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Who Benefits More: The Charedim from the State, or the State from the Charedim?

• 17 min read
Who Benefits More: The Charedim from the State, or the State from the Charedim?

The Question Assumes a Single Ledger — Salaries, Taxes, Subsidies, Budgets — and Assumes the Charedim Lose on It. Both Assumptions Are Wrong. Even on the Material Ledger, Honestly Examined, the Charedi Contribution Is Enormous: Charedim Pay Taxes, the Large Majority of Households Has a Working Breadwinner, and the Community Sustains Thousands of Nonprofit Organizations — United Hatzalah, Yad Sarah, Ezer Mizion, ZAKA, and More — and Tens of Thousands of Gemachim That Serve Every Israeli, of Every Background. Even Setting the Spiritual Element Entirely Aside, the Charedi World Contributes as Much as It Receives, and Very Likely More. And Then There Is the Second Ledger — the Spiritual One the Material Accounting Cannot See — on Which Torah Learning Sustains the World, Protects the Nation, and Draws Down the Bracha Without Which No Economy Functions at All. On Both Ledgers, the Nation Receives From the Charedim Far More Than It Imagines. The Field Benefits From the Rain More Than the Cloud Benefits From the Field

This question is asked often — sometimes in sincerity, sometimes as an accusation. Critics point to government subsidies, kollel stipends, child allowances, and tax considerations, and ask: "Who is really supporting whom?"

It is a fair question to raise, and it deserves an honest answer — but the honest answer requires noticing the two assumptions hidden inside the question. The first assumption is that the only accounting that counts is the material one of salaries, taxes, and budgets. The second is that, on that material ledger, the Charedi world is a net drain — a taker. Both assumptions are wrong. As we will show, even on the material and social ledger — the critics' own chosen ground — the Charedi contribution is enormous, very plausibly exceeding what the community receives. And beyond that ledger lies a second one, which the material accounting cannot see at all, and which the Torah teaches is the deeper and more decisive of the two.

This article addresses both. The mechanism by which Torah learning protects Klal Yisrael we have developed at length in our articles on Torah as the protection of the Jewish people and on what would happen if no one fought; here the focus is the question of benefit and exchange — who, in the fullest accounting, material and spiritual, gives more to whom. We work through it honestly below.

I. Two Ledgers — and the Charedim Contribute on Both

To answer the question honestly, one has to recognize that there are two ledgers on which a nation's accounts are kept, and they measure entirely different things.

The first is the material and social ledger — the one the question assumes. It records taxes paid and benefits received, work and output, and what a community gives to and takes from the common life of the nation. And here is the first surprise for those who assume the Charedi world is simply a net drain: even on this material ledger, honestly examined, the Charedi contribution is enormous — arguably as great as that of any other sector, and in some respects greater. We will document this below: Charedim pay taxes, most Charedi households have a working breadwinner, and the Charedi world sustains a vast network of nonprofit and chesed organizations and free-loan societies that serve the entire nation. The lazy caricature of the Charedi world as a population that only takes is false on the material ledger itself, before one says a single word about Torah.

The second is the spiritual ledger — and it records what the material ledger cannot even see: the Torah learned, the tefillos offered, the bracha drawn into the land, the protection extended over the nation, the moral foundation on which everything else stands. This ledger is invisible to a purely material accounting — you cannot find it in a budget — but the Torah teaches that it is the more real of the two.

So the full answer comes in two stages. First: even on the material and social ledger, the Charedi world contributes as much as it receives, and very likely more. Second: on the spiritual ledger that the Torah insists is primary, the contribution of the Torah world is the very foundation on which the entire enterprise rests. The critic's question assumes the Charedi world loses on the first ledger and that the second does not exist. Both halves of that assumption are wrong — and we take them in turn.

II. The Material Ledger, Honestly Examined

Let us begin precisely where the critics begin — with the material accounting — and examine it honestly, because the honest examination does not yield the conclusion the critics assume.

Charedim pay taxes. Every Charedi household pays value-added tax on virtually everything it buys, municipal taxes, and the full range of indirect taxation; and the large and growing number of Charedim in the workforce pay income tax and National Insurance like every other citizen. The notion that Charedim "don't pay taxes" is simply false — a community of well over a million people that consumes, transacts, and increasingly earns is, by that very fact, a substantial contributor to the public coffers.

The large majority of Charedi households have a working breadwinner. The single most persistent misconception is that the Charedi world does not work. In reality, the employment rate among Charedi women has risen to roughly 80% — a figure that has very nearly closed the gap with non-Charedi Jewish women — and a majority of Charedi men are also employed, with the figure rising over time. In the great majority of Charedi households, at least one spouse — and often both — is working and earning. The model in much of the community, in which women work while their husbands learn, means that Charedi women's workforce participation rivals or exceeds that of other sectors; the household is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a working household. The picture of a community sitting idle is a fiction; the reality is a community that overwhelmingly works, earns, and pays.

And then there is the chesed infrastructure — and here the Charedi contribution is not merely equal to others but, sector for sector, extraordinary. The Charedi world sustains a vast network of nonprofit and volunteer organizations and free-loan societies that serve not only its own but the entire nation, regardless of religion or background. This is not a minor footnote to the accounting; it is one of the largest contributions any sector makes to the welfare of Israeli society — and most of it is invisible to the budget because it is done by volunteers, for free, out of the community's own pocket and time.

III. The Charedi Chesed Network — Serving the Entire Nation

Consider, concretely, what the Charedi and broader Torah-observant world built and runs — and who it serves. These are not charities that serve only Charedim. They serve every Israeli — Jew, Muslim, Christian, and Druze; religious and secular alike — and many were founded and are staffed by Charedim.

United Hatzalah — the volunteer emergency-medical-response network that reaches the injured and the sick anywhere in Israel within minutes, entirely free, regardless of race, religion, or ability to pay — grew out of a project that began in a Charedi neighborhood of Jerusalem and is sustained by thousands of volunteers, a large proportion of them Charedim, who drop everything at any hour to save the life of a stranger. Every Israeli of every background is safer because of it.

Yad Sarah — which began, fittingly, as a single gemach lending medical equipment and grew into the largest volunteer organization in Israel — lends wheelchairs, hospital beds, oxygen, and a vast range of medical and rehabilitative equipment, free or for a nominal fee, to anyone who needs it. It serves Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze alike, runs on thousands of volunteers, and is estimated to save the national health system enormous sums every year. It was founded by a Charedi Jew (who later became mayor of Jerusalem), and it serves the entire country.

Ezer Mizion operates the world's largest Jewish bone-marrow registry — over a million potential donors — and has facilitated thousands of life-saving stem-cell transplants for patients in Israel and around the world, alongside a wide range of free medical and social services, run by thousands of volunteers. ZAKA — its volunteers, largely Charedi, recognized the world over — performs the painful, sacred work of search, rescue, and the recovery and identification of victims of terror and disaster, in Israel and at catastrophes across the globe. Yad Eliezer and similar organizations feed, clothe, and support tens of thousands of needy families throughout the country. Matnat Chaim, founded by a Charedi rav, has facilitated thousands of living-donor kidney transplants — Jews donating kidneys to strangers, including non-Jews — setting world records for altruistic organ donation. And these are only the largest and best-known names.

Beneath them lies a phenomenon almost without parallel anywhere in the world: the tens of thousands of gemachim. A gemach — from gemilus chasadim, acts of loving-kindness — is a free-lending society, and in the Charedi world there is a gemach for nearly anything a human being could need. There are gemachim that lend money interest-free; gemachim for medical equipment, for baby cribs and strollers, for wedding gowns and tablecloths and folding chairs, for tools, for medicines, for breast milk, for books, for plane tickets in emergencies, for hot meals for new mothers and mourners — for, quite literally, almost anything. Tens of thousands of these free-loan societies operate across the Charedi world, run by ordinary families out of their homes, asking nothing in return. This is an entire parallel economy of giving, built on the principle that what one has is meant to be shared — and it lifts an immeasurable burden off both individuals and the state.

Add it together — the taxes paid, the overwhelmingly working households, the national chesed organizations, the tens of thousands of gemachim — and the material ledger tells the opposite of the caricature. Sector for sector, person for person, the Charedi world gives to the common good as much as any group in Israel and, in the density of its chesed and volunteerism, very likely more. This is the crucial point, and it must be said plainly: even setting the spiritual dimension entirely to one side — even counting only what can be counted in shekels and volunteer hours — the Charedi world contributes as much as it receives, and most likely more than it receives. The accusation fails on its own chosen ground, before the Torah is even mentioned.

IV. The Torah's Accounting

What does the Torah's ledger actually record? Begin with the Torah's own statement of what holds the world up.

The Mishnah teaches: "Al sheloshah devarim ha'olam omed: al haTorah, v'al ha'avodah, v'al gemilus chasadim" — "The world stands on three things: on Torah, on the service of Hashem, and on acts of kindness" (Avos 1:2). The world itself — its very existence — rests on Torah as its first pillar. And as we have developed elsewhere in this series, the Gemara teaches that creation is sustained moment to moment by the learning of Torah (Pesachim 68b; Nedarim 32a, on Yirmiyahu 33:25): "were it not for the Torah, heaven and earth would not endure."

If this is true — and it is the bedrock of the Torah worldview — then the one who learns Torah is not drawing from the foundation of the world; he is holding it up. The kollel yungerman is not, in the Torah's accounting, a taker who consumes what others produce. He is a pillar on which the entire structure rests — including the structure that produces the material wealth that supports him. The relationship is not parasitic but foundational: the Torah he learns is part of what sustains the very world in which the economy operates.

The Torah's accounting also includes a reciprocity that the material ledger cannot measure. The verse teaches: "Hashem tzilcha al yad yemincha" — "Hashem is your shadow at your right hand" (Tehillim 121:5). The mefarshim (in a teaching widely transmitted in the name of the Baal Shem Tov) explain the image: just as a shadow mirrors the movements of the one who casts it, so Hashem, so to speak, mirrors the conduct of Klal Yisrael — when the Jewish people cling to Torah and mitzvos, they draw down corresponding bracha upon themselves and the world around them. The presence of a community devoted to Torah is, in this understanding, a conduit of bracha into the entire land — a benefit that flows to everyone in it, believer and skeptic alike, and that appears on no material ledger at all.

V. What the Torah World Contributes

On the spiritual ledger, the contributions of the Torah world are concrete, even if they are invisible to a budget.

Protection. The Gemara states plainly: "Torah maginah u'matzla" — Torah protects and saves (Sotah 21a). This is not a metaphor in the Torah's worldview; it is a statement about how the world actually works — that the merit and the spiritual force of Torah learning extend a real protection over Klal Yisrael. We have developed this at length in our articles on Torah as the protection of the Jewish people; here it is enough to note that, in the Torah's accounting, the learning in the batei medrash is itself a form of national defense — one that does not appear in any military budget but that the Torah regards as more fundamental than any that does.

The Gemara makes the inversion explicit and startling. When it was proposed that the talmidei chachamim contribute to the cost of building the protective wall around the city, the response was that the Torah scholars do not require the wall's protection — "rabbanan lo tzrichi nteirusa" — because their Torah is itself their protection (Bava Basra 7b–8a). The ones assumed to be protected by the city's defenses are, in the Torah's accounting, themselves the source of the city's deepest protection. This is the precise inversion of the "who supports whom" question: the Torah world is not the protected dependent but, in the deepest sense, the protector.

A moral and spiritual anchor. In a world of constant moral confusion, the Torah community anchors Klal Yisrael to a timeless framework of right and wrong, holiness and meaning. This too is a contribution — the preservation, in the midst of the nation, of the unchanging moral truth of the Torah, available to all and drawn upon even by those who do not live by it. Even those far from observance often turn, in moments of crisis, to the Torah and its bearers — a quiet acknowledgment of where the nation's spiritual anchor is held.

Tefillah and unity. The Charedi world davens daily for the welfare and safety of all Jews — including, as we have detailed elsewhere, for the safety and success of the soldiers and the healing of the wounded. In times of danger, Charedi communities the world over unite in Tehillim, fasting, and the seeking of zechuyos for the protection of Klal Yisrael. This is a contribution of the spiritual ledger — the marshaling of Heaven's mercy on behalf of the entire nation — offered freely and constantly, and recorded nowhere in any material account.

VI. The Model of Shevet Levi — The Torah's Own Design

Lest this seem like a self-serving construction, it is worth seeing that the arrangement — a portion of the nation devoted to the service of Hashem and supported by the rest — is not a modern Charedi invention but the Torah's own design, embodied in Shevet Levi.

The tribe of Levi received no portion in the division of Eretz Yisrael and no share in the spoils, because they were set apart for the service of Hashem. The Rambam codifies the principle and its meaning: Levi was separated "to serve Hashem, to teach His upright ways and His righteous judgments to the many," and therefore "they were set apart from the ways of the world: they do not wage war like the rest of Israel, and they do not inherit" — for "Hashem is their inheritance" (Hilchos Shemittah v'Yovel 13:12). The nation supported Levi, and Levi devoted itself to Hashem's service on behalf of the nation — a division of labor designed by the Torah itself.

And the Rambam extends it explicitly beyond the tribe of Levi: "Not the tribe of Levi alone, but any person… whose spirit moves him… to separate himself to stand before Hashem, to serve Him and to know Him… behold, this person has been sanctified as the holy of holies, and Hashem will be his portion forever, and will grant him in this world what is sufficient for him, as He granted to the kohanim and Levi'im" (ibid. 13:13). The model of a person dedicating himself entirely to the service of Hashem, sustained by others so that he can do so, is the Torah's own vision — and the one who supports such a person is, in the Torah's accounting, a partner in that sacred service (the Yissachar–Zevulun partnership we have discussed elsewhere). Far from being an anomaly or a burden, the Torah scholar supported by the community is living out a model the Torah itself designed and sanctified.

VII. The Dignity of the Ben Torah — Pillar, Not Burden

This reframes entirely the status of the ben Torah in the national accounting. He is not a burden the productive members of society carry; he is a pillar on whom they, unknowingly, rest.

The material ledger, read alone, casts the Torah scholar as a dependent — someone who consumes without producing, who must be carried by those who work. The Torah's ledger casts him as the opposite: one of the pillars on which the world stands, a source of the protection and bracha that make the whole enterprise possible, a partner in the very service that sustains creation. The question is not whether he is worth supporting; it is whether the nation understands what it is receiving in exchange for that support.

If the State fully grasped the spiritual accounting — if it could see the second ledger — its posture toward the Torah world would transform. It would not regard the kollel as a drain to be reduced but as a national asset to be expanded; it would treat the batei medrash with the seriousness it accords its most vital strategic installations; it would honor the ben Torah not as a dependent but as what the Torah considers him to be — one who holds up the world. The sentiment expressed across the Torah world captures it: a soldier holds a weapon, but a ben Torah, in the Torah's understanding, holds something far greater — a share in what sustains and protects the entire nation. This is not to diminish the soldier, whose courage and sacrifice the Torah world holds dear and davens for; it is to insist that there is a second kind of defense, invisible to the material eye, and that the one who provides it is no burden but a benefactor.

VIII. Truth Does Not Depend on Belief

The natural objection is obvious: all of this depends on believing that Torah learning actually protects and sustains — and the skeptic does not believe it. So why should it count?

The answer is that truth does not depend on whether one believes it. The spiritual economy of the world either is real or it is not; and if it is real — as the Torah teaches it is — then it operates whether or not any particular person recognizes it. The reply attributed to Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l captures the point with characteristic sharpness: that a cow does not believe in electricity either, but the light goes on regardless. The laws of the spiritual world, like the laws of the physical world, do not wait for our assent before taking effect.

This is not an argument that can compel a skeptic, and it does not pretend to be. It is a statement of what the Torah world knows to be true, offered honestly: that the benefit the nation receives from the Torah in its midst is real whether or not it is recognized, measured, or believed — exactly as the rain nourishes the field whether or not the field understands where the water came from. The Charedi world does not ask the skeptic to take its accounting on faith; it simply declines to accept that the material ledger is the only ledger, when the Torah teaches that it is the lesser of the two.

IX. The Closing Position — Who Benefits More?

So who benefits more: the Charedim from the State, or the State from the Charedim?

Begin with the material ledger — the critics' own ground — and the caricature collapses. Charedim pay taxes; the large majority of Charedi households has a working breadwinner; and the community sustains a national chesed infrastructure — United Hatzalah, Yad Sarah, Ezer Mizion, ZAKA, Yad Eliezer, Matnat Chaim, and tens of thousands of gemachim — that serves every Israeli of every background, much of it for free, out of the community's own time and pocket. Even setting Torah entirely aside, even counting only shekels and volunteer hours, the Charedi world contributes as much to the common good as any sector in Israel, and very likely more. The accusation that the Charedi world is a mere net drain fails on its own chosen terms.

And then there is the second ledger, which the material accounting cannot see. On the spiritual ledger — the one that records the Torah that sustains the world, the protection that shields the nation, the bracha drawn into the land, the moral anchor held in the people's midst, the tefillos offered daily for every Jew — the flow runs overwhelmingly toward the nation. What the Torah world contributes there is, in the Torah's own accounting, foundational: the very thing that makes the material economy possible, the protection beneath the visible defenses, the pillar on which the world stands. And this arrangement is not an anomaly but the Torah's own design — the model of Shevet Levi, in which the nation sustains those devoted to Hashem's service and is sustained, in turn, by that service.

So the honest conclusion is this, on both ledgers at once. On the material ledger, the Charedi world gives at least as much as it receives — the caricature of the parasitic sector is simply false. And on the spiritual ledger that the Torah insists is the deeper one, the nation receives from the Torah world far more than it could ever give in return. Put the two together, and the question answers itself. As the image has it: the field benefits from the rain far more than the cloud benefits from the field. The cloud gives the rain that makes the field live; the field, at most, returns a little moisture to the sky. So it is with the Charedi world and the nation it sustains — materially and spiritually both — and a nation that understood the full accounting would not ask "who is supporting whom," but would honor the Torah world for all it gives, seen and unseen, and beg that there be more of it.

Sources

The two ledgers and the Torah's accounting

  • Pirkei Avos 1:2 (Shimon HaTzaddik) — "al sheloshah devarim ha'olam omed: al haTorah, v'al ha'avodah, v'al gemilus chasadim" — the world stands on Torah, the service of Hashem, and acts of kindness
  • Talmud Bavli, Pesachim 68b; Nedarim 32a (on Yirmiyahu 33:25) — were it not for the Torah, heaven and earth would not endure (developed in "Why Is Torah Learning the Top Priority?")
  • Tehillim 121:5 — "Hashem tzilcha al yad yemincha" — "Hashem is your shadow at your right hand"; the teaching (widely transmitted in the name of the Baal Shem Tov) that Hashem, so to speak, mirrors the conduct of Klal Yisrael, so that clinging to Torah draws down corresponding bracha

What the Torah world contributes

  • Talmud Bavli, Sotah 21a — "Torah maginah u'matzla" — Torah protects and saves (developed in the articles on Torah as the protection of Klal Yisrael)
  • Talmud Bavli, Bava Basra 7b–8a — the talmidei chachamim do not require the protection of the city wall, "rabbanan lo tzrichi nteirusa," because their Torah is their protection — the inversion of "who protects whom"
  • The moral and spiritual anchoring of Klal Yisrael by the Torah community; the daily tefillos for all Jews (including the soldiers and the wounded) and the gathering in Tehillim and fasting in times of danger (cross-referenced to "Do Charedim Pray for the State?")

The model of Shevet Levi

  • Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Shemittah v'Yovel 13:12–13 — Shevet Levi set apart for the service of Hashem, without portion in the land because "Hashem is their inheritance"; and the extension to "any person whose spirit moves him to separate himself to stand before Hashem, to serve Him and to know Him," sustained so that he can do so — the Torah's own design of a portion devoted to Hashem's service and supported by the nation
  • The Yissachar–Zevulun partnership (developed in "Do Charedim See Working as a Religious Value?") — the supporter as a full partner in the Torah sustained

The dignity of the ben Torah

  • The reframing of the Torah scholar from burden/dependent to pillar/benefactor in the Torah's accounting
  • The sentiment transmitted across the Torah world (and attributed to Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt"l) that the ben Torah, in the Torah's understanding, holds up the world — presented as a transmitted sentiment; honoring the soldier while affirming a second, invisible form of defense
  • The themes transmitted in the name of Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus zt"l (Nefesh Shimshon) on the protective power of a Torah home, and Rav Pinchas Scheinberg zt"l on the irreplaceable value of Torah learning even in wartime — presented as documented themes

Truth does not depend on belief

  • The reply attributed to Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l — that a cow does not believe in electricity either, but the light goes on regardless — presented as a transmitted teaching; the principle that the spiritual economy operates whether or not it is recognized

The honest accounting

  • The fair acknowledgment of the material support the Charedi community receives (institutional funding, child allowances, services of citizenship), alongside the argument that the spiritual ledger — invisible to a material accounting — records a contribution the Torah regards as foundational and primary
  • The image of the field and the rain: the field benefits from the rain far more than the cloud benefits from the field

The structural relationship to other articles in this series

  • "What Would Happen If No One Fought?" and the articles on Torah as the protection of Klal Yisrael — the mechanism of Torah's protection
  • "Why Is Torah Learning the Top Priority?" — Torah as the sustainer of the world
  • "Do Charedim See Working as a Religious Value?" — the Yissachar–Zevulun partnership and the dignity of supporting Torah
  • "Is Kollel a Modern Invention or an Unbroken Chain?" — the historical continuity of the Torah-and-supporter model