Haredi Leaders React To Supreme Court's Ruling Ending State Welfare Stipends For Yeshiva Students

"They're out of their minds, they're cutting down the branches they're sitting on. They think they'll keep cutting back on what we supposedly take from them, but they don't realize that their raison d'etre is to sustain those who study Torah…the Americans won't give them money anymore. It's been proven that everything they do to haredim comes back to get them, as we've witnessed with the incitement campaign against haredim, which came back to get them in the flotilla affair all over the world."

Rabbi: Seculars' raison d'etre sustaining yeshiva boys

Leading ultra-Orthodox leaders slam High Court ruling revoking yeshiva students' income support

Ari Galahar • Ynet

Leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis slammed a High Court of Justice ruling revoking income support allowances for married yeshiva students. Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, one of the leaders of the haredi-Lithuanian sector said of the judges, "They're out of their minds, they're cutting down the branches they're sitting on."

Commenting on the ruling, the rabbi said, "They think they'll keep cutting back on what the haredim supposedly take from them, but they don't realize that their raison d'etre is to sustain those who study Torah for a few pennies.

"If they stop, the Americans won't give them money anymore. It's been proven that everything they do to the haredim comes back to get them, as we've witnessed with the incitement campaign against the ultra-Orthodox, which came back to get them in the flotilla affair all over the world."

Rabbi Shteinman, 97, added that currently there is a state of symbiosis between seculars and haredim: "They help us and God Almighty helps them."

'Funny seculars'

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, one of the top haredi rabbis in Bnei Brak, also commented on the High Court ruling and said, "They're funny these seculars who think they're hurting the haredim but they themselves should have been the ones to protest the decision."
 
Rabbi Yehuda Lefkowitz was even fiercer and stated, "Because we kept quiet about the Emanuel affair, it carried on with the yeshiva students and no one knows where it will stop."

Lithuanian spiritual leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv was not told of the decision as he was feeling ill on Monday.

In a groundbreaking precedent, the High Court of Justice ruled Monday that the State's manner of allotting assured income to yeshiva students was illegal, and ordered the clause be removed from the State Budget for 2011.

The precedent was set with majority of six justices concurring, led by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish.

Comments

[Bill]

"their reason d'être is to sustain those who study Torah."

Go f&$"! yourself!

[seymour]

the Israelis have finally got smart and telling the herideim to go fly a kit.

no big deal blaming whatever on this ruling. these are the same people who blamed the holocaust of the secular and the Zionists. As I have said before they are not Jews, just a cult based on Judaism

[Bill]

What Hitler did to the Jews was abominable, but -if- this was their attitude back then too, then they had it coming to them.

[TheLoneCabbage]

I'm sorry... for 60 years they cursed the Zionists at every opportunity. So against having ANYTHING to do with the state, they wouldn't even protest the Hitnakut that happened to Religious Zionists. Not one peep when their yeshivas were burned, and their students cast into settlement camps, and their communities scattered.

Now, NOW, they say that the "their reason d'être" is to bring blessing to the Zionists? Suddenly they are learning for the sake of Zionism? Go into any yeshiva and ask any shtieger who is really there to grant all the merit from his study to a soldier going on patrol?

I'm with Bill, Go f&$"! yourself!

[zach]

"If they stop, the Americans won't give them money anymore. "

In other words: "Israel is dependent on handouts from Americans and only get these handouts because they give money to hareidim".

[randomthought]

Out of line Bill =\

(yeah so are some of these rabbis)

[Dr. Dave]

OK lets have the chareidim put their money where there mouths are!!!

Every chareidi who sits and learns and gets a government stipend also gets a governmental curriculum of how much learning is expected and regularly gets tested by the government (not by fellow chareidim to avoid any appearance of impropriety).

Lets see if the fellows are actually learning the tanach, gemamra, shulchan aruch, rishonim and acharonim or are just batlans who smoke and gossip or worse, throw rocks and riot.

Fail too many tests and you lose your stipend, or will receive it only for national service!!

[jay]

Bill, you suggested that they deserved to be gassed and cremated. That's an incredibly evil statement. Opposing their policies and actions is one thing. Approving their mass slaughter , the murder of their children...no one deserves that. Shame on you.

[David]

Bill,

That is horrible waht you said.

[Bill]

"Bill, you suggested that they deserved to be gassed and cremated." - Jay

Jay,

If you champion an ideology or doctrine under which everyone else in the world is your indentured servant and owes their existence to you, you are inviting and instigating a severe and calamitous backlash, and when the backlash does come, it tends to be indiscriminate and affects both the extremists and the moderates.

This is unfair, but I think any mature and intelligent person should be able to come to the conclusion that this is how the world and the people in it function.

[SJ]

When theodicy runs wild.

[Bill]

"Out of line Bill" - Random

Not at all.

The Jewish people needs to try to resolve its hitherto internal problem (peacefully and amicably).

If they fail to do so, the rest of the world, in time, will do it for them. And if that happens, things won't be as neat and tidy as one might wish.

[Althelion]

Linking anti-haredim sentiments to the flotilla confrontation is a bizarre bit of logic. It seems that for the haredi leaders, when all else fails, play the God card and hope that the public and government are freaked out about it enough to feel scared or guilty. The problem this time is that since haredi behavior has grown more and more abhorent and violent, the general public has ceased to view them (the haredim) as representing God and/or Judaism.

[jay]

Bill, that ideology is common to many religions and nationalities. To suggest that they would have deserved the gas chambers for having a superiority complex is insane. You'd need to follow with the Japanese, Mandarins, Aztecs, Romans, Evangelicals, ad infinitum.

[Bill]

"Bill, that ideology is common to many religions and nationalities.' - jay

Jay,

Educate me, please.

How about naming some religions and nationalities that are delibirately parasitic upon their host nations - and back it up ideologically?

(As an aside, I didn't say "deserved." There is such a thing as consequences, however undeserved....).

[Orthodox]

Bill,

You clearly do not believe in G-D. Any believer would know that the primary existence of the Jewish nation is to keep and study His Torah. You must be a lonely, depressed inidividual.

[Bill]

Orthodox,

I’d be ashamed to show a brain like yours in public.

I'll summarize your argument in case anyone missed its stupidity the first time around:

A. All believers in God believe that the “primary existence of the Jewish nation is to keep and study His Torah.”

B. Bill does not believe that the “primary existence of the Jewish nation is to keep and study His Torah.”

Therefore,

C. Bill does not believe in God.

[yaacov]

A person can be a believer in GD and not agree with supporting ALL Torah students. Lifelong Torah study has traditionally been for the gifted and the wealthy. Everyone else worked. In fact the Tanaim and Amroaim worked. This idea of "mageea li" did not exist.

[JR]

Bill,
The polygamist Mormons believe just that (at least they say it out loud). They call it "bleeding the beast." (i.e. taking welfare money from the US Government in order to weaken it). Read "Under Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer.

[randomthought]

You answered it for yourself on that one...

"The Jewish people needs to try to resolve its hitherto internal problem (peacefully and amicably)."

Agreed.

[Abracadabra]

Did Rabbi Shteinman ever, in his 97 years, brush his beard?

Maybe THAT is what caused the flotila problem!

[Bill]

abra,

I kid you not.

Legends circulate in haredi circles about why his beard is uncombed.

I'm not joking.

[Dr. Dave]

Its kinda like dreads for the beard. Is he a rasta rebbe?

[Bill]

Actually, the story goes that in his youth he once realizes that he accidentally plucked a hair out of his bear on Shabbat - a big no-no.

So he vowed never touch his bears again.

In fact, his beard got so gnarly once (it is as hard as steel wool - the truth!) that a piece of it broke off and fell to the table while he was eating.

[who knows]

They are playing on the basic human emotion of FEAR. Specifically the fear of unknown.

Practically, Steineman have said that the only reason and only purpose for Israeli secular people's existence is to give material support to Haredim. Just like the only reason for cows to exist is to give milk and meat to the people.

So the non-haredim are similar to farm animals in their purpose.

[sifter]

"What Hitler did to the Jews was abominable, but -if- this was their attitude back then too, then THEY HAD IT COMING TO THEM"

Bill, U R a fucking mental case carried away by your Ortho Jew Hate. You want to throw babies up in the air and catch them on bayonets for sport? You want to force a mother to choose which of her twins lives, and watch the other one die? You want to see 7 year olds hanged for stealing bread? You think a Haredi woman 'deserves' to have concrete poured into her vagina as an 'experiment'? Or maybe she deserves to be raped and then have her breasts sliced off for the orgasmic delight of her assailant? 'Cuz THAT is what the Nazis did to our people, you son of a bitch.

I'll take Haredi misbehavior, protests, crime and bad breath any day of the week over the hateful exuberance you exude over suggesting Jews, even bad or despicable Jews, 'deserve' the extermination Hitler dished out. After reading your hateful shit one can only wish abortion was retroactive.

[Nickidewbear]

sifter, your behavior is not better than that of Bill.