Saving Charedim, Saving Israel

The desperate need, and an idea for addressing it

Ten years ago, the Israeli edition of Mishpacha magazine ran a shocking feature story about poverty and financial collapse in the Israeli charedi community. The only thing still keeping the community going since then is the enormous funding and welfare payments and tax exemptions from the government, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually. Obviously this can’t last forever. Even if Likud manages to stay in power forever via consenting to charedi demands, eventually the money will run out. And the longer this catastrophe is pushed off, the harder it will hit when it inevitably eventually happens.

Shortly after the aforementioned article appeared, the American edition of Mishpacha ran an extraordinary op-ed by Jonathan Rosenblum, a longtime ambassador for the charedi world. He stated nothing other than that which is obvious to many people outside the charedi world (as well as to some very pained people within it), but it was suprising to see such a writer admit it in such a publication. Rosenblum pointed out that when you put together the exponential growth of the charedi community with its opposition to secular education and its deliberate under-employment, then the eventual result will be the financial collapse not only of charedi society, but of all Israel.

To this, Rosenblum added a further crucial point. He noted that once Israel is turned into a Third World country, it will not be able to fund the kind of army and qualitatively superior defenses needed to survive against those who seek to destroy it. Quite simply, this will mean the end of Israel.

Since then, we’ve learned that the security challenges facing Israel are not only those that require money, but also those that can only be solved by manpower. There is already a shortage of tens of thousands of soldiers in the IDF. And if and when the Third Intifada breaks out, with millions of Palestinians having access to huge amounts of weapons that have been smuggled in to the West Bank, and potentially also conflict with the 42,000 troops of the PA, the manpower shortage in the IDF could be truly disastrous.

Needless to say, the almost total lack of participation in the IDF by the charedi community - out of 82,000 eligible young men, only 177 have responded to recent enlistment orders - seriously harms Israel. This is both direct harm in terms of the lack of manpower, but also indirectly in terms of the crushing burden placed on reservists who are needed to keep the economy going, and the enormous harm it does to national morale; many people don’t want to be making the enormous sacrifice of doing reserve duty for decades while an entire sector of the population is not serving (and even being paid not to serve).

Of course, I’ve been writing about all this for many years. But the situation is so bad, with so little hope for change, that we need to think about how to step up efforts to save the country from nothing less than utter destruction.

There are all kinds of efforts that need to be made to address this. There is political campaigning. There is creating and promoting institutions that offer charedim opportunities to receve a secular education and engage in military service. There is outreach to charedim in Israel - flyers, posters, publications. And there is another aspect that I feel is overlooked: outreach to people outside of Israel, both charedim and non-charedim, who perpetuate the problem either by funding charedi society, by promoting or defending it, or who move to Israel, put their kids in charedi frameworks, and increase the problem.

There are a number of institutions and organizations which tackle various partial aspects of this challenge. But it seems to me that there is also a need for an organization which will take on the challenge as a whole. There is also a need for an organization which will specifically deal with English-speakers both in Israel and abroad. Ideally, the latter would be a part of the former.

There are two things that such organizations would require. One is a network of contacts - rabbis both inside and outside of Israel, philanthropists, journalists, activists, and so on. I am personally aquainted with many such people in each category who would be perfect for such a network. But the second requirement is for someone to actually take ownership of the project and work full-time at it.

I personally cannot take on such a role. My obligations to the Biblical Museum of Natural History (which has a unique role to play in Israeli society) do not permit me to do so. For the same reason, I cannot solicit funds for such an organization. However, I do know of certain sources of funding which might suffice to get such an organization started. Perhaps it could be called “Hatzalat Israel.”

If you’re a rabbi, philanthropist or other such influential person who would be interested in being part of such an effort, please write to me at zoorabbi@zootorah.com, with “Hatzalat Israel network” in the subject line. And if you think that you could be the right person to run such an organization, please send me a CV, with “Candidate for Hatzalat Israel” in the subject line. (The correct subject descriptions are crucial, as I’m already drowning in hundreds of emails).

Maybe between us all, we can put something together and help save the charedim from their financial collapse and the State of Israel from its economic and military collapse, along with the Holocaust that will inevitably ensue.