{"id":5197,"date":"2010-12-28T22:34:47","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T22:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5197"},"modified":"2010-12-28T22:34:47","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T22:34:47","slug":"he-who-does-not-work-must-eat-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/he-who-does-not-work-must-eat-bread\/","title":{"rendered":"He who does not work must eat bread!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/12\/29\/world\/middleeast\/29israel.html?partner=rss&#038;emc=rss&#038;pagewanted=print\">Some Israelis Question Benefits for Ultra-Religious<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Chaim Amsellem was certainly not the first Israeli Parliament member to suggest that most ultra-Orthodox men should work rather than receive welfare subsidies for full-time Torah study. But when he did so last month, the nation took notice: He is a rabbi, ultra-Orthodox himself, whose outspokenness ignited a fresh, and fierce, debate about the rapid growth of the ultra-religious in Israel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTorah is the most important thing in the world,\u201d Rabbi Amsellem said in an interview. But now more than 60 percent of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel do not work, compared to 15 percent in the general population, and he argued that full-time, state-financed study should be reserved for great scholars destined to become rabbis or religious judges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose who are not that way inclined,\u201d he said, \u201cshould go out and earn a living.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In reaction, he was ousted from his own ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, <b>whose leaders vilified him with such venom that he was assigned a bodyguard.<\/b> The party newspaper printed a special supplement describing Rabbi Amsellem as \u201cAmalek,\u201d the biblical embodiment of all evil.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Though watch what you ask for: once the ultra-Orthodox join the labor force and no longer are so dependent on state subsidies, they&#8217;ll more more politically influential, not less. Those who pay the piper are more assertive in their demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some Israelis Question Benefits for Ultra-Religious: Chaim Amsellem was certainly not the first Israeli Parliament member to suggest that most ultra-Orthodox men should work rather than receive welfare subsidies for full-time Torah study. But when he did so last month, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/he-who-does-not-work-must-eat-bread\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5197"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5198,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5197\/revisions\/5198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}