Alienation and the ambivalences of “freedom from work”: An investigation of Haredi Jewish men in Israel

In its original/classical formulation, alienation is a matter of estrangement from “species-being”: wage labour entails alienation because the employee controls neither the labour process nor the destination/use of the product.  Insofar as alienation is a subjective experience (not merely a theoretical construct), wage labour is deeply dissatisfying. 

In advanced capitalist societies where paid work is the norm (particularly for men), one then wonders whether people who choose not to be in the labour force experience alienation.  One such group is “Haredi” (ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Israel.  Many Haredi men spend many years studying in yeshiva instead of holding jobs; their understanding of religious obligation leads them to reject “profane” work in order to devote themselves fully to religious activities.  (These are large families whose income derives from state support gained via the power of their representatives as “swing parties” in parliament.) 

In devoting themselves to religious study, Haredi men do not experience the alienation of wage labour; indeed, they are free from the need to work in the normal sense.  On the other hand, their activities put them at some distances from Marx’s notion of species-being (a point apparent from the traditional Zionist perspective in which manual labour itself was the path away from the alienation of conventional European Jewish occupations). 

The paper explores that latter point by considering recent trends in which some younger Haredi men in Israel (perhaps experiencing alienation in their yeshivas) are rejecting non-participation and are seeking ways to reconcile religious obligation with paid employment.  These efforts suggest that even people who do not have to work might prefer the alienation of wage labour to the “alienation” they experience by absenting themselves from the labour market.  The paper concludes with reflections on how we might advance the (oft-lamented) empirical investigation of alienation.