There is a tendency to see things that happened in the past with a fair amount of forgiveness. Everything was seemingly simpler. Easier. More understandable. "Your people are my people, your God is my God," said Ruth the Moabite, and in an instant she became a Jew, and not just a Jew – but the great-grandmother of King David, the source of the descendants of the Kingdom of Judah throughout the generations.
It is not for nothing that the story of the optimistic and human Book of Ruth existed thousands of years ago, and became the scroll around which the holiday of giving the Torah is commemorated. There's no way any of this could have happened in the 21st century.
Since Judaism had been persecuted for centuries, and most of its development took place in foreign countries, it was right to shut itself up in its mothers in order to avoid assimilation. Separatism was, in fact, the insurance policy for the preservation of the Jewish religion for generations.
Even before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the establishment of the Jewish community in Israel, the fear of assimilation had almost disappeared. There were Jews and Arabs here, and they hardly married each other. Still, instead of openness and inclusion, the trend of separatism is only getting worse, especially among the ultra-Orthodox public.
With the backing of their leadership, they are building cities for themselves, and secular people or those wearing a knitted kippah have no foothold; They study in schools that are segregated between female and female students, and even there is no foothold for non-Haredi students. Also, in those segregated and segregated cities, there are no core studies, and there is no preparation for the moment when they, too, will have to participate more in the leadership of the state.
According to a study conducted at the Israel Democracy Institute by former Bank of Israel Governor Prof. Karnit Flug, the share of Haredim in the population, which currently stands at 13%, will reach 2065% by 32. If their levels of education and integration into the labor market do not change, we are likely to face a broken trough. Therefore, the trend recorded in the last budget – the unconditional transfer of huge budgets to the haredi sector for core education and enrichment of the education of haredi children, which will constitute the backbone of the country's leadership in 30-25 years, is worrisome.
Add to this the issue of gender inequality in Israel. The startup nation, which has brought to the world amazing social laws such as a weekly day of rest, ranks last in gender equality. A study compared us to OECD countries, examining data on discrimination against women in 179 countries in several situations: discrimination within the family, personal security, access to financial resources, and the exercise of personal freedoms.
The study by Prof. Flug and her team also shows that there are fewer women in high-tech, even when the characteristics of education are the same between women and men. In the Haredi sector, the phenomenon is the opposite: Haredi women constitute about 3.6% of high-tech employees, compared to 1.5% of Haredi men. Despite the high abilities of Haredi yeshiva graduates, their dropout rate from academic studies is high: motivation is not enough when you lack an educational foundation and take care of a wife and children.
Prof. Flug summarized the findings: "The only group in Israel that starts low and goes further back is the ultra-Orthodox group." Their leadership must think about the future of all of us, not just the present.
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