ULTRA-ORTHODOX ("HAREDI") Jews in Israel Enter The Work Force
"A Shift in Haredi Society: Vocational Training and Academic Studies."

The snag in the Haredi working plan

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/394166.html

By Aryeh Dayan

Three weeks ago, the Haredi weekly "In the Community" published an article that attacked a true sacred cow: "Alongside the glorious troops who are sacrificing themselves in the tent of the Torah," the publisher, Dudi Zilbershlag, wrote, "idlers have emerged for whom it is not honorable to make a living from work. Their external image is that of Torah scholars, but their internal essence is empty and loutish."

The writer went on to note that the phenomenon was more acute within the Lithuanian camp - the anti-Hasidic group - than among the Haredi public overall. Yated Ne'eman, the daily newspaper that represents the Lithuanian world of yeshivas, did not take that lying down. "Not even [Meretz MK Yossi] Sarid or [Shinui leader Yosef] Lapid attained a level of hatred such as that for Torah scholars." This is a geometric leap in the debate over the question of whether yeshiva students should go to work, which has been preoccupying the Haredi society for some years.

The controversy reflects meaningful deep processes that are occurring within that society, which are described in a new study by Dr. Yaacov Lupu, from the Jerusalem-based Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies (http://www.fips.org.il/), under the title "A Shift in Haredi Society: Vocational Training and Academic Studies."

As the title indicates, the study deals with the changes that have occurred in the past decade in Haredi society's attitude toward professional training and academic studies, and through those developments a move from the yeshivas and kollels (yeshivas for married men) into the labor market. Underlying these changes is the recognition that the "scholars' society" - the ideological social structure that sanctifies yeshiva study and pushes every Haredi male to find his place in that framework - has produced a serious crisis in Haredi society and has brought about the need for change. According to Lupu, that change is already under way. In recent years the attitude toward general studies and the acquisition of a profession has received something of a validation," he writes. That validation, he says, remains qualified and partial, and the Haredi leadership is trying to guide the developments in accordance with its worldview.

The internal Haredi debate still revolves around the limits of that validation. Zilbershlag wants to extend the limits, while Yated Ne'eman, which represents circles who gave their assent to the validation as such, wants to restrict them and play the validation down as much as possible.

Lupu's study describes a slow process, studded with pitfalls, abrupt stops and regressions, which has encountered no little internal opposition. Nevertheless, his evaluation is that the direction of the development is clear, and that the same reasons that caused the Haredi leadership to validate the start of the process will prompt them to continue to encourage it. His study treats the term "shift" with academic cautiousness and refrains from the use of more dramatic concepts, such as "change" or "revolution."

"I used the term `shift' because in the meantime there is no change here, not of 180 degrees, or even of 90 degrees," says Lupu. "What we have is something closer to the signal light of a car. The Haredi society is signaling its intention to depart from the road on which it is traveling. I believe this is of great importance, because no one signals if he doesn't intend to make a turn."

Escape from the army

Lupu locates the start of the shift in 1996, when Haredi society reached the apogee of its political and economic power. "At that time it became clear to the Haredi leadership that the scholars' society had realized the goal for which it was formed," he notes. "It was intended to rehabilitate the world of the yeshivas that was destroyed in the Holocaust and ensure its survival. In the mid-1990s, the yeshivas in Israel reached dimensions that exceeded those in the golden years in Lithuania, and the Torah sages understood that they faced no further danger. So, for the first time since the Holocaust, they allowed themselves to look inside and examine the price that the Haredi society was compelled to pay for the existence of the scholars' society."

And they were very unsettled by what they saw there: "Suddenly they discovered that in the yeshivas and kollels there were large numbers of people who were not qualified to study Torah and who were certainly not going to be great in Torah. They realized that the yeshivas and the kollels had become an escape for people who were afraid of the army or for people who were untrained for any other work. They began to be concerned that this trend would harm the yeshivas."

Their anxiety, Lupu says, increased when they discovered than some of the shababniks - Haredi slang for young men who don't study and spend most of their time cruising the streets - "belong to the most privileged Ashkenazi families."

In light of this situation, Lupu writes in his study, "many Haredi leaders were increasingly of the opinion that these young people should be directed to a track of vocational training, the more so as they felt that the growing weakness of the scholars' society had begun to threaten the status of the pure Torah elite."

Two additional facts facilitated the crystallization of this awareness. The first was the high-tech boom at the time, which also drew young people who had no high-school diploma or formal education; the rabbis preferred that this process take place under their supervision. The second was the illness of Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Schach, who was adamantly opposed to any change in the character of the scholars' society. "There are some who claim," Lupu writes cautiously, "that his withdrawal in effect from public leadership removed the last barrier to the introduction of general and academic studies in the Haredi society." At the same time, he quotes a different opinion, according to which Schach approved the shift before he fell ill.

Be that as it may, the authorization to open the first Haredi vocational training center, which gave courses organized by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Joint Israel, was given at the end of 1996 by Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Shalom Elyashiv, the two rabbis who became the leaders of the Lithuanian public in the wake of Rabbi Schach's illness. Since 1999, the spiritual committee they established to oversee the center's activity has also supervised the Haredi college in Bnei Brak, where students can obtain a first degree in computer sciences, accounting and business administration, under the academic supervision of Bar-Ilan University and with the authorization of the Council for Higher Education.

The spiritual committee made approval for opening the college conditional on "the curriculum not containing studies of thought, ideas or literature or any other study which touches on heresy, heaven forbid." However, not long afterward the committee authorized law studies for Haredim at a college of law in Hod Hasharon (an institution with a national-religious character); accounting, tax consulting and land assessing at the College of the South in Ashdod; and law and business administration at the Academic College in Kiryat Ono, which opened a special campus for Haredi students in Or Yehuda.

The Shas factor

The validation of academic studies by the Lithuanian Torah sages led Shas, a Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party, and its spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, to follow in their footsteps. A nonprofit association established by Shas in 1997 signed an agreement with the Jerusalem branch of Touro College, an American institution, which made it possible for 40 teachers and principals in the Shas education network to study for a first degree in educational administration. This was followed by the opening of academic courses in business administration for Shas functionaries in local governments.

A few years later, Rabbi Yosef sought to establish a Sephardi Haredi college which would offer, in addition to the subjects available in the Bnei Brak institution, social work, psychology and paramedical fields. The Council for Higher Education made the establishment of the new college conditional on a merger with the Bnei Brak college, and that condition led to the collapse of the initiative.

According to Lupu, "The Lithuanian rabbis opposed the merger on the grounds that the moral commitment of the Sephardim wasn't strong enough, and that supervision over them was lax."

Shas's entry into this arena was accompanied by considerable publicity in the secular media, which brought about the backtracking of the Lithuanian rabbis. "They didn't retract their support unequivocally, but they lowered their profile," Lupu writes. "Today they are reluctant to link their names to the subject. To the extent that they support any arrangements at all in this spirit, their support is ad hoc and they do not grant sweeping, highly publicized permission. Similarly, the bodies active in the sphere of vocational training and academic studies refrain from publicizing their work today, and they operate as furtively as possible."

Nevertheless, Haredi men in their late twenties and in their thirties continue to acquire a profession, even if their numbers at this stage count for not much higher than a "signal light." By the end of September 2003, some 1,500 Haredi men had been trained in computers, electronics, graphics, accounting and electricity at the Haredi center for vocational training. Another 1,000 have since completed their studies at the academic colleges in Kiryat Ono, Hod Hasharon, Ashdod and Bnei Brak. Lupu says that another 500 or so will complete their studies this year. A few hundred Haredi women have also gone through these courses, but their training does not signal a shift: Women were never part of the scholars' society, and their work in general professions gained legitimacy years ago.

From a macro-economic or micro-Haredi perspective, 2,500 or 3,000 people really constitute quite a small public, Lupu admits. "However, if we take into account the conventional approaches in the Haredi community, that figure takes on a different meaning. I, for one, have great respect for the Haredi leadership, which in eight years, as a result of hard, quiet work, succeeded in producing 3,000 graduates of colleges and of vocational training courses."

"The future of this process, he says, depends in part on factors that are not under the control of the Haredi leadership. The situation of the economy and the labor market in Israel will affect the process no less than the attitude taken by the rabbis.

"The fact that the economy entered a crisis just as the Haredim were beginning to understand the importance of going into the labor market creates a serious problem, Lupu says, "because a young Haredi who succeeds in mustering all the inner strength needed to take a vocational training course and then is forced to return to the kollel because he can't find work, has an adverse effect on his whole surroundings.

"In my view, the fact that there was no synchronization between the intra-Haredi process and the micro-economic processes in the country is a real tragedy."
- posted by Izak @ 7:01 AM