Petach Tikva School Scandal: Abject Racism or Media Lynch?

When I first heard about 100 Ethiopian immigrant children being denied places in religious schools in Petach Tikva, I was obviously appalled. Racism is alive and well in Israel, unfortunately, but I couldn't imagine it had gotten to the extent of actually denying children places in schools. In order to fulfill the requirements of the conversion authority, the children must be enrolled in religious schools.

3 semi private schools in Petach Tikva- Lamerhav, Da'at Mevinim and Darkei Noam- have now said that they will take 50 children into the first grade and the rest they will accept into "Kittot Klita"- separate remedial classes. Gidon Saar, the education minister, does not accept this solution because he doesn't want the children "ghettoized" into their own classes. Shimon Peres has called for demonstrations against the school (you can see his call not once, but twice, in this Haaretz article). Again, as I said, when I first heard of this, I, too was horrified. But after reading up on it over Shabbat, I've come to the conclusion that this is an attempt to attack and demonize these religious private schools.

Over the last few weeks, efforts to find a compromise were made by various representatives of the municipality. One suggestion, proposed by Moti Zaft, head of the religious schools department, was to form special classes for the Ethiopian children to help them close the pedagogic gaps between them and the rest of the students, the main reason cited by the private schools for their unwillingness to accept the immigrant pupils.

Another suggestion, which was accepted by the city's non-official recognized religious schools, was to split up all the children equally among all the schools.

So far the Ministry of Education has been adamantly against the idea of forming special classes for the Ethiopian students.Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar said he unequivocally demanded that the students be put in regular classes and that segregated classes where like "small ghettoes."

The schools are offering (or are willing to accept? Different paper have different versions) a sensible solution- how are new immigrant children expected to keep up in regular math, language and Torah classes if they are just entering school? (My husband thought at first that this was an attempt on the part of the schools to keep up their standings on state tests, that these weren't really new immigrant children- but if they're still going through the conversion process, obviously, they are still relatively new).

If the schools were smart or at least a bit media savvy, they would simply accept the kids into regular classes and remove them for remedial work as needed.

Also, it's unclear from any of these articles why they can't be accepted into regular state religious schools in the city. I found it interesting this is the complete opposite from our experience here in Raanana. Here, there was a quota on the number of children from Ranaana that Darchei Noam was allowed to accept, in order to protect the state religious schools, which is logical from a public policy standpoint. The school had to turn away 18 families, at first, because of this quota. We were one of them, until we used our Jerusalem address to circumvent this (they had no problem accepting children from outside of Raanana.) The mayor here is very against private education and does his best to stifle its growth.

In Petach Tikva, the municipality seems to depend on these schools to educate religious children- otherwise, why can't these children just be accepted into the state religious schools system?

There were a number of other articles in Haaretz and Jpost lamenting the spread of private and semi private education, about the weakening of the public system and what it means for the future of Israeli education. As I said before, I fully understand this on a public policy level. However, on an individual level, I was horrified that the mayor was trying to force me to send my daughter to a public school when I wasn't sure that was the best place for her or us. I think school choice is part of being a modern developed Western nation. I think it's foolish to assume every child should go to public school.

I hope a solution is found within the next 72 hours and the school year in Petach Tikva can start peacefully for everyone.

Eeek, My Tanach Professor's Son!

I had this guy's father as a Tanach professor in Stern. Professor Havatzelet wasn't particularly awe inspiring and many times he repeated the same lessons a few times in a row. But he was a very sweet man.

Summer Activity Alert

If people are still looking for things to do with their kids in the Merkaz area, I highly recommend Park Kfar Saba. Parking does cost 15 shekel in public lots but there is plenty of free street parking if you're handy with a map.

The park is only in its first stages, but they have some really beautiful mitkanim (playgrounds? jungle gyms? Not sure how to translate that) based on a combination jungle/ Noah's Ark theme. There is even a mini wooden climbing structure for toddlers which my crawling 14 month old enjoyed immensely (and it was small enough that I didn't have to climb up and rescue him for the too-high slides like most other mitkanim)

The park also has a great "sprinkler park" where kids can splash play in a series of about 30 jets of water. I can't guarantee how hygenic it is, but we went last week and I don't think my kids got any sicker than they were before (they had a few sniffles).

The park also has a pretty area for barbecuing and a great giant sculpture exhibit.

There are also have lawn bowling courts if you're into that.

Sorry, I didn't bring my camera. It was enough wrangling three kids back and forth there myself.

Another place we plan to check out is Mekorot Hayarkon (the source for the not very clean Yarkon river, pictures at right) But I heard good things about this site and since it's so close to us and looks very stroller friendly, I thought I'd try that with the kids this week as well. Update: Sorry, this site is not free. 25 shekel for adults, 15 for kids.

If you have a daughter between 4-6 who loves fairies and anything sparkly and pink, I recommend an outing to see Princess Lillifee- it went down big with my two daughters. I got a nice 15 minute nap in there, so I can't really complain myself. :D

Israel's 'Scary' Religious Army

Salon has an article about Israel's "activist" military rabbis. All of the stories that really inspired me from Gaza incursion, of rabbis inspiring the troops with tefilot and divrei Torah before going in I guess don't play as well to the rabid liberal Left.

Apparently they don't appreciate Chief Rabbi Rontzki's habit of expressing his views:

Rontzki has been accused of speaking out against military service for women -- he denies it -- and after Bamahane, the army magazine, profiled a homosexual major, Rontzki wrote to several senior officers to protest.

But what really gets the goat of Yesh Gvul, the defender of Israeli human rights (who knew we had our own group?) is this:

"Under Rontzki's command, the rabbinate is giving the conflict a religious overtone, and they are also using their free access to soldiers to work toward political goals," said Michael Sfard, an attorney for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group. Those goals, critics like Sfard say, include making sure the West Bank, claimed by the Palestinians as part of their future state, remains in Jewish hands for good.

What I think is most interesting about this article is the sincere attempt on the part of the author to try and convey valid reasons for why the rabbinate might be more activist (there are more religious soliders in the army now) but how it utterly fails to convey how most traditional Sfardi soldiers probably appreciate the strengthened rabbinate. Yes, I'm sure it might make some secular soldiers uncomfortable. But I would imagine that on the night of the incursion, they were probably in the very small minority (don't have any proof for that, which is why I imagine it).

So Far Away

Well, that vacation seems a lifetime ago.

So far, since we've gotten back, I've dealt with a bout of almost swine flu (my baby came down with a fever the day after we came back, so the dr. sent us right up to the swine flu clinic with masks. A few days later, we found out it wasn't.); we currently all have matching hacking coughs and the baby has an ear infection.

I'm also in full kita aleph shopping mode. Here in Israel, you have to buy all the books! So different from the US, where we always got books and workbooks from school on the first day.

And my husband has been away all week! But he's miserable too because he's only gotten to sleep in a bed on night out of the the last four.

Anyway, a few things that I've read that have caught my eye:

This excellent Modern Love column. A really amazing example of a woman's courage and strength while trying to keep her family together. It sounds trite, but really, it's true!

I cannot believe this news about that woman who killed 8 people on the Taconic Parkway in NY last week. I was truly horrified by all the miserable kid-related news that came out of the US last week, but this latest update really takes the cake. I really have no answer to Lisa Belkin's question how can a mother drive drunk. I have no idea how a mother can strap 5 kids into a car that drunk. :(

I was with Michael Pollan halfway through this article about how no one cooks in America anymore, until I started choking on all the pretension. Also, I really have to correct him when he includes frozen vegetables among other processed conveience foods that have replaced real foods used in cooking from scratch. Frozen vegetables are usually just veggies and they usually have more vitamins that old, worn out fresh veggies. But I did appreciate his remembering watching Julia Child on WNET in the afternoons with his mom because that's exactly what I did when I was a child! One of my first memories was sitting at the coffee table in our living room watching Julia Child and copying out Sesame Street picture books onto yellow legal paper. I was already protoblogging at the tender age of 4!

and, a recipe. Take that Michael Pollan! Some of us still like to cook:

Chard and Chicken Pilaf

2 Tbs oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic chopped

1 bunch Swiss chard, washed and chopped

1 pack mushrooms, cleand and quartered

2-4 pargiot or 2 chicken breasts sliced

1 small container (2 Tbs) tomato paste

1/4 cup red wine

3/4 cup water or chicken stock

1 cup rice (brown, white or I used a grain mix of pearl barley, buckwheat and brown rice)

s/p

Sweat the onions, add the garlic, saute about a minute (careful not to burn garlic). Add chard, saute until cooked down. Add mushrooms and chicken, saute another minute or two. Add tomato paste and wine and stir around some more. Add water or chicken stock, stir through and add rice. Add salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, and cover. Cook about 15 minutes for white rice, about 30 for brown or mixed grains. Check after around 15 minutes and add water if it seems like it needs more.

The House That Was Not a Hole

So we make it to Killini, the town with the ferry port, even though the GPS insisted it doesn't exist. Once we made it past the major highways, the drive was stunning. Huge green mountains on one side and impossibly blue sea on the other. Kind of like the coastal drive from LA to San Francisco but greener. I'm really glad we did it because we got to see so much of country this way, though poor M was stuck driving because he didn't put me on the licence. I couldn't have driven anyway because Greek drivers are even crazier then Israeli ones. And they have this cute driving custom- they magically turn two lane highways into four lanes by driving half in the shoulder, thereby letting others pass. There were a number of breathless passing maneuvers that I could have done without, but M got us there in one piece, thank Gd.

Anyway, we find the ferry, I rush to get tickets and we make it onto the 5:30 in the nick of time. Poor E is starving and I get him some applesauce before we set off. It's too windy to sit outside with him, so I went inside with him in the stroller and T, my middle daughter. She was not all that thrilled with this part of the trip and I forgot to take her drawing stuff with us. By that time, we'd been travelling for about 14 hours and my super-organized Supermom persona had kind of worn off.

On the ferry, we actually met another Israeli family with kids who were on our plane in the morning. Their four year old recognized us, although I had recognized the mom myself, but I was too tired to go up and be friendly with my fellow countrywoman. But once the little girl made the connection, we said hello, and exchanged phone numbers promising to sms and make plans. More on that later...

We landed in Zakynthos. The port had a lot of nice bright colored buildings. We get off the ferry in our car and started using the directions from the villa owners. Since they were written in British rather than American, some of them were hard to understand (it took me a while to get that "stay right" means "bear right"). Luckily, we made it to the house and the outside looked exactly like the picture. Terra cotta, with yellow sun umbrellas. The house is in the village of Mouzaki, on the southern part of the island. It's a rural area, with houses spaced fairly apart fields of dried grass around it. People had goats in their backyard and we were actually right near the airport. But mostly, it was much nicer looking and more charming than Athens had been, which was a relief!

There's a crazy wind storm going on when we get out of the car making it difficult to get to the door without my skirt going over my head. I punch in the code for the key safe outside the door open the door and immediate relief! The place is gorgeous- completely new tastefully furnished, clean. Really, everything you could hope for in a completely unseen vacation home you rent for yourself and your family from the internet without any reccommendations! It was a crazy gamble, but it really paid off. The pool was gorgeous and clean, with plenty of deck chairs, two bathrooms, a nice clean new bathtub, a dvd player. It was fantastic. It was a great relief.

Here is the living room:

A nice pic of the pool:

I have more pics of the pool but that's all I have of the house per se. The house was apparently just built last year and everything is new. Even most of the utensils in the kitchen were new- the bbq tools were still in the bag! Basically we felt very lucky, got our stuff inside, got everyone showered/bathed and had some kind of food and promptly passed out from exhaustion!

Well, It Was a Nice Vacation...

I finally have a second to post. I'm not sure where to begin- the vacation or the post-vacation madness.

How about let's start with the vacation? Much nicer!

Basically, it was fabulous. As my husband described it- Nikui Rosh Totali- complete brain cleaning. No internet. Schedule was basically: AM: Pool PM: A different beach every day. One day we took the kids to a nature park and they got to hang out with animals but it was completely stroller unfriendly (hello, who do these people think come to animal parks?) and another day we took a cruise to this Shipwreck beach.

Getting there and back was a hassle. The plane ride there was at 7 am, which means we had to be there at 5. The girls were really great about getting up at 3 am and getting dressed and ready in 5 minutes. E was too- except that I forgot to change his diaper and forgot to pack a bottle for him for the wait on the security line- big mistake. He ate a lot of tea biscuits but then was very thirsty and cranky- and wet. We finally made it through check in and I was able to change him and get him a bottle before getting on the plane.

All I can say is- thank God it was only a 1.5 hour plane ride. No trips to America until all kids can plug into their own iPods or DVD players!

We landed in Athens, got our stuff. Everyone else was travelling with little itty bitty suitcases because they were going to "HaKol Kallul" (all-inclusive) resorts. Not us! Three big duffle bags for us! But we didn't actually overpack too much and only came back with two.

We got to our car- unfortunately, the car M ordered online that seemed like a "deal" online but was only a deal because it didn't include insurance (!) and was actually too small for us. He had to go back and get us a bigger one and was extremely pissed for getting cheated in about 4 different ways. So lesson number one for readers: Beware of car rental "deals". Stick with the major rental businesses and as always, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

So we packed the car and headed to Beit Chabad to pick up our frozen food. The GPS took forever to "Find the Satellite" and I was getting a bit nervous because I had absolutely no idea where we were and where we were supposed to go. Luckily, M printed out Google maps directions to BC and the island, so even if the GPS failed us, we'd be able to get where we needed to go. Yay for my forward thinking husband!

The kids conked out in the back seat and we found Chabad on a little street in Athens. Athens looked kind of like a depressing version of Bat Yam. The parts I saw on the first day didn't look very charming. A lot of cheap dirty stores, a LOT of cigarette ads all over the place ( no wonder 40% of the country smokes as I read in the news last night!). Anway, I made it up five flights because I couldn't figure out how to work the elevator (something about opening and closing the right doors). A very nice Chabad rabbi handed me a rather large insulated bag and a smaller one, packed with individual frozen meals, fantasically packed. I was thrilled. I paid him and he was nice enough to show me how the elevator worked.

Back in the car, M got the GPS working and we made our way out of Athens and towards Korinthos. We needed to get to Killini, on the far edge of the Pelloponese to get the ferry to the island but guess what? The GPS couldn't find Killini! It could only find as far west as Korinthos, so that's where we headed. We later found out that the GPS knew nothing about Zakynthos, our island, either. But there we managed with a map.

M was pretty exhausted from sleeping only 3 hours at night, so we had to make a rest stop on the highway for about an hour. Luckily, there are tons of rest stops on Greek highways, kind of like in America. I took the kids to the bathroom, bought yogurt for E at the gas station (Greek yogurt! Yum!) and some other snacks and we had a nice party on the grass. M slept for about 45 minutes and was refreshed enough to continue.

Here is a piece of Google maps showing a bit what the car/ferry trip looked like. Athens (Athina) is on the right and Zakynthos is all the way on the left: