Wanna wreck your marriage?

Last night I met yet another man whose marriage fell apart in SSOI. It shouldn't be surprising. Don't they tell us that money is the biggest cause of martial strife? Well, in SSOI it's hard to earn a living. People get low level jobs, lose them, don't work for 6 months, get another low level job. 

Yet the cost of living is higher. Real estate is roughly the price of that of Metro New York, but for half the living quarters. For $500,000, you get three small cruddy rooms in an apartment. And of course, in SSOI you make a third the salary of New York, and that's if you speak fluent Hebrew and had a skill that transfers over. Most people make 1/5th the salary or less! Gee, you think this might cause marital problems?

But not only that, you live in tiny apartments, on top of each other. You don't have a room to escape to. Even your room is taken up by beds and a standing closet, because Israeli apartments don't come with built in closets.  You might not have a car so it's harder to get away for a few hours.

You might fight over the children, many of who fall apart in SSOI. Last night, I spoke to a woman whose son was religiously the strongest until they came to SSOI. She thought he was going to be the tzadick. Now, it seems that he's no longer Torah observant, or maybe barely so.

I know many families like this. My apartment building has at least four like that. I know so many stories. The kids fall apart in Israel.

So all of that will jeopardize your marriage. 

But not only that, SSOI is a life of strife, fighting, yelling, shouting, stubbornness. It rubs off on you. Nobody here backs down. They don't compromise. 

What's amazing is that many with rocky marriages move to Israel as if that's going to save them. They get lost in a romantic fantasy about the Zionist state, living with their brothers in sisters in their own land, where there are no goyim. It's going to be paradise and fix their marriage.

Only it's all a fantasy. People here hate each other. There's no brotherhood in the society at large. There are plenty of goyim. I mean real goyim - Arabs, Philippinos, Indians, Thai, Russians.  And they are low level workers. You don't even get educated, successful goyim. And then there are the Jewish goyim. That's 80% of the country.

If your marriage is rocky, fix it wherever you are. Don't come here. The divorces are even uglier here, and the courts more unfair, more cold hearted.