Year: 2021

Bottom Line: Choose the Worst Israel Instead of the Best Galus!

The Best Galus Ever

I like to keep things simple. The arguments in favor of residing in galus over Israel inevitably boil down to two tracks:

1) Life in galus is better.

2) Life in Israel is worse.

The rest is commentary. People will only move to Israel, or choose to stay there, if they crunch all the objective and subjective variables, and determine that life in Israel is a better deal. There is no need to catalog all the variables; we know them.

Instead, I would like to present the greatest sales pitch for galus in history. Imagine a scenario in which life in galus could not be any better, while life in Israel could not be any worse. It would look something like this:

Economic: Getting by in Israel is virtually impossible. The economy is completely in the tank, extreme poverty is widespread, and there are severe food shortages. Survival is only possible due to an influx of foreign aid, which of course comes with strings attached.

In galus, however, the Jews live with great prosperity and don’t even need to work. Their standard of living could not be better. They are free to live in the most upscale neighborhoods, tax-free, without even having to worry about zoning laws.

Political: Israel is completely ruled by gentiles. In fact, it wouldn’t even be known as Israel. Not only are Jews an extreme minority with little political influence, there are no Jews there at all! Although Jews are allowed to live in Israel, they have no say in how the country will be run. Furthermore, the gentiles who rule the land are diametrically opposed to Jewish values, and any Jew who does live there would need to keep an extremely low profile. He would be grudgingly tolerated at best, and would need to be perpetually wary of his neighbors.

In galus the Jews enjoy political power at the highest echelons and can be openly Jewish with impunity. Although there are some resentments, in general the Jews are respected, admired, and feared by the gentiles. No one would dare lay a finger on them.

Spiritual: Life in Israel is a spiritual wasteland. There are no rabbis, no shuls, no yeshivas, no Jewish education, no communal infrastructure of any kind. How could there be? There are no Jews! But to make matters worse, the spiritual environment could hardly be worse. The gentiles who rule the land are morally bankrupt, far worse than the gentiles in other lands. Raising a proper Jewish child would require separating from society as much as possible, with no support group.

In galus the Jews would still be vastly outnumbered, of course, but they would be able to live in their own spiritual cocoons. They would be guided by tremendous tzaddikim and Torah scholars, among the greatest who ever lived. Jewish education would also be completely free. Their religious rights would be fully protected; in fact, Jewish leaders would be recognized as holy by the gentiles and held in the highest esteem. Naturally, Jewish communal and family life would be ideal.

If a Jew could choose between living in the Israel or the galus described above, the correct choice would be obvious.

Israel.

This is not a theroetical question. This actually happened. When the Jews first came to Egypt, and for many years before things turned bad, this was the situation. Yosef was the ruler. Yaacov was the spiritual leader. The Jews enjoyed freedom and prosperity without a care in the world.

At the same time, Israel was known as Canaan, ruled by the most wicked idolaters in the world. They were so spiritually bankrupt and morally corrupt that they deserved to be utterly destroyed. There was famine in the land, and everyone was beholden to Egypt for their food. The inhabitants were also well aware of Jewish ambitions to ultimately kick them out and take over the land. Conditions for a Jew could hardly be less favorable.

Nevertheless, Yaacov would not have left Israel were he not compelled by divine decree and heavenly machinations. Same for his family, which comprised the entirety of the Jewish people. Yosef would not have left Israel or remained in Egypt if not for circumstances beyond his control. They were expected to live in galus at all times with one foot out the door, ready to return to Israel at the earliest opportunity. They were expected to give up the best life in galus for the most difficult life in Israel, and to view that as the greatest priority, the greatest blessing.

Home is home, and if it isn’t everything you want it to be, you need to be there to really change that.

Despite all the complaints, many of which are justified, life in Israel has a lot going for it. Despite the deep attachment many Jews have to galus, despite the yetzer hara to remain there no matter what, life in galus is no paradise for an authentic Jew. It never can be. It’s an exile, an unnatural habitat, a temporary dwelling where the Jew may be tolerated and exploited for some time, but where he is never meant to feel at home. He doesn’t belong there.

When a Jew remembers this, keeps one foot out the door, and desires to return home at the first opportunity, there is no need for the galus to be rough. However, when he mistakenly interprets God’s kindness in softening the exile as a sign that he should plant both feet there, the kindness needs to be removed.

One final time, as has happened so many times in history, the Jews have planted both feet in their temporary dwellings, mistaking a comfortable life in galus as preferable to an uncomfortable life in Israel. The kindness is being removed and once again things in galus are turning very bad very fast.

It shouldn’t have to be this way, and it still doesn’t need to be this way. We can learn the lesson without having to learn it the hard way. We can turn things around and finally get it right.

Tell shmutz la’aretz that you appreciate the hospitality and will remember the good times, but it’s time to just go home.

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www.chananyaweissman.com

Copies of Go Up Like a Wall are available from me at no cost upon request, and on Amazon for the minimum price they allowed.

The Universal Theory of Everything: More Research Needed!

(Well, everything but the Corona vaccine…)

How does every study end?
A mealy-mouthed conclusion, good enough for media headlines and excerpts. And then: “However, there were certain constraints… Conclusion: There is an urgent need for further studies like this one.”

In other words, give us more money!

Scientists are funded by taxes. This is how “science” continues.
An excerpt:
A 2004 metareview by the Cochrane collaboration of their own systematic medical reviews found that 93% of the reviews studied made indiscriminate FRIN-like statements, reducing their ability to guide future research. The presence of FRIN had no correlation with the strength of the evidence against the medical intervention. Authors who thought a treatment was useless were just as likely to recommend researching it further.
Indeed, authors may recommend “further research” when, given the existing evidence, further research would be extremely unlikely to be approved by an ethics committee.
… Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, argues that FRIN is often used as a way in which a “[l]ack of hard evidence to support the original hypothesis gets reframed as evidence that investment efforts need to be redoubled”, and a way to avoid upsetting hopes and vested interests. She has also described FRIN as “an indicator that serious scholarly thinking on the topic has ceased”, saying that “it is almost never the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from a set of negative, ambiguous, incomplete or contradictory data.”
Not to mention the asked-for research is never the lonely thoughtfulness of a Tesla, but ten thousand blooming wasteful experiments (per Nikola Tesla’s criticism of Thomas Edison’s showy scatter-shot approach), or, even worse, catered symposiums and the like.
If anything, we need private science funding!

Educating Children to Avodas Hashem In Eretz Yisrael – Avraham Shusteris

The American Yeshiva Day School fraud

The problem in our yeshiva day schools is that the real priority is to produce students who will succeed in the secular world. Opinion.

Avraham Shusteris, Dec 20, 2020 11:18 PM
Arutz Sheva

In Soviet Russia, where my parents are from, there was a famous saying amongst the working class: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”.

Somehow the employer and employee each thought they had the upper hand by cheating the other and this allowed for the system to continue. As a result, nothing ever got done. It was a lie, but a lie that everyone was comfortable with, so it continued on until the country imploded.

Today, the Yeshiva day school system is continuing a similarly comfortable and convenient pretense. The parent body and school system pretend to provide their utmost in giving their children the best Jewish and secular education possible, while the children go along with the system, playing the role that the day school system expects of them.

Once it’s time for college, the pretense is exposed. Looking back at my high school class 17 years after graduation, most of my peers are no longer shomer shabbat, and of the minority that stayed Sabbath observant most have become Open Orthodox – basically neo-Conservative, even if they now call themselves Modern Orthodox. Very few of my high school peers maintained the true Modern Orthodox lifestyle, where scrupulous adherence to Torah comes before Derech Eretz (taking an active part in the professional, scientifc and academic world) of their parents as personified by Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik’s students. A small sprinkle “frummed out” and became hareidi.

I don’t have an axe to grind with the American Yeshiva Day School System. In fact, I am grateful that they agreed to take in a young Russian boy like myself from a non observant family, something that would probably never happen in a more yeshivish school. Also, the rigorous study discipline that I experienced in my yeshiva day school made my college workload feel like a walk in the park. Nevertheless, there is a major problem that exists in this system with tragic consequences and it needs to be brought out in the open.

The main crux of the problem in yeshiva day schools is that it is abundantly clear to everyone, although never outwardly expressed, that the real priorities of the system are intended to produce students that will one day achieve success in the secular world. This means getting into great colleges and eventually getting great jobs. The system is extraordinarily successful in this regard.

That being said, all parties in this system, including the parents, the schools and the students all know that this is and was the real priority – and it isn’t spiritual growth. Although publicly the schools preached an uncompromising dual commitment to Yiddishkeit and academic excellence, no one was under the illusion that these two priorities were somehow equal. No state of the art beis medrash (study hall), inspirational lecture series or 10 day trip to Poland or even Israel could change that simple reality. Material success is what truly mattered when I was a student in yeshiva day school, and I suspect not much has changed in 17 years.

Our school preached love for Israel and commitment for Israel. We waved our flags and we marched in the parades. However, when it came to practically making Aliyah, there were few takers.

Children smell hypocrisy from a mile away…

And there is another example regarding which our education failed. Our school preached love for Israel and commitment for Israel. We waved our flags and we marched in the parades. However, when it came to practically making Aliyah, there were few takers.

The issue is not one that is unique to the Modern Orthodox community.

Gone are the days of real ideological disputes between misnagdim and hasidim, Modern Orthodox and yeshivish. Those were for the simpler times, when Jews were still poor and sidelined members of society. Today, when we have reached the pinnacles of success in the secular world, the hashkafic distinctions that once defined us are no longer real.

Today there are two types of people. There are people who are primarily focused on the material, and others who are primarily focused on the spiritual. There can only be one true priority. This dilemma of spiritual vs material priorities holds true for not only the Modern Orthodox, but for the hareidi world as well. What separates the hareidi wall street daf yomi lawyer working 70 hours a week from the Modern Orthodox one? The color and fabric of his kippah?

There are hareidi materialists and Modern Orthodox ones. There are also poor materialists and wealthy spiritualists and visa versa. What distinguishes us is not our type of kippah or the size of our bank account, but where our priorities lie.

If we want our primary focus and our children’s primary focus to be spiritual, ruchniyus, we need to take action to make it so. There is no greater practical expression of Emunah and yearning to come close to Hashem than foregoing all of the comforts and conveniences of life in America and coming to live in Eretz Yisrael. What other mitzvah proves where your true priorities lie? You can be a Jewish materialist and send your son to Brisk and visit Israel three times a year for Yom tov. It’s harder to be a materialist and actually live in Eretz Yisrael.

Schools and Jewish educational organizations recognize that the Israel experience is the most successful educational experience that can inspire, uplift, and re energize our children and rededicate them to their Judaism. The yeshivish send their kids to Eretz Yisrael to learn before and after marriage, the Modern Orthodox send their kids to study for a year or two after high school, while the non affiliated send their children on birthright to hopefully inspire them to marry Jewish.

Eretz Yisrael has the effect of connecting the Jew to his roots across all religious spectrums. Educators try to bring the Israel experience to America in any way that they can to try to rekindle the spark of our Jewish youth’s souls.

The Israeli Religious Zionist school system has much the same problems, with similar dialectics between religious and secular studies and a too high rate of non-observant graduates (known in Israel as datlashim – formerly religious). However, there is a very large selection of Yeshiva high schools, among which there are a good number where it is clear to the students that Yiddishkeit and spirituality come first even when secular subjects are on a high level. In addition, these Yeshiva high schools work hard to have students go into a higher Torah learning program such as hesder before army service, so as to create a post high school spiritual atmosphere with no other distractions. Yeshiva high schools measure their success by how many students chose that extra period of Torah learning before the army, and in the case of hesder, students also return for another year of Torah after their army service.

Maybe it’s time to reconsider our logic in America. Instead of bringing the Israel experience to America, why not do something simpler. Let’s give our children more of an Israel experience in Israel, by bringing them there – with us – and making our homes here.

The longer we wait the more difficult it will become.

Avraham Shusteris is an accountant in Ramat Beit Shemesh. He made aliyah from Monsey with his family in 2018.