Israel – Over half of haredim would be interested in receiving advanced secular education in preparation for a profession if they could be assured of a religious, gender-segregated classroom environment, according to a survey released today.
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The poll was commissioned by Chakima, an institute that helps haredim prepare for university entrance exams, ahead of a Knesset Education Committee discussion of affirmative action legislation aimed at encouraging haredim to enroll in institutes of higher learning.
The Shiluv Group, the Israeli representative of the Millward Brown research company, asked a sample of 500 haredim if they would be interested in earning an academic degree in preparation for professions such as medicine, nursing, economics and law.
While 53 percent said they would be interested, 63% of female respondents said they would, while only 41% of males were interested.
Hassidim were more open to secular learning, with 59% answering in the affirmative, while only 42% of the Lithuanian respondents said yes.
No differences were found between older and younger haredim or between married and singles.
According to Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry data, 49.1% of haredi women of working age participate in the labor market, higher than the 37.4% rate for haredi men aged 20 to 64, but lower than secular women’s at 70%, and secular men’s at 79.9%.
In the years 2002-2007, the average size of the haredi population was 637,000, 8.8% of the total population. There were 233,000 haredim aged 20 to 64, including 118,000 men. Some 12.4% of haredim had at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37.2% of the secular and traditional population. In addition, 19.9% of haredim served in the army, compared with 72.2% of the secular and traditional population.
The average monthly salary of haredi women was NIS 3,690, 40% lower than that of haredi men (NIS 6,123). The average salary of secular women was NIS 5,698, 36% lower than that of secular men (NIS 8,955). Haredi women earned 35% less than secular women, while haredi men earned 30% less than secular men.
“A lot of the tension and polarity in our society is a direct result of the fact that the haredi population does not integrate into the labor force,” said Shay Cohen, CEO of Chakima.
“There is no doubt that as soon as they start to join the workforce, with all the implications of such as move, barriers that separate between people will fall.”
I am very impressed that they have the desire for such academic aspirations and take no action upon it….gevaldic
Is there a hiddush? They should add to the conditions, that military service not be a condition of entering a profession or attending an Israeli academic institution. One should also note that asking Israeli institutions of higher learning to give up their anti-Torah haskafa would be like asking the Nazis to give up being anti-Semites, but no harm in asking.
i find this interesting
most charedim have no idea what a secular education means yet they desire it..
i suspect most are clueless in this regard although they probably mean well in their aspirations.
I applaud their interest in education and training for professions and other employment. However, it is not appropriate to maintain gender segregation throughout such education or training. In most professions and many jobs in the real world, you have to be able to interact with and deal with people of both genders and people from all backgrounds. If you are a dr. or nurse, you are going to have to work with patients, family members or patients and colleagues of both genders. (Yes, I know there are a few exceptions, an ob/gyn only treats woman for example, but you don’t become an ob/gyn without first having general medical training and rotating through several areas during internships). If you are a lawyer, you have to deal with clients, witnesses, other attorneys , judges, court personnel, etc. of the opposite sex. Part of their training therefore needs to include integrated settings or how will they function in real work settings.
We can debate the pros and cons of whether Israel higher education facilities should accomodate their unusual and sometimes extreme needs for separation, limited exposure to certain photos etc. However, if we don’t do somthing soon, there will be a crisis of huge proportions in EY as tens or hundreds of thousands of dysfunctional and uneducated young men and women can’t find a parnassah and have to be for tzadakah or welfare from the state. It would be better to accomodate their need rather than having to support them indefinitely.
Sounds like an Israeli version of YU would be what is needed.
just to clarify…i am impressed that they do nothing about it….they talk; they do no action….batlin..
an israeli version of YU is not needed. they haven’t done much in the “Y” department for the USA, YU rabbis are really far & few, other than that their just like any “U” . Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim has put out 10 rabbis for every one out of YU. Besides YU hashkafa has become too modern even for MO. keep the “Y” out of the “U” & you’ll have a “U”, trying to make a Y&U together loses all sense of purpose.
There are in fact thousands of rabbis with semicha from the YU-affiliated rabbinical school.
There are also tens of thousands of men and women who have earned non-rabbinic degrees from Yeshiva University, in environments that are friendly for Jewish observance.
Full disclosure: I am a Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is a division of YU.
Why all the talk and no action? It’s not that hard. Here we have COPE. Chareidim are being prepared for the CPA exam. It’s not that hard to get a proffessional in room and put a group of chareidim in it and teach. There obviously is little motivation for improvement of their economic lot. As of now, they are quite proficient in stown throwing and garbage burning.
Sorry but there are a lot off very wealty yiddin that did not have any special degree so please lets not tell the one abov how to give us parnasa.
I have personal experience with attempts by chareidi groups to arrange for gender specific professional training programs. Some of them are successful, but most are not. The reason is that the chareidim look for a quickie course in that profession without having to do the full course load.”Just give me the maskanah, I don’t need to know how, just what” is an often heard request. They want only night school and they want everyone to pass the course, guaranteed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in the academic world. Shortcut programs produce inferior products. Want to learn a profession? Do it the right way. There is no Artscroll medical degree yet.
I am not sure that the answer to Hareidi education in Israel would be a YU-like school. These folks need an intense secular education in an atmosphere that they feel would not compromise their way of life. They do not feel that they need to learn both Torah uMada; they feel that they get plenty of Torah from their own institutions already.
YU is built around offering both types of education to someone of a University age; say 20. In Israel, the age that we must address is more like 30–no way are most yeshiva boys going to leave full-time study at age 20. Even if the Hareidi Rabbis would agree to this, the boys wul;d be eligible for the draft or other national service.
I personally see no problem with YU; I just think that their academic program would be difficult to fit into Israeli academia. Israel does have a University with a full-time kollel; it is called Bar-Ilan. Israeli Universities have flexible programs which would allow students to learn in parallel wiht thier studies, but this would be quite difficult for most students to arrange, and close to impossible for students in medicine, law, and other such schools.
these will all have a disadvantage for Hareidim–classes are mixed. That’s the way Universities are. We believe in educating men and women together (except for things like Bar-Ilan’s Kollel and Midrasha).
On the other hand, academic colleges are opening every day in Israel. Nobody is stopping anyone from opening a single-gender college only for Hareid folks. The problem is that these are private, and faculty must be found to teach in them. So money is required for salaries and operations–and there will be tuition costs.
hundreds of guys learning? huh? who you’re fooling? (unless you consider m.d.t.’s class learning). oh, & their semicah program is a hoax, after taking it I had to relearn yoreh deah to get semicah from reb moshe, & still learn choshen mishpat FOR 6 SIX MORE YEARS to get a job with maachon lehora after having passed YU’s joke course in less than a year. that is by the way why there aren’t many yu rabbis, just “smicah”guys. r’elya never learned in yu, just in torah vaddath lakedwood brisk bais hatalmud & mir, & r’gifter spent a large part of his life publicly doing teshuva for having learned in yu
Many (although not all) of the existing “trade” or “advanced degree” programs focused on the hareidi students are a joke. First, they don’t offer programs for girls who are just as much in need of a parnassah as the bochurim. Second, they invest more time and resources on cosmetics (e.g. avoiding any use of computers without strict filtering, excluding instructors who are not themselves ultra-frum, no women instructors where men are in the class etc., scheduling classes so as not to conflict with davenin, learning, yom tovim, etc. If they are serious about education, they will have to relax some of their chumrahs and structure thes programs in a more rigorous and professional way and not obcess about the cosemetics.
I hope they do do this, but it has to be done right. Not a BS certificate but real learning. If the education gets a reputation in the outside world as being a purely pro forma cargo cult system then it is worse than useless. You send people out to spend 6 months learning to do whatever and when they get out they send out CV’s and find that they all end up in the trash.
You also need to know that if I had 2 CV’s in front of me, one has a BA or MA in computer science and the other has a 4 month course from some place I have never heard of in programming that the guy with the MA will get the interview every time
Hiring is always very competitive.
There are plenty of people without a real education who did well. And there are plenty with real educations who didn’t. But when you look at it statistically it’s very clear. A real secular education vastly increases your expected lifetime income. A high school education, an accredited bachelor’s degree and graduate or professional post-baccalaureate diplomas all raise your chances for material prosperity. That’s so well established that no rational person could disagree.
But there are dangers. And that’s the big reason the Charedim have fought hard for religions-only education. Quite simply, a real education is incompatible with Salafist, Christian Fundamentalist or Charedi Jewish life. Do you think I’m exaggerating? If anything I’m understating the case.
Here it is in a single sentence: Revealed religion, any revealed religion is fundamentally incompatible with the scientific method of inquiry.
The basis of the physical and social sciences, both pure and applied, is investigation and critical inquiry. The fundamental standard isn’t “What does my Rabbi say” it’s “What are the facts?” and “How do they fit together to make theory?” Real education, especially in the sciences, does not assume its conclusions and reject contradictory data in favor of what one has been told by authorities. An inconvenient fact can and often does destroy a carefully built edifice. Over time we come up with better explanations than what we had before. And the greatest hero is the little child who announces that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
I’ve been called a heretic and worse on this forum for saying “We know more about the physical world than the Sages did. When it comes to the sciences we cannot blindly accept what they say.” Any evidence to that effect is and must be rejected without examination by the Fundamentalist, because his worldview runs on authority and threats, of shunning or death in this world and eternal punishment in the next. His opposite – the man or woman with a free mind – must examine the evidence and abandon cherished beliefs if they cannot stand up to critical scrutiny.
Then there are the social effects.
People with a real education are, on the whole, more accepting of people who are different than themselves. The Charedi lifestyle is based on ever-increasing separation from and intolerance of any difference. Anything which the Gentiles do must be rejected specifically because Gentiles do it. It isn’t enough to be a Jew, one must be Orthodox. And Orthodox isn’t enough. One must dress archaically, speak a special tribal language and, if at all possible, avoid all contact with anyone who isn’t in one’s particular sub-sect. One must retreat entirely from the real world. If possible, one lives off the sweat of other Jews’ brows so that one’s days are entirely filled with rote memorization of doctrine.
The two practice do not work together. They are fundamentally at odds.
The real danger to the Charedi way of life comes from women. No matter how much we talk about “tznius” and expand the idea beyond all bounds of reason, no matter how much we say that true fulfillment lies in having a dozen children and never menstruating we are human beings. And the simple unarguable fact is that women who have access to education change. They delay marriage. Once they are married they delay child-bearing and limit the number of children they have. They question imposed gender roles and find fulfillment in things that do not involve having as many kids as possible.
You can scream all you want about how it isn’t Jewish and claim that studying more Torah or restricting women’s activities will change this. But it simply doesn’t work. From Tehran to Shanghai to Mexico City increased education form women has always meant smaller, wealthier, more independent families. The daughters of these women simply do not go back to their grandmothers’ lifestyles in any significant numbers.
In short, the only way to maintain “traditional values” is to force women to be ignorant, constantly pregnant and without any alternatives. Women understand this at some level. That’s why about two thirds of Charedi women are interested in real higher education as opposed to less than half of their men.