Heaven and hell

The contrast could not be starker. Mothers from hell and mothers from heaven, living in the same country, the same society, sometimes even neighbors.

On the very day that a Jerusalem mother of eight is indicted for tortuously abusing her two healthy, normal toddlers, a mother of two disabled children struggles to get them wheelchairs by threatening suicide at the Knesset.

Likewise in the same week that the burqa-cult leader and mother of twelve is indicted for abusing her children, the parents of disabled children lose their youth recreation center to a fire apparently set by angry neighbors. Many in the community of Even Sapir, where the new center was awaiting its official opening next month, were candid about their sentiments. They invoked the standard litany of terrors - diminished quality of life, loss of property value, noise - in defense of their prejudices.

They also cited a less typical excuse: religious zealousness. As one resident put it: "We fear the street will fill with cars and the wheelchairs of hundreds of handicapped on Shabbat". And we all know what G-d would think of that.

A Jerusalem real estate agent, attempting to explain the neighbors' concerns, said:

"We live in a world that that doesn't like to see weak people. A person gets up in the morning and doesn't want to see people in wheelchairs. We are a society of "succeeders", so any institution that is connected with any connotation of success, not weakness, - such as a school for the gifted, would be an easier pill for a neighborhood to swallow."

And this is the society I left family, friends and security for?

At first glance, the above issues may appear unrelated. But the truth is, the answers to both rampant child abuse and discrimination against the disabled lie with the government.

When a state tolerates neglect and refuses to legislate against physical punishment it gives child abusers a green light. It tells them, you can hit, hurt, beat, lash out, provided you do so within limits.

And when a government allows its citizens to bar centers for the disabled, and builds multi-million dollar institutions for the disabled in deserted locations, it is giving exclusion a green light. Because of our government's policies, parents of the disabled are left to try and convince the communities that inclusion of the disabled will benefit, rather than harm them. Despite their efforts very little progress has been made in this area. Most communities in Israel are still "disabled-free".

A case in point is the recent opening of Aleh Negev, a mega- institution accommodating 220 disabled people. Situated as far from any community and from any scrutiny as possible it enjoyed generous funding from our government, not to mention its donation of all the land on which it was constructed.

Enclosing people with disabilities in their own "village", as Aleh directors enjoy referring to it, isolated from the rest of society denies everyone the opportunity to encounter people with disabilities and to overcome their primitive fear of and revulsion from them.

While the rest of the modern world is actively promoting their integration into the wider society by mandating accessibility, school mainstreaming and small in-community residences, Israel is surging in the reverse direction.

And here, once again, the two issues dovetail: If children with disabilities were mainstreamed into society, and, wherever possible, into regular schools, then parents of non-disabled children would be affected. They would look at their healthy, normal children with renewed appreciation. They would envelope them in hugs and kisses and thank G-d for their blessings. Anger, spankings and even abuse, would inevitably wane.

In short, everyone would reaps rewards of inclusion.

Abuse again

I never imagined that my first two blog entries would soon dovetail as neatly as they have in the past week.

A 54 year old mother of twelve from Ramat Bet Shemesh, presumably the leader of the Burqa cult, has been arrested and indicted for abusing and neglecting her children and for failing to intervene in their incestuous conduct. Once again, poor children have allegedly suffered at the hands of a strictly religious, observant mother who also happens to be a sadist. It boggles the mind.

And since then, more tales of child abuse have surfaced in Israel nearly every other day, most involving chareidi parents. There are so many aspects to this story it's hard to decide where to begin.

Perhaps, for starters, the refusal of the chareidi leaders and rabbis to condemn physical punishment of children deserves a few lines of attention. When, in 2000, Israel's High Court issued a decision declaring any capital punishment by parents, including spanking, to be a crime, we had a high-profile chareidi apologist screaming foul. He devoted an entire column in the Jerusalem Post to the defense of parental hitting of children on moral and halachic grounds.

His rant was so riddled with illogic it would take too long to pick it apart point by point. I'll just bring a couple of salient quotes:

"No one ever became an alcoholic without taking one drink but that hardly mandates Prohibition."

Then he gets all religious on us, as if spanking is next to G-dliness. So he offers the classic drivel with which spanking is defended:

"The Torah view is that the parent-child relationship is the model for our relationship with G-d... Children learn from their parents that they are subject to rule, and some authority commands respect... the sole justification for punishing a child is the desire to help him grow to become the best possible person he can..."

And on and on.

These lovers of spankings can't seem to comprehend that eliminating physical punishment from our parenting tool-box does not mean an end to discipline or boundaries. There are myriad ways of achieving precisely what that apologist spoke of without violating our children's bodies. The sole reason that hitting children is so accepted is that it is easy (we are after all bigger and stronger than them), gets immediate - though temporary - results and boy does it release the anger effectively.

In January, 2007, we heard Rabbi Halperin declare at a conference in Jerusalem that "a light tap" of a child by a parent is permitted "if followed up with a hug." Parents clearly didn't need his encouragement to lay hands on their children, not to mention thoroughly confuse them with a follow-up hug. They seem to be "tapping" (that was a new euphemism for me) just fine all on their own, thank you very much.

Now I know that if figures of authority would discourage the practice it wouldn't disappear. But at least many would start to think twice from time to time before hitting. And it along with outright abuse - a corollary of spanking - might finally diminish as well.

Another dim-witted defender of parental hitting is some rabbi with a video on the Aish site who triumphantly cites a poll that found most CEO's of top US corporations were spanked as children. Well, with such scientifically sound data against me, I'd better just rest my case. I could go on railing, and fully intend to in my next entry.