514 A History of Judaism
of the sexes within the armed forces, the perceived danger of moral cor-
ruption, the exposure to secularism and the challenge to religious
observance, as well as, in some cases, theological doubts about the legit-
imacy of the state they would be defending. In response to economic
pressures and government incentives, some haredim are opting to work
in ambulance units or in special army units set up for young haredim
who are not in yeshivah. But all of them are taught unequivocally that
devotion to yeshivah study should be seen as no less valuable than ser-
vice in the military because of its supreme efficacy in encouraging divine
favour towards Israel.
Secular Israeli resentment is stoked still further by haredi reliance on
the state’s social security system to support large families in which the
father is too engrossed in yeshivah studies, for much or all of the poten-
tially productive period of his life, to earn a living. The provision of
generous government grants to yeshivot – itself a product of political
negotiations by the leaders of religious parties over the years – has per-
mitted a growing number of haredim to remain as full- time students
past their twenties in a fashion that had been possible only for elite
pupils in the eastern European yeshivah culture whose traditions the
modern Israeli yeshivot claim to maintain. Even with state aid and low
expectations among haredim for their standard of living, mass yeshivah
education lasting a lifetime is very expensive to maintain, and, although
few Israeli haredim break the taboo of studying in secular universities,
some have begun to attend vocational courses to pick up marketable
skills in single-sex programmes established by the universities and col-
leges with government funding specifically for the benefit of haredi
students, and haredi women are much more widely engaged than their
menfolk in earning for their families.
The causes of antipathy to haredim among diaspora Jews are more
oblique. Non- orthodox Jews have sometimes led the opposition to
attempts by the orthodox to establish an eruv, perhaps because this reli-
gious practice involves an incursion into the concerns of the non- Jewish
public in a fashion which offends the instinct to keep the practice of
Judaism a private matter. The deliberate distinctiveness of haredim in
the modern world can feel like a threat to those Jews who wish to inte-
grate their practice of Judaism into the wider society in which they live.
The arrival in their neighbourhood of a community of ‘black hats’ may
feel like moral pressure to adopt an alien religious life or an inducement
to non- Jews to resent the presence of all Jews.