Changes to religion and state need planning, patience

With a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, the leaders of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political parties and their MKs lined up this week to denounce Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman as the latest in a long line of tyrants who oppressed the Jewish people.

Shas leader MK Arye Deri called him “wicked,” Shas MK Michael

Malkieli said he had the values of “the jungle, United Torah Judaism chairman Moshe Gafni called him “evil,” and UTJ MK Meir Porush called him “Godless.”

Liberman’s offense was to have revoked childcare subsidies for 18,000 families in which the father studies full time in yeshiva.

Under the terms of the new framework, men will have to work for 24 hours a week to claim such benefits, worth up to NIS 1,200, a significant figure for the limited means of haredi households.

The purpose of the measure is to reverse a situation in which haredi yeshiva students are subsidized to not join the workforce, which has led to a situation in which 53% of haredi men were employed in 2019, compared with more than 85% of other men.

In a separate step, Religious Services

Minister Matan Kahana’s office said he intends to enact term limits of 10 years for municipal chief rabbis, after which they could stand for reelection.

The idea is to keep such rabbis accountable and relevant to their residents and reduce the likelihood that they will adopt extreme positions of Halacha, speaking and acting in a manner incommensurate with the character of their cities, as numerous municipal chief rabbis have.

This development received less attention from the haredi parties, although Porush found the time to accuse Kahana of seeking “to crassly destroy the Chief Rabbinate.”

The new government is very unusual in many ways, but one of them is that it does not include any of the haredi parties, something Liberman himself greatly desired.