In Israel, where modernity coexists uneasily with tradition, hand-wringing about the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority is a national pastime. Cloistered in poor towns and neighborhoods, exempted from conscription into the military and surviving largely off government handouts, the black-hatted ultra-Orthodox, known as Haredim, have long vexed more secular Israelis. Now, in the wake of an Israeli Supreme Court decision, this perennial tension has escalated to new heights.
The immediate issue is a decades-old state policy of providing stipends to students who attend religious schools, called yeshivas. In June, the court declared those stipends illegal, citing discrimination against secular university students who don’t qualify for such assistance. Last month, however, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers introduced a bill to reinstate the stipend. “The state sees a great importance in encouraging Torah study,” says their proposal.
Opposition to the bill is fierce, as many Israelis believe that decades of welfare and draft exemptions have created a cycle of poverty and dependence among Haredim. “If they want to live in a ghetto, fine, but why should the state pay for it?” Yossi Sarid, a former education minister, told the Associated Press. The controversy has triggered street protests across Israel, and threatens to topple the coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
That is truly an interesting cultural phenomenon if you have ever been to Israel.
Archer is indeed correct. The U/O’s wield political power that is vastly disproportionate to their numbers due to Israel’s parliamentary system of government which provides for so called “proportionate representation.” This basically means that every political party that gets even a relatively small piece of the vote is entitled to a number of seats in the parliament roughly equal to the percentage of the vote they got. Predictably this encourages a proliferation of small and fringe parties that are sometimes extremist. And since it is almost impossible for any one party to gain an absolute majority in parliament, coalitions are required. In order to gain a governing majority the largest party usually has to go hat in hand to the U/O’s and beg for their support. They in turn demand seats in the cabinet despite rarely polling more than low single digits (even with all of the U/O parties combined) and broad concessions to the U/O community in laws and governments benefits.
The political power they hold is astonishing and has been an open scandal in Israel for decades. Not surprisingly though they furiously oppose any reform of Israels dysfunctional system of proportionate representation, and given the need for their votes to form and maintain any government it is unlikely any reform will be forthcoming in the foreseeable future.
The Haredim (or more properly, because it is a gutteral, Charedim) are divided into those from a European or Ashkenazi Orthodox Judaism, who support the Agudat Israel party, and those from a Mediterranean or Sephardic background, who support Shas. The two wings usually (but not always) function under the banner United Torah Judaism. They have never had more than a handful of members of the Knesset and yet, as outlined above, because of proportional representation they are usually essential for a coalition. But note this: there are Arab political parties of equal strength. A governing coalition could in theory include them, but to the best of my knowledge this has never happened. Israel becomes more, not less, divided.
The analogs to these welfare kings exist in certain parts of New York. I remember my mom seething with anger when behind some of these folks in the check out line at the grocery store. The women would sometimes be dressed in mink with large diamonds on their hands, but would whip out their food stamps to pay for the groceries. I can’t count the number of houses in my village that were not on the tax rolls because they were classified as synagogues, simply because a minyan would meet once a week for services.