How Much Money Does the Israeli Government Give to Kollel Families?

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  • #927194
    EY Mom
    Participant

    RBS Jew:

    Chareidim don’t make anyone pay more. You would be paying the same amount of Arnona regardless of whether I get a 90% discount or none at all.

    #927195
    mdd
    Member

    EY Mom, because many pay less, others have to pick up the slack.

    Plus, what about people getting havtachat hachnasah?

    #927196
    RBS.Jew
    Member

    EY MOM, of course it makes me pay more! The government has to pay for all of their expenses. Trash collection, lighting in the streets, paving roads, building parks, paying for police, running the municipal offices, the list continues. For every family that pays only 10% of their arnona property taxes, the rest of us has to pay the rest of their 90% plus our 100%!!! It’s simple mathematics & economics – exactly the subjects that the schools should be teaching in order to make us successful in earning a decent and honest living!

    The problem is that people all justify to themselves why it’s OK for them to avoid paying taxes and living off of other people’s money. This is not an attack on chareidim – it’s an attack on everyone who works the system but then leaves the rest of us paying the bill. Even if you can work the system in a way that doesn’t get you arrested, it’s still wrong. Religious people are held to a higher standard than to say, “well everyone else is doing it and it’s not really illegal and the chilonim can do it too.” That’s a cop-out and not what halacha demands of us.

    #927197
    shein
    Member

    Halacha does NOT demand that anyone forfeit a legal government benefit. If it is legal, it is permissible.

    #927198
    RBS.Jew
    Member

    shein – this is the basic hashkafic argument. Halacha says quite a bit about this issue but you have to be intellectually honest to understand that. The chareidi movement has been given a tremendous amount but have not kept their part of the deal. There’s just so long that you can continue to take money before the system collapses under its own weight!

    A case in point – the city where we live has been growing in the number of chareidi families tremendously over the years. Way too many of those families get a 90% discount on their arnona (property taxes). It’s now come to the point that there’s simply not enough money coming in from taxes to cover expenses. So, the municipality keeps refusing to pay for necessities. Instead of telling the chareidim that we simply can’t afford this anymore -They have recently raised our taxes in a most unscrupulous way – they reassessed everyone’s taxes by charging for communal spaces. A quote from the chareidi newspaper: “almost 70% of homeowners” had their assessments raised by including “areas such as elevator piers, stairwells, pergolas and even the area where the trash bins are situated as taxable property.” This was done because the city was asking the discount to be lowered from 90% to 70%. That means they were asking the chareidim to pay the smallest amount more in order to cover the expenses THAT THEY BENEFIT FROM EVERY DAY! They’re taxing us on the place where the dumpsters are in order to avoid charging the chareidim their fare share!!!!! The absolute worst of it – the chareidi paper is proud of it and said that this reassessment more than makes up for the difference.

    This is the reason that so many people in Israel (both religious and not-yet-religious) are so fed up with the chareidi mentality. The chareidi movement (I’m careful to recognize that not every chareidi person is this way but the leadership is) has chosen to be unreasonable. They think of themselves and their money instead of thinking of what’s good for the Jewish people. Yes, this is the reason that people say it’s time to get an education and work. And I don’t mean just work a underpaying job or off-the-books job that keeps you under the poverty level and therefore exempt from income taxes.

    #927199
    shein
    Member

    RBS: Your argument, in a nutshell, is that people are required to make good money so that they should pay taxes. Your same argument equally goes against a guy who lives with his parents and doesn’t work. Or a guy who is poor and doesn’t make much money.

    And you are simply wrong. As much as you don’t like it, the grown up living off his parents, the yeshiva guy and/or the poor guy have every right to be just like that. You have no right to tell the guy living with his parents to go get a job, or the yeshiva guy who is earning a living as a melamed or anyone else to change and to get a better paying job (or to even get *a* job). They have every right to remain as is.

    #927200
    truthsharer
    Member

    Shein, you keep mentioning welfare, especially in the US, but the US has enacted welfare reform years ago. A person cannot be on welfare his whole life. It’s now illegal, and if you just want to sit all day and watch TV you’ll see that eventually you will stop getting your welfare checks.

    It’s one thing to be in favor of Charedim sitting and learning all day, but it’s quite another to not even see that the other side has extremely valid points. I bet if you acknowledge those points and try to work it out, it will be a lot easier. People who don’t even get acknowledged are far less likely to work with you to resolve an issue. It’s time for the Charedi leaders to act like leaders and realize there is a communal problem of money.

    #927201
    shein
    Member

    It is a side point, but in the U.S. you can indefinitely remain on food stamps, Section 8, HEAP, and a host of other programs.

    Valid points? The Chareidim have a host of valid points that is never acknowledged by the other side.

    #927202
    y me
    Member

    shein: that’s very untrue, the chareidi points are considered all the time. Maybe not to the extent that you’d like them to be but none-the-less the people here constantly consider the chareidi people’s points. In fact, they consider religious people’s feelings all of the time even though it doesn’t necessarily result in the outcomes we always desire. That’s a democracy.

    Also, can’t believe you want to compare yourself to those other cases. I completely disagree, if you pay taxes and someone else chooses to live off of those tax $$, then I have every right to tell them to get a job or a better paying job. The point of welfare and tzedaka is to help the person temporarily until they get on their feet. It’s NOT to continue paying for them just because they (or you) think it’s their “every right to remain as is” (your quote!) The US system REQUIRES the welfare recipient to always be searching for a job and do specific things in order to receive welfare benefits (I have a family member who works as a social worker and deals with this all the time). The problem is that there are some (many?) who falsely claim that they’re truly looking for a job or doing what they’re supposed to – that is totally against halacha even when they don’t get caught or prosecuted!

    #927203
    zahavasdad
    Participant

    The idea of the welfare state is a totally recent invention. Post world war II for the most part (even in Europe). So there is no minhag at all to learn and survive on government benefits. Prior to then you had to work or starve

    #927204
    Confucious
    Member

    Chareidim DO work. Whether as melamdim or many other positions. Stop repeating that canard that they do not work.

    Secondly, the Israeli government has a law where it is ILLEGAL TO WORK until age 28, for Chareidim who didn’t join the Army. So if you want to see more Chareidi employment, or more precisely – legal (on the books) employment, REPEAL THAT LAW. We are not going to enlist but we certainly are willing and want to work.

    #927205
    flyer
    Participant

    If in the US you truly want welfare people off – you need to put them to work – make them clean the streets, clean public buildings etc. (I’m sure there are a thousand other things that can be done) in order to receive their welfare check – they’ll get off welfare fast because they can make more doing anything else.

    Another point – you can make thousands of dollars in the US monthly – between food stamps, state health insurance, section 8 etc. You never have to get off of that (unless your income changes). And yes my taxes go to pay for that – that is the system

    #927206
    ☕ DaasYochid ☕
    Participant

    So there is no minhag at all to learn and survive on government benefits. Prior to then you had to work or starve

    Your second sentence does a good job of explaining your first sentence.

    #927207
    oh brother
    Member

    Confucious – “Stop repeating that canard” that the chareidim work but it’s just that the system is stacked against them! They are the ones who created the system by insisting that they won’t get a basic secular education, they won’t serve in the army OR A NATIONAL SERVICE PROGRAM (i.e. a chesed program!!!), they won’t vote for anyone who helps set up a realistic economical system but they will instead vote for parties that will give them “free money.” At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as a free lunch! Get a real secular education and follow the rules of the country you live in. Get a job that can actually pay your bills (just like the Chafetz Chaim did, Rambam did, Abarbanel did, Moshe Rabbeinu did, Yaakov Avinu did, Avraham Avinu did, etc.) our gedolim of our history didn’t take money for being gedolim and spreading Torah. They certainly didn’t instruct the Jewish people to learn instead of working and then live off of everyone’s charity and government handouts.

    #927208
    Confucious
    Member

    oh bro: You are dead wrong. The Chareidim DO work. And they work without a secular education. And they will continue to work without a secular education. Whether you like it or not.

    #927209
    zahavasdad
    Participant

    Secular education doesnt help one get a job, it helps on get a better job.

    You dont need much secular education to be a box schlepper, but if you want to be a lawyer you do.

    #927210

    I am a bit chareidi, and I am planning on doing national service next year. I actually requested to work in a chareidi environment, so hopefully, I will have an interview at a Chareidi Gan for girls with mild developmental delays. If you are saying that Chareidim don’t serve, keep in mind that this goes to show you that Chareidim don’t promote doing national service, yet they are open to accepting girls who are doing national service for them (which, I think is an oxymoron, plus most of the girls that apply to that gan might not even be chareidi). I was actually shocked, like mamash shocked, when I heard that chareidi special ed fans accept bnot sherut.

    #927211

    I have been doing some research on salary for sherut leumi for the past few days, and a typical assignment for a bat sherut pays 800-900 his a month, with that money, she is responsible for providing herself with; 3 meals a day, and all necessities, buses are free. Other than the free buses, that is very close to the same amount. I think it is about the same amount of money as soldiers in the idf get paid as well. So… I guess that the Israeli government does indeed consider learning in Kollel to be a form of National service!

    #927212
    oh brother
    Member

    It’s actually funny – I just gave a ride home to a very sweet chareidi man on my home from a wedding. He was tremping on the side of the road and was going to the same city as I was. Anyway, he’s a very nice guy and has 12 children. He works as a security guard in various areas and was lamenting about how hard it is to support his family with this kind of salary. You could tell that he works very hard (it was about 11pm when I picked him up and he’d been working all day). We talked about him getting another job but he acknowledged that he can’t find anything that would pay enough with his lack of a good secular education. I kid you not – it’s funny that I just met him tonight especially since I never give tremps to people anymore (too dangerous) but his security uniform somehow reassured me. Anyway, bottom line, this is a common story here – there are many chareidi people who work very hard and still can’t bring home a respectable salary. It’s not fair to them because the chareidi leadership and society creates this dilema for them. Yes, you could tell that he’s a happy person but he’s suffering and was upset that he can’t even afford to take off time from work to go to school in order to get a better job. This was an older man too (I’d say in his 50s or 60s).

    I’ll repeat what I said a few days ago – I am not trying to put down anyone but I also think there are many good people who are being put into a horrible and unsustainable situation. Provide your kids and yourself with a basic secular education so that you can work at a decent job and be able to hold your head high, provide for your family and not have to resort to government handouts or tzedaka.

    #927213
    RBS.Jew
    Member

    Confucious, a lot of people have already answered this. There are chareidim who do work but without a proper secular education they are most often left with jobs that don’t pay well, have no future and leave them unable to support their families (let alone pay their fair share in taxes). You say that “they will continue to work without a secular education. Whether you like it or not.” Yes, that may be true that they’ll continue but it’s not really about whether I like it or not. This affects them too and probably more than me! More importantly, as long as chareidim (as a whole) insist on continuing down this path, the vast majority of the society in EY will continue to change the laws so that we don’t have to foot the bill.

    #927214
    truthsharer
    Member

    oh brother, what he, and others in his situation, should do is take their family and waltz into their rabbis house and tell them their moving in. If enough people get through to their leaders, maybe their leaders will listen to them and not only to their handlers.

    #927215
    agittayid
    Participant

    It’s a terrible waste of human potential for someone who is probably highly intelligent to have to work at an unskilled job due to the lack of an education. That warehouse worker could possibly have been an engineer; except that no one knew that he was a whiz at math as his school didn’t take math seriously.

    #1453191
    MTAB
    Participant

    By gov. figures, there are 141,000 yeshiva and kollel students in Israel. 16,000 are non-israeli

    Gov. gives about $2,000 a year to each one of the israelis and half that to non israelis

    from the article:
    “Kollel students receive an average of 2,000 shekels ($500) per month for committing to a full day of kollel study (from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and again from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.). In its heyday, state support covered about half of this sum, with the rest being raised by the kollels’ directors, mainly from overseas donors.”

     

    This means that it’s a wash for the government. Their spend of $250 million is matched by overseas donations that pay for more than half of the kollel stipend and go into the economy. But a lot more goes into the economy because nobody lives on $2,000 a year in Israel. If each overseas student spends another $4,000 that’s another 64 million in the economy. Add to that visits by parents, funds for buildings – all of which go into the economy.

    And let us not forget that America gives Israel 3.9 billion a year.

    You want to know who pays for world torah study – america, not the state of israel. Israel profits from it.

     

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