<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" > <channel> <title>Ultra Orthodox – tothepointanalyses.com</title> <atom:link href="https://tothepointanalyses.com/tag/ultra-orthodox/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>https://tothepointanalyses.com</link> <description>Deconstructing the News</description> <lastBuildDate>Sat, 22 Jul 2023 20:49:05 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en-US</language> <sy:updatePeriod> hourly </sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency> 1 </sy:updateFrequency> <generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2</generator> <image> <url>https://tothepointanalyses.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cropped-Islamic-Falcon-32x32.jpg</url> <title>Ultra Orthodox – tothepointanalyses.com</title> <link>https://tothepointanalyses.com</link> <width>32</width> <height>32</height> </image> <item> <title>Educating For Failure</title> <link>https://tothepointanalyses.com/educating-for-failure/</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Lawrence Davidson]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jul 2023 20:31:12 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category> <category><![CDATA[U.S. Domestic Affairs]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Education]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Survival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ultra Orthodox]]></category> <category><![CDATA[United States]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tothepointanalyses.com/?p=5114</guid> <description><![CDATA[Educating For Failure—An Analysis (22 July 2023) by Lawrence Davidson Part I—UItra-Orthodox Jews: The Hasidim/Haredi Most ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects originated […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[ <p>Educating For Failure—An Analysis (22 July 2023) by Lawrence Davidson</p> <p>Part I—UItra-Orthodox Jews: The Hasidim/Haredi</p> <p>Most ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects originated as part of an 18th century spiritual revival movement—which was in turn a reaction to the secular influence of the Enlightenment. The name used in Europe for this multifaceted movement was Hasidism (piety), or in modern Israel, Haredi (one who trembles at the word of God). Geographically, the movement’s origin was in Eastern Europe, and particularly Poland. Yiddish was a common tongue for the Hasidim, as well as for many of the secular Jews of this region. While fragmenting into many sub-groups over time, the Hasidim/Haredi sought community preservation through isolation from the secular world. They developed a dress code and personal habits that would enhance this separation and a system of education that excluded secular knowledge while emphasizing the study of religious texts.</p> <p>Just before World War II, the numbers of Hasidim in Europe ran into the hundreds of thousands. The Holocaust that followed brought them to the brink of extinction. Here, self-isolation worked against them. For most people, worldviews are locally constructed and in the case of the Hasidim this meant that they knew nothing of the world outside their own communities. In times of crisis they had no internal human resources to fall back on. In addition, their idiosyncratic lifestyle meant they could not readily hide amidst the general population. They easily fell victim to the Nazis.</p> <p>After the war the little that was left of these communities were, ironically, able to regroup largely thanks to outside intervention—the willingness of Zionist leaders in Palestine to take them in and provide the necessary financial support for rebuilding. And what did rebuilding mean to the Hasidic/Haredi leaders in the wake of the Holocaust? It meant replicating the prewar past as exactly as possible. As it turned out, one key to doing so was to resurrect a benighted faux-educational process that once more turned its back on the secular world.</p> <p>Part I—Israel</p> <p>According to Anshel Pfeffer, one of the permanent opinion writers at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “The whole point of Haredi education … has been to rebuild the communities devastated in Europe through isolating their children from the world and preventing any “foreign” influence in their schooling.” Pursuing this goal “in democratic countries with modern welfare systems was supposed to both allow them to teach without state interference while receiving public funding.” At first this might seem a naive set of goals but, as we will see, it has proved doable simply by turning the recovering Hasidic communities into disciplined voting blocs. Thus, in the case of Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu recently “promised the ultra-Orthodox parties that … he would act to give their schools full public funding without requiring them to add general studies to their curriculum” in exchange for their electoral support. It was a maneuver that helped him achieve his present position of power.</p> <p>Haredi education is gender segregated and boys in particular get little or no exposure to science, social science or the humanities. They spend almost all their study time analyzing Talmudic text and related commentaries of past religious scholars. Most of the boys never go into the labor force. Since, in this supportive environment, the Haredi population has been growing, and thus becoming a larger percentage of the Israeli population, this wholly non-secular education will, as Pfeffer notes, have “major implications for the future of the Israeli economy.” Indeed, the fulfillment of Haredi ambitions in this regard has already seriously split the Israeli Jewish population and unleashed deeply negative emotions among secular elements who must pay the taxes to fulfill Netanyahu’s promise.</p> <p>Part II—New York</p> <p>After Israel, the United States has one of the world’s largest ultra-Orthodox communities—much of it located in the New York City and state area. “There are about 200,000 Hasidic Jews in New York.” They have revived the dress code of their pre-World War II enclaves and pursued their policy of isolation. In the name of preserving ancient traditions, the American Hasidic community, like its Israeli counterpart, has created “one of New York’s largest private school systems (more than 100 schools for boys) which it runs on its own terms.”</p> <p>In 2019, one of these schools, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to the administering of state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 of its students. Using New York State grading standards, “every one of their students failed.” The failures were not a function of underfunding or administrative incompetence. As a recently published New York Times (NYT) expose puts it, the Hasidic schools “fail by design.”</p> <p>Students, particularly the boys, are taught “Jewish law, prayer and tradition” and almost nothing else. All classes are conducted in Yiddish. This certainly succeeds in “walling them off from the secular world.” It also produces high school graduates who are functionally illiterate relative to the world beyond their communities. Most students graduate school “without learning to speak English fluently, let alone read or write at grade level.” The conclusion of the NYT is that, in violation of state law, “generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.”</p> <p>As in Israel, state officials in New York know that this is going on. However, meaningful action to address the problem has never been taken. Why is that the case?</p> <p>Part III—An Element of Corruption</p> <p>There appears to be an exception to the otherwise passive ignorance practiced by the ultra-Orthodox. The Hasidic/Haredi leaders have developed the ability to secure outside resources (state aid) within a pliable, corrupt environment. In both the U.S. and Israel this now translates into an election-based democracy with a peculiar bureaucratic arrangement wherein bribable politicians control the greater society’s educational regulations. These politicians then trade turning a blind eye to Hasidic/Haredi violation of the rules in exchange for the community’s bloc votes.<br>This corruptive environment has been working for the ultra-Orthodox in Israel and the U.S. Yet, whether they understand it or not, it puts them in an exceedingly precarious position. For how readily are they able to recognize and adapt to any change that introduces a less accommodating environment? They have little ability to do so and are apparently not interested in acquiring this skill. They have arranged things to protect their ignorance of secular society by relying on sympathetic, more worldly Jews (mostly lawyers), to handle their problems and challenges. Sometimes this works, but not always. In countries such as England, Australia, and Canada smaller Hasidic communities have faced inescapable pressure to reform their educational curriculum from state bureaucracies not susceptible to electoral manipulation. Most of these communities have been unable to adequately respond and so their long-term survival is in doubt.</p> <p>Part IV—Conclusion</p> <p>What the Hasidic/Haredi communities are doing is educating their children so narrowly as to risk eventual extinction. They are doing so despite having come very close to this end during World War II when their community isolation fatally reduced their ability to respond to devastating threats. They seem to have learned nothing from that traumatic experience. Interestingly, they are not alone.</p> <p>In present day America, the Hasidim are extremists on a continuum—a long list of other movements with approximately the same determination to not adapt in the face of change. In the U.S., every school board that tries to restrict teaching about race relations or the realities of gender, every paranoid group that goes after books in a library, every Christian “patriot” who seeks to replace documentable history in favor of fantasy, and every climate change denier is on the spectrum, so to speak, at one end of which are the Hasidim. And in each case, short term success risks long term demise. There is just nothing in their worldviews that allows for timely adaptation to changing circumstances. In this sense such fantasy-based outlooks, even if temporarily sustainable, ultimately get in the way of the evolutionary principles of survivability.</p> <p>As to the Hasidim, Talmudic scripture by itself certainly cannot guarantee survival. Ignorance, lack of caring about the world around them, finding “reality” solely in ancient texts will eventually threaten their community, perhaps fatally. That is a bit of tested scripture that human history as a whole has written.</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title>How Stable Is Zionist Israel?</title> <link>https://tothepointanalyses.com/how-stable-is-zionist-israel/</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Lawrence Davidson]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 21 May 2023 22:11:24 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Civil War]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ultra Orthodox]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Zionists]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tothepointanalyses.com/?p=5087</guid> <description><![CDATA[How Stable is Zionist Israel? An Analysis (22 May 2023) by Lawrence Davidson It is time to ask the question: […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[ <p>How Stable is Zionist Israel? An Analysis (22 May 2023) by Lawrence Davidson</p> <p>It is time to ask the question: just how stable is Zionist Israel? Is it possible that the Jewish population of Israel constitutes an inherently unstable society by virtue of deeply rooted divisions? Are these divisions so deeply rooted that they are irreconcilable? As Lloyd Green put it in a recent article in the Daily Beast, “Decades-old grudges have now morphed into pitched political battles. Antipathies of the old world are now playing out in what was thought to be a high-tech Hebrew-speaking Mecca.”</p> <p>In the West, the potential for this upheaval has long gone unnoticed because of Zionism’s constant emphasis on the alleged threat of extermination at the hands of the Palestinians. Coincidentally, it has been the Zionist determination to dispossess all Palestinians that has allowed them to put off confronting their own internal problems.</p> <p>Now, all of a sudden, it may well be time to pay the piper. Despite the current rightwing coalition’s attempt to delay intra-Zionist confrontation by pulverizing the Gaza population, the moment of political Zionism’s disintegration may well be at hand.</p> <p>Part I—Parasites vs Heretics</p> <p>The accelerated expression of these internal problems, the one that has seen tens of thousands of mostly secular, upper class Ashkenazi Jews protesting in the streets of Israel, was triggered by a rightwing government’s efforts to destroy the independent status of the nation’s courts—particularly the Supreme Court. The reason this move was seen to warrant massive protests is because when it comes to the culture of Jewish Israel, as goes the judiciary, so goes the nation. To date the courts have been seen as a bulwark for secular society. Destroy that bulwark, and Israeli Jewish civil liberties become vulnerable to reactionary religious pressures. Here are some of the issues that court decisions have influenced in a liberal way: (1) Who is a Jew? The courts have recognized Conservative and Reform Judaism (the latter sect being the largest Jewish group in the United States) as legitimately Jewish, and any conversions made under their auspices as legal. The ultra Orthodox (Haredim) see this as a direct challenge to their influence over Israeli “Jewishness.” They insist that their form of Judaism is the only legitimate form. (2) What commercial activities should be allowed on the Jewish sabbath (Saturday)? Should the stores open? Should the buses run? When and if they do operate, should they (and all other public facilities) be gender segregated? (3) Should ultra-orthodox men be exempted from otherwise compulsory military service? The courts have sometimes ruled against a blanket exemption for the ultra orthodox communities. And, to what extent should public monies go to support an ultra orthodox subgroup of males who do not serve and do not work (they just study the Torah) within the national economy? In terms of these last exemptions from military service and a subsidized excuse to avoid economic employment, much of secular Israel sees the ultra-orthodox as parasites.</p> <p>This is, of course, only one half of the story. The Haredim see themselves as the only “real” Jews, and therefore the fight to preserve and extend their rights is seen as a fight to preserve Jewish Israel itself. Under these circumstances, Israeli judges who tend to support secularism are “wicked judges,” and their decisions are “antisemitic.” They and those who support the predominance of secular life in Israel are seen as heretics.</p> <p>Part II—A War of Brothers Against Brothers</p> <p>Soon after the formation of the so-called left-leaning Bennett-Lapid government (2021-2022), negotiations began seeking a political alliance between Israel’s rightwing parties, both religious and secular. It should be noted that there is a secular right and it is made up mostly of the more traditional and observant Sephardic Jews whose origins are not European. The Sephardim constitute much of the voting power of Netanyahu’s Likud party. The aim of this rightwing alliance is a coalition government that would emphasize “the exclusive nature of Judaism in the State of Israel.” That “nature” is to be compatible with orthodox religious tenets.</p> <p>These negotiations were successful and led to the present coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. This government’s rapid move to implement into law their version of a religiously inspired Zionism, initially through a “reform” of Israel’s judiciary, has triggered a confrontation with a frightened and angry secular community that seems capable of, and willing to, shut down the country’s economy before it will go along with religious right’s plans. These secular protests have, in turn, angered at least some of the voters who helped put the present rightwing government in office—“people who are fed up being outsiders even after they’d won in the democratic game.” The frustration caused by a “recognition that you may be the ruling party but you’re not ruling” has led to recent counter demonstrations organized by the rightwing parties. Thus we have a confrontational environment wherein intra-Israeli Jewish differences come to the surface.</p> <p>All of this was enough to throw the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, into a panic. After his mid-March compromise proposal for changes in the judiciary was rejected by Netanyahu and his rightist government, Herzog warned “Israel is in the throes of a profound crisis. Anyone who thinks that a real civil war, of human life, is a line that we will not reach has no idea. The abyss is within touching distance.”</p> <p>You get a sense of this “abyss” when you translate “civil war” into Hebrew. It comes out as “brothers’ war.” The fraternity has always been fragile and as a piece in the Middle East Eye puts it, “for many Israelis that fraternal feeling has now gone and has been openly replaced by hate, contempt, and plain horror.”</p> <p>Such a destabilizing situation cannot help but erode the Israeli economy. And, it has done so by lowering the value of the shekel on currency markets, lowering the country’s credit rating, causing a drop in property values and unsettling the Israeli stock market. There are signs of both a flight of bank deposits and businesses abroad.</p> <p>Worse yet, for a country that imagines itself under constant threat, elements of the military reserve have been critically alienated by the government’s actions and threaten to refuse to serve under the evolving new regime. These threats sent prime minister Netanyahu into as big a panic as Herzog’s. In an address to the nation on 28 March 2023, he declared, “The State of Israel cannot exist without the IDF and the IDF cannot exist with refusal to serve. … Refusal to serve is the end of our country. Therefore, I demand that the heads of the security services and of the army vigorously oppose the phenomenon of refusal to serve, not contain it, not understand it, not accept it – but put a stop to it.”</p> <p>By the end of his speech Netanyahu had shown that he had replaced the prospect of compromise with a rather empty concept of dialog. “I – as Prime Minister – will take a time-out for dialogue.” But then came the declaration that “We insist on the need to enact the necessary changes in the judicial system … . Our path is just. Today, the great majority of the public recognizes the urgency of democratic reform of the judicial system. We will not allow anyone to rob the people of its free choice. While we will not give up on the path for which we were elected.” So what is there to dialog about?</p> <p>Part III—Finding the Classic, if Temporary, Diversion</p> <p>There is an old adage which goes, ‘if you have internal problems that defy solutions, then start a war and force unity onto the country.’ This is exactly what Netanyahu and his rightwing coalition have attempted to do. It was a simple and obvious path to take given that the Palestinians are an always available whipping boy for the Israelis. What is surprising is that the press seems not to have recognized the gambit.</p> <p>Google the proposition of diversion through war and you find the most recognition of this maneuver on leftist “outsider” sites: (1) a World Socialist Website article on the Israeli government’s provocation of the Palestinians. “As Netanyahu doubtless calculated when he started the military operation in Gaza, the opposition leaders dutifully fell in line. … They proved their unity … with Netanyahu and the far-right, above all in relation to the oppression of the Palestinians.” (2) The joint Israeli-Palestinian web site +972. “It was only a matter of time before Jewish Israelis — socially disintegrated, politically divided, economically sinking, and diplomatically entangled — would once again gather around the common denominator under which they can all embrace: the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.” (3) Also, the liberal Israeli news site Haaretz, which has recently expressed concern over the impending vote on a budget that would transfer large amounts of government resources to the ultra orthodox religious communities. The paper has called for renewed demonstrations. “We must not capitulate to the Netanyahu government’s distractions or spin. The protest must go one and even intensify.”</p> <p>Part IV—Conclusion</p> <p>The problem with this tactic of shifting attention to an outside threat is that it will not work in the present circumstances. For one thing, the Palestinian “threat” is seen as perennial. More importantly, regardless of that threat, the unity of Netanyahu’s coalition demands a relentless process of realizing the demands of the religious parties in the form of new laws. Under such circumstances, the religious-secular contradictions must soon approach the breaking point. Think of it this way: (1) the envisioned new laws at once threaten Israel’s secular culture while at the same time (2) hold the ruling rightwing coalition together. Renewing the process of passing these laws is imminent, and so is some variation on Israel’s “brothers’ war.”</p> <p>Back in 2016, former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo expressed the opinion that “the internal threat must worry us more than the external threat.” He followed this up with a prediction, “If a divided society goes beyond a certain point, you can end up, in extreme circumstances, with phenomena like civil war. To my regret, the distance [until we reach that point] is shrinking. I fear that we are going in that direction,” Perhaps the Zionists have now arrived at that certain point.</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> </channel> </rss>