The Knesset plenum held a debate on an urgent motion for order submitted by MK Menachem Elazar Mozes, along with other MKs, following a shocking investigation published in the media, according to which elderly people in nursing homes suffer from severe abuse and criminal neglect.
Moses said that everything depends on home education, and that when children respect their parents and visit them regularly and frequently, neglect or abuse is prevented.
""I am, one might say, old and used to the subject of nursing homes. I have already established several nursing homes in the country - both in Jerusalem and in Bnei Brak, and I know how nursing homes operate," said Moses. "When children don't come to visit their parents - this is the result, they are neglected! And I saw this with my own eyes when I ran nursing homes.
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
""In places where children were raised to respect their father and mother, and came to visit – there were no such omissions, and there were no such phenomena. Ask the directors of nursing homes, hear from them how many of the children of these unfortunate old people come to visit!""
Moses said: "I remember in a nursing home in Jerusalem, a woman named Rivka. She said: I raised eight children. I went to do sponge work for eight children, at nights, in schools, in places - I don't want to say public places, in order to give them an education, so that they could go to high school, to university. Of all these eight children, only on Yom Kippur Eve does one of the boys, who lives in the Jordan Valley, come to me.".
""The other children don't know me. They forgot that I raised them. They forgot that I educated them. And that's the result, that things like this happen.".
""And I want to tell you," Mozes continued, "there is a very famous saying - why exactly in this mitzvah, 'Honor your father and mother,' is there the blessing "that your days may be long"? Why only for this longevity? But the answer is: A son does the math - what, I'm going to visit my elderly parents in a nursing home? In that time I can do business, go to work, earn something else. What a waste of time.
""The Torah tells him in the Ten Commandments, God says: Honor your father and mother so that your days may be long - you will have a long life. What you think you are losing here by visiting your parents, you will receive it back in a long life and good years.
""And that's what we're missing, this central point. And I'm telling you from my experience – when children are educated, respect their parents and come to visit, these things don't happen. This terrible abuse that was published in the media couldn't have happened if a son or daughter had come at least a few times a week to visit their parents. It couldn't have happened, because I know that I had a mother in a nursing home, thank God – there wasn't a day that I didn't visit her.
""I am an only child, I haven't gone abroad for years because of her, but thank God, that's how I was raised and that's how you should be raised. But when there is no education and you abandon your parents - then why is it surprising that you find such things? It's all a question of education. Educate the boy according to his own path, even when he gets old, he won't leave you - they say: Not only will you grow old; but, when you have old parents - this education will also remain with you.".
At the end of the discussion, the Knesset plenum voted to transfer the issue for further discussion in the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee.
