Sadly, Israel’s haredim confuse prayer with study.
The ultra orthodox in Israel have a sweet deal.
Until now, they have been able to run their own schools and avoid Israels’s military service. Why? Theri claim relies on athe same princile that has made the Jewish people unique in world history.
We Jews were, arguably, the first people to develop a phonetic alphabet. This is something to take pride in, but even more important was that this invention made reading an d writing universally accessible.
For my ancestors this meant that , where other cultures depended on oral traditions and priests, every Jew was expected to read and study our traditions on his or her own.
No one knows how old this expectation is. However, certainly after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and outlawed our state, the Torah became the glue that held us together.
That same glue also gave the Jews immense power within the Roman empire. As a literate people in an illiterate culture, the diaspora Jews were uniquely able to serve as merchants.
The Torah played another role in empowering Jews. The book is not just a heroic founding legend, a la the Iliad or the Vedas, this Jewish book is a textbook of law and science. Jews versed in Torah and Talmud, were natural scholars for medicine and science as well trade. I suspect thsi is why abuot 1/2 of all Nobel prizes have gone to small people, the Jews.
Netanyahu has recently declared his support for a law taht would end the exemption for Heredim from Israel’s universal service.
So scholarship, not just Torah have been part of the Jewish tradition for over a 1000 years. Thats tradition is now deeply rooted in other cultures. Every modern nation recognizes that scholarly work .. science and social studies, is necessary for national defense and proseprity.
In most or all modern nations, scholars are given military deferments so they cdan study.
Unfortunately, the ultra orthodox confuse Torah study with prayer . Heredi rabbis assert that ‘that Torah study helps the nation no less than the army, and were it not for prayer, the country would be in parlous state.”
These Heredi claims are backed up by a rather unexpected source. In the past two weeks, the haredi press has trumpeted a recent “financial discovery”: that the NIS 200 banknote bears a quote from former president Zalman Shazar about the importance of Torah study.
Indeed, the design of the NIS 200 bill features words from a speech Shazar made in 1949, in which the late president said that the Jewish people, even in its darkest periods, had always known to make Torah study mandatory for all children, “in every village in every country.”
“Rich or poor, only children or large families, single or married – we must all carry the burden of Torah study,” Shazar’s quote reads.
