We need the police, the firefighters, the army and hospitals. To support this and many bureaucrats along the way, there is the government which collects taxes from us. It is difficult, but let's agree, the government does serve some purpose. However, for the life of me I cannot understand what purpose do rabbis serve? The rabbis set rules and have established an institution to give a purpose to themselves. They call this institution "religion," which is a collection of clever claims designed to mask the world's reality. But I already have an institution in the government which sets many rules that are hard enough to take. Religion and its servants, such as rabbis, are superfluous.

is greatly respected by Jews and all who believe in the Magnificent, Wonderful Creator of the Universe. The Awesome G-D of all life. 10,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from Gaza from land that never belonged to Arabs, for the sole reason they were Jews and not Muslim. A horrible crime against innocent non-Muslim humanity. Forced into poverty, many of the evicted Jews had to live in tents for a long time. The UN and other Jew-hater elites rejoiced. Muslim mobs celebrated by desecrating and destroying Gaza synagogues. The Jew-cleansed areas were transformed into rocket firing sites into Israeli communities and cities. No more Jewish land surrenders to global jihad!

What a silly article. And it had to be published on Shabbat of course...

Barney , hate to break it to you but the haredi you speak so warmly of as having such love for their fellow secular Jew is total nonsense . The fact is they view secular Jews as treif and that tel aviv is a latter day Soddom and Gemorrah Now I have no problem with this as long as my taxes don't pay for their unemployment benefits and that their off spring serve in the army . Unfortunately this is not the case in either issue

lets not call it the hareidi way rather the jewish way

comment intelligently we would need to know just how many Rabbis are earning three times the national average. In answer to some talkbacks.......of course in the galut Rabbis are paid by the community. Imagine going to the Government of France, or Spain and asking them to pay the Rabbis! Israel is supposed to be a Jewish state isn't it? You have to decide what that actually means. I've been to Israel many times and I've seen women dressed in all kinds of ways in the street. No one seems to care. I agree that observant Jews are taught to respect all people, including secular Jews. I also know that just because you wear a black hat, have a beard and pray three times a day, you are automatically a good person and a religious Jew. Baseless hatred is not good for anyone, specially the Jews. Shalom lekulam.

seen, breeds respect. Rabbis and Haredis should learn to tolerate other peoples ideas, to have theirs respected and tolerated, I, as a Jew, do not beleive in how they see religion, or how they eat or dress, or separate from women to pray and to engage, but respect their right to live that way, but they do not respect my ways to live and look at G d, and follow his laws and teachings, if they think that not mixing meat with milk is right, I respect that, but then, if I dont, they should respect that, too. They should not try to make Israel an Ayahtola nation, that curtails freedom for all Jews in how they beleive in their G d.

Not in my birth, not in my life and not in my death will i ever have anything to do with these vile people. I do not recognise their authority not now and not then. Amen

He works for a living.

Don't get me wrong. I don't trust or like the rabbis who have committed fraud. But the ballooning hostility toward Judaism is not caused by these few men, nor is it caused by Jews as a whole.

how did a democratic country end up paying the salaries of undemocratic rabbis? isn't there something wrong with haredi rabbis, who are neither elected nor representative (of the majority of israeli jews), holding all the *public* offices? at least part of the problem stems from the israeli political system, which breeds small, fringe parties, like mushrooms in rainy weather. "religious" parties are a BAD IDEA, not least because political power corrupts, and corruption breeds contempt. therefore, at least two suggestions for reforming the rabbinate: make city rabbis (or preferably all rabbis who receive state funding) face election, and raise the minimum electoral percentage, for parties in the knesset, to 10%. elected rabbis are not a perfect solution, but it would do away with the absurd situation where the only connection between the population and "their rabbi" is paying his (rather handsome) salary. and raising the minimum vote for the knesset would eliminate the smaller parties, including the religious ones, and spare us the spectacle of parties with less than 10 seats extorting special privileges for their followers. i have no doubt that eliminating one major source of political corruption would greatly increase the respect toward rabbis in general.

This article is the saddest thing I've seen in a while as it shows the depths of sinas chinam that exists and how much work needs to be restore the achdut that will lead to true Am Yisrael Chai! People wake up, stop bashing each other other, and try to have some respect and gratitude for our great tradition and history that has sustained us and our direct ancestors to get to this day. This article's title is a shonda.

Why do we hate the rabbis? Let me count the reasons. 1. These rabbis do not represent main stream Judaism. They represent a small percentage of ultra orthodox sects. 2. They cling to 16th century ideals and morals thus making their pronouncements seem ridicules. Particularly in respect to modesty and women in general. 3. They seem to unaware of the today’s reality 4. They are out of touch with their congregations who are not members of their sect. 5. Their Halachic statements are out of sync with the real world. 6. They busy themselves with minutiae and miss the big picture. 7. Their dress is inconsistent with the Israeli climate.

Was there a God in Czechoslovakia when you murdered and expelled thousands of people after 1945 ??? In the months following the end of the war expulsions happened from May till August 1945. These expulsions were encouraged by hate-inciting speeches made by several Czechoslovak politicians.[who?] The expulsions were executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers. However in some cases it was initiated or pursued with the assistance of the regular army.[4] Several thousand died violently during the expulsion and many more died from hunger and illness as a consequence. The expulsion according to the Potsdam Conference proceeded from 25 January 1946 till October of that year. An estimated 1.6 million ethnic Germans were deported to the American zone of what would become West Germany. An estimated 800,000 were deported to the Soviet zone (in what would become East Germany). Deal with your History and don't interfere with us....you have enough problems !

It are not the rabbanim who are hated , it's their behaviour and their intrusion in our life that is . Would they only lead their community , as a religious leader should do , there would not be any reason to dislike them . A question : are all the rabbanim supposed to earn this sum ? Or only the two chief rabbis ? In my birth country , chief rabbis of recognised congregations were paid by the state , in the same way as the leaders of all recognised faiths .

You have said it right! The problem of course is that these rabbis don't even recognize the rest of us as Jews. To them we are goyim - and that is why they don't see us as worthy to be treated as fellow Jews.

You haven't seen anything yet. The demographics cannot be changed. Each of the haredi families has about 8 children on average and their children will have about 8 children on average. The secular just can't keep up with that. Look what's happening in Beit Shemesh and many other places - they are building haredi towns and taking over other towns from the secular population. Fast forward to around 2070 and there will be a majority of haredis in the population. They will control EVERYTHING simply by virtue of their numbers. It will be a theocratic "democracy". They will eventually have about 80 Knesset seats - so they can do exactly what they want and to hell with the remaining secularists. They will control all of the ministries except perhaps the Ministry of Defense because they don't understand defense matters. They will control education - all the schools. They will control the "Interior" - status of citizens etc. There will be no civil marriages OR divorces, no civil burial, nothing. And forget about daylight saving time. Worse than that - there will be no cable TV on Shabbat and they will censor the internet. The country will shut down on Shabbat - no restaurants, no buses in Haifa, no shops in the Bilu Center. They will even enforce dress codes and you won't see swimsuits on the beach in Tel Aviv. Of course the secularists will either have to adapt or get out and many will choose the latter, making the situation even worse. Hi Tech companies will move abroad and the economy will go pear shaped. And in the middle of all that there will be a Palestinian state............ And they wonder why they are hated..........

Not all Orthodox rabbis are Khareidim. There are an increasing number of moderate Orthodox rabbis who are struggling valiantly to improve our situation against enormous obstacles; getting a modern university education themselves, even advanced degrees in science, engineering and math, applying these disciplines of discrete logic to their hermeneutics to reset Halakhah and taking up the causes of agunot, widows, divorcees, orphans, converts and the poor. I find the Leftist misojudaic fringe no less a danger to Israel than the Ultra-Orthodox fringe. Isn't it more constructive to focus on unifying the moderate middle? Paqid Yirmeyahu Paqid 16, The Netzarim, Ra'anana, Israel Israeli Torah-observant Jew: Teimani, Baladi, Dor Dai Advocate for Discrete Logic as Hermeneutic Halakhic Authority Welcoming all who choose to keep Torah (When questions to me go unanswered, they have refused to post it. Find our reply in our Web Café at www.netzarim.co.il)

Having grown up traditional in Australia and attending a chabad girls school, I sometimes find my traditional values are challenged by all sides of Israeli society. I'm in the middle ground - too observant for some, and not enough for others. What I unfortunately have learnt in Israel though is, to no longer respect Rabbis as spiritual guides. I always thought that's what they were meant to be but, here in Israel they are more like dictators. Judges and juries as to what constitutes being a good Jew. If you don't fit their view, well your nothing. How can we respect that, and then look to Rabbis for moral or spiritual guidance?

They get paid WHAT???? No wonder so many of them are a great deal fatter than the pigs they don't want anyone else to eat. Religion: the opiate of the masses. The cause of almost all the misery in the world, not least the dehumanizing of women. A pox on them all.

if you can produce factual documentation pertaining to legitimate rabbinic support and/or endorsement for your un-orthodox teachings i'd be willing to change my mind.

Sir, you are such an ignoramus it boggles the mind. You simply hate everything. Nu, is there one thing you do like about Israel. Do us all a favor and move to Saudi Arabia. I hear the sun sets more genntly there. Bunch of bollocks that you broke your Shabbat to answer as if you had any belief or knowledge to begin with. And you believe that the middle ground should be tyaken by both sides do you. In your world there are no TRUTHS, only half truths and middle ground.

And now, we are together with Germany in EU. We dealt with our history and solved it.

out of the mouth of such hypocrites as yourself, Jarda, the Jewish people need take no moral or civil lessons. Don't just hop on the bandwagon of anti- Israelism and then wax so self-righeously that you slved your past sins by joining the EU. How quaint. Israel could also join the EU and it wouldn't solve the problem of the intolerant, primitive blood thirsty Arabs that try to deprive us of our land and our right to exist. If it took Europe over a thousand years to sort out its nationalities, don't expect the solution to be found here in the Middle East by a wave of your sanctimonious hand.

to come,.....your grand-children will be Baale Teshuva!!!!

My crystal ball reads differently. It's because Israel does not exist in a vacuum and the outside world will convince young Haredim to abandon religion. Similar process among deeply religious has been taking place worldwide for the last 150 years and the numbers of seclulars are growing. Israel may be swimming the other way right now, but it will not be the situation for long, definitely not until 2070. Even in India, Indonesia, and in Africa the birth rates are dropping. In Israel, all the reasons that Mike, #81, gave will bring to the collapse of the Haredi foothold. The risk that seculars like me will emigrate beforehand is real, however. I am waiting for the better times to come back, when Israel will again become a secular and egalitarian country.