Russ Roberts: recommendation

Transcript context

…Here’s another religious question. The Knesset recently, as you know, they voted to loosen up kosher certification regulations and take away power from a group of rabbis. That’s a kind of deregulation. You are a market-oriented economist. Are you happy, or should you be worried as a religious, observant Jew that this could mean a higher probability of some Israelis eating non-kosher food? Yes, it’s a fascinating example. Listeners should know that Shtisel is not the model family in Israel. The ultra-Orthodox are a percentage of the country, and they’re a politically powerful percentage because they tend to vote as a bloc. But there’s really all kinds of variations now, both religious and nonreligious, in Israel that are extremely fascinating. Many Jews here are secular. Their Judaism is that they live in a Jewish state. Now, there are other Jews who are religious. And then, in between that, there’s all kinds of stuff happening here that’s really fascinating. I recommend the book The Wondering Jew by Micah Goodman, that came out in the last few years, about what’s going on on the ground here in Israel and the amount of religious innovation that’s happening and how people who are “not religious” are connecting to Jewish text. People who are religious are leading more open lives. The tension between the religious and the nonreligious here is somewhat overrated. Having said that, some of the source of that tension is governmental mandates that give preferences for subsidies to childbearing, and the ultra-Orthodox tend to have much, much larger families. Families are much larger here in Israel than in America generally, secular and religious, but the ultra-Orthodox tend to have the larger families. And they’ve used their political power to get both subsidies for children, exemptions from army service, and other forms of special treatment that nonreligious Jews, not surprisingly, find offensive. I don’t think the alliance of the state with the Jewish religion has necessarily been a good thing. Many people before me have pointed out that the United States is generally a more religious country than Europe, but there’s no state religion in America. Most of Europe has state religion. The state doesn’t do anything particularly well, and it doesn’t tend to lead to good feelings about religion and has not over time. When you ask the question, “If you take away some monopoly power from the rabbinic authorities here, are you going to get less kosher food?” The answer is you might get more kosher food. There’s a lot of resentment of the way that the kosher certification has worked here. A lot of people feel that a lot of times a fee is collected and not much supervision takes place. These are nonreligious people who resent that they’re paying for something that gives them the certificate they need to serve their religious customers, but don’t like the hypocrisy of that system. It’s a fantastic example, by the way, of the natural assumption most people have that when there’s a law that gets enforced, or when there’s a law, the government does it well. Or I’ve had people say to me, “What if we move to a more decentralized system? People won’t be able to trust the kosher certification.” You sure you trust it now, when the government has a monopoly driven by rabbinic oversight? A lot of people say it doesn’t work so well. ystem? People won’t be able to trust the kosher certification.” You sure you trust it now, when the government has a monopoly driven by rabbinic oversight? A lot of people say it doesn’t work so well. I’m excited about the role competition might play in the process, and I think it’ll lead to cheaper kosher food, more kosher food, more restaurants offering certified kosher food that I think will actually be kosher, and we’ll be fine.…

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