The ‘Daycare Bill’ Debate: Should Non-Serving Israelis Receive Subsidies?

Children in Mea She’arim/ Wikipedia

By Rabbi David Stav

Amidst a highly controversial debate that is now dividing Israeli society, the government is weighing a bill whereby daycare subsidies would be extended for families where the husbands do not serve in the IDF and are not employed.

The intensity surrounding this debate is being significantly exacerbated by the current environment where we are fighting a deeply costly and tragic war where there is a clear distinction between sectors of Israeli society. 

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On the one hand, there is the sector whose husbands and wives and sons and daughters have been serving for hundreds of days on multiple fronts and experiencing hundreds of casualties and thousands of injuries. All the while another sector chooses not to bear their share of the ‘burden’ associated with the physical defense of the land. 

While there are multiple legal and political aspects of this debate that are being weighed by the relevant authorities, I will highlight the halachic and moral perspectives at play.

In principle, every country has the right to benefit from burdens imposed on its citizens, as well as to impose taxes on them as equally as possible. At the same time, governments have the right to ease such burdens.  The very nature of governance and society is that there will never be complete equality in such a process.

But moral and ethical principles mandate that a person cannot compel the state to afford him with assistance when they are not taking certain measures to assist themselves.  There are of course obvious exceptions to this principle when a person doesn’t have the mental or physical capabilities to help themselves.  But when they do (as is generally the case in the current debate being discussed here), then these individuals, or group within society, have no moral basis to demand state support akin to those individuals or groups who are assisting themselves.

There is a Talmudic teaching whereby we learn that “If one says ‘If I die, do not use my wealth to fund the burial’ that request should not be honored.”  The reasoning is that the result would be that someone else (the public) would still have to bury him, while his children would benefit.  The lesson learned from this teaching is that one has no right to shift ones responsibilities away from themselves, their families or their children, at the expense of others (in our case the state.). It is certainly a person’s right to study Torah, but that decision cannot then be used as leverage to receive benefits as if he is unable to earn a respectable living.

Such an action would, in essence, be shifting his responsibility away from himself and onto others, in contradiction to that Talmudic principle referenced above. 

It is also taught in Tractate Pe’ah that “Anyone who takes without needing will not leave this world until he truly needs to take from others.” 

A functioning state is compelled to encourage people to work and not take from others.  One of the ways that a government can successfully encourage integration into the workforce is by offering reasonable subsidies to offset costs associated with daycare for specific households that fit within a certain income threshold. 

However, shifting that subsidy to someone who has chosen not to work and insisting that they too should enjoy this benefit is a clear example of shifting a burden away from the individual and onto the public.

A secondary problem with the premise of those calling for “equal” benefits even though they aren’t serving in the military is the comparison between students in yeshivas and the tribe of Levi, which did not participate in the wars.

In relation to this claim, the Rambam (Maimonides) writes: “The Levites are warned not to take part in the spoil when conquering cities, as it is written: ‘The Levites shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel.’”

So why did the Levites not merit a portion of the land of Israel and its spoils, like the rest of their brothers?

The answer is because they were set apart to serve God and teach His righteous ways to the public.

Therefore, they were separated from the world’s ways; they did not fight wars like the rest of Israel, and they did not inherit or acquire their own strength.

In other words, the Rambam links the special status of the Levites, who were exempt from participating in wars, to the fact that they would not benefit from the fruits of those wars.

The critical takeaway for our current debate is that one cannot both enjoy an exemption and, at the very same time, simultaneously seek state support.  All the more so, we know that the state is failing to meet its basic obligations to our reserve soldiers, who are collapsing under the economic burden, not to mention the mentally and physically wounded, who should be given priority in receiving state support.