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Dispatch From Israel

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By Herbert SteinPosted Monday, March 16, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET

As I have written in Slate before about my adventures with electronic gadgets--my TV satellite dish and my microwave oven--I will start by saying that I lo-o-o-ve my laptop computer. I have never had one before, and I was worried about how I would hook it up in Israel. But I got the help of an engineer in my hotel (which is not one of those luxurious international hotels). The engineer explained he did not speak English. But he installed a new phone jack in the wall and gave me a new connecting cord to fit that jack and an adapter for the power line. All this was done in about half an hour. When I told an Israeli friend about that, he said that the engineer must be Russian. He might formerly have been a professor of electrical engineering in Kiev. Anyway, being online, I feel that, though 5,000 miles from home, I am still close to my friends and relations.
But now to a less personal and less trivial observation:
Arriving at JFK airport, at the departure gate for the flight to Israel, one is immediately struck by what a diverse lot we Jews are. I think of the diversity in terms of two characteristics--degree of religious observance and culture. On this scale, there are four broad groups:
1) The extremely observant Orthodox, who observe, at the very least, the more than 600 Commandments in the Bible (you thought there were only 10). This observance controls every aspect of their lives, so that there is no difference between their observance and their culture, a culture handed down from the eastern Europe of 150 years ago. The men are distinguished by their black clothing, which includes a black hat worn over the yarmulke. In general the men do no work of the kind that adds to measured GDP, spending their time in Hebrew schools (yeshivas) studying sacred texts. The women dress plainly. What mainly distinguishes them is that they bear lots of children.
2) Israelis living the Israeli culture, with varying degrees of religious observance ranging from quite a lot to none. The Israeli culture is most obvious in extremely casual dress. Also, speech tends to be blunt. This has been explained to me as being a consequence of the Hebrew language, which is rather meager in vocabulary and does not allow fine shades of meaning. So, when Israelis speak English, they are translating in their minds from Hebrew, and a bluntness emerges that is not intended. I don't know whether to believe that or not. There is a certain assertiveness in their behavior, physically manifest in the swaggering walk of many men. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that most men have served in the army under circumstances in which it was good to seem tough. The attitude seems to be that of a frontier cowboy who is saying, "This is my country now. I earned it, and I intend to keep it." That may reflect insecurity.
3) Israelis living with American culture and varying degrees of religious observance, which probably means little observance for most of them. They are neater and more restrained in aspect. I refer, of course, to appearances and do not mean to imply that the American culture is really "nicer" than the Israeli culture.
4) American Jews with American culture and varying degrees of religious observance, mostly very little.
Among the Israelis, the second category is the largest. I have the feeling people are sliding from that category into the third. This may be a biased observation, because most of the people I deal with spend lots of time in the United States. But everyone in Israel has a lot of contact with America through television. I also feel that the degree of religious observance among this group is declining, or will decline.
On my plane from Washington was a young bearded Israeli wearing a knitted yarmulke, bluejeans, and a sweatshirt from an American university. Before the plane took off he opened an enormous attaché case full of file folders, appointment books, and other paraphernalia. He took out and opened a little book, turned the pages rapidly, and mumbled for about 30 seconds. I guessed he was saying his evening prayers--in record time. I also guessed he wasn't going to go on doing them every evening much longer--and that it didn't matter whether he did or not, the whole thing having become so diluted.
The interesting case is the first group, the totally observant. My first thought was that this group would wither away under the lures and pressures of a rationalistic, high-consumption society. But apparently that is not in prospect. Although there are a few defections, the rate of childbirth is so high that the total number of these people is increasing, not only absolutely but also as a fraction of the population of Israel.
So, how do they live, if they do no income-producing work? Obviously, they live on transfers from others. Some of these others are wealthy American, Canadian, European and Australian Jews. But mainly the transfers come from the Israeli government. The government pays the yeshiva students a stipend for being students. Israel also has a system of income supplements for people whose income is below a certain poverty line. Since the student stipends are low, the Orthodox men qualify for the income supplement.
They still have very low incomes. I was told that Jerusalem has the lowest per capita income in Israel, because it has the highest proportion of the extremely Orthodox. But still they get along.
Many of them are highly capable people who could earn satisfactory incomes. But there is a Catch-22 here. They are exempt from serving in the army as other Israelis do, on the grounds that their religious observances forbid it. But if they took ordinary paid employment, the government would take that as evidence that their religious observances did not require constant attendance at the yeshiva, and they would be drafted into the army.
It is not my intention, nor is it within my ability, to pass judgment on any of the parties to this arrangement. Certainly, maximizing the GDP is not the most important goal in life. The Orthodox may say they are serving a higher purpose than is served by those who help produce the national income, and they may be right. But how long the arrangement can last seems a question.
Many societies provide support for private religious practice. In the United States the deductibility of contributions to religious institutions is a subvention to the members of those institutions. What distinguishes the Israeli case is that the support goes not to almost everyone but to a particular group of practitioners, whose numbers are substantial--perhaps 10 percent of the population--and rising, that the support per recipient is large, and that it is direct and highly visible, especially in the form of exemption from military service.
This situation obviously causes much dissatisfaction among Jews who do serve in the army and pay the taxes that support the Orthodox. The situation persists for political reasons. Neither of the two major parties, the Likud Party and the Labor Party, can command a majority and form a government without the support of the Orthodox. Neither party wants to offend the Orthodox. But the present arrangement looks unstable, especially as the proportion of the Orthodox in the population rises.

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By Herbert SteinPosted Monday, March 16, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET
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Herbert Stein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He is a member of the board of contributors at the Wall Street Journal.
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