Questions Answered (Article #29) 11/23/2006

Apparently I struck a chord last week in what I didn’t write. Many of you wrote to me asking why I had not said anything about the two main issues of the day; my feelings about the parade/chareidi riots and the security crisis that came about because of Palestinian threats.

I had ignored these issues because for Goldie and I (and our family) these have been almost entirely non events. Although it did have some effect on us at work, the home front was mostly quiet – we live outside of Yerushalayim in what we feel is a very secure location in Central Israel.

What did surprise us were the reports we had heard about the chareidi rioting spreading outside of Yerushalayim. Apparently there were riots in Bnei Brak, Ashdod and yes, even Beit Shemesh. How rioting in Beit Shemesh is going to have an affect on the status of a parade in Yerushalayim is beyond our comprehension.

Two weeks before the parade Goldie called me to tell me that as she drove through Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet (RBS-B) to her ulpan class in Ramat Beit Shemesh Aleph (RBS-A) she had come upon a bunch of “burned out” dumpsters and a whole bunch of blackened patches of road where there had apparently been some rioting the night before.

As the week developed we began to hear about rocks being thrown at school busses, terrorizing the students on them. These chareidim were ostensibly objecting to a “moral outrage” totally terrifying and terrorizing other peoples children.

Where we live in Beit Shemesh, we are in the corner of our neighborhood and on two sides are directly next door to chareidi neighborhoods. One night, while we slept, our chareidi neighbors tossed some large logs into the street and set them ablaze to disturb traffic. Once traffic had stopped, they then began to stone the cars in the street.

When our across the street neighbors went into the street to try to remove the logs and allow the cars to get by, they had rocks thrown at them as well. When I mentioned that it was probably just teenagers and young adults, one of the neighbors who was there told me that the crowd was actually a bunch of middle aged Chassidim. I just don’t understand how this is acceptable.

Yet, with all of this, the incident that bothered me the most was something that I read about in the Mir Yeshiva in Yerushalayim. I read about this on the website of a prominent Jewish newspaper, that included descriptions of the events that transpired by people who were actually there as well as comments by other readers.

Apparently, Bochrim from the Yeshiva had been participating in rioting in Kikar Shabbat when the police began to chase them (seemingly to arrest them for their violent actions). Realizing they were about to be caught, they fled into the Yeshiva building where they quickly sat down and acted as if they had been sitting and learning for quite some time.

When the police attempted to enter the Beit Midrash, according to the published report I read, the bochrim began to violently throw their shtenders at them, chasing them back in what was described as “defeat”. The report gleefully described how the police had been beaten back and indignantly protested the violation of the Yeshiva by the “secular” police.

The gist of the report and the overwhelming majority of the comments by readers was that the police were totally wrong in attempting to capture/detain the Yeshiva rioters and that the bochrim were totally justified in their violent attempts to injure the police.

I know that many people will disagree with me, but this not only outrages me, it shames me as a religious Jew. I absolutely agree that the parade and its attendees are a disgrace for the city of Yerushalayim. I also feel that had it not been for the Charedim, NO ONE WOULD HAVE EVEN NOTICED THEM AND THEY WOULD NOT HAVE HAD SUCH A PUBLIC PLATFORM FOR THEIR ACTIONS AND OPINIONS.

I am a citizen of the State of Israel. As every other citizen, I have the expectation that the police of Israel (like the police of every other country) will maintain order, safety and security. I expect them to use all the force at their disposal to ensure the safety of all citizens and guests of our country.

The police did not retreat in defeat. In my opinion, they exercised incredible restraint in not taking out their billy clubs and beating the living daylights out of the ruffians who disguised themselves as Bnei Torah. There is no justification for violating the safety and rights of others simply because you object to somebody else’s moral code and behavior.

I am all for Kedushat Eretz Yisrael; I am against people flaunting their lifestyle in the face of the public, especially in Yerushalayim, but I am more embarrassed by the violent, terrorizing behavior of the Chareidim and the tremendous chillul Hashem they have caused. Quite frankly, those people give the entire religious community a bad name and are the cause of a lot of the hatred from the non religious community.

At the same time that we were facing the parade/riot issues, our army erred in firing a shell and destroyed an apartment building in Gaza, killing 19. In response, the arabs promised extremely violent revenge, causing an extreme security alert within Israel.

I’ll admit it, I was nervous. To my thinking, this wasn’t a matter of “if”, it was a matter of “when”. I still think it is a matter of when. As we continue to relax our guard with the passage of time, I believe that most likely (I hope I am wrong) something is going to happen.

Our Yeshiva (in fact many Yeshivot with foreign students) went into “lockdown”. From Thursday afternoon through Saturday night, we did not allow the students to go anywhere outside the building with the exception of the pizza and falafel stores directly across the street. Even when we relaxed the lockdown, they were still banned from malls, as well as Ben Yehuda and other crowded places through the end of the week.

As a family we did not adjust our daily activities in the least bit. Chaim still took the bus to Yerushalayim for his flag football league game. The kids took the busses to and from school as needed. We lived our lives as we have before, and will continue to do so for as long as we can.

We enjoyed another relatively quiet week. Chaim had a better experience academically, and has begun to get settled in as an active participant in making sure that he has a successful high school program. He even mentioned to us that he might not need to go to America this summer, since there is a program in Israel that a lot of his friends will be going to – as long as we give him the cost of the airline ticket to America as spending money.

On Monday I had to go to the mall to buy some stuff for the house and to take a broken ring to get repaired. No matter how long I live here, I know that I will always be recognized as a foreigner. In both the Jewelry store and the hardware store, no matter how many times I asked questions in Hebrew, the responses were always in English.

Goldie was serving leftovers for dinner. So as a bonus, I went to Sbarros (Kosher LeMehadrin) in the mall food court and picked up a dinner to eat on the train (I almost always get a seating section to myself on the train with my own table). How cool is that?

We went to an Ulpana open house for Aliza. The Ulpana (Middle/High School) open houses are so much different here than in America. In the US, there are tours of the school, individual presentations (by subject) by the teachers and a very comprehensive look at the curriculum, daily schedule and extra curricular activities.

In Israel, there is essentially a town hall meeting. We are greeted at the door by the Principal, and directed to a meeting room where the major presentation will be made. The principal and two or three selected staff members get up and talk about the philosophy of the school and what they are trying to inculcate into the girls.

Each presentation is almost identical. This could be a result of the fact that we are looking for a certain type of school and are only going to open houses for that type of school.

We hear about how excellent the academics in the school are, BUT how the important thing to them is middot, warmth, character and a sense of chevra. Each school says that they offer the full range of academics and that their graduates can go on to any college, michlelet or program that they wish.

The combination of our poor Ivrit skills and our lack of familiarity with the educational system here makes this decision even more difficult for us. We will definitely work with the Nefesh Bnefesh educational department, but at times it feels like we are just throwing darts and hoping just to hit somewhere on the dartboard.

The same night we went to our first open house, my parents arrived from Chicago. With three children in Israel, they are here visiting for three weeks, including a joint birthday party for my father and Chaya this coming Sunday at our house.

They actually have a very good plan for this visit. Our kids are all in school. Goldie is in ulpan. Similarly their other grandchildren will all be busy. So, instead of hanging out all day waiting for the kids to come home and do homework, they are staying by us over Shabbat and then going to hotels in Yerushalayim or Eilat for the week to have as a home base for touring. They will stop by for a dinner or two, but it makes a lot of sense for them not to have to shlep in and out of Beit Shemesh each day when they go to tour.

The kids were very excited to see them. As the first relatives they actually know to come see us, the kids had a lot of fun showing them our house and pointing out the various neighborhood places (ganim, supermarket, dance class) that are important to them. Of course, there is nothing like a five year old running up to his grandparents and shouting “Hey – where are the presents?!?”

On Thursday Goldie took the kids to get flu shots. Flu shots here are both complicated and simple. The shots are given by a nurse, just like in America. Yet, in order to get them you need to see the doctor so that he can enter a prescription in the computer. You also need to wait by the doctor’s office for a half hour after they give you the shot in order to make sure that you don’t have a bad reaction to the injection.

My parents got a GPS system with their rent a car. It must have been programmed in Chelm. Wherever we drive, it gives us the wrong directions. About the only good thing it does is give us a pinpointed location of where we are at any given time.

On Friday night one of our neighbors (Menachem and Randy Lipkin originally from Highland Park, NJ) made a Shalom Zachor in their home for their first grandson. While they are definitely older than us, they aren’t THAT MUCH older and it freaked me out a little bit.

For the past 5+ years we have hosted a Parshat Hashavua Chabura (study group) in our home on Friday nights – cholent included. Since I didn’t know about the Shalom Zachor until right before Shabbat, we cancelled the Chabura and I brought the cholent with me to the Shalom Zachor, which was a big hit.

Of course, it is inevitable that whenever my parents come to visit, one of the kids have to get sick. This time it is Batya’s turn. She complained of a sore throat on Shabbat so we ran with her to the doctor on Sunday. Sure enough, she has strep. My father also tends to get sick easily, so we are keeping an eye on him to make sure that he didn’t catch it.

They are having a little bit of a difficult time with jet lag, which is unusual for them in this direction. Motzei Shabbat was the worst for them; I don’t think my father slept at all.

The real plus here has been the weather. As hot as it is in Beit Shemesh during the summer, that is as beautiful the weather has been in the fall. We had only one Shabbat with rain. Every other week has been absolutely beautiful; we haven’t even needed to wear a jacket during the day.

Nights are definitely chilly and we may even have to start using the heat at some point soon. But for now we are enjoying the mild climate and continuing to settle in.