Israel Prosperity Seen Unsustainable as Haredim Refuse to Work

Moshe Linker spends his days studying Jewish religious texts in Jerusalem, supporting his three children with a seminary stipend, state child payments and his wife’s teacher salary.

Linker is one of the almost 60 percent of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox men who don’t have jobs. The second fastest-growing population group in the country after the Bedouin, they have prompted Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz to assert that the haredim, as they are called in Hebrew, may impede Israel’s prosperity.