On Yom Ha'Zikaron, all the students of the ulpan went to a local Tali high school. Tali is a system of schools that teach more religion than government-secular schools but less than government-religious schools. In my opinion, this school system should replace the secular system entirely. The secular school system only has one class a day on Tanach and Judaism/Zionism, which is not enough. It's not that one class a day can't be sufficient to impart a solid amount of Jewish knowledge, it's just that giving the knowledge is only half the battle. The real achievement in Jewish education is bringing Judaism to the overall social life of the school and integrating Jewish and Zionist values into the entire school experience instead of just into a 45-minute daily class. It is the lack of such an environment that I think makes the secular system less effective in building quality Israeli citizens. Of course, even if the government chooses to do nothing in this regard, time will solve everything. As the religious sector grows, the secular schoolchildren will make up a progressively smaller proportion of Jewish Israeli children. Of course, it's a shame that the secular sector will continue to have weak Jewish education, no matter how minor of a sector it will become in numerical terms.

Back to Yom Ha'Zikaron - the ceremony was moving, the siren at 11am was even more powerful than the one the night before. The courtyard of the school was filled with the 800 high school students and about 150 students from Ulpan Etzion. Everyone was wearing white shirts, as is customary for the Day of Remembrance, and the ceremony included poems, songs and lists of names of fallen soldiers who had graduated from the high school. The emotional climax was the Kadish read for the fallen, the two minutes of silence during the siren, and the singing of the Hatikvah. I found it especially powerful that the national anthem was sung with no accompanying music and without a singer to lead everyone else. Without microphones, loudspeakers, amplifiers and an overbearing voice of a single singer, the anthem sounded much more pure and more beautiful.

Tuesday night, Yom Ha'Zikaron ended, and Yom Ha'Atzmaut began. Downtown Jerusalem hosted what can only be described as insanity of the multitudes. There were Independence celebrations in various theaters and community centers, but I figured since I still have the vigor of youth on my side, I might as well go all the way. Ben Yehuda, Yaffo and King George streets were packed with the various residents of this crazy city. There were teenagers, kids, families, young and old. There were a few conspicuous groups of American Birthright trip participants. They crowded around a stage that was set a bit way off from Kikar Zion and that mainly played clubbing music and hip-hop. The main stage was overwhelmingly playing Israeli pop songs, although I think 50 cent/G-unit slipped one in towards the end. The really popular songs like Adon Olam (a prayer sung to a pop melody) and anything by the Mizrahi singers were sung by the crowd, which is definitely an experience. It was also very clear that representatives of two major population sectors of Jerusalem were absent - the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs.

The Arabs consider Yom Ha'Atzmaut the day of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, and it is a day of mourning for them. And I am not just talking about West Bank and Gaza Arabs, I am talking about Israel's very own Arab citizens. The fact that 1.4 million holders of Israeli citizenship consider the formation of the State of Israel a disaster is clearly a sign of problems ahead. Granted, almost 300,000 of the Arabs are Christians or Druze, and I am sure some of the Muslim Arabs aren't totally anti-Zionist, so the real figure of the "fifth column" is probably more like a million. Regardless, there are a lot of them. The kind of war that needs to happen on this land to fix this problem is something no one wants to think about, but it will start one terrible day in the not too distant future. We're still going to win, have no doubt, but only after a bloodbath. Unless G-d waves a magic wand, which I am sure He's not planning on doing. We have to earn this little piece of real estate all by ourselves.

The ultra-Orthodox consider Yom Ha'Atzmaut a Zionist holiday that celebrates independence of a State that has not been established yet. They are waiting for the Moshiach, then and only then will Israel truly be independent. Well, we're all waiting for Moshiach, but that doesn't mean that we had to have been sitting on out collective ass for the last 120 years. It was worthwhile to spend the time building the State. We merit Israel by our doing not by our praying. Praying gives us the power to accomplish things, but we still have to accomplish them prior to Moshiach getting here. What can I say, I am a dati-leumi idealogue.

Before heading out to Kikar Zion for the celebrations, I went over with a bunch of people to Nitzanim, which is a synagogue close to the ulpan, where a special Independence Day service was held. I was especially impressed when Shir Ha'Maalot was sung to the tune of Hatikvah. For those of you who know as much about Judaism as I did back in my free-wheeling, spiritually empty youth - Shir Ha'Maalot means "Song of Ascents" and is one of King David's psalms. It's really beautiful and I encourage all to read it in both the Hebrew and in whatever galut language is most relevant to you. The song is amazing, it's traditional (Mizrahi version) is the best, and there's a line that gets me every time. Of course, a lot of things "get me" in Israel.

Yesterday I went to Tel-Aviv with my Brazilian roommate and a bunch of the French kids. The beach was all it's cracked up to be. It was hot and sunny, the water was perfect and clear. The Brazilian was busy plying his favorite craft - talking to girls in a mixture of really bad Hebrew, funny-accented English, and that incomprehensible Portuguese. One of the Frenchies had two friends from France visiting who were staying in an apartment close to the beach. It's nice when Daddy buys a piece of choice real estate for vacations in the Holy Land. I think at this point the French Jews all own at least one apartment in Israel. Nu?? Stop with your Frenchiness and get the hell over here already. I am sure France will not miss you. The French will be too busy getting slapped around and taken advantage of by their homegrown, fundamentalist Arab masses.

After some serious shawarma, we went decided to go out and see the nightlife of Tel-Aviv. Apparently the night after Yom Ha'Atzmaut is a quiet night in the city, but there were still plenty of entertainment options. There was a club owned by Subliminal that was impossible to get into. It was one of those deals where hundreds of people crowd around the entrance and try to get the attention of the massive Russian security guards who then select who to allow inside. Clearly, unless you have at least two mind-bogglingly stunning beauties hanging all over you, getting in is a matter of knowing people. An interesting note - all the security guys at the entrance of clubs and bars in Israel are massive Russians. It's as if all those Soviet sports schools for Greco-Roman wrestlers and weightlifters existed for one purpose only - to churn out employees for Israeli night clubs.

In general, I am not a good person to review the night life of secular Tel-Aviv. Anyone who has experienced it knows that it is at least as "good" if not "better" than in any other Western, cosmopolitan city. But for me, I find secular entertainment empty and a general waste of time and money. Given what other things one could do with one's time, especially in Israel, I simply don't understand people who live the New York-like life in Tel-Aviv. What, in effect, are they doing here? Is that type of life really an expression of Jewish Zionist values? I don't think so, and there aren't really any people in the secular left establishment who make a concrete, facts-based argument to the contrary. The opposite, the secular left in Israel is trying to be as American as possible in all aspects of their life. The leaders of that sector have tried to reconcile Zionism with an increasingly consumer-oriented, materialist value system that is strengthening as the economy becomes more capitalist. But they fail to see plain facts. The only people in Israel that have been able to combine making money with Jewish Zionist values are the religious. It's easier for religious people to be less pretentious, less superficial and more focused on the meaningful aspects of their lives than for their secular counterparts because they aren't slaves to a secular value system. Regardless, Tel-Aviv was all it could be and we made our way back to Jerusalem in the wee hours of the morning. I woke up at 1pm today with a sunburn, exhausted, and missing some serious cash. Clubbing isn't cheap anywhere.

The following section is about the amount of Judaism in Israeli life, so stop reading now if you don't care. Israel is more than just secular and hareidi, which is what the left-wingers would like to have you believe. So I will lay out some facts and figures for you.

First the terms:

Hareidi means ultra-orthodox, anti-zionist, black suit wearing types. Notably, Chabadniks and some other groups are hareidi but are supportive of the State of Israel. The national-religious sector, also known as the religious zionist sector (dati-leumi and dati-tzioni, respectively, in Hebrew), is characterized by knitted kippot. Many of them wear tzitzit, but otherwise wear modern clothing. Dati-leumi women dress conservatively, with long skirts. And of course the real grey area is the definition of “traditional” or "masorti" in Hebrew - most Israelis labeling themselves “traditional” have a level of observance and a set of beliefs that would place them in the Conservadox wing of American Jewry, lodged right up against the Orthodox.

The Israeli government (Central Bureau of Statistics) is at:
http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=cw_usr_view_Folder&ID=141

They list the following for 2002:
5.9 percent Haredi
10 percent Orthodox (this is a mix if ultra-orthodox who are Zionist and strict dati-leumi)
13 percent Traditional - “Religious” (the more lax dati-leumi)
28.5 percent Traditional - “Not So Religious” (yes, that’s a direct translation!)
42 percent Secular - (this is the Ashkenazi secular mass, which includes most Russian Jews)

In the school year 2005/6 enrollment of Jewish children in elementary school broke down as:
27 percent Ultra Orthodox (many of these kids are from traditional or secular homes and were sent there because these schools are free and high-quality)
24 percent Religious National
49 percent Secular

for middle and high schools:
19 percent Ultra-Orthodox
19 percent Relgious National
62 percent Secular

I assume that the small number of “Tali” schools (traditional stream within the secular school system) is lumped in with the secular school system.

But a breakdown by actual religious beliefs and practices yields a much different picture. The most commonly quoted study is the Guttman Institute’s 1996 survey, but similar results were found in longitudinal studies by Ben-Gurion and TA Universities:

A solid 70 percent of Israelis:
keep kosher homes
fast on Yom Kippur
light Hanuka candles
attend Passover Seder
believe in G-d

at least 50-60 percent of Israelis:
- light Sabbath candles
- make kiddush on Friday night
- don’t usually work on the Sabbath
- believe in the Divine origin of the Torah on Mount Sinai
- believe in the chosenness of the Jewish people
- believe in the efficacy of prayer

Despite the PR circus around the topic of civil marriages, 90 percent of Israelis marry using the Jewish ritual.

The report is well summarized here and is worth reading:
http://www.jcpa.org/jl/hit07.htm

It also seems that “secular” is not so secular. A few pertinent quotes:
Many of these “traditional” Jews differ from the Orthodox only because they will drive their cars on the Sabbath, use electricity, watch television, or go to a soccer game or the beach, frequently after attending religious services in the morning and the evening before. Many of the men don tefillin every morning, others cover the spectrum of observance. What is critical is that all are committed to a major religious component in the definition of their Jewishness and the Jewishness of the Jewish state.

The fourth and second smallest group consists of those who define themselves as secular, some 20 percent of the Jewish population. These are people whose beliefs are secular. Their practices, on the other hand, may be quite similar to those of many traditionalists, only they maintain those practices for family and national reasons rather than accepted religious ones. The fact that Jewish religious observance has such a strong national component makes it a major component of Jews’ national identity even if they no longer see themselves as believers in the Jewish religion.

The Guttman study shows that three-quarters of the 20 percent follow the most common traditional religious practices. Only a quarter, or 5 percent of the total Jewish population, say they observe no religious practices whatsoever, a figure which is belied by figures that show that 98 percent of Israeli Jews have mezuzot on the doorposts of their houses and 92 percent circumcize their male children, to mention only two of a number of observances that are so deeply entrenched in the culture that hardly anyone thinks of them as religious observances.

Hence, Israel is thus a much more “religious” society than is implied by the bald percentages of “Orthodox” Jews. And it’s clear from the school enrollments that there a major demographic shift is underway.

This parallels developments in American Jewry - Orthodox have gone from a sliver constinuency to fully 1/3 of affiliated Jews - and that’s using a very broad definition of “affiliated” that equates joining a JCC pool with synagogue membership.

So there. Go Judaism. I am now off to visit the North of Eretz Israel. If you read this far, you either love me or you have a boring job that you need to quit.