lunch programs.
Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah, teaches that the most sublime act of charity is to give a poor person the means of self-sustenance. Why? Because unlike with other forms of charity, the recipient is not humbled by the benefactor.
Shas, in short, may be doing itself a political favor by championing increased child allowances. But it is doing the haredim themselves a disservice, one that could keep them in a condition of dependency for years to come.
Samuel I live in he heart of Shas country and they have above above average birth rate I think, but as in most out back communities the young tend to leave after the Army , at least those who go to the Army and gravitate to the bright lights and action of the Big Orange. Those that stay are more influenced by cultural provlivities more than I think religious as they maintain some elements of Judaism in customs most get a primitive religious education. The tie that bind is still Family and extended family and this truism is weakening with time and modernism. The other side of the coin is there is a big push by the Orthodox of all sects in Judaism in balei tshuvah ( return to religious fundamental roots, and this seems to be accross ethnic divides) Jewish numbers are more important for changing the internal political status quo in another generation or so and therefore can be looked at positively.
This brings us to 2 basic problems. Those having large families tend to be unemployable or at best making minimum wages and are therefore in need of external help. The economic productive sector is loath to pay for what they believe are parasitic and domographic threats to their way of life. The other problem is our egalitarian laws require us to pay for large Arab Israeli families as well so one actually cancels out the other. My personal feeling is that it is absurd for a Zionist state? To pay and support non Zionists Jewish and Arab to breed and form in the future the seeds for the dissolution of the Zionist project.
I don’t agree with you re: American aliyah. They will come either voluntarily or in other ways less happily but history makes no exceptions.
A comment on the data in the article:
“4.3 in 2001 to 4.3 in 2006. In heavily ultra-Orthodox cities like Beitar and Modi’in Illit, there has been a 10% drop in the birth rate.”
First, there is an obviously a mistake in that there is no drop (4.3 to 4.3). Also, birth rates are usually given as “births per 1,000 persons per year” while a more accurate measure is the number of children born to each woman over her lifetime in a given population. Lastly, to then switch to raw percentages (“a 10% drop in the birth rate”)is potentially misleading: it sounds more dramatic to say 10% but without a context it is impossible to gauge the actual change.
On the substance of the article: living in America, it is less proper for me to venture into the politics of this topic. However, please allow me to offer the following:
In my opinion it is best to remember “V’al titvada larashut” (Avot 1:10). Yes, we need to have a voice in government in order to protect our interests. But when we become too reliant upon the government, we may get too caught-up in the deal making, the back-room arrangements, and lose sight of our principles. Better to become as self-sufficient and self-reliant as possible and thus support a Torah-true life in which we can rely upon Hashem rather than the politicians.
I still like Shas.
The Arab savages are breeding like crazy. Yasser Arafat said “the womb of the Palestinian mother is our secret weapon in our final victory over our Jewish enemy.” The European Union and UNRWA reward Palestinians by paying them extra for every additional child they have. They teach those children Jew-hatred from the time of conception. They constantly encourage them to become islamic martyrs by killing Jewish babies. And if you have ten kids from each one of four wives, you probably don’t even notice it if a few of them go off as suicide bombers.
In America, you can be addicted to crack and infected with AIDS, and have ten kids from ten different fathers, and I have to support them all with my tax money. You can be a Mexican, check into an American hospital to deliver your kid, and I have to pay your hospital bill and support the kid (who is an American citizen) with my tax money. If I question this, I am branded a racist and told, “You can’t blame the children and you can’t let them suffer.”
Israel needs more Jews. But aliyah is all tapped out. American Jews will never leave America to go Israel.
Shas (so called “oriental” Jews) and Torah-true Jews in general, consider it a mitzvah to bring more Jewish souls down into the world, and will do so no matter what.
But the Ashkenazi elite in Israel (the Hebrew-speaking goyim) are indeed racist, and do blame the Jewish children for being born, and are willing to let them suffer. Jews who have Jewish babies are “parasites”, while Jew-hating Arabs are “poor sweet innocent victims of Jewish oppression”.
An Israel where no Jewish children are born is doomed (the goal of post-Zionism). And while an Israel where only religious Jews have children may also be doomed, it at least has a fighting chance.
(As always, please correct me if I am wrong.)
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Plenty of time to dicker.. I no longer get excited about Israeli politics it’s all so crooked. I’ve heard the old saw, “Haifa pays, Tel Aviv prays, and Jerusalem prays.” If that arrangement is fine with all parties concerned, I have no objection.