Opinion & Comment
Wrong Emphasis in Protests

To The Editor:

Recent articles about the government's economic plan have, in my opinion, insulted all previous generations of Torah-true chareidi Jews.

Until our current generation, millions of bnei Torah in Poland, Litta, Russia, etc., learned for as long as they could after marriage and then, when financial needs required them to work, adopted the life of a working ben Torah. These working chareidim closed their shops mid-afternoon to go learn, or stopped working when they had money saved and learned until the money ran out, all with chareidi mesirus nefesh, and all as described in numerous sheilos uteshuvos and nosei keilim.

To say that chareidi life will be destroyed without government subsidies is an insult to their memories. It also distracts us from the truly important issues of fair education allotments and child-support assistance, as well as the obvious (and unasked) question of how chareidim can possibly find work in the current job market.

But chas vesholom to say that Torah-true life cannot exist without government subsidies. We didn't receive them in Litta or Poland. Jews don't receive them in America or England, and we can survive without them here.

D.K.

Har Nof, Yerushalayim

The Editor Replies:

Although we certainly intended no insult to previous generations, and it seems to us that a careful reading of what we wrote will indicate that we did not say or imply that Torah-true life cannot or will not exist without subsidies -- and we were careful to add on several occasions that our guarantees of persistence are from Hashem and not from any government -- nonetheless the impression may have been given that this was said. In fact, some chareidim have been saying such or similar things.

Our rabbonim have recently made it clear that our main protest is against the fact that the current government is against the Jewish religion, and not against its economic polices. We have argued on several occasions that the way the economic cuts indicates an ideological motive and not an economic one, and our main pain is because of this. It really needs no incisive deduction: Shinui has made fighting Torah its central issue.

Hashem yeracheim veyatzil es amo.

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