A Calling?

Israel is in the midst of a rather complicated teachers strike. Complicated, since we have two teachers unions. One is striking and the other signed the government's demands. The government offered a contract based on "reforms" which would drastically change teachers work contracts and conditions. Lots more required hours in the schools for a a "slight" raise in salary. What it boils down to is less money per hour, but more per month and lots more rigid demands on teachers' time.

To say that teachers aren't united concerning the strike is an understatement. Not only is the dividing line union membership, but some teachers want to switch to the other union. And some teachers feel very guilty about striking.

I'm part of an online discussion group among teachers. The strike, its pros and cons, is the main topic. Recently, someone wrote that he felt that striking conflicted with his "calling" as a teacher. A "calling?" Isn't that a religious term?

Teaching is a profession, which demands academic training, like a doctor, nurse, lawyer, CPA and computer programmer. Nobody demands that those professionals "make sacrifices for their calling." Only teachers are expected to both study and constantly update their professions, while at the same time, they're made to feel guilty for expecting a proper middle-class salary.

In the teachers room we mention, in awe, the superior salaries our children receive, even though they may not be as well educated. I often do I hear my fellow teachers saying:

"My children won't go into education. They've seen my
salary slip."

I've worked at a number of varied professions, and I really love teaching. A successful lesson gives me a great feeling, but it doesn't pay the bills. The teachers I meet at professional conventions are on the verge of retirement. We wonder who will replace us. The younger generation thinks we're fools. They wouldn't want to put up with what they know we put up with. Teaching's not easy, but getting a salary that's lower than average wage is an insult.

Unfortunately, too many teachers are under the misunderstanding that they're doing some "holy work" and shouldn't let the students suffer. Teaching is a talent, a skill and a love, but it's not religion.

Teachers must demand to be treated and paid as academic professionals. Otherwise the governments and society will continue to abuse us take us for granted. Yes, "abuse" us. The striking teachers are not responsible for their students' bad behavior. Just like during summer and the long holiday vacations, they have parents who are supposed to supervise their actions.

To be a teacher is not to be a babysitter. It's also not a "calling." It's a wonderful, challenging and rewarding job for those trained, talented and lucky enough to be teachers.

Olmert is Offering Everything!

Olmert is endangering the existence and viability of the State of Israel!

Speaking at the annual Saban Forum at the Jerusalem King David Hotel, Olmert said that everything was on the table:

"All of the historical questions that overshadow the argument between us and the Palestinians are on the agenda. We will not evade any one of them, and will not avoid discussing each one of them."

Complete article here.

Balfour, Who Was That Street?

Carl posted a very comprehensive post on the Balfour Declaration, which is 90 years old now.

Last night, late afternoon, I caught the tail end of a "youth" program on Channel 1 TV. They were out interviewing people of all ages on Balfour Street asking them who/what Balfour was.

I'm sure you can guess the results. Nobody knew for sure, though one was "close," and most were so far off the mark that it was obvious that they had never learned anything about the British Mandate.

Decades ago there was a fascinating book published here in Israel called Street People by Helga Dudman. It told about the people and events behind the street names. We bought it for our parents as a gift before going to visit.

Israelis know neither Zionist history nor Biblical. I'm always amazed and horrified at the amount of Israelis, no foreign accents, who mispronounce שילה Shiloh. They say "shee lah." The word/name isn't familiar, even though it should be. Biblical Shiloh was the capital of the tribal nation for 369 years.

Balfour was just a one-shot deal.

But back to the TV program....
It was geared to teens in striking high schools, and its final message was:

Spend the strike time investigating the historical background
of the street names in your neighborhood.

Finally something good on TV!

When Being "Right" is Wrong When It's Not Right

It may make it easier to chose whom not to vote for...

All the "mainstream" Israeli politicians consider the label "right wing" the kiss of death. That's why Bibi Netanyahu tries to fit into the "center." He's sure that he'd lose if people thought he was right wing. Actually, when he was elected people were happy that he was running as a right wing candidate. Then he took off the mask, and we discovered that he was really more left wing.

Bibi claims to be center, but the Left calls him Right and the Right calls him Left, so does that mean he's center? Naaww! He's not "center," he's just an ambitious politician willing to wile his way any where way and how he thinks it'll give him votes. Yes, sort of like, very much like the Missus Hillary Clinton.

Israel's media call anyone they don't like "right wing," even if they're left wing, sort of like how in some parts of the world "Yid" is used as a derogatory name. It's rather ironic that Ehud Barak is being called "right wing," when we know he's far to the left. I guess that means that the establishment wants to brand him as "traife" according to their concept of acceptable. Unless it's some sort of reverse psychology, and they think we're stupid enough to fall for it and vote for him.

I guess Barak should have stayed retired from public life, just cashing his checks for this very lucrative lectures abroad.

Wow! I have an idea. Since he's busy as a minister and limited in his outside earnings, wasn't that the story behind Sharansky's resignation? I wouldn't mind taking on a couple of his speaking engagements. I'll do it at half price, which will still mean that one talk will earn me more than my entire annual salary. Nu? I'm waiting!

It certainly can't be any harder than teaching English to a bunch of teenage boys!

There's lots more to read

Read the latest Havel Havelim on A Mother in Israel.

Remembering...

Yes, last night I was at a funeral, one of those midnight ones, very common in Israel, where the dead aren't expected to wait for the living to get themselves "together" or the labor union to agree to dig the graves.

The funeral started on time. I was a few minutes late, and hundreds or thousands were already in the plaza and parking lot of Shiloh's Mishkan Tabernacle Synagogue. The rabbi of the Eidot Mizrach North African Synagogue was eulogizing Zacharia Gi'at, Z"L.

"You were always the first to arrive to pray. You were never
late."

How foolish and thoughtless of me to have taken my time to get organized and walk down the hill. It was midnight, and I had taken a late nap in the livingroom, since midnight is the time I'm always asleep.

We had known Zacharia over a decade before we moved to Shiloh. He was part of the Nachal Moriah of the Old City, Jerusalem. Our first year in Israel, 37 years ago, we lived in the Maon Betar in the Old City. Nobody referred to the neighborhood as the "Rova Yehudi" at the time. It wasn't much of a neighborhood. Jewish families and institutions were spread around, rather isolated, where many Jews had lived before the pre-State Arab terrorism and the Jordanian invaders banished them.

Nachal Moriah, along with Yeshivat HaKotel, were among the first Jewish institutions in the Old City of Jerusalem after its liberation in 1967. Nachal Moriah had a synagogue, which I was first introduced to by the late, legendary tour guide, Aaron Bier and his wife. I was their guest for a Rosh Hashannah meal when I was here as a student, and they took me there. Less than a year later, my husband and I docked in Haifa Port as new immigrants and moved to the Old City. Our one Jewish neighbor, Harav Moshe Segel dovened in Nachal Moriah and so we did too. That's where we first met Zacharia, Z"L.

Ten years later, living in Bayit V'Gan, Jerusalem, we decided that Shiloh was the yishuv for us, and we were pleasantly surprised to discover that Zacharia lived here, too, with his wife, Mazal, and their growing family.

Zacharia worked as a furniture maker/carpenter and also drove, providing taxi service. He was one of those who established the Eidot Mizrach Synagogue. He took great pride in everything there and constructed a lot of the furnishings. Zacharia kept it all in perfect repair.

Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet
HaMakom Y'nachem...

The Unexpected

I don't feel like going into nitty gritty details right now, but...

Today, Shabbat, in the morning, we were among those who went to a kiddush. Neighbors were hosting it in honor of the birth of their baby daughter. Lots of neighbors, from the entire yishuv, Shiloh, were there.

One neighbor didn't make it. He fainted on the way. The ambulances came to take him to the hospital. A heart attack. He's not all that old, about my age.

Later, when we had our shiur nashim, we dedicated it to his "refuah shleimah," complete recovery, and also that of Pnina bat Sofia Zlata.

No news on Shabbat.

After Shabbat we wondered how he was. Then a beeper notice to pray for him. He was in Intensive Care.

And a short while ago, another beeper.

Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet

Hamakom Y'nachem...

A "Lifetime"

Yesterday my neighbors and I met at the cemetery.

"How many years already? 15? 17? 16?"

We looked at the children, mostly married, and grandchildren playing and toddling among the stones and steps, running from the arms of their parents, aunts, uncles and grandfather. Their great-grandparents were focused on the grave, the first in our cemetery, which overlooks the setting sun.

Just before I went to the Azkara, Memorial Ceremony, I had entertained a small AFSI delegation. They seemed so disappointed that Shiloh and other Jewish communities threatened by Olmert's destruction plans weren't out demonstrating, screaming shouting to the world about the dangers.

I tried to explain how useless people feel the demonstrations are. Decisions of fate aren't made "in this world." During pre-Oslo times, the Rabin Government pooh poohed everything we did, insisting that we weren't the "real Israel." We all know how demonstrations were ignored pre-Disengagement. Over a half a million Jews, 10% of the Jewish population converged on the Kotel, and it was ignored by the politicians and international media. Even when Yitzchak Shamir was Prime Minister, during the time of the Madrid Conference, he ignored what was happening in Israel. An enormous demonstration took place in Tel Aviv to encourage him to be strong, but he was weak, very weak. He didn't even react, walk out when Rachella Druk, our neighbor, the one whose grave I was about to visit yesterday, was murdered.

One of the three buses from Shiloh was shot at by Arab terrorists that evening. We were all on our way to Tel Aviv to the demonstration. The driver, Yitzchak Rofeh and Rachella, mother of seven, were murdered. A number of children were wounded, two with life-threatening injuries. B"H, they survived, but one, Harel Bin Nun was later murdered while doing guard duty in Yitzhar, where he had made his home.

Shamir was supposed to have announced to the world that:

"The Arabs here are terrorists, murderers. We can't make
peace with unrepentant murderers."

Shamir failed. He followed America instead of following G-d.

In Shiloh, the first Jewish grave in modern times was dug to bury Rachella. Since then, the cemetery has filled. Sadly, tragically, she's not the only victim of Arab terrorism buried here.

It seems like a lifetime has passed since that horrific day. But nothing is really new, just the children born.

Our people, again, are under pressure to given in to Arabs, encouraged by the US and UN, demands.

We just have to say no!
That "no" is a "yes" to survival!

Israel's Fifth Column

The State of Israel is in danger, and I'm not talking about terrorists or even Arabs. Too many Israelis worship a false morality. Israel's fifth column.

Please read these two short articles:

‘Machsom Watch’ Told Soldiers to Release Terrorist
Nov-01-07 08:03 PM

(IsraelNN.com) According to eyewitnesses, members of the extreme-left
group “Machsom Watch” told soldiers to release an Arab teen who turned out to be
an armed terrorist. Soldiers at the Huwarra checkpoint apprehended a teen after
finding explosives on his person. Soldiers wrestled the would-be attacker to the
ground, and the explosives were later detonated by IDF sappers.
Members of
“Women in Blue and White,” a group dedicated to encouraging soldiers at
checkpoints and giving them food and drinks, were present at the time and said
that members of “Machsom Watch” had yelled at the soldiers as they
struggled with the terrorist, saying “Leave him alone, he’s just a
child.” Women in Blue and White activists added that many soldiers had
complained about “Machsom Watch,” warning that the group has interfered in
security checks and could cause a disaster.

Aloni Calls to Put Barak on Trial
Nov-01-07 06:50 PM

(IsraelNN.com) Extreme-left activist Shulamit Aloni, who formerly served
as Education Minister, told the director of the Arab paper Ma al-Adath that
Defense Minister Ehud Barak should be put on trial. In an interview to be
printed Friday, Aloni called Barak “arrogant” and “The most dangerous person in
the State of Israel,” saying Barak had committed “war crimes” by calling for a
temporary decrease in the supply of Israeli electricity and fuel to Gaza. If
Israel does not put Barak on trial, Aloni said, the International Court in the
Hague should.
Aloni also mentioned a recent lecture she gave to IDF
officers in which she compared them to terrorist killers. Referring to
terrorists with “blood on their hands” who have killed Israelis, Aloni asked
“Why are you making a big fuss over people with blood on their hands? Each one
of you has blood on your hands. They throw bombs, and you throw bombs.” Terrorists’ blood “is just as red” as that of Israelis, she
said.

AFSI, Israel's Best Friend!

A delegation of AFSI activists, led by Helen Freedman, is in Israel. Today they visited me in Shiloh. We were joined by my neighbor Moshe Belogorodsky and his daughter Chaya, who was one of the young teens jailed during the pre-Disengagement government crack-down on dissidents and even those who just tried to defend those attacked by the police.

Among those in the delegation was Glenn Richter, who my husband and I knew over forty years ago, when were were actively involved in his Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the first mass protest movement to pressure the USSR to allow its Jewish population to leave.

One of the important leaders of the organization wasn't with the group. That's Herb Zweibon. To know more about him, read the excellent interview by Ruthie Blum in the Jerusalem Post.

Halloween?

I grew up in a much more innocent time and place. Yes, for sure. I grew up in Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, New York, in the 1950's and very early 1960's.

Most everyone was Jewish. It was a brand new neighborhood, built after WWII for US veterans and their families. I still can't get a reason why it was so Jewish. Maybe because only young Jewish families were desperate enough to leave the slums in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side and The Bronx to risk going to a new place that was so far from everything. Bayside is in very eastern northern Queens, almost at the city line, the border between New York City and Nassau County. There weren't enough schools. They were constantly building more; classes were over-full.

Halloween was just a time to dress up in costumes and wander from door to door collecting candy. It's hard for me to relate to articles like Tzvi's Trick or Treat? We were just kids, and the only dangers were to our teeth and appetites.