All aboard the bus

Today I left the house a bit later than usual, just in time for children's rush hour. That is the time when all the young people are rushing off to school. That means jam packed buses because mass transportation in Israel is underfunded and subpar like everything here. I was reminded of my commute decades ago on the #6 train on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The train was so packed, that it was impossible to cram oneself inside. Three trains would go by before there was some kind of opening. I remember once standing there, bodies  pressed all around me, when I muttered half aloud, "Why do we live like this?" A man heard me and responded, "We choose to."

These children don't choose to. Most were born into it. Some were born to lunatic parents who brought them from civilized countries to Israel because they were sure that geulah had come or because enough deranged Modern Orthodox rabbis convinced them that it was their duty. The parents generally are affluent--who else can live in such a dream?--and ride around town in cars, ignorant of what their children deal with every day. In Israel, the people boarding the bus don't allow the ones trying to deboard space to do so. In Israel, the people standing in the front of the bus don't move inside to make room for new people. Like everything here, like everything, getting on a bus is a battle, a war. You take the land by force, against the decree of the Talmud, then God leads you in the direction you want to go. Everything, every part of life becomes a battle.

For sensitive children it's all too much. For God fearing children it's not healthy as the scene is immodest. The boys and girls are all mixed together and pressed against one another. So much for this erroneous notion that people in Israel are frummer. As I say here often, they are not frummer. They are just more militant. That's not the same thing.

I wanted to take a picture of the scene. It looked something like this:

It did not look like this:

The second picture is what your child's bus ride in Cleveland might be like. The state provides buses for religious schools! Oh, those anti-Semitic gentiles, what ever will we do about them? Let's move to Israel and live like animals.