When I get in the Knesset (Israeli legislative branch) I’m proposing a law: block a roadway, your car gets a boot until it compensates for 2x the amount of traffic you caused. Don’t own a car? Then your punishment is to sit in a stopped car in August for 2x the total amount of time your little protest blocked others from driving.

No, I don’t want to sit in traffic because you think it helps hostages get freedom when you put pressure on the wrong side of the equation. If I’m taken hostage, please obey traffic laws (except speed limits) in my name – save lives and, you know … do things that make the world a better place.

Also, no, blocking the road doesn’t make me thing you deserve and exemption from the army because you have the courage to stand in front of 1000 cars ready to accelerate into you. That’s the kind of courage that belongs in the army so get going.

Blocking Our Intersection

Where we live, there is one main road out of here to the rest of the country (unless you take the back way through Rohan which is about a 45 minute loop to go through and back to the Edoras. (For all the harping about “The West Bank” in Samaria (that’s what I was referencing), most of the land is empty of people.)

The protests between early Minchah and Maariv (not a joke) left one small area to turn right, the opposite direction of our house. My wife, being sent that way with one of our kids (who now doesn’t exactly have warm feelings about those who are outwardly more religious looking), decided to go through Rohan … and then suddenly got redirected back when Maariv time came.

At the now formerly blocked intersection, two Haredi kids wanted a ride. The nerve! They just blocked all these cars from going … thousands of people from getting home to their families, and now these guys are asking for a ride?!?

My wife gave them a ride home and I’m very proud of her.

Proud of My Wife

There’s a Jew who needs a ride home. What’s the question? If he was starving, wouldn’t you give him food? We shouldn’t do chessed (kindness) because he didn’t? I should hurt myself and own happiness by bearing a grudge?

Further – Do you know the person hitchhiking was one of the people who stopped the road? Maybe he was against it. I should be racist (or something) against all people dressed in black because of the actions of others?

Maybe he did block the road though he’s young and full of zeal which can only tempered by kindness from “the other”.

Then I tried it

Friday afternoon at the gas station, a young chasiddish guy with a rental car wanted to take my gas nozzle and put some gas in his car, just on the other side of the aisle. I remembered what my wife did and a story about a woman who put the wrong kind of gas in her car, killing the engine up north (which I had done myself…) and it was an hour before Shabbos and someone gave her his car. He lived nearby and would make it home in time without his car. Later, that led to a shidduch (marriage).

Being armed with my wife’s chessed (kindness) and that story, here was my chance. The guy had no money and seemed sincere / very worried about his situation. I asked him where he was going for Shabbos, how much gas he needed, etc, and I shared some gas with him. Near the end of it, I thought to give him my phone number so he could pay me back.

Well, now I find ways to view him favorably for not having contacted me to pay me back. Most likely scenario is that he just doesn’t have money.

I demand you let me into the army

This story shocked me – changing some facts for anonymity. There’s a boy with a birth defect … enough to get him out of the army and not enough that he can’t function every day of his life. The army doctor tells the boy to get an exemption. The boy doesn’t want one. Why? He told me he wanted to “prove to himself” that he could do it – that he could go through the army.

The doctor is unconvinced, so the boy calls his mother who pushes the doctor to let him in the army. It worked.

My worldview … it’s haredi – we do things the way we did it in Europe. On my material side, a great-great uncle deserted the polish army (his brother came to the barracks with a bribe for the officer and didn’t tell him that he never paid the bribe and they just left on a train … so they absconded to the USA before he was arrested and the one brother never kept his promise to give him the money he had for the bribe).

I grew up listening to Alice’s Restaurant and on my paternal side and stories of my father’s plan to escape to Canada if he was called up to the Vietnam war.

You can get out of the army and instead, you choose to spend 3 years there? What about preparing for your financial future?

Girls in the Army

I wrote about my daughter’s experience getting an exemption from the army as religious girls do not need to go to the army. They can, optionally, do one year of “national service” which it seems most do. My daughter fully plans to do so. Imagine in America … “I’m going to spend one year working in a government office for the good of my country.” Haha. Never.

Female soldiers lined up on Sunday morning – note some girls in skirts, in accordance with religious dress codes.

Another of my daughters currently says she wants to go to the army (in intelligence). I … I … I guess?

From America … no way any daughter of mine is going to Israel and joining the army. Nuts. Here, your perspective shifts. There’s a “we’re protecting each other and care about each other” vibe. There are a good number of religious girls – wearing tznius army uniforms (mid-length or full-length skirts, depending on the girl) right alongside secular (or, at least, pants-wearing) girls. There’s a religious girls combat unit now as well. Each time I see one of these girls I think … wow, here’s a person who does not have to do this. She’s giving ~2.5 years of her life for her people.

Respect for Charedim

“we’re protecting each other and care about each other” – me, one paragraph ago.

^ I feel like that gets lost in these debates. There’s a lack of understanding for others who also (usually) care about the Jews.

Know why the US provides kosher food in jails? A deep-seated religious belief, whether you believe it to be correct or not, is respected by the constitution. When a religious Jew says, “I believe that my Torah learning is protecting us all”, it’s not for you to say, “that’s crazy talk.” If you’re going to scoff at someone’s religious belief, it’s kind of hard to convince them that if they join the army with you in charge, that you’re not going to use your power to subconsciously (at best) cause them harm.

Lack of Respect Goes Both Ways

At the same time, having gone to a haredi yeshiva, there was definitely a “look down upon the secular Jews” vibe going on. I was certainly taught that a non-religious Jew was a rebel believing in Zionism, a worship of the state, which replaced a worship of G_d. (There’s some truth to it … though I argue that Jews who are secular would be so regardless of Zionism.) Even a religious Zionist might say, “you’re right, there shouldn’t be mixed dancing at this wedding where we’re the band, however, at Israel’s independence, Jews danced the hora, men and women together, so we can tolerate this here.” (That might be why Haredim separate from such influences.)

Then there was Rabbis like Rabbi Mordechai Becher who joined the army and came to yeshiva in his army uniform. He said to me, “a little hard for them to give me trouble when I was holding a machine gun” and “don’t tell secular Jews they’re wrong, and then take their money”.

Some more haredi yeshiva stories from a top Rabbi … the first two examples are from public speeches and the last, from a conversation I had with him.
a) the stupid Israeli municipal worker who kept digging and filling holes even though the other guy who was supposed to be a tree in the hole was out sick that day … not exactly teaching respect.
b) When Israeli started building a security barrier to stop homicidal bombers, the Rabbi got up and screamed about the absurdness of the secular Jews who thought this would protect them. (Yes, if we all have complete bitachon (trust) in G_d, we won’t need the wall; on a practical level, the wall was a large part of the reason Arabs stopped blowing themselves up.)
c) This Rabbi joined the army at one time because he wasn’t learning and felt he should. He was put in charge at night and the girls and boys wanted to know if he was alright … meaning, did he look the other way when the girls/boys went to each other’s barracks … so he quit … not a place for him.

Okay, story “c” is a good reason not to want your son or daughter to join the army. Haredim win this one. (Sounds like a freshman college dorm and I don’t want my kids there either.)

The Solution

I’ve gotten too old and have too many teenagers to pretend I can solve anything though I’d start with putting a boot on people’s cars who block roads. Get a permit and protest in the park.

After October 7th, it has become clear that Israel needs more reserve soldiers. Before such a need, okay, learn Torah. That’s fine.

Now there’s a need and when there’s a need to do a mitzvah to save someone that no one else can do, you stop learning Torah and do it. Protecting our lives from the terrorists that surround us is important and there are no enough people to do it. The burden of fathers and mothers, doctors and lawyers, having to take off from their families and work for months can only go on so long, and in time of emergency, that’s not always enough. Had Hezbelloh decided to invade on Oct 7th, given what they had at the time, they could have gone halfway through the Galil. It’s scary to see just how complacent we were.

We’re not in 1947 anymore and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about living in Israel of 2025: no one really cares what you believe or what you do. Never, not once have I had any issues looking too secular in a religious neighborhood or too religious in a secular neighborhood. With preface that I might have no idea what I’m talking about in the next phrase: the army was a little behind in this – it is finally opening Haredi units, in masse, separate from, and unaffected (for now?) by complaints of “they don’t want to mix with women – what about women’s rights”.

The goal, so I read, is to have Haredi commanders training Haredi soldiers and so on. It seems when there’s a need, the politics become secondary. It seems the world is wide enough for both Hamilton and me.

The Entire Aliyah Diary

Beginning and End

01. Aug 19, 2024: Preparation In America
02. Aug 25, 2024: First Few Days
03. Aug 29, 2024: Moving In
62. July 17, 2025: I MADE IT
75. Sept 14, 2025: Leaving USA Behind

Cultural Adjustment Fun

Cultural Adjustment Difficulties

On The Roads

Shopping

11. Oct 13, 2024: Packages. (חבילות.)
34. Feb 17, 2025: Finding Obscure Things
41. Mar 23, 2025: New Shopping Habits
44. Apr 6, 2025: Pesach Shopping & Osher Ad

Special Locations

Government and Bureaucracy

Politics and Thought

Travel: Indoors / Museums

Travel: Outdoors (Except Hikes)

Travel: Hikes

Travel: From Israel to …

54. June 4, 2025: Marseille and Avignon
66. Aug 11, 2025: Return to America 1
67. Aug 14, 2025: Return to America 2
70. Aug 24, 2025: US Price Compare