{"id":5064,"date":"2010-11-13T19:54:41","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T19:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5064"},"modified":"2010-11-13T19:54:41","modified_gmt":"2010-11-13T19:54:41","slug":"%e2%80%9cultra-orthodox-welfare-kings%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/%e2%80%9cultra-orthodox-welfare-kings%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cUltra-Orthodox Welfare Kings\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The problem that the Ultra-Orthodox pose for Israel is not<\/a> a<\/a> new<\/a> topic<\/a>, either here or elsewhere, but this<\/a> WSJ piece by Evan Goldstein is worth reading, not least for the insight into the way that welfare handouts have (for all practical purposes) distorted an ancient religious tradition:<\/p>\n

At the root of the disaster is the revolutionary idea that the study of Torah is a vocation. There is no precedent in pre-1948 Jewish history for an entire community devoting itself to Torah scholarship\u2014and certainly no precedent for getting paid to do so. <\/p>\n

“Torah study has always been for spiritual, not material, sustenance,” Zvi Zohar, a professor of law at Bar-Ilan University, tells me. Moreover, the notion that a man’s primary obligation is studying, and not providing for his family, is “diametrically opposed” to Jewish tradition, Mr. Zohar says. The Shulchan Aruch, for instance, an influential 16th-century legal code written by Rabbi Joseph Caro, states: “A respected and impoverished scholar should have a trade, even a lowly trade, rather than being in need of his fellow man.”<\/p>\n

State-supported Torah study has also harmed the quality of Jewish thought, argues Mr. Naeh. Ultra-Orthodox self-segregation has cut “learning off from life,” he wrote in a recent essay. As a result, the current generation of Torah scholars “is far from being one of the greatest . . . despite the existence of tens of thousands of learners.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is there nothing<\/em> that government cannot mess up? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The problem that the Ultra-Orthodox pose for Israel is not a new topic, either here or elsewhere, but this WSJ piece by Evan Goldstein is worth reading, not least for the insight into the way that welfare handouts have (for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[363,221,53,679],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5064"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5073,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions\/5073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}