Jews for Java - Employment of Charedim in the Israeli workforce

By Sarah Coleman

April 6, 2000 

Every day, Ephraim Mett works a mouseclick away from damnation. 

In Israel, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have banned their followers from cruising the Web, but that's not stopping the observant from hacking code. 

Mett, a programmer at Jerusalem's MALAM Systems Ltd., spends his day writing code and developing Web sites for clients like the Israeli post office. 

But, as a member of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, he is forbidden to browse the Web or shop online; this would be frowned on by his rabbis, who have branded the Net a "danger thousands of times more serious" than television, one that could bring "destruction and ruin." In January, prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis banned their followers from using the Net for purposes other than work. 

When Mett comes home to his young family, he steps back into a traditional world that has more to do with "Yentl" than Yahoo. 

Mett says he wouldn't put a connection in his home or use his Web browser at work for shopping, even if it was to buy something as innocuous as a sofa. 

"Obviously, it would be very useful to use the Internet for such a thing," he says. 

"The problem is that the Internet has a lot of power to draw a person in, which is why I understand the ban fully and respect it." Like other ultra-Orthodox programmers, Mett (who did six years of advanced religious study before joining MALAM) straddles a strange divide: With one foot firmly planted in the ancient and insular world of Talmud study, he is stepping into the fast-paced, globally oriented world of programming. 

Curiously, his religious background might be his greatest asset as a programmer. 

"The analytical approach used in Talmud is very useful for programming," he says. 

"You have to work out plausible explanations, which are quite a lot like programming algorithms." Until recently, it would have been almost impossible for Mett and his ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, peers to work in a high-tech company. 

Prejudices on both sides and a lack of technical education barred their entry to "Silicon Wadi" -- the collective name for the industrial parks and incubators springing up all over Israel's desert landscape. 

Now, with increased educational options, the ultra-Orthodox are entering Israel's high-tech world in significant numbers -- and finding that their skills are in high demand. 

"I'd be happy to employ more haredi programmers," says David Schindler, a vice president at MALAM. 

"They're older and more mature, and they have a tremendous drive to succeed." Besides, adds Schindler, who was a religious scholar in his youth, Talmud study is excellent preparation for programming. 

"It gives you an intuitive mind; you know how to break problems down into the smallest particles." In fact, the Talmud -- first compiled in the year 200 B.C. -- was ahead of its time both aesthetically and intellectually. 

Looking at it might explain why "the people of the book" are natural converts to hypertext: In many ways, the Talmud looks like a blueprint for Web design. 

Consider the Babylonian Talmud, the work of many generations of rabbis. 

When this transcription of oral law was started, Roman occupiers were attempting to wipe out all traces of Judaism: life was a little stressful, and the original text, the Mishnah, came out disjointed and nonlinear (imagine Moses communing with James Joyce). 

Succeeding generations of rabbis saw the Mishnah as a good start, but decided to add their own interpretations to it. 

On a typical Talmud page, these writings ("Gemara") are placed in discrete blocks in a tree-ring formation around the Mishnah -- with cross-references, links to other sections and arcane symbols and abbreviations. 

The effect is of a virtual discussion forum between rabbis from different centuries. 

"It's actually the world's first hypertext," says former Israeli Minister of Energy Yossi Vardi. 

Talmud pages are "busy, non-linear, filled with different typefaces, graphical symbols, parallel and intersecting frames, and even multiple languages," writes Edmond H. 

Weiss, an associate professor at Fordham University's Graduate School of Business Administration, in "From Talmud Folios to Web Sites: Hot Pages, Cool Pages and the Information Plenum." Each generation of Talmud scholars is encouraged to produce its own interpretations, the very best of which might be incorporated into future editions of the text. 

To read the Talmud, Weiss posits, "you join the conversation. Just like the Net." 

Of course, with so many voices, there are bound to be disagreements. 

The Talmud contains notorious arguments between rabbis. 

In studying the text, part of the scholar's task is to decode and reconcile these differences, discovering an underlying system by which the different points of view can coexist. 

Imagine, for example, that an updated Talmud was to deal with malfunctioning Web browsers (this is not so far-fetched, since it deals with such minutiae as the direction a person should face while defecating). 

Replace rabbinical authorities with programmers and a section might read as follows: Adam believes that his Web browser is crashing because he hasn't upgraded to the newest release. 

Bill says that Adam is using too recent a version of the software. 

Both are experienced programmers. 

How can this disagreement be? Carla, another programmer, says that if the problem is file-system corruption, Adam's theory would apply, but if there are problems with certain embedded Web objects, Bill would be right. 

Danya had problems with embedded objects, and found that the solution was to disable certain audio plug-ins. 

So it seems likely that Bill is referring to problems with portable document formats, whereas Danya's issues concerned streaming audio. 

Did Erin manage to fix her system by removing plug-ins? Doubtless she had encountered the streaming audio bug, too. 

"I must give credit to the years of studying Talmud, which opens their minds," says Rabbi Yehezkel Fogel. 

In 1996, Fogel founded the Haredi Center for Technological Studies, the community's first technical college. 

Since the ultra-Orthodox can't attend secular schools (they're prohibited from studying in co-ed classrooms) the center acts as a necessary bridge between the worlds of Talmud and high tech. 

Having opened in 1996 with 35 students, it now boasts an enrolment of 1,200 in five locations across Israel. 

In setting up the school, one of the major issues Fogel hoped to address was poverty in the community. 

Traditionally, haredi men study in a yeshiva full time into their 30s and beyond, while their wives support the family, often by working menial jobs. 

Add to this the stress of dealing with a large family (often up to nine children) and it's easy to see why 51 percent of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel live below the poverty line, as opposed to 15 percent of new immigrants to Israel and 24 percent of Arab Israelis.