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Part Four - Judaism, Culture and State

Financing of Yeshivas and the Humanities

Equality, recognition of reality, striving for independence

The vision

One of the hottest topics in the Israeli public discourse in the last thirty years is funding for yeshivas. Zehut's approach to this complex subject is derived from its general approach of distancing the state from cultural intervention, while recognizing the reality on the ground and placing the "world of Torah" and the "world of the humanities" on the same level.

Zehut has a vision of an independent world of Torah and humanities that is not reliant on of governmental charity, either financial or spiritual, but is instead funded by the private and communal capital of both Torah students and those who learn with them, as well as those who wish to contribute to the advancement of the goals embodied in the institutions of study and research.

When the world of humanities and Torah in Israel is released from the nursery of public funding, both Torah and humanities will benefit, but most importantly, the Israeli public will benefit from the fruits of a free, vibrant and independent national culture, particularly one that is connected to it and its needs.

The damage of funding

Government funding for Torah institutions and institutions of higher education in the field of humanities causes very deep damage, which does not stem from any ill intent on the part of the people who receive this funding, but from the nature of the world, especially from the nature of the influence of government funding, even if it seems convenient for all parties involved.

Funding given to yeshivas requires a whole army of inspectors and officials to enforce eligibility criteria. Moreover, these criteria, however logical, serve as a brake on the ability of yeshiva students to be financially independent and restricts them to a path on which they remain dependent on government funding forever.

A more serious phenomenon is the phenomenon of "anti-elitism" developed by institutions that receive funding on a per student basis. Yeshivas among the Jewish people have always been a tough elitist institution, and yeshiva students were a symbol of self-sacrifice and endless devotion. All this has disappeared in Israel, largely under the degenerate influence of funding. When the meaning of eliminating a student is not an increase in the available budget, but a decrease in funding, it is no wonder that the yeshivas hold on with all their might to any student who will agree to their sponsorship.

But all this is dwarfed by the lack of spiritual independence that this funding dictates. When the funding weapon is constantly held by the state, which waves it frequently, yeshiva heads align themselves with what can be said in the framework of the ability to continue receiving funding. Thus, paradoxically but surely, there is no reason to finance such a Torah, which is no longer genuine, but dependant upon the whims of the client.

The same is true of the humanities, but where the tradition of academic freedom makes it possible to express itself more freely, and to some extent, the damage is more limited to the more pragmatic contexts. The entirely unjustified expansion of the faculties of the humanities is a direct result of the willingness to finance them proporationally to the number of students who choose to study there.

When Hegel and Fichte learned humanity subjects in German universities, no one thought they should be funded, even after they began teaching there as professors. Contrary to what is generally accepted today, the glory period of the nineteenth century was accompanied by very little public funding. Today, however, every humanities student receives generous government subsidies, and people who cannot contribute much in these elitist and abstract areas are encouraged by universities and colleges to study for degrees with no financial future.

The predictable result is that in the entire Western world, and in Israel as well, there is a huge number of unemployed academics who are graduates of the humanities faculties, who need retroactively to provide for their livelihood and employment in government programs.

The analogy between yeshivas and the humanities

"My situation does not allow me to complain about the funds given to Torah scholars, because it appears that I myself receive from the public coffers more than yeshiva students do for the same Torah."

    –Professor Yehuda Liebes, a senior researcher in Jewish studies

Zehut believes that the unilateral approach to funding the world of Torah is fundamentally wrong. There is no difference in kind between funding given to Torah institutions and funding given to academic institutions in the humanities. In both cases, public funding for educational institutions dealing with subjects that on the one hand, do not have direct economic benefit, and on the other, express a spiritual occupation that justifies (or does not justify) public funding for the purpose of nurturing and preserving it.

Contrary to a position common in Israel, there is nothing obvious about funding the Chair of Egyptology at the Hebrew University, rather than funding the Mir Yeshiva.

However, things do not stop there, and the comparison between funding yeshivas and financing the humanities has a deeper connection. Although this did not have to be the case in practice, it is a fact that the academic institutions of the humanities do not represent in any country the prevailing moods in general society. In the United States, for example, over 90% of students in the humanities faculties consistently support the Democratic Party. It is sufficient to recall the identity of the last elected president in order to be convinced that this is a strange phenomenon. This phenomenon exists in Israel as well, and even more so. The historical roots of Israeli humanities in the radical left of Brit Shalom, which united the fathers of Israeli humanities research, is well known.

It is also known that this phenomenon occurs less in the world of exact sciences, in which the range of opinions better represents the accepted range of opinions in society. This leads to the thought that public funding for the institutions of the humanities is not self-evident, and in any case should be balanced by parallel funding.

Zehut maintains that government funding of the humanities in Israel justifies the funding of yeshivas, and vice versa. As long as yeshivas receive government funding, it is reasonable for institutions of the humanities to accept it, and vice versa, since these institutions express authentic values that are clashing within Israeli society, and there is no justice in strengthening one of the parties at the expense of the other.

The present situation and the future

Today there are hundreds of yeshivas in the State of Israel, and hundreds of academic institutions dealing with the humanities, which enjoy direct and indirect government funding. Even if Zehut does not like it, it is an existing social fact with deep historical roots, and this reality can not be changed in a moment. In any case, Zehut opposes a unilateral cut against one of the two branches of the educational institutions supported by the state in Israel.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the desired direction is a gradual reduction in the dependency of these institutions on government support on the one hand, and a gradual reduction of this support on its assistance to the institutions and the restrictions it bears on the other. This will open the way to humanities research and Torah study – independent, respectable, more rooted and authentic, for the benefit of all of us.

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