Finance Minister Yair Lapid has put forth his proposal for solving the Israeli housing crisis. Unfortunately like so much of what he does his plan is poll driven rather than the result of any carefully considered policy.
Lapid has good cause to focus on the polls. A recent one showed his Yesh Atid party dropping from 19 seats in the current Knesset to 11 if new elections were held. Even more unsettling from the point of view of Lapid — who has spoken openly of his ambition to be prime minister — is that he is the lowest-ranked minister in the entire cabinet with an average rating of 4.19 on a ten-point scale.
Lapid’s housing plan is pure populism. He proposes to drop the 18 percent value added tax (VAT) on the purchase of a first new apartment by young couples with at least one child. The proposal has been strenuously opposed by leading officials within the Finance Ministry and by the Bank of Israel on two grounds. First it would cost the government approximately NIS 2 billion in revenue.
But second and more important it would exacerbate the very problem — sky-high housing prices — that it comes to alleviate. Though the VAT reduction would assist the targeted beneficiaries in the short run its overall impact would be to drive housing prices yet higher by increasing demand while doing nothing to increase the supply of housing.
The Treasury’s chief economist Michael Sarel resigned in protest over Lapid’s proposals even as he stated that as a general rule it is inappropriate for a ministry official to resign over policy disagreements. This proposal however is so egregiously bad according to Sarel as to justify an exception: “[T]his specific instance is exceptional in its severity and broad repercussions which leaves me no plausible other alternatives.” Bank of Israel governor Karnit Flug has also been described as “bitterly opposed” to the VAT exception.
Though Lapid has no training in economics the impact of supply and demand on price is not such a difficult concept to understand. My guess is that he knows that his proposals are bad policy perhaps even disastrous ones but the lure of being able to deliver an apparent giveaway and win popularity proved too much to resist.
That pursuit of popularity at the expense of policy outcomes after all defined his stance on the criminalization provisions in the new draft law. Prior to passage of the law a petition signed by a number of academics who focus on the chareidi community as well as a diverse group of public figures — including Ami Ayalon former chief of the Shin Bet — all argued that a “law based on criminal sanctions would be understood by the chareidi community as a declaration of war on the world of the yeshivos and an expression of contempt by the state for the value of Torah learning.” Not only would such sanctions create a “tear in the societal fabric ” the 33 signatories warned but the criminal sanctions would “cause an end to the integration of the chareidi community” and likely cause “leading rabbis [to] prohibit any form of enlistment.”
Yet Lapid pushed ahead despite the warning telling his cabinet colleagues that he could not sell the draft law to his supporters without criminalization.

ONE OTHER ASPECT of Lapid’s housing proposals was similarly designed to cheer his supporters: The proposed VAT reduction will only be available to those who have served in the IDF or performed some form of national service. Thus most young chareidi couples will be excluded. So by the way will Arab couples a fact that prompted a number of MKs on the left to protest the discrimination against Arabs and threaten suit if the law passes.
We can expect to see many more government benefits tied to army service in the future. That raises the question as to how we should respond as a community. My own feeling is that we should not automatically protest against benefits conferred on those who have served in the IDF.
More than a decade ago income supplements for which the criteria were designed in such a manner as to apply exclusively to avreichim in kollel were challenged in court by a group of university students on the grounds that no similar supplements were available for them. I argued at the time that there was no discrimination — in American terms no equal protection claim — because Torah learning and university studies are not the same thing and therefore the Knesset need not treat them equally. A democratic society is permitted to value one form of learning over another. I would make the same argument about government stipends to encourage students to go into the hard sciences or engineering over humanities — and vice versa.
But obviously the argument that I made then cuts two ways. And accordingly it is legally permissible for the Knesset to offer certain benefits to those performing one form of national service and not to those performing another form of national service. They may both be valuable but they are manifestly not identical. The American G.I. bill that has enabled hundreds of thousands of former servicemen to attend college and beyond is one example of a governmental benefit as a reward for military service.
Legal technicalities aside it is not wise to reflexively oppose any special benefit offered to soldiers. Chareidi support for generous benefits conferred on soldiers particularly for those who serve in combat units helps refute the canard that the chareidi community denies the value of military service or the necessity of an army.
Even more important the more government benefits are conferred on those who serve in the IDF the weaker becomes the emotionally charged slogan of “equality of service”: Yes the service is not identical but neither are the benefits.
Shachar Ilan quoted recently in Mishpacha was right in stating that the Torah leadership was prepared in advance of the draft bill to accept economic sanctions for non-service — and how much more so incentives for service — as long as the government did not force a single full-time Torah student into the army.
There was a great deal of wisdom packed into that stance.

Lessons Gleaned on the Road
(with Apologies to Rabbi Y.Y.)

Mishpacha readers could be forgiven for concluding that most of my time on trips to America is spent sponging rides from anyone who expresses so much as a word of appreciation for any column I have ever written. Yet what I inevitably gain from those rides is much more valuable than the cab fare I save.
Recently I was met at the Denver airport by Mrs. Aliza Bulow a writer speaker and educator whose work I had admired from afar. She had expressed an interest in speaking to me while I was in Denver and it turned out that she would be dropping off her daughter at the airport just as I would be exiting the baggage claim area.
As it happened I preceded Mrs. Bulow. She did not arrive at the airport until half an hour before her daughter’s flight. By that time there was no hope of her daughter returning to Detroit with the suitcase she had brought. “I’ll pick it up at Pesach ” she told her mother matter-of-factly. Meanwhile there was still the matter of getting through security control with two children in strollers with just half an hour before flight time. Clearly she would have to rely on the kindness of many strangers to do so. (She did make the flight.)
I remarked to Mrs. Bulow that both she and her daughter had seemed preternaturally calm about a situation that would have tested my nerves to the breaking point.
In response she told me that she has a rule in her family called “Skip step two.”
My ears picked up in anticipation of learning the magic formula for never losing your cool. She explained that in most situations that try us first comes the triggering event — e.g. a dentist appointment that goes way overtime when you have to make it to the airport. Then you lose yourself in either panic or anger. Finally you realize that you have to deal with the new situation one way or the other. Since you are going to have to deal with the situation eventually why not just skip step two?
Mrs. Bulow gave me another example of “skipping step two” from the same daughter’s year in seminary in Israel. She and her roommates had been instructed that their closets were old and not overly stable and should not be moved. Nevertheless the roommates decided to rearrange all the beds in the room which entailed moving the closets as well. Sure enough the closet of Mrs. Bulow’s daughter collapsed and all her clothes were strewn around the room.
When her roommates came to tell her what had happened she just went upstairs and put her stuff back. “Aren’t you even angry?” they asked.
“How would that help me?” she replied without breaking stride.
Don’t we all waste a lot of time and energy losing our cool over things we are going to have to deal with anyway? Why not just skip step two?
ANOTHER ONE OF MY BENEFACTORS on the recent trip shared a snippet of his life story. In his 40s he was happily married to a non-Jewish woman and had two teenaged children.
At that point he was introduced to Shabbos by a local Orthodox rabbi and over a period of a few years he began taking on more and more mitzvos. His wife had no interest in the course on which he had embarked.
Eventually he decided that he had no choice but to get divorced. Feeling guilty about changing the rules midstream and breaking up his family he gave his wife and children the house and pretty much everything he owned. He had to borrow his first month’s rent from his boss.
Subsequently he married a lovely woman from a Torah family and together they have two children.
When I heard this story I found myself awed by the absolute clarity of the truth of Torah he had experienced which enabled — nay forced — him to break up a happy family and begin totally anew midlife with no idea where his new course would lead him.
How many of us could have done the same?