The War Against Children

Yesterday's post, "The Charedi Master Plan," drew a lot of response, some appropriate and some less so. I regret if my post gave the impression that Rav Berkovitz is some kind of extremist. As I mentioned at the outset, he is most decidedly not so. He is a true ohev Yisrael, a stellar educator who teaches refined behavior and love for all, and generally a voice for moderation in the charedi world. Neither he nor any of his students would ever engage in any kind of extremist behavior. His shiur about Peleg was an aberration which took many people by surprise, and it would be tragically wrong to form an opinion of him based on that shiur alone. If you're going to be learning in a charedi kollel, there is probably no better place to be than the Jerusalem Kollel. (It goes without saying that I personally believe people to be better off in a non-charedi kollel, and that non-charedi synagogues should hire rabbis who are trained in non-charedi institutions - just as charedi shuls would only hire rabbis who are trained in charedi institutions.)

The premise of his talk, that there is a widespread desire in Israel to destroy the charedi way of life, is by no means unique to Rav Berkovitz; it is pretty standard in the charedi world. Others have taken a much more strident tone in this regard. A local shul rabbi told me that prior to the last elections in Beit Shemesh, he was invited to a meeting of community charedi rabbis in which the opening statement was a declaration that "there is a War on Torah" which they must fight. This was a constant theme heard not only in Beit Shemesh, but throughout Israel over the last few years. One of the commentators to the previous post raised an interesting question regarding this:

I think that it might be helpful if you explained whether you disagree with R' Berkowitz about his point that there is a "plan" to change Chareidi society, or if you instead think that there is some effort to integrate Chareidim but that such effort is necessary... Unless you are of the opinion that Chareidim leaving kollelim en masse to pursue a higher education and meaningfully join the workforce is not an existential threat to Chareidi society as it looks today, I'm not sure what your issue with R' Berkowitz's stance is. 

To respond to this, let's discuss another scenario: the War Against Children. This is the ongoing campaign by adults to destroy childrens' desire for freedom to play all day, by forcing them to attend school. Against their will, there is a "social engineering" project which is an existential threat to their desired way of life. They aren't going to be able to be children!

Of course, that's absurd. The existential threat would not be less playing; it would be a world in which children do not receive an education. There's a certain degree of social engineering, but this is wholly appropriate, since the children have no plan as to how to run society without an education. And there's no malicious intent involved; nobody has anything against play, it just has to be balanced with responsibilities. They can still be children with playtime. It would be ridiculous to describe it as a War Against Children; it would be a Desire For Everyone's Survival.

The same is true here. The existential threat to charedi society is not less people in full-time learning (which was the historic norm in Judaism); it's a society facing economic collapse, which will in turn lead the entire country towards economic collapse. There's a desire and effort to influence and change charedi society, which some might call "social engineering," but this is wholly appropriate, since charedi society has not itself formulated any plan as to how societies with large families will survive without people getting professional careers, nor as to how the country will survive with an ever-increasing proportion of charedim. And there's no malicious intent involved; nobody has anything against learning Torah, it just has to be balanced with responsibilities, for the sake of the entire country. Charedim will still be able to learn Torah, they will just have to also get an education and a job, just as many American charedim do and just as pretty much everyone did before the recent Mass Kollel Reformation. It's ridiculous to describe it as a War Against Torah; it's simply a Desire For Everyone's Survival.