I recently got a subscription to the easy Hebrew newspaper, Shaar L’matchil.  It was supposed to arrive on Tuesday for the first time, but after repeated calls to the office, it arrived this morning instead.  I was so glad to see it, until I opened it up and saw the first line of the front page article – “Recent events in Beit Shemesh have worsened the struggle between the secular and national religious parties – and the charedi public.”

This is so upsetting to me  because it’s misleading and untrue.  The issues in Beit Shemesh weren’t about anyone being against the charedim (religiously conservative Jews), but against the sickos who are perpetuating evil and saying they’re doing it because the Torah mandates it.  Until this point, those involved in Beit Shemesh have been careful to say ‘the extremists’, specifically not ‘the charedim’ because all of those who live there realize this is an issue with an extreme group of people who have no conscience who don’t represent the general charedi public.  But the secular media is having a heyday painting all religious Jews (ironically, even those who  were in the group that was attacked by the extremists) as intolerant, dangerous religious fanatics who are planning to take over the country and force their sick moral codes on everyone else.

It’s 9 am and I’ve been awake for hours.  I woke up in the middle of the night, trying to think about how to explain this situation here on my blog to a readership that is coming from vastly different backgrounds.  It’s actually more of a topic for a thesis rather than a post, but I’ll try to be brief and include the most salient points (as I see it).

The state of Israel has been characterized by extreme struggles between the secular and religious from before it’s founding.  This country was founded by those who were anti-religious to the extreme, and terrible things were done by these leaders (Operation Magic Carpet is one particularly horrendous widespread case that comes to mind) to eradicate religiousity.  Understandably, an antipathy developed on both sides and an extreme religious divide developed.

Many of us have moved to Israel who don’t have that common history, and haven’t grown up with this as our reality, so it’s hard for us to understand how deep this runs.  Those who have been living here for generations grew up with a much different reality, and it’s reflected in the way they interact with those they perceive to be on the other side.  Meah Shearim is the oldest neighborhood in Jerusalem (outside of the Old City)  that was established by very religious Jews.  It was filled with pious Jews of similar values, and has remained this way until now.

However, what was a physically isolated neighborhood when it began became part of the city center as the city grew.  It is seen as a quaint and historic area, and is a popular tourist destination.  However, the people living there never asked to be put on display and have people from very different walks of life come through their neighborhood.  Many years ago, they put up a large sign upon entry to their neighborhood, requesting that visitors show respect to those living there by dressing modestly when visiting – not according to their stringent standards, but for women to cover their necklines, knees, and elbows.    Some people respect this, many others take pictures with this sign, and others provocatively enter this area dressed very inappropriately, with the intent to show that they won’t endure religious coercion.

So what happens in an area where respectfully trying to ask others to respect you isn’t respected?  Some people became more aggressive over time about this, too aggressive, way too aggressive.  And since these people were seen as fighting for Torah values (and things started much smaller), they weren’t stopped early on, when it might have been nipped in the bud.  So the message that aggression works was adopted by some as a way to fight for their values.  It was from this neighborhood that a number of families moved to Beit Shemesh years ago, thinking to recreate the lifestyle they had enjoyed there.  There was just one problem – they were moving into a community that had been there for many years.

Now, if they were able to adapt a ‘live and let live’ attitude, there wouldn’t be any news today.  And actually, many of the people do have that attitude. But unfortunately a number of people weren’t content to enjoy their new more spacious surroundings.  As their neighborhood grew, it got closer and closer to the existing religious but more modern communities who had been there for many years.  And this is where the tensions began, as they tried to insist on their religious mores for everyone around them.

This went way beyond sharing Torah thoughts with their new neighbors (which is what the rabbi who sent them there to live said he expected them to do) – they began using fear and intimidation to get what they wanted.  When a religious woman in her fifties was sitting in the front of a public bus (this was about five years ago), she was beaten by a group of these hoodlums when she refused to move to the back.  Back then, I was so distressed and asked, “How are people allowing this?  Why aren’t people stopping them?”

I think there are two reasons: a) people who saw the danger for what it was, and were afraid.  Seriously, would you keep sitting in the front of a bus if you risked being beaten up?  (I did sit in the front of the bus when I visited Ramat Beit Shemesh a few months ago, and was a little apprehensive about it for this reason.)  b) Most charedi Jews who saw this viewed them as a group of radicals who weren’t connected to them, and saw it as incumbent on the group’s leadership to moderate it’s followers.  It was so clear to them that these actions were against the Torah, and that they couldn’t possibly advocate or approve of this, that it seemed unnecessary to state it.  And c) some people didn’t approve of the means, but did agree with the end goals, and were willing to turn a blind eye to methods used to  get to those goals.

Now, you might be saying, but where are the rabbis?  Why don’t they stop them?  I’ve had the same questions.  I think these people shouldn’t be given an aliyah in shul (called up to make a blessing on the Torah in synagogue), and whatever social pressures that are brought to bear on someone who hasn’t given his wife a get (religious divorce) should be put on them.  This has to come from their community to be effective, though.  And they don’t have any rabbi that they follow, nor anyone whose directives they would listen to.  They make their own rules, they don’t care about anyone – they could care less that they are causing a huge desecration of G-d’s name internationally.  They could care less about the hatred that is being caused between Jews because of them.  They truly don’t care.  They are sick, abusive people, and unfortunately for us all, they are claiming to act in the name of the Torah to perpetuate their evil.

In my opinion, when you deal with abusive people, you have to fight might with might.  I know that doesn’t sound so nice, but I don’t think anything else works with people like this.  You have to show you’re stronger than they are.  Now that the media is involved, the police have finally taken action, like they should have been doing for months.  I saw a video months ago, where parents were asking the police to protect their daughters as the men were screaming at the young children exiting their school, and were told until there was a physical attack, they couldn’t do anything.  I also believe the mayor of this city is at fault, for empowering these evil people by letting them get away with this for so long.  He could have instructed the police to take action months – years – ago.  He didn’t.

But honestly, there are always going to be sick people in the world, and it’s not fair to place all of the blame for their behavior on the people around them.  So I  don’t think this can all be laid at the feet of others, but directly on those who do the actions themselves.

It looks like now, some people have been embarrassed into taking action.  That’s a good thing.  But what’s not a good thing is dragging an entire religious group through the mud, a population that has an extremely low criminal rate, that has an unusually high rate of family stability – for the sake of political gain (locally and internationally), and that’s what’s now happening.

Avivah

Sorry this week is so heavy on the aliyah/Karmiel topic – but a couple of days ago I learned that two American families will be moving here from the US very soon, and just got another email from someone considering Karmiel last night.  Though I thought this information wouldn’t be of practical use to anyone for a while and wasn’t planning to post on this issue for a few more months, I realized it’s important to get it up now.

I think that my perspective on the schools is somewhat unique because I have children in each of the schools (I don’t know of anyone else who does), so I’m going to share my personal experience rather than theorize about each school.

There are two charedi boys’ school options in Karmiel: the Talmud Torah (known as the cheder), and Amichai.  They are both located in the Dromit neighborhood, less than a ten minute walk from each other.

The Talmud Torah was formed several years ago by kollel families who wanted a classic charedi education for their boys.  Until that point, all the families sent their sons to Amichai; once they started the new school, all the local families switched them over.  (Amichai also has a girls’ school, and all the charedi families still send there.)  They are both very good schools with an excellent staff, but have different advantages and inherently different focuses on education which I’ll try to elaborate on.

As part of the discussion about the specifics of the schools, it’s  important to understand what a classic charedi education means in Israel.  In the charedi boys’ schools, there is an intense focus on Torah studies; a pure Torah lifestyle is the ideal.  Correspondingly, there will be anywhere from minimal to nonexistent secular subjects taught . (The secular subjects at the Talmud Torah consist of Jewish history, Nach/Prophets, geography, science – I use the term lightly – and math).  Because there is a primary focus on a pure Torah lifestyle, this leads to a desire for insularity from the outside world as much as possible.

The expectation is that these boys will continue on to a Torah only high school yeshiva, where they will continue on to full-time Torah studies for the foreseeable future.  When I commented to another parent about the abysmal math standard for the eighth graders, she said, “So what?  They’re never going to need it again.”  That’s a typical response, and if they pursue full-time Torah learning for the rest of their lives, it’s quite possible that basic math will be more than adequate – honestly, I’ve hardly had a need for higher level math after high school, other than homeschooling my high schoolers!

Boys in this system generally do not serve in the army or go to college, and will marry women who will work to support the family while they are engaged in full-time Torah studies.  If they work at some point in the future (as eventually most people will have to), it’s likely to be in the Jewish education field or to start their own business.  Due to the strong push towards long-term Torah study, working is considered very much a less than ideal option.  (How major a factor this is, isn’t at all reflected in the one sentence I just allotted.)

Since the school isn’t run according to government academic standards, they receive less funding so the tuition is higher than in schools that meet the academic standards.  Currently this is 380 shekels a month.  In the early years the school hours are comparable to Amichai, but as they get older, the hours get longer and longer; boys in the seventh and eighth grade return home at about 5:30.

My ds12 is in this school, and has a wonderful rebbe (teacher), and though I haven’t met many staff members, those I met were very nice.  I’m saying the following to be descriptive, not as a criticism: the attitude on the part of the administration is that your child needs to fit into their structure, they are not there to accommodate you.  (This is why I had to advocate so much for the concessions that I wanted for my son in this school.)

The Israeli government recognizes the educational needs of immigrant children to have tutoring in Hebrew in order for them to integrate, and has allocated a budget for this.  There is government funding for every immigrant child to receive a given number of hours for tutoring during school hours.  At the Talmud Torah, they didn’t want to apply for this until I insisted, and I still will have to follow up with them to see what’s happening with the paperwork because it’s not a priority to the school if this goes through or not.  It’s your problem if your child doesn’t speak the language, and it’s your business to hire a private tutor.  My feeling was that they felt they were doing me a favor to accept my son and allow him to sit in class for hours every day.  For the parents of an immigrant child, it might be challenging to have to work so hard to get services that in other schools are automatically taken care of for you.

The school schedule is set according to a kollel schedule rather than a typical school schedule.  They have vacation three times a year, for Sukkos, Pesach, and three weeks in the summer.  For Chanukah, ds12 had two days off instead of a week like our other kids.  There are clear expectations of the boys and to a degree, what they do in their free time is dictated.  For this reason, when the Israel Baseball Association called us to recruit ds12 for their team in the north (they play twice a week), I didn’t even entertain the idea – it would absolutely not be allowed by his school.  When a famous rabbi came to speak and accepted questions from the audience (it was a mixed crowd of secular and religious Jews) about Judaism, some boys from this school were in the audience, and a note came home from school afterward that this wasn’t acceptable and future attendance of events should only be with the school’s specifically stated approval.   This school has a homogeneous student and parent body, and is the choice in Karmiel for charedi families.

Now on to the Amichai school.  Amichai is an unusual school that you will rarely find in Israel, and the Karmiel community is very fortunate to have an option like this right in our city.  Schools here are usually black or white, this or that.  Amichai also has an entirely charedi administration, and was founded by Rav Margalit, the head of the kollel as well as a number of other educational institutions.  His attitude is one of inclusion, and so students from differing religious backgrounds are not only accepted but welcomed.  This makes for a heterogeneous parent and student body.

I don’t know what the overall percentage of the parent body in the school is charedi, but I’ve gone through the class list in my ds9’s fourth grade class with both his teacher and principal separately and fifty percent of the families are charedi; most of these families live outside of Karmiel.  He has one student in his class who comes from a home that isn’t religious, but the parents value a religious education.  The rest are religious but not charedi.

This varying range of backgrounds that students come from is clearly an issue for a family for whom insularity is a primary value – they are concerned their child will hear or see something inappropriate from classmates who may have the internet or a television, which is a legitimate concern.  I have a radical attitude that I very openly share – basically, I feel it’s a value for a child to know how to navigate the wider world that we all live in, and that there are more dangers in insularity than in careful and guided exposure.   The last couple of people I discussed this with happened to be teachers and they literally couldn’t think of anything to say in response to me since they’ve never heard a perspective like this, apparently.

Amichai follows government academic standards, which means that there are secular studies (including English language study), and also includes classes such as music, art, and computers.    The school day is shorter – the eighth graders finish three days a week at 3:15, and twice a week at 1:30.  (Friday is early dismissal at all the schools.)  This means that there are less hours for Torah study than at the Talmud Torah, and combined with the increased hours spent on secular studies, students at Amichai are generally are less advanced in their Torah skills when they graduate eighth grade.

My thought is that a parent has to supplement privately if they want their child to be comparable in ability to the students at the Talmud Torah, but I don’t have a son in the upper grades at Amichai so I’m making a statement based on what I’ve heard – but not my personal experience.  The  secular subjects are obviously much stronger than at the Talmud Torah, so they are more advanced in that area.  The boys from this school go on to a variety of schools.  The principal told me that fifty percent of their graduating class this past year went on to Torah only high schools.  The others went on to high schools that combined Torah studies and secular studies.

Since they recognize the diversity of their student body, they work with every child as much as they can. They want the boys to enjoy coming to school, and for learning to be a pleasurable experience.  They aren’t set up to handle special needs students, but if there’s a challenge, will try to work with the parent and child to help him succeed.   For example, the principal immediately got ds9 started with a personal tutor long before the funding from the government came through, because he felt it was imperative that he get language help immediately.  Ds9 has been staying to himself socially, and his teacher has called me several times to tell me how he’s trying to include him, and suggested he brings a game from home to share with the other boys.  He’s a busy man with many students but he’s made the time to initiate contact with us several times.  A large number of teachers as well as the secretarial staff at Amichai speak English, which is helpful for a student who can’t express himself yet in Hebrew.

Since their school hours are shorter, it allows the students downtime as well as time for hobbies.  (Some people would prefer that their children are out of the house more hours rather than fewer, and wouldn’t see the increased time at home as a positive thing.)  Being that the tuition is about 70 – 150 shekels a month (depending on the grade), a parent has room left in the budget for private lessons or supplemental tutoring, if that’s something he would like to do.  To me, the increased time with family and decreased time with peers is a hugely important advantage, because of the developmental and emotional benefits to a child.

I can’t believe how many hours it’s taken me to write and edit and re-edit this post.  Usually I don’t even want to spend this much time on an article that I’d be paid for!  I’ve really tried to fairly represent both schools, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.  As I said in the beginning, both schools are good choices, but the issue is to match the priorities of the parents (along with the needs/personality of the child) with the strengths of the school.

Did you find this helpful and informative?  Is there something glaringly obvious that I left out?   If you had a choice between the two, does one of the schools sound like the place you would choose, and why?

Avivah

More about why we moved to Karmiel – there was too much for one post!

Karmiel is primarily a secular city.  This wouldn’t appeal to many religious families, who prefer to live exclusively with religious families who are similar to themselves.  However, we saw this as an advantage to raising our children.  We want our children to appreciate people from all walks of life, to know how to respectfully and appropriately interact with different kind of people, and I have very strong feelings about the dangers of raising one’s children in an insular religious bubble.

This also means we have more room to be who we are without feeling like every detail about us is being looked over and checked to see if it meets community standards – I know quite well how common this is, albeit unconscious.  And I really dislike that.  I am very open about who I am and am not willing to pretend to be more than I am.  There are pressures in exclusively religious communities that I find stifling and unhealthy (even though I live according to the same values and standards for the most part!), that too often lead to hypocrisy, fear, and secretiveness.  I’ve lived in this kind of community for years very successfully (in Israel) in the past and understand the nuances and  reasoning, that most new olim (immigrants) don’t even realize are there.  But I don’t agree with it.

As your family gets older you realize that not every child in every family is going to religiously make the same choices.  I’ve seen this happen with many, many families and though we’re grateful that our older children have made choices in line with ours, I don’t take that for granted.  Do you know how hard it is to live in a community that has no room for even slightly different choices?  Do you know how many teens struggle to find themselves, to find acceptance, and so often feel that there’s no room for them?  This is a big issue regarding kids at risk.  I feel that raising children in an environment like we have here in Karmiel is much healthier spiritually and religiously.  Yes, they may see more immodesty, hear language or music that we would find objectionable (though honestly, this has been quite minimal so far), but as a result, they have to think and evaluate more, important skills to develop for life.

But living in a secular city means you see cars driving on Shabbos (though still drastically fewer than during the week), see people walking dogs instead of pushing baby strollers, and you’ll see people of varying levels of religiosity.  My wonderful guest who came with her family from a totally religious city, commented on Chanukah that it was strange for her to walk down the street and hardly see any menorahs being lit.  And it really is very special to be surrounded by visible signs of mitzva observance, to feel the holiday in the air they way you simply won’t when many fewer people are celebrating.  Here, there are many people who are traditional, and I’m sure they light menorahs,  but not in a window where people would see it.  So with things like that, you don’t have the same warm feeling you have in religious neighborhoods.

However, even here, I love that every Friday, a half hour before candlelighting, Shabbos music blares out over the loudspeakers to let people know that Shabbos will be beginning soon.  I can still greet everyone I pass with a Shabbat Shalom, or chag sameach (happy holiday) – and people seem to appreciate it, perhaps because it’s more uncommon, perhaps because we’re visibly Orthodox and there are (false) assumptions that people have that the religious Jews look down on people who are less religious.

The Jewish people were given the mission statement by G-d to be a light unto the nations.  How can we be a light to anyone if we live only among those that are exactly like us?  There’s a potential for kiddush Hashem (sanctifying G-d’s name) in a secular city that you’ll never have the opportunity for in a religious neighborhood, and children in an area that is more secular will learn that how every one of them behaves matters.  Sometimes that can be a pressure, but it’s a responsibility that truly every one of us has, but most of those living in totally religious surroundings won’t have a chance to teach their children.

Years ago my husband had been offered a position as a synagogue rabbi in an almost entirely assimilated neighborhood in the US.  I was concerned about the affect this would have on my children, and I asked a very experienced and knowledgeable rabbi for his feedback on this before accepting the position.  He said that kids who grow up ‘out of town’ (ie, not in large Jewish communities) have a strength of character that you don’t generally see among kids in the big communities.  That’s because they grow up knowing that there are other religious choices that people make other than Orthodox Jewry, and want to live a religious Jewish life, rather than doing it because that’s what everyone around them is doing.  Furthermore, they are often in a position of being looked to as an example, and that also strengthens them.

So what seems to some as a disadvantage of living in Karmiel, is in my opinion a big asset!

Avivah