Opinion & Comment
What the Numbers Add Up To

The poverty report released a few weeks ago gave Israel's secular Jews yet another opportunity to issue provocations against the Torah world, this time in the guise of rachmonus on the families of lomdei Torah. An editorial printed in Ha'aretz read, "In addition to the unique reasons for the increase in poverty in recent years, there are also structural reasons. Perhaps the most significant of them is the percentage of the population in the work force, which is among the lowest in the world. If nobody is out making a living, there is no livelihood. First and foremost this phenomenon characterizes the chareidi sector, in which two of every three men do not work, as a matter of choice. No wonder surveys show the chareidi population has a particularly high rate of poverty."

Chareidi representatives, the newspaper goes on to defiantly state, cannot lodge counter claims and must assess "what the chareidi education system contributes to poverty within the community and its need to rely on public support."

Under the headline "Children are not to Blame" another newspaper writes, "For some of them this is indeed a reality forced upon their families, a difficult reality from which it can be difficult to extricate oneself. When both parents work in the only factory in a town far from the center of the country and the factory goes bankrupt and closes its doors, unemployment and poverty are imposed on them, not something done by choice. But there are also those who essentially choose to be under the poverty line-based on an ideology that directs them to choose not to work of their own free will and to rely on aid assistance allotments, those who elect to engage only in Torah learning rather than working for a living, for instance. They lack income and means of subsistence not because there is no alternative, not because there is no work nearby or opportunities for employment, but because they choose not to work. By making this choice, which they are wholly entitled to make for themselves, they are also imposing it on their children."

Nevertheless the editorial in Ha'aretz, like all of the other provocateurs in print, notes the fact that "the principal reason for the increase in poverty is increased unemployment." The newspaper even admits "unemployment alone is not a guaranteed preventative against poverty: many families with one or even two people working are defined as poor because their income does not reach the poverty line relative to the size of the family." A backdrop to these circumstances is the fact that the last fiscal year was a year of devalued employment and in a portion of economic sectors the recession has begun to affect wage rates.

Another article in this same newspaper provides an economic analysis of the poverty report: "The figures show that not only the unemployed live under the poverty line. In more than 36 percent of impoverished families, the head of the household works. This rate is almost identical to that of families in which the head of the household does not work."

Last month still another article reported on a meeting between high-ranking representatives of the business sector and top Finance Ministry officials in order to discuss the difficult economic situation. "It was a depressing meeting," Manufacturers Association President Oded Tirah summed up. "We left with a weighty feeling that there is no chance of improving the economic situation in the short term. If we thought that there was some improvement in the periphery or in the rest of the world that might have a beneficial impact on our economy--we were fooling ourselves."

Yet for our purposes the following quotation is more worthy of note: Business sector representatives reported a severe situation in which "unemployed workers are being created at a rate of 10,000 per month."

*

These facts speak for themselves. Yet some people are reluctant to allow truth to confuse their thinking. Secular journalists, for instance, and politicians who despise Torah and speak in a similar vein try to claim "their hearts go out" to the families of lomdei Torah and if only the avreichei kollelim were put out in "the work cycle" it would spare many families from the hardships of financial subsistence.

Yet the figures stand in stark contrast to their remarks. First of all, when there is no work for job- seekers, how do these Torah haters have the gall to suggest that a small handful of bnei aliyoh engaged in sustaining the entire world leave their learning and join "the work cycle," which could more aptly be called "the unemployment cycle?"

If there is such a dire lack of workers, if there are so many job openings waiting breathlessly for avreichim to man them, why are they not offered to the hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers in every sector, from simple manufacturing to fired high- tech workers?

The statistics also demonstrate that at the lowest wage level, with monthly expenses increasing, even when the head of the household enters "the work cycle" he does not manage to improve the family's financial situation, the cycle of poverty or struggles with day-to-day subsistence. In many cases the wages offered at most jobs are not significantly higher, and certainly not in relation to the family's needs, than the stipend the avreich kollel receives.

Rabbenu Hagodol HaRav Shach, zecher tzadik vekodosh lebrochoh, used to note the Chofetz Chaim's explanation of the verse "Yiru es Hashem kedoshov ki ein machsor leyerei'ov, kefirim roshu vero'eivu, vedorshei Hashem lo yachseru kol tov" (Tehillim 34:11-12). With his fabulous Torah wisdom, the Rosh Yeshiva would offer a piercing truth that expressed deep emunoh that is obvious to anyone who considers the reality of life and does not bury his head in the sand.

The Chofetz Chaim explains that "Yiru es Hashem kedoshov" means to serve the Creator with joy without worrying that you stand to lose by doing so, "ki ein machsor leyerei'ov," i.e. there is no lack specifically for those who fear Him. On the one hand young lions cry out in hunger and on the other hand those who seek Hashem will lack nothing. If so, engaging in parnossoh is not what brings happiness, and dedication to Torah is not what brings want.

Said Rabbenu: "Indeed we see many who dedicated themselves to other fields of knowledge, like doctors and engineers, who were eventually left out of work, while there are G-d-seekers who lack nothing. If so it becomes apparent that reality shows us that a man's subsistence is in the hands of the Creator. Advanced study for parnossoh purposes is not a seguloh for wealth and avodas Hashem is not a reason for poverty (see Mishulchono Shel Rabbenu)."

Observers of the current state of the economy and the poverty report can sense the truth hidden in these remarks. At a time when "the work cycle" continues to deteriorate, when factories produce nothing besides thousands of unemployed workers every month, when the number of families whose household heads work appear in the poverty figures with the same frequency as similar families whose heads do not work, it becomes clear that only He Who spoke and the world came into existence decrees a man's subsistence.

All material on this site is copyrighted and its use is restricted.
Click here for conditions of use.