The problem is much worse

The problem is much worse than not fitting in to the schools. If I took a MO kid from Teaneck and put him in Mesivta Chaim Berlin he might not fit in but he could learn to. Same with the reverse. Not fitting in can be problematic and even harmful but it's a comfortable American's idea of what the problems could be. The problems here are on a whole different scale.

Coming to Israel a kid can barely function. The biggest problem is language acquisition. The Zionist salespeople spew this myth that "they'll be understanding Hebrew by Chanukah and speaking by Pesach." I heard this from a dozen people before I came. This is nothing other than a delusion. I have met numerous kids who have been here 10 years and tell me that they can't speak or read comfortably in Hebrew.  And the ones here a year or two are suffering terribly. Two years is a long time for a child to feel that way. If you dig deep enough you find a real Ulpan teacher who tells you the truth that it generally takes 4 years or so for a grade school age child to gain comfort in Hebrew. That's if he works on it and gets help in doing so. I'm talking about a child of normal intelligence and emotional health. Any personal issues get magnified 10x. You can destroy a child in 4 years. I have watched in happen to a few of them.

Magnifying the problem further is that Charedi schools have minimal to no instruction in Hebrew. Some may have an hour a day, more like a 1/2 hour in practice. This includes even Charedi schools that claim to be designed for olim. The situation is better in daati leuimi schools as they offer 1/2 a day of instruction for 5 months, but you get all kinds of other problems in those schools as they are religiously to the left of Teaneck.

So  the kid spends his entire day in class staring at the walls, fantasizing, dreaming, feeling like a failure. If you care to know what that's like, go to Chinatown in New York and sit with some people speaking Chinese for 6 hours and see how crazy bored you will feel. Many operate with this myth that children pick up language magically in seconds. This is magical thinking and ignorance. I have met so many miserable teeange olim here. I say without hesitation that it is wrong to bring a teenage frum kid from any Western country on 'aliyah' unless they have an Israeli parent who raised them on Hebrew. 

It's unwise to bring any child above the age of 4. You put them at terrible risk. If you are fleeing Syria, or maybe the Ukraine, it's one thing. But the USA, UK, France, not a chance. It's not worth the risk.

People think, oh I don't have to worry about my kid, he's rock solid. You'd be shocked how rock solid they are not. Kids today are so fragile. 

And it's even worse for kids from France if they are non-English speakers because some of the teachers speak some English, but not French. So the kid really becomes lost.

Many of the parents are incredibly ignorant about what their kids are going through with language. The parents sit in Anglo enclaves and don't realize what it's like to be in Hebrew environments all day. The parent thinks his or her kid is fluent in Hebrew because he can say the equivalent of "kick me the soccer ball." They think that means fluency because it's actually more Hebrew than the parent speaks. But it's not enough to understand school. Not even close.  I know kids who sit in daily Chumash classes who cannot only not tell you anything about the material, but can't even tell you what parsha they are in, even if the class studied the parsha for months!

You'd think the teacher would spend a little time with the olim so they at least know the name of the parsha. But that is not how Israelis operate. They are in general quite rough and even militaristic in their teaching. Westerners have an image of teachers that doesn't match what goes on in Israel. 

What goes on is military culture. The military mindset affects everything here as the training and service is intense and most everybody goes through it in their youth and  continues with yearly service. They are deeply affected by it and even the schools have a militaristic quality to them. But the issue is not just that the young are indoctrinated in the military culture, it's that the mindset endures through life because the military is the most respected entity in the country. It's the national religion so it never loses it's hold on people. To me, it's the most unJewish thing one can imagine, Jews whose identity is guns, tanks, big muscles, barking orders, and yelling, yelling, yelling. But you see people like that everywhere, on the trains, in the stores, and in the schools. 

I'm not saying the teachers are completely uncaring people. There are caring teachers but it's a much less tender caring than one finds in the West. And the schools themselves lack resources and each class has 35 kids in it. The government wastes so much money on the military that there isn't so much left for schools or for medical care, which is a whole different subject.

So why do so many people in chutzah l'aretz have such a different picture of Israel? Because the aliyah sales people lie as does the government. They are so drunk on Zionism that they don't see reality, or they don't really care about it. They remind me of the Jewish 1960s era radicals who sanitized Buddhism and made it seem as if it weren't actually a religion of idol worship. It was  largely the secular Jews who plucked out elements of the philosophy and disguised the paganism, making Buddhism semi-palatable to the Western audience. But if you take a trip to Thailand or India or China you'll be shocked by the plethora of idolatry. 

Zionism is similar. The Western aliyah fanatics paint a picture that is palatable to the Western person, but the picture is a lie. When  you get here, you realize you have been duped. All the talk about help, and assistance, and programs is shown to be nearly entirely talk. There is very little help. Whatever there is you have to pay for.  Nefesh b'nefesh is effectively non-existent here. They turn out to be like any salespeople. They claim to be your best buddy until you sign on the dotted line. Then they disappear in search of their next prey. You came into this thinking, I'm tired of goyish culture. I want to live in a Jewish country, one with compassion and justice. Aliyah is going to be challenging but my family of 8 million people will be there for me.

You find that it is no different here. You are on your own. Your find yourself in a country that is in many respects more goyish than a goyish country because they are trying so hard to copy them. There are less programs for children and families. Less help and support than you would even get in your native country. And maybe an adult can survive that. But can a frum Jewish child survive it, particularly when in an anti-religious society? In America, I sat in a cubicle at work between two polite practicing Catholics. In Israel, I sit between two atheists one of who relishes in telling me what he thinks of Charedim. Several of my coworkers relish in that. And they are as ignorant of the Charedi life as is a farmer from Montana. Brooklyn Irish anti-semitism of the 1930s was nothing compared to secular Israeli anti-charedism of today.

There are many other lies and many sadly involve children. The picture of a vibrant social life with children  playing freely on the streets is a lie. Kids are a bit more independent here and they are outside a bit more than in suburban America. But it's not that much different. And the Israeli kids ignore the olim. Israelis stick to their cliques. We have not yet in our year here been on the inside of an Israeli home other than to pay our building manager our monthly fee. There I go 2 feet into the apartment without being asked how are you, where are you from, what's your name. Our next door neighbor refuses to say hello even after first being greeted. Olim children are generally quite isolated and the other olim families generally behave as they do in suburban America, locked in their homes, except here it's in tiny apartments with little play area. There is a good amount of playground equipment for small children but very little play area for older children, nowhere to ride a bike, no fields. If there were Torah programs for the older boys that would suffice but I have seen very little of that.

I could go on.

Am I saying that nobody should make aliyah? I don't make life decisions for other people. This makes me different from the aliyah promoters who will promote aliyah regardless of your life situation.

There are people who can have a positive experience here. They tend to be of a certain type, aggressive, thick skinned, zionistically ideologically driven, and affluent. I'm talking about the adults. Whether their children survive is another story.

You have to come here before having children if you are some kind of religious zionist. And you better come with money. I know a guy who wants to leave as his family is melting down but he can't afford the plane tickets. He's broke. 

Most of the Western olim I have met are affluent. They have 2 to 3 story duplex apartments even though they don't work or work a little. They came with cash and have somebody supplying them with more cash. 

So if you don't have much cash, aren't an aggressive, thick-skinned kind of person, are charedi or yeshivish, and have children above the age of 4, live in a Western country as nearly all Jews outside of Israel do today, please proceed very carefully, research very thoroughly, and don't be naive.

Maybe you think the world is about to collapse and you'll be safest in Israel. Could be but I am puzzled as to why Israel is deemed to be safe ground. The Romans killed millions here. And since 1945 more Jews have been killed in Israel than in all the world combined times 10. But if for whatever reasons you think you'll be safer in Israel, just know the hazards for your children and come prepared to deal with it pro actively. What you should never assume is that somebody else is going to take care of you or make it right for you or even do small things that would make it much easier.

Heaven forbid that I appear to be slandering the land of Israel. The land is beautiful and there is a holiness in the air. The Charedi communities are full of decent, G-d fearing people. It's the state and the non-religious society I am criticizing as well as the aliyah experience in general, which is dependent on the general society, the government, and the religious zionists who make all kinds of promises and spin all kinds of tales but who are entirely unreliable and nearly entirely unhelpful. The religious zionists in my opinion generally live for their ideology. People are pawns in the game.