I see they are taking birth rates as a basis. That assumes that all the children they have will follow their parents' religion. I don't think that can be taken for granted.
When I look at my own country it seems that people are less and less following their parents' religious choices. Most Catholics in Holland of my generation are only so in name. That say they are to please the parents, but they don't do anything church related.
The same happens to more strict religions like Calvinism. My generation generally doesn't care about it, only their parents do. I guess even at a young age kids find information these days and start making their own choices. Having a religion that forbids loads of fun stuff isn't really attractive when you see other people living their life without all those rules.
My parents tried to make me Catholic but I already rejected it when I was very young. I was baptized but I refused to do any more like communion or Sunday school. It just made so little sense to me (and science made so much sense instead)
Ultra-Orthodox Judaism is not like the American religious practices you mention, where faith is a matter of identity but only expressed on Sundays or whatever. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism is a total way of life, for men especially it determines your daily schedule every day of the week. The Torah study that many men engage in full-time gives them a distinct body of knowledge and perspective that makes them feel part of the same culture as fellow ultra-Orthodox, while the secular world is an alien and potentially hostile place.
That isn’t to say that attrition doesn’t happen. It does. But this group has resisted it more than other faiths.
My understanding of the community is that the women are often the breadwinners in addition to being homemakers and caretakers. I wonder if/how this will be sustainable as things become more and more expensive.
Also, are the ultra-orthadox exempt from the military service that the rest of Israelis are required to enrol in? This seems like the only opportunity for ultra-orthadox Israelis to even be exposed to outside influences
>Also, are the ultra-orthadox exempt from the military service that the rest of Israelis are required to enrol in? This seems like the only opportunity for ultra-orthadox Israelis to even be exposed to outside influences
both. they supposed to enroll to army but in case they study in yeshiva they typically avoid it, till they reach the age when army "looses" interest in you.
it's one of the major pain points in israeli politics/society. army supposed to be people army but big chunk of population avoids it and all the time tries to pushes through knesset laws to make this avoidance permanent and supreme court strikes it down (because it violates equality clause)
one of the reasons for the very messy supreme court reform in israel that been ongoing for past half an year is to allow to make law that will give permanent exception from army to orthodox . they even wanted to make recently law that equates tora study to army service
The argument _for_ the exemption is that it will allow them to join the workforce and contribute to the economy, instead of staying in the yeshiva (which is currently a condition necessary to get the _current_ exemption, and which I think also furthers cements into the orthodox lifestyle). I wonder whether this argument can be tested before the exemption is actually given.
So secular folks risk their lives in military service to secure the lives of these Haredis, and upon returning to civilian life find out that no jobs exist for them, because the (quite hated) Haredis have taken them up? Sounds like a very sound recipe for stability indeed.
In some countries with universal conscription that can be dodged, men who actually serve are more likely to be hired for desirable jobs. So, it could be that even if Haredim work in secular professions, those veterans would still have an advantage over them in the employment market and the Haredim wouldn't be viewed as ungrateful competition.
That's not the case everywhere. When I was young in the Netherlands it was pretty much frowned upon because conscripts would have nothing to do but smoke weed and clean some tanks for the 50th time. It was widely regarded as a waste of a year and a half. I'm very glad I was disqualified and it never was a barrier for me in life.
I guess in countries where shots are actually fired in anger this experience may vary wildly.
At the very least an 18 year old who has been forced to fend for themselves is very different to an 18 year-old who still lives at home and has their mum do their washing.
Fend for themselves? The military is the one place where one doesn't get to do that. Especially conscripts.
Following orders that are barked at them by usually less intelligent people that just happen to have some stripes on their shoulder is not fending for oneself. You get fed, sleep and eat on command, what fending is there to do?
I would say you're conflating freedom with fending for one's self.
A teenager living at home has a high degree of freedom, but they don't have to fend for themselves, that is, they don't have to take responsibility for doing all the things that need doing in life, they will find their dirty shirt left on the floor, magically cleaned, ironed and put back in the wardrobe.
Someone in the army has a low amount of freedom, but they have to take responsibility for all the things that need doing in life. If they don't make sure their shirt is washed, ironed, etc they will be held responsible.
But the military have a laundry service, cooking service etc. Everything is still done for them. Except the things they are ordered to do. Throwing your shirts in the laundry is not really different from home.
Moving into your own place for the first time is much more like fending for yourself. Having to learn to cook, wash, manage your finances. Living independently and having to live with your mistakes, not just being told off for them by a superior. And really, things that actually matter, not something stupid like not having a starched shirt in the morning. The real world no longer cares about such superficial matters.
The only thing the military is really good at teaching is obedience but at the expense of suppressing critical thought and creativity. If I were an employer I'd like my employees to tell me if they disagree and not blindly follow orders.
PS: Yes my aversion to the military is pretty clear sorry.
Last I checked, the aforementioned services you state (cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc) were all handled by conscripts themselves, and not by some sweet outsourced civilian agency (of course, things could be different for US folks in a warzone). In fact, some high level officers are often assigned a bunch of conscripts to do all their boring work for them. This is mostly the case in countries with a conscripted military, or a large enough population.
things in Israel and Israeli army somewhat different from what you describe. If you curious, go to /r/Israel, there were a discussion last week about difference between US and Israeli armies
I have born and raised in a little similar environment, a semi catholic cult called Neocathecumenal Way, but after a massive growth in the 80s and in the 90s the movement is declining. Right now, only the teen agers (sons of the members) are joining the Way, but they usually leave as they grew up.
They also marry young, like at 18/19 and then are expected to start having kids immediately. Once they have kids, they're stuck. If you want to leave the faith you better have your spouse on board or you will also be leaving your kids.
I wonder how much of Catholicism’s continued decline can be attributed to Vatican II? I never experienced the OG mass format, but it seems possibly less dumb than the modern “life lecture by a guy with no actual life experience”. It was in decline at the time and they were trying to save it, but I feel like a resurgence might have been more likely if they hadn’t neutered it.
The Tridentine Mass also has a homily. I like the Norvus Ordo done in a reverent manner. However, he prescripts of Vatican II were abused. Latin was supposed to be maintained generally. Music was supposed to be primarily Gregorian Chant. Communion on the hand was allowed because people were doing it and there was a desire to prevent those people being in sin while it was corrected. Instead it was allowed to spread and become entrenched. The Church needs to focus on preaching the Truth a specially the hard controversial ones of our time, an increased focus on the Sacraments (e.g. more daily Masses, especially daily Confession, moving Confirmation to before first Communion---this last one predates Vatican II), reintroducing the mystery and reverence of the Eucharist by switching back to Latin, mandating kneeling during reception of Communion and on the tongue only.
Ah I see. I don't know Amish. We don't really have those in Holland. We have Calvinists who are pretty strict by our standards, some even refuse to own a TV and they "close" their websites on Sundays.
But young people live in a more open world. The ones that still adhere to such strict rules are a tiny minority.
> That assumes that all the children they have will follow their parents' religion. I don't think that can be taken for granted.
Same mistake as we make for radical Islam.
These aren't religions, they're cultures/law systems/political systems/belief systems, that encompass everything you can think of, for people born in these nothing of value exists out of them
There are so many of them, and they are in fact so successful, that a Knesset MP _suggested_ passing a law that will make it criminally illegal to elicit orthodox jews to leave the religion! Link: https://www.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-991752
What confuses me most about Israel’s rising political turmoil is that the faction driving for violence against Muslims (the ultra orthodox) are also exempt from the military.
Say they get everything they want and they become an apartheid, theocracy…how do they expect to survive? Who will defend them from their neighbors and from their Muslim citizens?
How would the country with arguably the greatest need for a strong military in the world expect to continue existing if their most powerful and populous group refuses to fight?
We’re seeing the problem already with reservists resigning in large numbers in protest of the PMs power grab.
Yours is a frequent misunderstanding outside Israel. Ultra-Orthodox aren’t necessarily driving for violence against Muslims, and some Ultra-Orthodox groups are anti-Zionist. If you visit a West Bank settlement, you meet a lot of plain Orthodox, and also secular Israelis who are on the hawkish end of the spectrum.
When I visited the West Bank, I was invited in by a family who immigrated from former USSR on grounds of Jewish ancestry. They were were not religious Jews, in fact they kept Orthodox Christian icons in their home since that was their vague cultural background. They were attracted to a West Bank settlement just because of cheaper housing than in Israel proper.
Your statement has the same air of statements like "not every man is a sexist", yes but men in general are responsible for how men in general treat women. If Jews do not hold to account the extremist views that lead to murder and violence their brothers have then they are too blame as well.
Your post is needlessly strident and kneejerk, and your claim that an uninvolved third party has to take certain action to avoid blame is obviously not something that everyone would agree on. In any event, Israeli society is extremely divided and, indeed, half of it has been trying hard to hold the other half to account. This is obvious to any visitor to Israel who talks to a wide range of people. Protests have been going on for years, and the current wave of protests has been widely reported in the international news.
Don't Americans have some responsibility for the mass dead Iraqis? Whether they supported the war directly or not they sat by while their country waged war for economic reasons. Why is it ok to accept violence wrought by others? Good that some Israelis protest. But what prevents needless death and pain? What actions bring peace?
"Sat by" is doing an awful lot of work there. My recollection was not that many Americans actually "sat by" - it was quite divisive. Lazy support like those "support our troops" bracelets was of course positively supporting the war and thus shares in responsibility, but that was by no means the whole country.
You are trying to hijack my reply and turn this thread into a debate on what actions should be taken, who is to blame, etc. Please don't use HN for political battle. The OP made a factual error and I corrected it, no more.
> men in general are responsible for how men in general treat women
So many questions.
Why?
Does this rule apply to both genders? What about other things? Nationality, hair color?
If someone transitions into another gender do they lose the original sin that taints their original gender? Is Elliot Page responsible for the sins of men?
So I'm personally responsible if you rape someone, based on some nebulous concept that men and only men are responsible for policing men.
And then you choose the phrase "not every man is a sexist" it seems pretty sexist to me to lay the blame purely on gender lines. So I'm I also responsible for you spouting this nonsense?
(Assuming you're a man, but I don't agree with your pov, so even if you're a woman, I'll still call you out)
I didn't read the comment in any way like "not every man is a sexist", mainly because what the comment says is true - Israeli society is made up of very particular groups, and the political map is complex, its not a single vector of left-wing to right-wing or secular to religious.
The settlement movement is a mix of secular nationalist people and religious Zionist (a group that contains a lot of very religious people but is socially distinct from Haredi/ultra orthodox, and the difference is immediately obvious to anyone who is familiar with the groups based on their dress code alone).
There's even a political party that caters primarily toward immigrants from the former Soviet Union that is simultaneously staunchly secular and anti-Haredi but also right wing and nationalistic.
The Religious Zionist Party ("faction driving for violence against Muslims") are a separate political bloc from the ultra-Orthodox. The former typically do serve in the army.
> What confuses me most about Israel’s rising political turmoil is that the faction driving for violence against Muslims (the ultra orthodox) are also exempt from the military.
That's mostly inaccurate. Most Haredi people don't "promote" any violence against Palestinians, since they don't see themselves as part of this conflict (they mostly identify as non Zionist), don't go to the army, and in general don't participate in any violence against Palestinians.
You might be talking about religious zionists, most of their men actually do go to the army.
The Haredi (aka ultra orthodox) parties are not the key drivers of the settlement enterprise. They are mostly ambivalent to the whole thing, their primary focus is preserving their lifestyle, which is less about the land and more about everything else in the religion. In fact, just last week one of the Haredi politicians published a populist rant about how Zionism is terrible, the Zionists are the root of all the problems etc etc.
The two most right-wing parties in the parliament (headed by Smotrich and Ben Gvir, respectively) are not Haredi, and their constituents do serve in the military, by and large (although less than their secular counterparts, as the women don't have to serve and there are programs that allow abbreviated service for men as far as I understand).
Israeli here. Please forget what you know about the parents-children patters in your own country whn you think about Israel. Absolute majority of ultra-orthodox community is locked inside. In fact it consists of dozen offractions, hostile or very hostile to each other internally but standing together when questioned, accused or attacked from outside. But these fractions vary from those serving in the army or working for IT to Taliban-like sect where women wear full black burkas so only eyes are visable (800 or 900 live in Jerusalem).
Majority of their children go to segregated religious schools where neither languages nor math, history (beyond Thora) or sciences are taught. Yes they stay in community and have little incentives to leave it. They reproduce ultra-orthodox behaviour and values in every generation. Normal number of children in each family 6-10. Apartments with 4-6 bedroom are normal in Israel and you can find 8 or 9-bedroom ones so no problem from this side.
Now they demand sex-segregated events and beaches for all (UO beaches are strictly segregated).
And Israel i s a religious state. Recently a cook at the military base was quite punished for making warm food (=cooking) for soldiers returning from real fighting with shooting, etc. Neither cook not soldiers were religious.
16 million people in a country smaller than New Jersey that is arid, has limited water, etc seems like a lot. Population growth rates often slow down when young people are crammed into apartments even if they are very religious. Curious if the models predict this
Is this really a risk? They get 85% of their drinking water from desalination and since Israel is on the Mediterranean running out of water doesn't seem likely.
Yeah, or if I were an expanding yet constricted population I would think “instead of contract we will expand, and find an addition” i.e. so many people will need more land.
That’s the normal human response, not “so many people we need to contract and subtract.”
When I look at my own country it seems that people are less and less following their parents' religious choices. Most Catholics in Holland of my generation are only so in name. That say they are to please the parents, but they don't do anything church related.
The same happens to more strict religions like Calvinism. My generation generally doesn't care about it, only their parents do. I guess even at a young age kids find information these days and start making their own choices. Having a religion that forbids loads of fun stuff isn't really attractive when you see other people living their life without all those rules.
My parents tried to make me Catholic but I already rejected it when I was very young. I was baptized but I refused to do any more like communion or Sunday school. It just made so little sense to me (and science made so much sense instead)
I wonder if the same will happen there.