London – The strictly Orthodox community is facing a rise in child poverty as a result of benefit cuts and lack of secular education for boys in its schools, according to a new report.
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With the economic downturn and government spending cuts, it says: “The alarm bells should be ringing loudly”.
The report, by Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), is the most comprehensive survey of child deprivation undertaken in modern British Jewry.
The Charedi community is particularly at risk of “considerable damage”.
“The potentially toxic mix of a paucity of professional skills, more mouths to feed, a reduction in government support and a likely diminution of charitable donations all point towards the probability of a noteworthy increase in child poverty and deprivation cases in the coming years,” it says.
The poverty level is difficult to calculate because of a lack of data on incomes. But information from the 2001 census and other reports give some indication of its extent. Around eight per cent of UK Jewish children – 3,800 – live in overcrowding, a third of them in the London borough of Hackney, home to the largest Charedi community.
Nearly nine per cent of children, over 4,300, live in households with no adult in work. Another 4,000 live in low-earning households. Around one in six is eligible for free school meals in the strictly Orthodox Pardes House Primary school in Barnet and in the pluralist Clore Tikvah Primary in Redbridge, Essex. Almost one in ten are on free school meals at JFS.
It also notes that the cost of maintaining a religious lifestyle can impose an additional burden. Some people are plunged into debt by spending more than they can afford on simchahs to keep up appearances.
Read more at Jewish Chronicle
Then maybe it’s high time they get secular education so they can support themselves
Sorry, but as the article suggests, there will be little sympathy among the public in the UK for the increased poverty within the Chareidi community as a result of the government’s austerity program since the source of the problem (i.e. large families, refusal to find a job and wasting huge amounts of money on simchas) are all lifestyle choices they make themselves. Thus, the perception will be that they can fix the problems themselves too by the decisions they make.
Are we supposed to be shocked by these findings? This has been a sad reality for a while. Although some of this is specific to the way the British Government works, this is happening everywhere. The vicious cycle of choosing not to be educated by the secular system so as to know some sort of trade in life and instead – becoming dependent on Government handouts or handouts by your fellow employed Jew (who themselves have been taking cuts or losing parnassah because of the economic downturn) can no longer make the world go round. The Charedi community is going to have to face this cold stark reality and “choose” to change their views on what their duty is in making the world go round.
Its child abuse to deny your child a basic secular education.
This is only the beginning. Wait till more European socialist states start sinking and the habitually unemployed or low skilled enclaves start starving because they became accustomed to being fed by government handouts and imagine that God is doing a miracle for them. France and Germany are next to go, but there it will be mostly the Muslim uneducated masses with large families who will get impacted by these government cuts. The real crisis will come when the economic storm will hit Israel which will mostly impact the Charedi world followed by uneducated Arab slums that mooch off the state that they so much distrust.
As a resident of Hackney, I must say, that a part of the problem here is the fact that rents are very high, and a normal paying job (hashgach for example) would not pay your rent, let alone every ting else that comes with being a frum Yid. With rents being as high as £550 a week for a six bedroom house (£2200) a month, that is just for rent, you would need a bout £4000 per month income just to live. who has a job that pays that much. This high rent causes people to rely on housing benefit, earning the minimum in work, and relying on the Government to support you.
The good news is, housing benefit is going to be capped at £400 per week, this will force the Landlord (fellow Yidden) to lower the rents so that they can be affordable to the average person who has an average paying job.
Headline should read: Parents choose poverty for their children.
people get so worked up over yidden on goverment benfits. really they are a small fraction of the problem. the far greater problem is those on welfare without farthers in the home. in the black community welfare has helped destroy the family structure and now they have 75% of children born to single mothers.
A Lakewood mom I know with lots and lots of kids told her children, “You’re on your own. Abba and I cannot support you, so figure out a way to earn money and support yourselves.” So my question is: Are she and her husband not the most selfish people for bringing all these kids into a culture that trades money for marriage, and then telling them, “Tough luck, kids, we can’t help you much”!?!?