This issue of working mothers has always been a problem. It very often distorts the relationship between husband and wife, and deprives children of a full-time
mother (the proverbial “latch-key” children).

Many ShoLom-Bais problems and many children-at-risk problems can be traced to the absence of a full-time mother from the home.

The Jewish woman is the bedrock of the the Jewish family. If her wolrdview is subverted by the secular (Hellenist) concepts usually taught in BA programs,
especially when secular teachers are involved), the viability of Jewish home is at risk.

Hillel, these are admirable sentiments, and true besides, but I think all of this was seriously compromised when Collel became the preferred alternative to husbands earning the bread instead of sending their wives out to do it.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
You can’t totally reverse roles when it comes to breadwinning, and then expect wives to severely limit their education and work options for fear of secular influence.
If the rabbis are concerned about wives transmitting secular influences to their families, then mandate that all but the brightest students leave collel and (gasp) go to work and earn the living their ketubot obligate them to earn: “… and I will work for thee, honor, provide for, and support thee, in accordance with the practice of Jewish husbands, who work for their wives, honor,
provide for and support them in truth.”

This information comes from the book ‘between the yeshiva world and modern orthodoxy, by Marc Shapiro, pp129-134.

Yes! We DEMAND that the Israeli government pay chareidi women less than non-chareidi women of equal qualifications! That’ll teach the government to meddle in “our” affairs! How dare they tempt our dainty belles with improved salaries! It’s a Zionist plot, I tell you!

Please Ms. Katz–don’t fool yourself or others. You have manufactured here an entirely new, and fascinating, justification for the anti-degree decrees: The need to maintain the next generation of chareidi families in reliable impoverished equality. So, now let’s imagine that the government acceded to your demand and offered chareidi women consistently less pay than other qualified women. You would complain on these very pages that: ‘The Israeli government is desperately trying to keep chareidim impoverished and segregated from Israeli society. The secular leadership is terrified of an intellectually accomplished, economically productive and socially confident chareidi woman. And certainly of entire neighborhoods of them!’ But alas: it may not be only the secular leadership that shudders at that prospect.

>“The education degrees are a total crock.”

Unfortunately they are a “crock” that opens one of the only available doors to Israeli chareidi women to earn a living for their families. That may be why chareidi rabbonim have endorsed the “crock” for decades. (Or did “the government” forcibly occupy Bais Yaakov buildings all these years?) Perhaps we should dispense with the crock and thereby dispense with the living?

>“Degrees in education in the US are a known boondoggle.” Indeed they are. But Israel is not the US. Israeli degrees are not American degrees. Bais Yaakov isn’t a University, and chareidi women aren’t American college kids. (Right?)

As to the charges voiced of “careerism”: How else aside from a “career” do you want a working mother of, say, 9 children to provide the sole income for her family? Selling old clothes or Clods of Holy Earth from home on eBay? (Well I guess that also wouldn’t work: no internet.) Are you just asking for a guaranteed lifetime income from the government? (”Free” healthcare…) If so, just say so. If not, please outline your proposed alternatives.

Ms. Schmidt says: “…and tried to formulate guidelines to prevent competition for salary increases and inroads of problematic course content, while not harming existing salary scales.”

In other words, they attempted to impede the economic rules that govern wages for the rest of humanity–where higher qualification leads to (whoa!) higher income–and wanted to instead ensure that salaries can never rise. Some other locales where this strategy has been tried: China, Cuba, the USSR, North Korea, Israeli kibbutzim, et al. It’s usually called “socialism”. Its record of success is open for public viewing.

>“…women who were enrolled in continuing ed and degree programs will have to retrench. The rabbinic committee is aware of this and is taking measures to ameliorate economic harm to those caught in midstream.”

Maybe they should have thought about taking those measures before throwing the students out of school… According to the NY Jewish Week: “Further, the new decree specifies that women who have already completed the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree would be at a disadvantage if they apply for a job at any institution affiliated with Beit Ya’akov.” Is this accurate? Are the students who completed their degrees at Bais Yaakov now going to be retroactively punished? But then again…given the dominant charedi social mores, they already have.

>“You cannot talk about “the rabbis” since the haredi world is variegated and has multiple centers of authority.

Indeed, we should not assume that every chareidi rabbi bears the accountability for this decision.

Ori: Your actions seem to contradict your words. Even on an Orthodox site such as this one, you are going to be exposed to posh’im and our kfirah (= heresy, for those who don’t know Hebrew) thoughts. I don’t think I’ve ever had a comment rejected, and my ideas definitely flow from my non-Charedi lifestyle.

Unless I miss my guess, you thought this issue out, possibly with the advice of friends and/or your Rabbi, and decided that it is worth it. The risk to yourself from exposure to secular ideas is small, well worth the rewards from the discussions here. Besides, kiruv always requires interaction with Jews who are far from Torah uMitzvot.

True, you are not an impressionable young adult (I assume). However, in many ways this is a more kfirah-friendly environment than a Charedi school where professors have to tow the line or lose their livelihood. Besides, it would take less than a decade to train Charedi professors who will have the right attitudes AND be able to teach as the B.A. level.

The parallel you may be thinking of is R”H 25. by R’ Yehoshua and R’ Gamliel and he correct day for Yom kippur. However there are those commentaries that say that R’ Yehoshua had to listen only because of a special rule by the establishment of the new moon and in any other case he would have had to act on his certainty of the din.

Again I don’t know enough of the specifics with the Sridei Eish to know how sure he was.

KT

If they now have to suffer economically for the same reasons, why are they complaining?

And if they will now be less enthusiatic when they teach the girls how to relatre to parnasa (and how its all from heaven, and we should not worry about such irrelevant annoyances like career restrictions), that would not be so bad.

By acknowledging the consensus opinion of the Gedolim of Eastern Europe regarding public policy, (which was led, on this issue, most vocally by RCO) as one that people should follow, even if one’s personal opinion is not in agreement. This had nothing to do with personal Kavod.

Joel,

As I understand it, the Seridei Eish did not think that “the Sanhedrin” was telling him that he was allowed to, e.g., actively eat something which he personally held was Cheilev. There was no risk of violating a commandment by going along with Rav Chaim Ozer.

On May 7,2006 Sarah Leibowitz Schmidt wrote in the online version of the Jerusalem post an article on why she, an Ashkenazi academic, was voting for Shas.

I am assuming that you and the author of the May 7th article are the same individual.

In the article you wrote, that what you like about Shas is:

“A SECOND area of moderation and openness is the attitude to higher education. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the founder of Shas, has given full backing to his daughter’s Herculean efforts to establish a college. Adina Bar-Shalom started the Haredi College in Jerusalem five years ago to enable haredi Beit Yaakov graduates to obtain fully recognized academic degrees in several professions”

It seems that your defense of the decision of the Ashkenazi Lithuanian Rabbinical Panel’s is out of concern about the misrepresentation of Charedi life but that you disagree with the substance of that decision

But if you take away the option of the degree programs, where will the schools get new teachers?

Steve-As I said I wasn’t commenting on the specifics but I suspect that the Sreidi Eish would have qualifierd in Sanhedrin days as at least at talmid raui lhoraah - (see horiyot 2.)

KT

2. Degrees in education in the US are a known boondoggle. Of all the subjects a person can major in, education is the emptiest in terms of actual content. People who apply to schools of education (as opposed to those who major in English, math, history and so on) have on average the lowest SAT scores of all college applicants. Having taken 12 credits of education courses in my undergraduate days, and having read widely on the subject, and having met many teachers with masters’ degrees in Education, I can tell you that in terms of what those schools actually teach they are a total waste of time and money. The reason the graduates of those schools earn more money in the public school system is that that’s what the teachers’ unions have negotiated. Money is not to be tied to teacher achievement or success in the classroom, but to time spent doing something any donkey can do. Behind it is a radical egalitarianism that has wreaked havoc with educational standards in US public schools. Unfortunately we know that secular Israelis are totally enamored of every popular American liberal fad and fancy and slavishly ape that side of American life. (Hence the push for women in combat, gay marriage, easy abortions and so on.) In reality, by far the best preparation a really good teacher needs in order to teach her subject well is more intensive grounding IN HER SUBJECT. The education degrees are a total crock.

Are you horrified by the implied racism in their report about bringing in outside lecturers from the “Sephardi faction?”

In fact, the original quote (in Hebrew) used the word “Mizrachi,” NOT Sephardi, which might likely be defined as the “modern Orthodox/kipa sruga” factor, which is in fact a completely different hashkafa than the chareidi outlook.

This is just one more way that Ha’aretz continues to incite and inflame its secular readership against religious Jews.

- are you saying that the thrust of R’ Chaim Ozer’s commendation was that Rabbi Wenberg gave kovod to him (RCO) by acknowledinging him as the godol hador?? This sounds suspect. What is the source?

Oh, and Boruch Hashem, it is not just the Flatbush campus that is thriving. The ones in Queens, Manhattan, Yerushalayim, Los Angeles, and Miami — all tailored to the convenience and sensibilities of the frum student — are doing so as well. (I say “Boruch Hashem” not only because I objectively think it’s wonderful, but because one of those campuses pays my salary. )

It’s also yet another reason for all of us in the US to object, and object vehemently, to being labelled charedim.

It is often quite the opposite. The rejection of television has countless adherents in the Charedi world- this eschewal did not come about at the inception of the TV age, but only after immorality became rampant on its programs. Families were inspired by Torah leaders to throw out the TV’s, and their children, for the most part, wouldn’t dream of having one.

There are myriad other examples of frum Jewry rejecting the modern, in situations wherein the “modern” is not in consonance with the spiritual. “Modern” per se can have many benefits; frum Jews do not share the viewpoint of the Amish. At the same time, each major “development” should be assessed for its suitability to a life dedicated to service of Hashem. Our Torah leaders, in whom we look to for Torah wisdom, often guide us in such matters, although many facets of modern life are left to the individual to evaluate.

I know nothing of the degree issue in EY except for what I read here, but I wish to counter the assertion that since “Charedim want modern life”, which I’m sure they do (no one wants to go back to washing boards for laundering), they will automatically dig their heels in, in however subtle a way, on this issue. We don’t yet know the outcome, (nor do I think we have clarity on the decision itself (with all due respect to the poster and commentors), but as a general concept, frum Jews have proven they CAN reject modernity when they are inspired to do so.

We are still a nation apart.

That’s why it’s helpful to see the Hebrew, as Gershon Dubin said. I suspect the author in Hamishpocha was not so much complaining, but just giving vent to people’s feelings and trying to help them sort things out.

Rav Moshe Z’l said one shouldn’t say “es iz shver tzu zain a yid”, but if one feels that way, pretending that one doesn’t without prior acknowledging the previous reality would be counterproductive(I assume the author, a Beis Yaakov graduate, was taught that in her seminary psychology class )

I agree that this is true on the individual level. It becomes a major problem when outsiders see people of any society as a group, as opposed to a collection of individuals. Rabbi Rosenblum wrote about the Dale Carnigie course taken by Israeli chasidim(11/21/06). I take pleasure whenever I see stereotypes shattered.

“Quashing criticism: there ain’t no such thing in the haredi world.”

In my understanding, disagreement is certainly not encouraged, and in subtle ways, it is in fact discouraged. I think that you have to provide more examples to show that criticism is viewed favorably, as it is easy to show that conformity is stressed in thought, dress and action, which tends to make criticism of policies difficult.

Rabbi Dovid Elizrie(comment #99 of the Dennis Prager/Lubavitch thread) writes of a major Charedi publisher submitting to criticism, because he “got flack from [a particular group] for including the bio of the Previous Rebbe.” This is not the ideal way a Torah society should operate. When the Jewish Observer disclaims articles carefully written and reviewed because of criticism received, paradoxically this decreases some people’s faith in the charedi system.

You might say that the above publisher was merely responding to the book market, but the net result is the same: diversity is sometimes publicly suppressed in favor of conformity, although in reality, variety is privately acknowledged as a fact of life. Indeed at two Agudah conventions, speakers mentioned that we might be too quick to be “mevatel” other’s ideas within the Torah world, and even when reacting to those outside the Yeshiva world, people need to do so with pain, rather than with anger. I think we still need to do more work to show that we welcome criticism.

I trust that many charedim, perhaps even leaders, would privately agree that more checks and blances would be healthy for the charedi world, and that there needs to be a slow change in that direction. Two anonymous Lakewood intellectuals were quoted in Haaretz’s “Only in America” essay as saying just that.

I suspect this may be the point. If you can create a closed system by depriving people of the qualifications they require to leave their own community for any purpose whatever then perhaps you would.

But ultimately all of us suffer. Charedim want modern life - otherwise there would be no need to ban the internet or TV or mobile phones. Thye want comfort and gadgets. And histroy shows that people tend to find ways to get modern things they want. All this does is to ensure that seeking to attain such things will be hidden so no one can really influence it - and that the non-frum world will laugh. And the non-frum world needs not to laugh because there is so much that Torah can offer it. But you don’t convey that message like this.

This is sticking the finger in the dyke. Those who obey will suffer financially, their trust will be destroyed and they will come to distrust those who gave the orders. Everyone else will circumvent (and this undermine) those who gave the orders. And those unaffected will laugh their heads off and be butressed in their view that frumkeit has nothing to offer.

It’s really a tragedy.