No Coercion

From Mishpacha Magazine:

When Israeli media personality Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party swept an astonishing 19 mandates in the January Knesset election, promising to make the chareidi population “share the burden” through mandatory army service and workforce participation, reactions in Israel’s chareidi community ranged from shock and dread to fiercely determined resistance.
Yesh Atid officials professed that their goal was only to help chareidim. “I don’t hate them,” Lapid proclaimed repeatedly and insisted, among other things, that the chareidi employment rate was lower than that of the general population simply because no one had compelled them to get jobs.
But Yesh Atid’s very insistence that nothing has been done until now to encourage chareidi workforce participation either betrays a casual and callous ignorance or belies the party’s claim that it feels no antipathy toward the population.

Rabbi Yoseph Deitsch, chairman of the Kemach Foundation — an employment program founded by and for the chareidi sector — has seen it all before. He remembers the provocations of Yair Lapid’s father, Tommy, whose Shinui party twice held 15 seats in the Knesset.

“[Tommy] Lapid and those of his ilk were sure they understood the chareidi community and knew the best way to ‘civilize’ them, to get them into the army and the workplace,” recalls Deitsch. “They tried very hard, and they failed. They failed because they came from the outside — they just thought they could come in and ‘educate’ the chareidim.”

In the intervening years, Deitsch and his staff — along with other organizations, such as Mafteach, Temech, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee — entered the arena, developing their own programs for chareidim seeking employment, and compiling an impressive track record. Thousands of yungeleit, forced out of the halls of kollel by financial, domestic, or personal circumstances, are on the road to economic stability without having compromised their beliefs or lifestyles — all through the efforts of a few dozen askanim working quietly behind the scenes.
As a result, Deitsch cannot help but be galled by the arrogance he perceives in Yesh Atid. He is unsparing in his condemnation.

“In this last election, we suddenly had people coming — Naftali Bennett from one side, [Yair] Lapid from the other — and saying, ‘We don’t recognize what came before today with the chareidim.’ I’m telling you, they truly don’t know what’s happening in the chareidi community. They don’t know how many chareidim are learning, how many are working … they don’t have a clue.

“The last few years they’ve been pounding the drum, complaining that chareidim don’t work, calling us parasites. But they have no idea of the workforce participation figures in the chareidi community. It’s just a convenient means for them to unite the entire Israeli population against the chareidim. They seem to think the first thing we say when we wake up in the morning is, ‘Let’s see, how can we leech off the state and the American Jewish community today?’”

“What we’re trying to say to them is: You think you know what’s going on, you think you know the numbers, you’re trying to impose a way of life on us that is not suitable,” says Kemach spokesman Gidon Katz. “You think that we’re incapable of taking care of ourselves and not responsible for our community, that we’re closed and narrow-minded. But we say no, we’re doing things the right way. We’re going to preserve our way of life. Kemach has been around for five years now, and we’ve proven we chareidim can smoothly integrate into the workforce without turning anyone against us, and still safeguard our traditions.
 
 I have a rule sweetest friends. Nothing done by means of coercion ever works. This holds true when raising children [believe me, I have tried...], marriage or anything else. A basic feature of human nature is that it craves FREEDOM. The moment a person feels compelled by external forces his natural resistance is ignited.

My own position [based obviously on our tradition] is that learning Torah is the greatest thing in the world and that nobody has to justify learning to anybody. My dream is that all of my sons should spend their lives involved in learning and teaching Torah [if they are so inclined] and that my daughters should marry such boys. I also hope that I can personally fund the whole thing. That would be the greatest zchus imaginable. [I find it ironic that all too often the people who don't have money WISH that they could support their kids in learning but can't while the people who could easily do so are so opposed to the idea of their child sitting and learning that they stand by idly and watch as their child and grandchildren live in poverty. My limited brain-power can't comprehend how a parent can watch their child suffer and not help. These same people DO give tzedaka to support Torah - just not their own child's learning. This happens ALL THE TIME and befuddles the mind. My only explanation is that this is Hashem's way of increasing the reward of the dedicated Torah scholars].

However, the reality is that many men are not cut out for full-time learning and others who are cannot support a family of 15 with a four hundred dollar a month kollel check. Such people should go to work and the fact is that they ARE. Secular politicians only push Charedim away from the workplace by forcibly imposing their standards on them.

Nothing should be done with coercion. Remember that lesson for life.