Focus on Issues: Will Devotion to Study Lead to Economic Disaster for Haredim?

Rushing back to class along the twisting alleyways, a yeshiva student named Yishayahu breaks the midday quiet in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem’s fervently Orthodox neighborhood.

Like most of his peers, the 24-year-old Yishayahu studies full time and does not work.

“None of the yeshiva students I know work,” Yishayahu, the father of two, says, sporting an other-worldly smile behind his reddish beard and sidelocks.

“Making money in this world just isn’t important to us. It’s the world-to-come that really counts.”

This sanguine attitude, shared by most in Israel’s fervently Orthodox community, could lead to an economic crisis that may soon come crashing down on the serenity of a lifestyle devoted to tireless study.

Furthermore, say economists who have studied the fervently Orthodox, or haredi, community, the crisis could extend beyond the boundaries of Mea Shearim and similar sanctuaries to Israeli society as a whole with increasing poverty and a growing strain on local and national funds.

Many haredi reject the doomsday scenarios, confident that pursuing a life of study is the ideal.

In 1997, Ruth Klinov and Eli Berman, economists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Boston University respectively, shocked Israeli economic experts with a study on Israel’s labor force that revealed alarming data on the haredi community.

According to the study, Israel — now often compared to developed markets-has the lowest rate of workforce participation in the developed world.

Non-participants are defined as people who either choose not to work or cannot work because of disabilities. They are not included in unemployment data, which only counts those who are actively seeking employment but cannot find a job.

Israel’s rate of participation in the work force for men between the ages of 25 and 54 fell from 93.5 percent in 1970 to 85.7 percent in 1993. In Western Europe and the United States, the rate was about 94 percent in the early 1990s.

Klinov says that the rapid growth of non-working yeshiva students accounts for about one-third of the decline. Indeed, other studies show that the number of haredi yeshiva students has doubled from 35,980 in 1990 to more than 72,000 in 1997 — 1.2 percent of Israel’s population of 6 million.

The growth of the yeshivas coincides with the growing political power of the haredim and increased national funding for fervently Orthodox institutions.

It also comes as Israel is struggling to revive its economy after a 3-year slowdown. Economic officials say this can only be done by reducing the level of transfer payments, such as significant government support of yeshivas, and increasing public sector investment in infrastructure projects that create jobs.

Meanwhile, secular Israelis are angry that this largely non-working sector of society pays virtually no taxes, or other dues to society. Exemptions from military service for yeshiva students, for example, have been a perpetual sticking point in religious-secular relations.

Klinov and Berman’s study concluded that military exemptions are the main reason why Israeli yeshiva students do not work, since the minute they start working, they lose eligibility for a military exemption.

“The problem is that ultra-Orthodox non-participation is not cyclical,” says Klinov. “It is permanent and increasing at a geometric rate.”

Indeed, in another study being discussed this week at a conference at Tel Aviv University, Berman says the proportion of fervently Orthodox men not working has climbed from 41 percent in 1980 to more than 60 percent in 1996.

Israel’s haredi community numbers some 350,000 today, or about 6 percent of the population.

Berman says the population of Israel’s fervently Orthodox community will double every 17 years.

There is no sign of a change in these trends. In fact, even though birthrates in other sectors of Israeli society, including the fast-growing Arab community, are slowing down, haredi families are having more babies than ever before.

The average number of children per mother in the haredi community has climbed from 6.5 in the early 1980s to 7.6 in 1996.

But the average monthly income for the family of a full-time yeshiva student was $1,150 below the poverty line and less than half the income of an average Israeli family.

While taking care of the children, haredi women generated 17 percent of this income. Another 39 percent comes from the yeshivas and 32 percent from government child allowances.

These allowances are paid to all Israelis, but are higher for haredim because they have more children. If these birthrates continue, as they are likely to, by 2010, predict the economists, 10 percent of Israeli children will have a father who is a yeshiva student and does not participate in the workforce.

“The rise of this community endangers its economic mode of existence because they have a much higher birthrate and they work less and less,” says Berman. “Whatever the form of support, whether it is from the state or from contributions from abroad, there is a limit. The funding simply cannot double itself every 17 years.”

In Berman’s newest study, called “Sect, Subsidy and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews,” he writes: “The ultra-Orthodox growth rate will make Israel’s welfare system insolvent and bankrupt municipalities with large ultra-Orthodox populations.” This is due to the large child subsidies, which are included in the welfare system.

Jerusalem and B’nei Brak near Tel Aviv are the cities with the largest haredi populations.

Berman believes that if a secular government cuts off funding, he says, or an economic recession threatens funding from abroad, the community will not be able to immediately integrate into the work force. This could prove a social time bomb for the haredi community and for Israel.

Some haredim reject the gloomy projections.

“Many more haredim are working than the numbers suggest, since there is a thriving underground economy,” says one haredi businessman, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The entire city of B’nei Brak is one big black economy.”

In addition, the businessman says economic analyses of the haredi community do not calculate the lower costs to society incurred by the fervently Orthodox community. For example, he says, there are very few haredim in prisons or in drug rehabilitation programs.

Avraham Ravitz, a Knesset member from the United Torah Judaism bloc, and chairman of the parliamentary finance committee, says the economists have missed the mark, since most fervently Orthodox Jews simply do not need money.

“The ideal is to live modestly,” says Ravitz. “They don’t go out to coffee shops or to eat out, and they only buy the bare necessities.”

Ravitz himself says he has been involved in initiatives to start vocational training programs for yeshiva students. He also believes that if they were forced to, most yeshiva students would probably go to work.

But although Ravitz says rabbis should allow students who want to leave yeshivas to find work, they shouldn’t actively encourage employment.

And what about strategic planning to deal with the population boom? Ravitz’s response resembles that of Yishayahu, the optimistic yeshiva student.

“There’s no need to be sophisticated and plan for a scenario that will take place 17 years from now,” says Ravitz. “This country is living with miracles.”