Charedi Farmers

Recently, what with the election fervor and all, I came up with a great new policy for Israel, as evidenced by the title of this post. Here's how it works:

The problems: The vast majority of Charedi men and women do not serve in the army or do national service (sherut leumi) and do not contribute to the country in the that their dati leumi or secular peers do. Plus, and this is a side point, a large number of them are living off a government subsidies, which are paid for by their dati leumi or secular peers, which is annoying for, you know, me. Not that I've paid any income tax yet. Then again, I'm in the army, so I have no real income. Another side point that I will connect beautifully to the main point in a minute: shemitta is very expensive and complicated in this country.

The solution: Inform the Charedi community that they need to start putting their money where their seforim are and that the government has started a new policy towards legal draft dodgers called "No More Mr. Nice Guy". All youths in Israel - including the secular ones who dodge it very cleverly as well - must do either national service or the army. BUT the options have increased. One option that might be attractive for Charedim - service within ones own community, which, as a friend of mine pointed out, is what a lot of Druse do, and it works swimmingly. If they (we're back to the Charedim now) really don't wanna leave the bubble, fine. But they still have to give back to the community. Having a bunch of young adults working in schools or other community centers and decreasing costs for them while actually making a little money for themselves and maybe their future/current families would go a long way towards decreasing government subsidies. And for those Charedim who are prepared to poke their heads just a little bit outside of the bubble, here's the solution to our shemitta (and terumah and maaser and orlah etc) issues as well. Ship a truckload of bochurim off to all the farms. This provides the farmers with cheaper labor, so their expenses go down. The bochurim rotate - half of them work on the farm in the morning and half of them learn all the relevant agricultural laws in the morning and then they switch in the afternoon. Then we've got tons of people studying and applying laws that we've just recently started to deal with again since Israel has been ours, and thus that we really need people to study, plus all the farms will provide produce from which terumah and ma'aser have been taken, orlah is no problem, and shemitta has been observed k'halacha. All for far cheaper overhead than before, b/c we know that people in sherut leumi make absolutely nothing. Plus we've got intense learning going on of all that stuff that people never learn - all the rest of seder zeraim that isn't brachot, anotherwards - and everyone's pitching in to the country.
Also, I don't want to insult anybody and I think that Israel's done a fantastic job so far of dealing w/ terumah and ma'aser and orlah and shemitta and stuff. But I think that this will make everything a lot easier and potentially save us a lot of money.
This option can also be used for those crazy left wing pacifists who don't wanna serve in the army. What could be more peaceful than working out on a farm in the middle of nowhere?
Of course we might have to put the Charedim and the pacifists on different farms...

:)