Leaving EY

Diamond Member Joined: Oct 29 2006 Posts: 4461

In 28 years here I have left exactly 4 times for very short (longest was 3 weeks) visits to my family.

Shalhevet, I doubt that any of the rabbonim were chassidic of any stripe. Neither Breslovers or Chabad are making a trip to Kevrei tzaddikim. My boys don't even go near the cemetary unless it is Yud Shvat (yahrzeit of the Frierdiker Rebbe. Breslovers are following the pekuda of their Rebbe to be at "kibbutz" with Rebbe Nachman. It's not the same inyan as,say, davening by the Ariza"l or Rabbi Meir Baal HaNess. The b'yachad of the chassidim and spiritual benefits of the month of Sova or kibbutz where the Rebbes asked them to be is the inyan, not kevarot.

To psak one has to understand and one who says its just a visit to kevrei tzaddikim obviously does not understand. I went when my father became seriously ill with emphysema in his final months. I went to my bil's wedding. I went to see my mother after I divorced and I went once to earn some money speaking and to help a worthy cause. Each time a rav either allowed or told me to go in the 1st place. And that rav is Anglo and does not allow stam vacations at all.
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There was a time when every brief saying one heard was regarded as a "Torah" (teaching, guidance), and everything one saw was perceived as an instruction in his avoda and conduct. - HaYom Yom

Posted: Sun, Oct 18 2009, 5:00 pm Post subject: Re: re: Leaving EY

Posted: Mon, Oct 19 2009, 7:17 am Post subject: re: Leaving EY

Freidasima, it's a bit reassuring to read your post!! I agree except for the last part that I wouldn't know.

But yes, of course some rabbis must agree with this as even the rabbis take vacations... and as I cannot have such a negative outlook on frum people to assume that most sin/would sin.
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"You will have many many children and make successful shidduchim beh", rebbetzin Esther Jungreis
"It's all cultural, disagree respectfully", me

Posted: Mon, Oct 19 2009, 2:25 pm Post subject: re: Leaving EY

Ruchel is right and quite realistic. Many rabbonim, rebbes etc. of the charedi world take so called vacations abroad. Sure you can say that they were giving shiurim in their hideaway in the alps at all those lovely kosher hotels, and they are full of good honorable yidden from here.

Unlike all of those of you who write that you cry when you leave, I don't. I go abroad for work more often than not, for family, and yes, when I could afford to, once upon a time, for vacation. Because you know what? A good deal abroad for a long weekend in Europe at various locations, including the flight, is a quarter of the price of spending that same long weekend in a decent hotel in EY. What can you do, facts are facts. I could never afford to go to a decent hotel here for a week, nor can many people, and not everyone thinks that a vacation is a zimmer in the galil.

Some people who live under a lot of physical pressure here - like yesha was saying about sending kids to school in bulletproof buses or whose best friends were killed in terrorist attacks, sometimes need to get away. All of you who write so lovely about life here, not everyone is Polyanna. Not everyone can see life here as being all sweetness and light. You need something? You have to go to a government office? More likely than not you will be sent on a merry go round of bureaucracy that will lose you time, energy, nerves over and over. Dealing with Bituach Leumi for a difficult question here is a lot more difficult than dealing with the social security services in the united states. Just going to get a passport renewed here these days is a military maneuver! Just getting someone buried here (!) can be a military maneuver starting with your having to get to misrad habriut at 7 AM to get a rishayon kevura (burial license!). And that is while you are trying to arrange a funeral, get the ads in on time, find a printing house to print the death notices and putting them up - yourself - to save money on the "chappers".

Folks I don't know what country you live in, but daily life in EY for those of us who work, who deal quite often with bureaucracy, who have ill relatives and have to deal with the bureaucracy of licenses for foreign workers, for their insurance, for their payments, just finding the time to go to the bank every month to get the foreign currency to pay them - not to speak of working hard to have the money to pay them - and note that I haven't even spoken about the security situation, just the daily tensions of work and bureaucracy - well that's a pressure cooker. If you add the security situation to that, yes, you don't just want a change of scenery, you want a place where you can just breathe deeply and relax.

I remember when my parents used to go abroad the first thing that my father z"l would do in Europe was to take a long shower. He would come out and say "a mechayeh - for once I don't have to take a two minute shower as we are afraid that the kinnert is going dry! - that from a man in his 80s.

Yes there are people who need a break from the daily life of EY. Kedusha notwithstanding. And obviously lots of rabbonim who feel the need for that break, otherwise I wouldn't meet them when I go to speak abroad. No matter what "pruzbuli" excuse they use to justify their going.

Truth is like Cat (I think, it was a few pages back) wrote, travel today is not like it was a century ago. You can go and come back from the other side of the world in three days. People don't "leave" EY in the sense of leaving so as not to come back. The nature of travel has changed and therefore the nature of leaving and entering the country has changed.

That's not "social construction" but more like "technological changes" which change the essense of what leaving means. When someone goes on a vacation they are not "leaving" EY. Hence many many many rabbonim see no problem in visiting the alps. Or anywhere else.
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"Olam Chessed Yiboneh", Tehilim 89.

Platinum Member Joined: Aug 12 2007 Posts: 20597

FS come visit. My life doesn't resemble yours and we are living in the same country. I hear you need to get away... come away to the Shomron!

Posted: Mon, Oct 19 2009, 3:18 pm Post subject: re: Leaving EY

Thanks for the offer Tamiri but not on your life. If you need to be really away the Shomron is no break. As long as I'm in the country I will be called away for an urgent work case, my mother's filipinit will call me ten times a day to ask me how to deal with her problems that come up, my mother herself will call me ten times to ask me what to do about X, Y and Z.

Your life doesn't resemble mine because you dont deal with the same offices I do, the same bureaucracy that I do and don't have the same issues that I deal with. You also spent many, many years abroad and know the other side of the coin of not living in EY. Most of the Israeli women on Imamother are not really Israeli but either foreigners who chose to come here and leave golus, or those who even lived abroad married with families for a while.

I'm much more typical of your middle class religious Israeli, even though I was born abroad. It's not a joke that the biggest present that you can give most Israelis is a ticket abroad. For those of us who don't have relatives who send us big presents from abroad, going abroad with $1000 to buy clothing for your family will give you four packed suitcases of clothes which you would have to pay $10,000 for here. Same goes for various goods which are much cheaper abroad. There are lots of reasons to travel. Economic ones in terms of purchases, social ones to see a different life. Cultural ones to enjoy the beautiful museums and exhibits which aren't here. Just spend two hours in the National Gallery in London - there is no museum in EY that can even come close. Yes, there are people who really need to spend some time seeing beautiful pictures, it calms their neshomo. What are such people to do here? Just look at them on the internet? Not the same, sorry. Same goes for lots of things which, unfortunately, we just don't have here.

So lots of people go abroad to enjoy these things, and come back refreshed and ready for yet another stint in the pressure cooker. The expression, BTW isn't mine. It comes from a study of Immigration to America and to EY and the espression was that if America could be termed the "melting pot" then EY should be termed the "pressure cooker".

I know that I am often a dissenting voice here on Imamother, but whether you like it or not, I'm really very typical of a large group of middle class Israeli, both religious and secular.

Posted: Mon, Oct 19 2009, 3:28 pm Post subject: Re: re: Leaving EY

Diamond Member Joined: Oct 29 2006 Posts: 4461

Last year I got an ad for a frum womens cruise that stayed right in the Mediterranean. A few days later I got another mailing that it was canceled because rabbonim told them to, they didn't ask before hand and didn't think about it being chutz once the boat left Israeli waters.

It is possible BTW to go on vacation without a cell and laptop.

Posted: Mon, Oct 19 2009, 4:08 pm Post subject: re: Leaving EY

I'm afraid that with the responsibilities I have it's not an option. I never turn off my phone, even abroad, even on shabbat (I'm often on toranut and with my mother's health it's not an option) but at least people think twenty times about calling me when I'm abroad. Then I only get the really important calls (one out of ten or twenty) and not what I usually deal with on a daily basis. For example, for the 12 hours that I am not available when I fly to america I have to make sure that one of the children will be on call for their grandmother and have to make sure that a co-worker at my level of responsibility is available on call for work emergencies (which can be something like counseling a client about to commit suicide so you HAVE to be available).

Yeah well.

but even for someone without all these crazy responsibilities coming from job and family in my status, it's still a pressure cooker.

And besides, people who live in France want to go to Switzerland and people who live in Germany want to go to Italy just for the fun of it. Does moving to EY preclude ever having fun again? Didn't know that one enters a dominican monastary when one moves here!