Question: At the gathering of the 18th Knesset, a compulsory education law was passed regarding essential subjects (mathematics, physics, and others) for the ultra-Orthodox schools. However, the ultra-Orthodox are introducing another bill to nullify this reform.
How do you feel about the proposal of teaching essential subjects for a general education in all schools?
Answer: I don’t understand the ultra-Orthodox’s fear. This doesn’t include history, social sciences, culture, or art. These are subjects that are essential today for every person to apply for any job.
Maybe they are afraid of being left without their electorate or that people will become more secular, will begin to work and leave their communities in which children grow up without a profession; they don’t have degrees and must study in a kollel [institute for advanced Talmud and rabbinical literature study] for a poor people’s scholarship. The problem is compounded by the fact that they receive very large benefits from the state according to the number of children in the family.
If you consider the situation from the perspective of the future, on the one hand, in any case everything is going toward a reduction in the number of places to work because robots and automated machines will enter our lives so much that we will simply not be able to find work for everyone. On the other hand, in spite of everything, it is necessary to give a person a minimal job besides studying Torah [1]. At least, that is what the Americans did. But it could be that to a particular degree this caused them to begin to become distanced from religion [2], from Jewish communities and to gradually spread all over America. The problem is serious and as far as it seems, the Orthodox are considering this issue.
They must stand guard in relation to their community and they are doing this magnificently. They use whatever they can get from the nation and from local self-management organizations. They are good politicians who can see everything correctly, predict developments, and come to agreements. They understand what they must do. There is a thorough understanding of their internal problems, but externally they always present themselves as one single monolithic force.
Comment: In principle, this is a type of preservation….
Answer: This preservation is correct because in their perception there is nothing new in the world, “If we wait 30 years, nothing will happen.”
Preservation like this is justified. So I think that they know what they are doing and all of our secular views about their behavior, in which we immediately denounce and judge them, is derived from a point of view in which everything must be changed immediately and be constantly clothed in another form.
While they assume that changes can wait, the main thing is to hold their community together, under one roof, behind one fence and not allow it any way to dissolve or to disperse anywhere.
Comment: According to Kabbalistic theory, the ego is growing and one way or another it will always win, meaning that the barriers will be breached….
Answer: This will only be in the end of days. First everything will come from the secular strata of the population through the moderate religious Jewish communities. And only at the end, when all the rest will already be close to correction and unity, then the Light of correction, by way of the external strata, will it gradually manifest in them.
Until then, they will be against any changes; they will hate the wisdom of Kabbalah and this will continue until the end of days.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/24/16
Related Material:
Orthodox Youth To Join The Army? [3]
The Difference Between The Secular And Religious Approach [4]
Why People Become Disappointed In Religions [5]