You call that a school?

I was talking to an American man at the Dead Sea one day, as we had taken a bus there, and its a four hour wait until the return home. I said how long have you been living here? He said, "You call this living?"

Same with the schools. You call these schools?

If you are yeshivish or Charedi, these, in many cases, are the kinds of 'facilities' in which your children will attend school. They are trailers, old ones.

I have just shown at least 4 different schools. See the bars on everything? I know a lady who advocates moving to Israel because in Canada the schools are now getting security guards. Well every school in Israel has armed guards and bars and gates all over the place.

Here's one of the ubiquitous guard booth with the grumpy, glaring guard, usually an unsmiling Russian.

Here's the inside of a classroom:

Typically, the walls are bare and there are no windows or few windows. How would you like to sit in there and be shouted at by a hot-tempered Israeli teacher all day long?

Here are stairs leading up to the classroom:

Lovely isn't it?

Here's the "hallway" of a school:

Sometimes, the schools are located in actual concrete buildings, but they are nearly always very damp and dreary on the inside, especially for the boys. The classrooms look about the same as the one I just showed you. I'd get you a photo of the inside of this school but it is in another town. There are no buildings like this for Charedim in my town.

And school days are long. There are no gyms or libraries or cafeterias. On occasion, the school will take a small storage room, stick a few books in there, and call it a library.

All day long the child sits in a tiny, barred window room with metal walls. The parents of olim have no idea. They never bother to check it out. Some of them just 'love' living in Israel but they don't really live in Israel. They live in the atypically large  apartment or semi-attached house they bought with American money and confuse that with SSOI. They don't deal with screaming teachers. They don't get jammed into packed buses. They don't spend the entire day in a box. In other words, they don't love their children as much as they pretend to. People who move to Israel are oftentimes very selfish and materialistic people and they never investigate to see what their children are going through. 

Let us compare to some American yeshivish schools:

Passaic:

Cleveland:

Manhattan:

That's how classrooms should look with something on the walls, something to look at, something to awaken the mind. In Israel, they just rely on shouting for that. 

Lakewood:

Seriously now folks do you love your children? Do you have common sense? Or is the brainwashing you got about living in the land at all costs or Medinas Yisroel being some kind of geulah going to overwhelm all that?

Let us compare:

So let's say, as some yeshivish people I know have, that you put your children in a Dati Leumi school where there are actual buildings of some kind, not quite as damp and dreary but close. I was told by a guy who went to one of the more religious ones that 1/3 of his classmates are no longer Torah observant. You want to risk that? And many of the ones that are allegedly still observant are barely observant. I know a bochur who wears a pony tail. I know another who doesn't wear tzitzis. They don't daven. They have girlfriends. That's Modern Orthodoxy in Israel.

Near my house is another Dati Leumi school. The young women dress like public high school students. I have no idea if they are actually mitzvah observant by the way they dress. 

Is it worth it if the yeshivish people are more religious here? They are not more religious here.  That's another myth. In Meah Shearim they are very religious. They are in Lakewood and Monroe as well, and in New Square. But you aren't going to live in Meah Shearim.

I have watched these guys study Torah. They do tend to shout, the entire time. But don't confuse shouting with solid Torah study. They get locked in their position and shout. Their minds are not agile. It's not real lomdus.

And the middos usually match the facilities. Yesterday, I saw two boys picking on another one as they passed him (a stranger) on a path. I have watched bullying (and intervened) numerous times. 

In case anybody has forgotten, middos are an important part of our religion.

America and Europe have their own problems, but they are not less religious than people in Israel. The lack of hachnachas orchim here is noticeable. There's also lots of cheating. 

So anybody who tells you that Israel is a wonderful place to live, that it has all the modern conveniences, or that moving here is the religious thing to do because the Ramban, who himself didn't move here until the last 2 years of his life due to persecution in Spain (but didn't move to a place dominated by anti-religious atheists) counts it as a mitzvah (an optional one according to Rav Moshe Feinstein) -- well that person is, let me be nice about this, not somebody you should listen to.