Holy High-Tech: A Highly Orthodox Solution Spurred By Poverty, Ultra-Orthodox Israelis Learn Computer Trade

On a sweltering summer evening, dozens of men in long black coats and stockings rush up the stairs of a building on the edge of this ultra-Orthodox town.

Clutching black hats and plastic bags, the bearded men hurry past a wig warehouse on the first floor and reach their destination - the Center for Professional and Technological Studies for the Torah Observant.

Out of the bags come prayer books and computer programming manuals. Placing the religious texts aside, the men sit down at computer terminals and gently sway as they contemplate the secrets of DOS and Windows 95.

It is a revolutionary scene for Israel.

Middle-aged men who have spent their entire lives cocooned in Jewish seminaries, living off government handouts, are starting to venture into the workaday world to learn a trade to support their large families.

Until recently, their rabbis had discouraged the men from getting degrees and jobs, as a way to shelter them from the temptations of the modern secular world. But simple economics are changing that.

“The rabbis suddenly woke up from the dream that they could count on God alone to support them,” says sociologist Menachem Friedman. “The rabbis understood that the old world was about to collapse under extreme poverty.”

Ironically, many of these ultra-Orthodox men, who still live much like their ancestors did three centuries ago in the shtetls of eastern Europe, are gravitating toward the world of high technology.

Computer work is appealing because it often allows for flexible hours, permitting the ultra-Orthodox to spend at least part of the day in their seminaries, or yeshivas.

And though many ultra-Orthodox men lack a technical background, Torah and Talmud studies are based on logical thinking that comes in handy in computer class.

“In the yeshiva, we are used to intensive studies, and though the subject matter is not always relevant to computer work, we are able to put our minds to other projects as well,” says Ahron Olman, a graduate of Jerusalem Technical College, which offers one of the two computer courses for ultra-Orthodox set up last year.

The idea is slowly catching on. The first graduating class of the Jerusalem program had 27 students, and the second class has 55 enrolled. About 200 students are in the other computer program, at the Bnei Brak center. That is only a fraction of the 20,000 ultra-Orthodox men who study in yeshivas full-time and get monthly government stipends averaging the equivalent of $430. But the idea is catching on.

“At first I was nervous about letting my friends and neighbors know what I was doing,” Olman says. “But now that they see me with my new profession, I think they themselves might even be interested.”

“The truth is that many are frustrated with the confines of yeshiva life,” he adds.

Elimelech Glinert, a father of six, says he enrolled in the Bnei Brak program reluctantly. “It is best to study one’s whole life,” he says, stroking his bushy red beard and averting his eyes. “But reality is forcing me to work. … I want to be able to give my children something.”

The courses are designed to make the ultra-Orthodox students feel at home. Classes are restricted to men, in line with the segregation of the sexes customary in their conservative religious communities. The teachers are also Orthodox, and the hours of study permit students to continue classes at yeshivas.