Pay for Pray « Rejewvenate!

Pay for Pray

January 2, 2008 at 6:38 pm | In beliefs, education, ethics, israel, jewish denominations |

Ultra-Orthodox missionaries from Bnai Brak have hit upon a very old scheme for gaining adherents - monetary incentive. As Ynet reports, Hareidi rabbis have been offering poor high school kids in Ramat Gan 18 shekel to attend a Torah study class.

I’m a little stunned. It is not acceptable behavior to bribe high school students in this manner. Talk about not passing the smell test! Would it be okay for secular Israelis to bribe Hareidi students to eat pig, or attend a lecture on evolution? If I found out that somebody was bribing my kid in order to indoctrinate him without my consent I would be driven to violence! Subverting parental choices about education and basic values goes beyond merely disrespectful. It is a violation of basic parental rights and a brazen act that will surely result in grief to all parties.

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If any given group of Christians in the USA did this against the kids of another Christian group, the interdenominational strife would be insane very quickly and the secular press would pick it up and run with it and in the end try to make both sides look stupid.

I have a feeling Israeli media might get around to doing the same thing with this. Not good at all. It makes the missionaries from the Orthodox community look cheap and insecure that they should pay and not stand on the intellectual and spiritual drawing power of what they have to offer, and it makes the secular people look negligently faithless at the outset that someone needs to pay them to look at the Torah, and willfully faithless later on when said bribery is actively opposed.

Comment by suitepotato — January 4, 2008 #