Tough
neighborhoods, hard times feed cycle of poverty
By Dina
Kraft, JTA
One advocacy group's
look at the problem Click the BIG ARROW to
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Lis an unemployed 32-year-old single mother,
eight months pregnant with her third child and seems to owe money to
everyone -- friends, the government and grocers at the local outdoor
produce market, where she has bought hundreds of shekels worth of food on
credit.
"It's a really hard existence," said L, who is divorced
and asked to be identified only by her first initial. "The kids want
things that I simply cannot provide. This winter, I could not afford new
shoes for the children."
But she added, offering a thin smile:
"Luckily my daughter and I now wear the same size, so at least we can
share."
Her family recently cut off contact with L after she
accused her father of sexually abusing her 10-year-old daughter. He is
serving time in jail for the crime.
On a recent afternoon, her
neighbor, Yaffa Ezra, 38, joined her for a visit. She was married at 16,
divorced at 18. Until recently, she lived across the street with her two
grown sons. The older one has a long police record; the younger one has
picked a straighter path but has yet to find a steady job.
Ezra
and L are part of the fabric of hard times and cohesiveness that make up
Shechunat Hatikvah in south Tel Aviv, one of the poorest neighborhoods in
the country, where about half of the families live in poverty.
The
neighborhood represents one of the toughest tests for poverty fighters --
a place where generation after generation is entangled in a cycle of
poverty. As recent immigrants move in, they also struggle to find their
way out of unemployment or low-paying jobs.
Shechunat Hatikvah
faces similar problems as the deeply impoverished communities in more
outlying parts of the country, the heavily immigrant development towns. In
the southern development town of Kiryat Malachi, for example, multiple
soup kitchens have opened but no new industry and jobs.
Anti-poverty activists and residents say the situation of many of
these towns is the result of decades of government neglect and poor
planning -- places seen as dumping grounds where immigrants were settled
in demographically strategic locations but far from job opportunities.
Shechunat Hatikvah is located in an area that once was lush with
orange groves. In their place now stand dilapidated low-rise apartment
buildings and narrow alleyways. Laundry is hung from outdoor balconies,
paint often peels off living room walls and families save money by not
putting on the heat, even during cold winter nights.
The
neighborhood is mostly a mix of descendants of the original Iraqi, Iranian
and Yemenite families that first settled here in the early 1950s, as well
as recent immigrants from the Caucasus Mountains and Uzbekistan. The new
immigrants comprise about 40 percent of Shechunat Hatikvah.
It's
also home to others drawn by the cheap rents, including foreign workers
from the Philippines and Africa. Rounding out the eclectic mix are about
40 Palestinian families who were settled here by the government after they
became informers in the West Bank and Gaza.
Teenagers who dropped
out or were kicked out of the army congregate on the corners of the
neighborhood's main shopping street, Rehov Etzel, where they eat lamb
kebabs or plan where they will meet for a party later the same night.
A store that sells lottery tickets bustles with men filling in
numbers on stacks of tickets, hoping the right combination will change
their luck. A foreign worker from Africa, fresh from the outdoor market,
pushes home bags of fruit and vegetables in a baby stroller. Nearby,
retired men play backgammon while grilling meat for dinner on a portable
barbecue.
Amid the bustle, an elderly man and woman collect empty
bottles and push them in carts up the street, hoping to collect a few
cents for each one.
Taking in the evening scene is Ezra's younger
son, Ben, 20. Since his mother rented out their home to help make ends
meet, he sleeps at the apartments of friends but wonders if he will find a
place of his own. He has been arrested several times, mostly for fights,
but he says all of that is in the past.
Ben Ezra, who has cropped
dark hair, three tattoos and wears two hoop earrings, calls himself "The
King of the Neighborhood." Indeed, he seems to know almost everyone,
waving a personal greeting to almost everyone he passes.
He now
volunteers at a local program for at-risk youth called, Better Together,
where he tries to act as a role model, steering others in the neighborhood
away from despair and in some cases a life of crime. He is still shaken
from the experience of recently helping talk three teens out of killing
themselves in the space of a few weeks.
Sponsored by the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Better Together operates in
several of the most socioeconomically challenged neighborhoods in Israel.
It tries to help youth-oriented organizations -- schools, welfare offices
and community centers -- better coordinate their work and pool their
resources more effectively.
Better Together, which advocates an
expansive and holistic approach to rehabilitating the Israeli underclass,
focuses on children from the very beginning of their lives as members of
both a family and a community.
More than half of the children here
between ages 3 and 6 need help with motor skills, language and emotional
problems. If they aren't treated early, they will start first grade two
years behind developmentally, said Noya Baram, national director of Better
Together, which is part of JDC's Ashalim project that designs services for
at-risk children and their families. Funding is provided in part by
UJA-Federation of Greater New York.
"These are like kids racing
for a bus they will never catch," Baram said.
Better Together also
emphasizes strong parental involvement in family matters. Organizers have
found that when parents are marginalized, young people begin to treat them
as irrelevant, which leads to even more serious social problems.
The program has helped counteract that trend by sparking a
revolution in parental involvement and family bonding, according to Varda
Horesh, director of the local welfare office.
Ben Ezra, who hasn't
had the benefit of an intact family, walked through the open-air produce
market where more and more people in recent years have been buying on
credit. He stopped to talk to Avner Chavaton, 56, who sells candy from a
stall and has been hit especially hard by tough times. Chavaton's
apartment was repossessed by the bank, and he recently had the water in
his rented apartment cut off because he could not pay his utility bills.
"In the past two or three years, I have barely had enough to eat,"
he said, rubbing his hand over his white beard.
Ezra listened.
When he walked away, he spoke again of his plans to improve his own life,
specifically by getting into a course that will train him to work in the
community, hopefully with children and other at-risk youth.
However, social worker Yisrael Sela, his mentor, was concerned.
Ezra had not yet been accepted into the course and, in the meantime, has
expressed no interest in finding a job. Sela feared for his young friend's
future.
"If he does not find a path soon," he said grimly, "he
will turn into a threat."
Before N, an ultra-Orthodox woman,
landed her job, she and her family of five lived on the $475 a month her
husband made studying Torah full time at a yeshiva, plus about another
$100 from government child allowances.
Her relatives helped when
they could, but the family's monthly income still left it well beneath the
poverty level in Israel.
Now N, who like other women interviewed
for this story asked that her real name not be used, is earning about
$1,200 a month doing paralegal work at a company that exclusively employs
religious women like her. She shudders when she recalls the lean, dark
days of unemployment and impoverishment.
"It is a scary feeling
that you don't have with what to buy in the store," said N, 29. "You need
to shop for food and clothes, and you don't have the money."
That
feeling has become familiar to more and more Israelis who constitute a
growing underclass. In a robust economy that has produced an abundance of
millionaires, they are the ones who've been left behind.
Among
those hardest hit by poverty in the Jewish state are ultra-Orthodox Jews,
also known as Charedim, and Arabs -- two groups that despite their obvious
differences have much in common socioeconomically.
Every weekday,
N and hundreds of other women in similar circumstances seek a route out of
poverty by trooping to a four-story, stone-faced building along the main
road in Modi'in Ilit, a Charedi settlement located about halfway between
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
It is the only office building in the
community of 35,000, and it houses Citybook Services Ltd., an outsourcing
company that has provided many Charedi women like N and their families a
new lease on life. In the process, some say, the first faint rumblings of
a revolution are being felt in the Charedi community: Now there are
workplaces in Israel that are catering to fit their needs.
Charedi
women have traditionally supported their families economically when they
could, but such new work settings are groundbreaking in that they are
specifically designed for them. The work is in their community, so they
are not more than a few minutes from home if they need to tend to their
children, and they work almost exclusively with other Charedi women.
Because most are mothers with large families, the hours are
structured to suit them. The workday at Citybook, for example, ends at
2:30 p.m.
It also offers options. Most Charedi women had worked in
education, but through these new offices, they can be part of the
professional, secular international world without compromising their
religious precepts. Here they have pension plans and work in an organized,
professional environment with bonuses and other financial incentives to
achieve and build careers that will increase their earning power. Most of
the companies include intensive training, bringing the women to a level on
a par with colleagues in the secular world.
Among others involved
in Charedi employment initiatives are the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Israeli Ministry of Industry and
Trade, which have partnered in a job-training project in six Israeli
cities. Yossi Tamir, who is spearheading JDC's new partnership with the
government for increased independence through employment, said programs
include placing Charedim in high-tech companies that train and hire them
as computer programmers.
Another program in Jerusalem trains bus
drivers to work routes in Charedi neighborhoods. Also, there are private
initiatives from employment agencies and colleges to employ Charedim.
Becoming the Breadwinner
On a sunny winter morning,
men cloaked in black scurry by the office building that houses Citybook
and two other companies staffed almost exclusively by Charedi women. The
men are bound for classes at local kollels or yeshivas for married men.
Most will spend their days studying Torah and most receive a modest
stipend from the government and their seminaries.
However, it is
the women who belong to the settlement's only real workforce. According to
the laws of Jewish modesty, their hair is tucked under wigs or neatly tied
scarves when in the presence of men or in public, and they wear
long-sleeve shirts and skirts that almost skim the floor.
On the
fourth floor, they work as paralegals in Citybook's office. On the second
and third floors, they work as computer programmers. On the first floor,
they scan in data for a digital archiving company.
The computer
firm, Matrix/Talpiot, hires women who have studied computers in high
school programs and also provides additional software training. The
graphic company does a brief training of its employees on how to scan and
store images.
For about 80 percent of these women, mostly mothers
in their 20s and 30s with large families, it is the first time they have
held jobs following years of raising families while living in deep
poverty. In most cases, they are the only significant breadwinners in
their families, meaning they can enjoy a newfound sense of empowerment, a
feeling of confidence in themselves and a fresh sense of control over
their lives.
"When I started working, I asked myself how I was
living until now," said T, 32, who has six children, a husband who studies
full time at a kollel and sizable debts to pay off. "All of a sudden, I
could breathe easier."
Until she found a job doing paralegal work
through Citybook, the family's main source of income -- like it is for
most Charedi families -- was the stipend for her husband's Torah study and
child allowances from the state.
She and her family live two
flights down from the street entrance of a large apartment block. Baby
strollers cramming the lobby testify to the average family size among the
Charedim -- seven children per couple. Some strollers even hang on the
walls to save space.
T welcomes a guest into her Spartan apartment
with freshly scrubbed tiled floors and walls lined with bookcases of
religious texts. Framed photos of rabbis mixed with some family portraits
are the main decoration.
Two years ago, her family moved from
their tiny two-bedroom apartment, where five of her six children had
shared one room, to this more spacious three-bedroom place.
"It
was crowded for living, and we were able to move up a step," she said,
largely due to the salary she earned in Citybook's title insurance
department, verifying ownership of New York properties.
On a
neighboring street, large families live in smaller apartments. Space is
tight. In one apartment, piles of laundry await folding on one edge of a
worn couch, just a few steps from a dining room table that takes up half
of a living room that measures less than 100 square feet.
In the
bedroom designated for four children, beds are pushed together. A crib is
tucked in a corner, leaving a narrow passage to enter and exit.
"At night, the beds come out from anywhere or everywhere, and
people make do because that's what they have to do," said T, her
honey-colored wig skimming the shoulders of her black sweater. "But they
are happy. This is the life they chose."
Due to their lifestyle,
the Charedim account for much of the poverty in Israel. About 20 percent
of those living in poverty in Israel are Charedim, even though they
comprise only about 8 percent of the population. Between 40 percent to 50
percent of Charedim live below the poverty line, compared to 17 percent of
Jewish families living in Israel as a whole.
Meanwhile, 54 percent
of Israeli Arabs live below the poverty line.
Among the Bedouin in
the Negev, poverty rates are the highest of all -- 66 percent of the
community live below the poverty line, according to research conducted by
the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in conjunction with the Van Leer
Institute.
The Plight of Israeli Arabs
The Charedim
and Arabs are patriarchal communities that feature large families and
deeply conservative cultures. Recent social spending cuts by the
government have been especially debilitating for the two groups, because
welfare benefits and monthly child allowances were reduced.
Concentrated efforts to bring work to Israeli Arabs, nearly 20
percent of the total population, are under way, but there is no equivalent
of companies cultivating work specifically for them as there is for
Charedi women, said Michal Belikoff, coordinator of research at Sikkuy, a
nongovernmental organization that focuses on civic equality for Israel's
Arab citizens.
Most programs in which Israeli Arabs participate
are initiated by the Ministry of Trade and Labor as part of wider programs
to get those who are considered weaker socioeconomic groups into the
workforce. This includes work-preparedness courses and job placement.
Private nongovernment organizations are also involved. For example, they
train Arab women as entrepreneurs.
In contrast to Charedi men,
though, Arab men commonly work -- often in low-paying jobs such as
construction, where benefits are scarce and stability is rare. The women
are expected to stay at home and care for the children, and therefore they
enter the workforce in lower numbers than Jewish women. Arab women are
also likelier to drop out of high school than their Jewish peers, limiting
their career potential.
Worse yet, finding work can be more
difficult for Arabs who tend to live far from the country's economic
heart, the center of the country. Even those who live near employment
centers sometimes face discrimination by non-Arab potential employers.
Some maintain that Israeli Arabs have been shortchanged through
the inequitable distribution of public assistance funding. As a result,
private groups have stepped in to try to meet the enormous material needs
of Israeli Arabs.
Salwa Kanan, for example, established a
volunteer group of women to distribute food in her hometown, the Arab
village of Tamra in northern Israel. Kanan talked about a recent visit to
Tamra, where a widow with five children opened her refrigerator to reveal
its meager contents -- a few pieces of dried-out pita bread.
"People are suffering more and more," Kanan said. "The payments
they once received have been reduced, and there is less money to pay for
things like food and electricity."
The Islamic Movement, the
conservative Muslim political and social arm of Israel's Arabs, also has
acted to fill the void, according to Yaser Awad, a statistician who was
formerly the head of research for Israel's National Insurance Institute.
He said the movement is paying for education for toddlers, providing
tutoring for other students, opening afternoon clubs for youths and
distributing food parcels.
Making Strides
In the
Charedi world, signs of a gradual revolt against a life of self-imposed
poverty can be seen, according to Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at
Bar-Ilan University who studies that community.
"It is beginning
to happen, but it's not an overnight process, especially because overall,
Israel as a welfare state for the ultra-Orthodox still works," he said,
referring to Charedi political clout in the Knesset that translates into
government allowances for married men engaged in full-time Torah study.
"But you see in the margins there are people who seek to live
differently."
Those margins may continue to grow, albeit slowly
and incrementally, according to Eli Kazhadan, an outsourcing consultant
and former chief of staff of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
"The more you see the person next door to you earning more money,
you will start asking why," he said. "It's an evolution, not a revolution,
because it's a very closed society."
Those who are especially
talented and ambitious men are finding their way out of the yeshiva world
through secular education and jobs. "But they cannot leave it all at
once," Friedman said, "so they leave it slowly."
However, in
Charedi families it is fairly common for the woman to work, even
part-time, in order for her husband to continue his studies. In Charedi
society, Torah study is seen as the ultimate occupation for a man.
Citybook was the first outsourcing company to locate in Modi'in
Ilit and the first of its kind nationwide. Joe Rosenbaum, an American
Charedi businessman, founded the company here three years ago as a
satellite office to an insurance and property services company based in
Lakewood, N.J. Six other companies employing Charedi women have since
followed to Modi'in Ilit.
Rosenbaum started Citybook here because
he thought it made good business sense, not from a sense of charity. In
Modi'in Ilit, he and other businesses decided they would be able to tap
into a pool of educated and motivated potential employees willing to earn
relatively low wages in exchange for working close to home and in a
religiously sensitive environment.
Also, the government has
provided an added incentive in the form of a subsidy of up to $240 a month
per worker, which can account for as much as one-quarter of a full salary.
"I never understood it, and it always bothered me seeing so many
people within the Orthodox community having such difficulty making ends
meet," Rosenbaum said. "I wondered why they could not have the same
opportunities to earn a living with respect like Jews in Israel and
Orthodox Jews in America."
Rosenbaum said he hopes his company
will serve as a model for many others.
Little Opposition
Charedi leaders have offered relatively little opposition to
women working. Rosenbaum said it is in their best interests to encourage
the women to support their husbands in Torah study, and as long as the
work is done in a religiously sensitive framework, most Charedi leaders
have been accepting.
The recent rabbinic ruling prohibiting
Charedi women from getting bachelor's degrees in education because their
instructors might be secular and teach them "heresy" was not taken as a
threat to the trend of increasing numbers of working Charedi women outside
of the education system, community members said.
Libby Affen,
chief operating officer for Matrix-Talpiot and a Charedi woman who helps
lead Temach, a volunteer organization that encourages Charedi women to
join the workforce, said she had not seen any effect of the ruling in her
business or other any others that employ Charedi women.
At
Citybook, the women make about $1,400 a month, about one-and-a-half times
above the minimum wage in Israel and just a fraction of what they would be
paid for the same work in the United States.
The women are known
for their good work ethic -- no personal calls on company time, no
Internet surfing. Before they arrive home in midafternoon, their children
have been tended to by older siblings, baby sitters or their husbands on
lunch break from kollel.
Perhaps they could have taken
better-paying jobs in major cities, but the long commute would make it
difficult to juggle child care. Also, the absence of a unisex, deeply
traditional religious setting would be culturally unacceptable.
"You come in, feel it is a respectable place and that you are
respected," T said. "I never worked in an office with men, and I cannot
imagine doing so."
Whatever the attraction, the Modi'in Ilit model
seems to work, said Yakov Guterman, the mayor of the settlement. He points
out that seven companies, mostly in the high-tech sector, are employing a
total of 700 people, mostly women. More arrivals are anticipated.
Just downstairs from Citybook, at Matrix-Talpiot, the software
development company, about 250 Charedi women are employed. Most had
studied basic computing at their religious high schools. The introduction
of such courses is a recognition that women in this community will
increasingly have to work outside the home for their families to survive
economically.
On the first floor, Chaim Arbel, manager of the
digital archiving company that employs about 100 women, is thumbing
through a stack of files submitted by applicants for another 60 jobs. His
supply of job seekers far exceeds the number of openings.
"Here
there is no problem of applicants," Arbel said with a satisfied grin.
