What they teach in school

If a school in Israel has any connection to the government, if it accepts any of the tax money that the government takes by force from working people, the government places requirements on the school curriculum. One such mandate is that the school teaches Tanach. That's not a bad thing, except that the mandate tells you what books and chapters of Tanach that you must teach. Invariably, it picks that ones that depict war and bloodshed. So you have 10 year old girls in Beis Yaakov reading not the book of Ruth but the most violent parts of Nach. Example from Samuel I

When the Philistine began to advance toward him again, David quickly ran up to the battle line to face the Philistine.

David put his hand into the bag; he took out a stone and slung it. It struck the Philistine in the forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground.

Thus David bested the Philistine with sling and stone; he struck him down and killed him. David had no sword;

so David ran up and stood over the Philistine, grasped his sword and pulled it from its sheath; and with it he dispatched him and cut off his head.

When the Philistines saw that their warrior was dead, they ran.

The men of Israel and Judah rose up with a war cry and they pursued the Philistines all the way to Gai and up to the gates of Ekron; the Philistines fell mortally wounded along the road to Shaarim up to Gath and Ekron.

Then the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines and looted their camp.

This is what the government has little girls studying. Or this from Joshua.

Joshua then sent them off, and they proceeded to the ambush; they took up a position between Ai and Bethel—west of Ai—while Joshua spent the night with the rest of the troops.

Early in the morning, Joshua mustered the troops; then he and the elders of Israel marched upon Ai at the head of the troops.

All the combat troops that were with him advanced near the city and encamped to the north of Ai, with a hollow between them and Ai.—

He selected about five thousand men and stationed them as an ambush between Bethel and Ai, west of the city.

Thus the main body of the army was disposed on the north of the city, but the far end of it was on the west. (This was after Joshua had spent the night in the valley.)—

When the king of Ai saw them, he and all his troops, the townsmen, rushed out in the early morning to the meeting place, facing the Arabah, to engage the Israelites in battle; for he was unaware that a force was lying in ambush behind the city.

Joshua and all Israel fled in the direction of the wilderness, as though routed by them.

All the troops in the city gathered to pursue them; pursuing Joshua, they were drawn out of the city.

Not a man was left in Ai or in Bethel who did not go out after Israel; they left the city open while they pursued Israel.

GOD then said to Joshua, “Hold out the javelin in your hand toward Ai, for I will deliver it into your hands.” So Joshua held out the javelin in his hand toward the city.

As soon as he held out his hand, the ambush came rushing out of their station. They entered the city and captured it; and they swiftly set fire to the city.

The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising to the sky; they had no room for flight in any direction.

The people who had been fleeing to the wilderness now became the pursuers.

For when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city, and that smoke was rising from the city, they turned around and attacked the men of Ai.

Now the other [Israelites] were coming out of the city against them, so that they were between two bodies of Israelites, one on each side of them. They were slaughtered, so that no one escaped or got away.

The king of Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua.

When Israel had killed all the inhabitants of Ai who had pursued them into the open wilderness, and all of them, to the last man, had fallen by the sword, all the Israelites turned back to Ai and put it to the sword.

The total of those who fell that day, men and women, the entire population of Ai, came to twelve thousand.

Joshua did not draw back the hand with which he held out his javelin until all the inhabitants of Ai had been exterminated.

However, the Israelites took the cattle and the spoil of the city as their booty, in accordance with the instructions that GOD had given to Joshua.

Then Joshua burned down Ai, and turned it into a mound of ruins for all time, a desolation to this day.

And the king of Ai was impaled on a stake until the evening. At sunset, Joshua had the corpse taken down from the stake and it was left lying at the entrance to the city gate. They raised a great heap of stones over it, which is there to this day.

This is what the government has little girls studying. I have asked several teachers, can you teach something else, like Mishlei or Esther? Every one told me, I can't. I have to teach what the government tells me to. Doesn't matter if it's a Charedi school or a Dati Leumi. They all teach what the government mandates.

The government is not interested in Misheli or Koheles or Tehillim. It's not interested in the parts of Tanach that discuss teshuvah. It is only interested -- as are Israelis -- in war, in conquest, in killing. They have you read the parts of Tanach that seem to match the Israeli newspapers and politicians who brag every day about who they killed and who they will kill. After 10 years in this country, I can see why some call the government leaders erev rav or even Amalek. They just love one thing and that's murder. It's like being around Mafiosi.

And what are they studying in the history class? The Holocaust. 9th and 10th grade is all Holocaust. Why Holocaust? It's an attempt to justify the existence of the state even though the state was envisioned long before the Holocaust, and Ben Gurion himself said the state was not founded as an answer to anti-Semitism. He said, he didn't experience antisemitism in Poland.

For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant. (Memoirs : David Ben-Gurion,1970, p. 36 in Wikipedia)

But the narrative enforced by the "Education Ministry" is like that of radical Zionists, war, war, war, killing, weapons, packing a gun, shooting so that there won't be another Holocaust. I am reminded of the words of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch:

The land of the Divine Torah is there for the people who live in it. Its most valuable product, the purpose and goal of the whole of God's Blessing directed to it, is every human life nourished by it, through its means able to dedicate itself to making God's Torah into a realisation. The land is only given on the condition of every human life respected as being unassailably sacred to the Torah. One drop of innocent blood shed and no notice taken of it drops a stitch in the bond which connects the land with the nation and both with God. (see verses 33 and 34). This holding human life to be so sacred is to be made evident immediately on taking possession of the land in the division of it by instituting the arrangement which the Torah had already referred to in the fundamental laws of Torah social life. (Ex. XXI, 13). Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Bamidbar 35:10

Nevertheless, the SSOI promotes every kind of killing. It rejoices in it. I was talking to a school principal today, at a girl's school. Somebody came in and dropped some papers on the table. They were projects done by the teenage girls. And here's what I saw on top of the pile. It was a paper with a drawing of soldiers, and written on it was this, 

The IDF, killing Hamas since 1985.

This is called a school project for teenage girls in SSOI, bragging about who you killed. I was at a funeral for a soldier a few months back, and his sister said about him, "He loved to kill Arabs." I heard  this with my own ears. She said it in English. That's how this "Dati Leumi" girl eulogized her brother. That's his legacy, being a killer. She didn't say that he killed terrorists but that he killed Arabs. This is a result of the educational mandates of the government and the culture in general.

When a central government dictates the curriculum to such detail and when it is all so violent and depressing, you are not living in a democracy but North Korean style tyranny. It's all brainwashing here.  

All the modern conveniences - NOT, part 4

Where I lived in America, there were three hospitals. Two were in walking distance from my house. By that I mean a two minute walk and a ten minute walk. Now I am 1 hour from a hospital even though I live in a city of 150,000 people, which is a population bigger than that of the city in which I lived in America. I just talked to another guy whose father had a stroke and didn't get to the hospital quickly enough. My city offers no care for stroke victims.

More on health care. I just spoke to a woman who is trying to get her daughter evaluated for ADD. Next available appoint is in May! That's 7 months from now.

I spoke to a woman who is trying to get her daughter's toe fixed. She  has some kind of double toenail which is causing tremendous pain and altering her walking which can create back problems. Next appointment available for a surgeon - four months!

On my pilot trip I asked an oleh here, a dentist, about health care in Israel. Because he's a Zionist he lied to me and told me that it's great, that he had a complicated procedure done here. He didn't tell me it's a four month wait for an MRI or that his city was 1 hour from a hospital. He comes from the same city that I did in America, the one with 3 hospitals.

Is it that Aliyah pushers deem it acceptable to lie or that they are so in love with the idea of living in Israel that they don't see the reality of this place and don't bother to force themselves to be objective when talking to innocent people who are considering moving here?

In the Yom Kippur al chets, there's the sin of giving bad advice. Yes that's a sin that needs to be atoned for. Hear that aliyah pushers? If you don't atone, you are a rasha. 

Depression and anxiety: New research reveals impact of war on preschool children

 Children whose parents served in reserves showed signs of greater emotional withdrawal, which included fear of sudden noises, tantrums, and difficulty sleeping.

A new study, which focuses on the emotional and behavioral effects of October 7 and the ongoing war on preschool children and their parents, revealed on Monday the severe impact the war is having among families of reservists and evacuees.

The study recommended expanding support to vulnerable populations, also within Arab society.

It was conducted by Dana Shay, Dr. Carmel Blank, Dr. Yael Navon, and Prof. Yossi Shavit at the Taub Center.

continue

This isn't happening in Far Rockaway or St. Louis or Atlanta. But if you come to Israel, you are subjecting your children to this. 

The post office closed

Remember when I told you about the challenge of getting stamps in Israel, how you have to make an appointment at the post office and how it will be several days later and that if you come 10 minutes late you miss your appointment? Remember that? Well, it gets better, the local post office, where sometimes they don't open the door to honor your appoint, it closed down. Now you have to go across town to the one post office. 

All the modern conveniences - NOT part 3

Many yeridim, people who ruin their lives by moving to SSOI, don't have cars because cars are twice the price here and salaries for most yeridim are 1/4 that of what they made in the USA. So that means buses. 

The bus system in Israel is like everything in Israel, barely adequate. To go from city to city, expect a multi-hour trip with buses that leave once every two hours or once a day or some days not at all. As for buses in the city, in some cities it's not bad, eg Jerusalem, Beitar, Beit Shemesh. The buses are very crowded in Jerusalem. It isn't a pleasant trip, but there is bus service of some kind.

However, you need a Rav Kav, ie a bus pass. Drivers no longer accept cash. And there are ticket checkers everywhere. Sometimes it seems there are more checkers than drivers. Sometimes, I get checked three times on the same ride. In this land of militarism, this quasi police state, even the bus ride is stressful because of the relentless ticket checking. And if your card doesn't work, or you forgot to swipe your card, or you made a mistake and didn't realize that the monthly pass doesn't cover the ride to Jerusalem and the machine doesn't automatically take the right amount from the cash part of your card (even though in the past it did take the cash) as happened to me once, be prepared for an embarrassing scene that the heartless ticket checkers make as embarrassing as possible. They call you a thief about 20 times before issuing the ticket. The whole bus will know that you are getting a ticket.

But filling up the bus pass is not easy. You can't do it on the bus. You must use machines that are found in a few places in the city. But many times they don't work. Other times they are unusable because the blazing sun washes out the screen and the machines don't have sun shields on them. The bus people tried a system of home readers for the computer but alas they don't work in this land of alleged "all the modern conveniences." It's also possible to fill up the card in many shuls, but that's only if the machine works.

Today, I went to the shul and waited 20 minutes for some guy to try to use it. So I left there and went to a street machine 10 minutes away but the sun was so blinding I couldn't see anything. I came back to the shul machine and he was there for another 10 minutes. Then I tried the shul machine and it didn't work. So I went back to the street machine with a sheet of cardboard to block the sun. I could barely see and make my order but the machine wouldn't accept my credit card. So I walked 10 minutes to another machine which again was washed out by the sun and the machine wouldn't take my card. So I went to the Rav Kav office where a grumpy woman managed to force herself to load the card. There was no good morning, no can I help you, no small talk, no jokes, no have a nice day. Just a grumpy lady. In other words, the secular state of Israel.

This is life in Israel, daily life. No, it doesn't have all the modern conveniences. Anybody who tells you it does probably lives in the USA and dreams of living in Israel a place he knows nothing about. His dream is your nightmare.

a letter from a non-religious "Oleh" Israel, it’s not me, it’s you.

Background:

I made Aliyah nearly a decade ago while in my early 20’s from a major U.S. city. I served in the army as a combat soldier, became fluent in Hebrew, I work in an Israeli company, and all in all have assimilated well to Israeli society.

Now, lately I’ve become fed up with the constant level of stress living here. It’s become so bad now I suffer from chronic headaches. My actual physical health is being affected by living here. Seriously, I ended up in the ER because my head didn’t stop pounding for over a week. The diagnosis… “you’re way too stressed out”.

It feels like nearly everything you do will incur the highest possible level of stress for the given task. You want to go shopping? Count on someone cutting you in line. You want to take a cab? More than likely the driver will try to cheat or overcharge you.

I consistently discover “errors” in my paycheck, always to my loss.

At some point you lose count of all the times you receive some bill from two years ago that you never knew you had, and now it’s in collections while your bank account is under seizure. What’s more, when you try to find out how to dispute or complain about an incident, you hardly ever find reprieve. If by chance there is a channel to justice, it’s usually not worth the energy.

In Israel it is just an extra level of being on top of things. Now, every couple months I check with every possible body (municipality, national collections, police, toll roads) just to make sure that someone isn’t trying to collect on me for some debt or fine they never did their due diligence to inform me about.

Just yesterday, I tried to take my car out of a private paid parking lot in Jerusalem, but because the management hadn’t removed the snow that had fallen the night before, I was unable to move my car. Coincidentally enough, the attendant decided not to show up to work either. Flash forward to today, the attendant insists that it’s my fault and that I should have dug my way out with my hands if I had to; he insisted on further payment. Voices were raised, insults flung, legal threats floated around. In the end, I’m just waiting for Shabbat when the gates are open to move my car.

I wish that this was an isolated incident.

I travel abroad for work. At the moment I hold no permanent apartment, and use Airbnb or hotels for the time I’m in country. More times than not, I arrive to an Airbnb and there is something wrong (no hot water, dirty, different location, heat/AC broken). Not to mention the prices for lodging are ridiculous. You’d expect, if you’re paying $150 per night for a box in Tel Aviv, that at least that box will be ready when you arrive.

- I actually had an Airbnb host offer me what amounted to a 1.3% discount on a one week stay as compensation for lack of hot water… in December!

Needless to say this instance required Airbnb getting involved. In the end I received two nights refunded, and left the host a scathing review. Unfortunately for future guests, all the host did was remove the listing and post it as a new property, deleting my review.

There really is no end in sight for this kind of behavior, it’s more than just the “charming straightforwardness” Israel is famous for. This is a pervasive culture of abuse.

I suppose when I was younger, and Aliyah was this big adventure, everything was fascinating as I tried to assimilate to my new country. Now, as a 30-something year old, it’s just exhausting, and it’s not fun anymore.

I’m sick of constantly being blamed for the shortcomings of Israeli businesses, and institutions.

It’s much like an abusive relationship that started wonderful, then turned sour.

We’re constantly gaslit by greedy telecom companies, dense government offices, and corrupt landlords that somehow their incompetence and constant fuck-ups, are our faults.

Enough… I’ve decided to leave. I’ve booked a ticket for three months on a tropical beach somewhere where the people are known for their smiles, not their scowls. After that,

I have no idea what’s next… but for now Israel, we’re done.

It’s not me, it’s you.

Will your children respect you?

If you move to Israel because some over-the-top Zionistic rabbi  guilts you into it, you might have a big problem with your children. I meet all kinds of people who give up their house to come live in a little apartment. They give up their cars to take buses. 

One of these people probably didn't have to give up his car because he only retired here after having a legal, academic, and rabbinic career in America (where he was educated). But he still pushes everyone to come here whether they be rich or poor. That's how ideologues work. You are just a pawn in their games.  

Here's how you look to your children now, like a loser. And if you don't speak Hebrew -- and few olim over 30 learn Hebrew -- you look like a bigger loser. If you are a baal teshuvah or convert that grew up without any exposure to Hebrew, it will be even harder. You can't help your kids with their homework. You need them to get on the phone and talk to the customer service rep. You look helpless. You are helpless.

So if you are escaping Czarist Russia in 1905, and you need to come to America to be a poor immigrant who never learns more than broken English, well you were poorer in Russia. You are not dropping by coming to America. But when you come to Israel, your standard of living drops significantly. And you stumble around because you can't speak Hebrew. 

And now you have brought them to a country with a broken government, that is relentlessly at war (largely by choice in my opinion), that is relentlessly after your sons to draft them into its secular army. People left Russia to escape the draft. Why would you come to a country that has a draft, that as we have learned, really don't care about its soldiers, and sends them into slaughter where this year 750 have been killed and 5,000 wounded. Since only Jews are drafted, that's the equivalent of 41,250 fatalities for soldiers in America. That's approaching the number of soldiers the US lost in the Vietnam war. As for injuries, that's equivalent to 275,000. That's what you brought them to. You look like a loser.

Now you don't have any authority over them. Why should they listen such a fool?

I heard olim kids say to their father, "We are poor because we don't have a car." And "I don't have to listen to you because you don't own anything." So you lose control over your kids.

You want to say that you'll teach them that the sacrifice is worth it, that you are winners because you live in Israel? What if you don't believe that? Not everybody thinks that way. They do. But that's the  derech of the aliyah salesmen. What they are doing is imposing that on you, and that's dangerous.

What if you don't believe that yishuv ha-aretz is the most important mitzvah in the world? What if you think that having good middos is more important? Well, you are going to have a big problem living in Israel. What if you are not so thrilled with the society? What if you are really bothered by rude people. What if you raise them to be polite at home, but they go into the schools and get massacred by the Israeli kids. This is an ongoing complaint of 'olim' kids. 

So I'm warning you what kind of mess you will get yourself into by moving Israel. The aliyah pushers paint such fantasies. They are liars.