Monday 16 February 2015

Learn, study work...

Greetings all

This is the latest of those posters of the adopt a disaster, adopt a Adopt-a-Kollel! campaign in Israel (following austerity cuts) :




The Hebrew Bible does of course write extremely poetically about how the Torah and studying it, is worth more than gold or precious jewelry. However the sages also, in my view at least, also talk about finding work and doing a trade and working for a living. There is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING which says one shouldn't work alongside Torah study and neither do I see that secular study is in any way a bad or wrong this: aren't we supposed to be the light unto the Gentiles? How can we do this stuck under a rock?. 

This is what I find so depressing about the situation in Israel: that working to provide for oneself or if married ones family is somehow illegitimate or wrong as opposed to full time study in the yeshiva or k. I cannot see why a system would be so opposed to doing so, nor can I understand the resistance to serving in the IDF. It is terrible that haredi families are suffering and in some cases starving. But this is entirely down to the dogma of the system that they've been brought up in. That has to change in order to prevent a terrible catastrophe for the Jewish people. I really do hope that after the next election in Israel, whatever government is formed is one that is committed to helping the Haredi out of this situation, which doesn't mean going back to dishing out cash like there is no tomorrow,  but does allow for a 'reformation' to this system,  which is hurting so many of the Jewish people. 


9 comments:

  1. Ruth the Rebel Orthodox16 February 2015 at 19:01

    Lot's c of typos, but I agree with the basics of what you are saying. Are you down to once a month posts now??

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  2. Hi David


    Good post. I only hope that after the Israeli election, things don't revert to as they used to be. Although I'd say if bibi got his way, we'd all live in Israel , but I suspect that would change Israel quite substantially.

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  3. Hi Ruth


    I was wondering this myself.

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  4. The problem is that we live in an era where the idol worship is a sense of entitlement. For any leader to tell his followers that the time has come to forgo an existing entitlement for the sake of the greater good is political suicide.

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  5. Perhaps. Although you seem to have written the bulk of the posts here, before you left to start-up your own blog.

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  6. Hanna

    I don't think the Israeli public would put up with that...

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  7. Sadly, the greater good is a noble concept, but one which is so easily twisted. I bet the charedi leadership believe that they are doing what they are doing for the greater good.

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  8. Ruth the Rebel Orthodox18 March 2015 at 12:49

    yes you are!

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