Quite a few Jewish folklore stories were born around the old woman who sits with the women on the holy Sabbath and listens to the husband reading, one of the most famous of which is about the sale of Joseph. In the first year she sat enthralled, listening to the unfolding plot, and as they get closer to the sale of Joseph, she becomes more and more agitated until she bursts into tears over his bitter fate and does not understand how the brothers could do him such an injustice.<\/p>\r\n
In the second year she already remembers the story and wonders in her heart whether this time he will be saved and beware of the brothers' harassment of him, but the same story is different and again he is thrown into a pit and from there is sold to a guest of Ishmaelites. In the third year she constantly mumbles, "Beware, Joseph, this is a trap," but the reader's husband ignores her mumbling and continues with the story of the sale of Joseph, and she? She no longer feels sorry, this time she says: You haven't learned your lesson, you deserve it.<\/p>\r\n
More than once I feel exactly like that old woman from the Women's Aid when I repeatedly encounter matters happening around me that were known in advance, and again and again we are caught at the last minute as if we were encountering them for the first time. One outrageous example is the issue of after-school care in kindergartens and schools.<\/p>\r\n
Who doesn't remember the Israeli spring of 2011? Protests that brought thousands onto the streets of a city, but unlike the Arab one, for us it was more like a summer festival in Tel Aviv that provided the public with entertainment and the initiators with jobs in the Knesset. Today it is clear that almost nothing came of it, except for one function that is created after every incident in Israel: a committee, the Trachtenberg Committee.<\/p>\r\n
I won't bore you with the committee's conclusions, mainly because I don't know myself. One thing I can tell you is that the committee recommended funding after-school programs, or in other words, a long school day, to give equal opportunity to the entire population to broaden their horizons.<\/p>\r\n
The main goal behind the decision to provide afternoon care is to encourage women to go to work who, without the afternoon care solution, would not be able to go to work, since their salary, minus the expenses of a nanny or another solution for caring for the children while working, is not really worth the effort.<\/p>\r\n
In the first year, it was the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism that was tasked with funding the after-school programs. It took them some time to organize, it wasn't clear which cities were included in the pilot, but somehow it worked and got on track.<\/p>\r\n
Like many others, I expected that the following year, after-school programs would be an integral part of the start of the school year, but to my regret and surprise - like that surprised old woman from the Women's Aid - in this case too, after-school programs did not open with the start of the school year. Why? I contacted the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Industry, but they explained that the matter was no longer their responsibility and referred me to the Ministry of Education.<\/p>\r\n
There, after a few weeks, they came back to me with a particularly interesting answer. According to them, they were indeed preparing for the after-school programs that would open, but unlike the free after-school programs that were operated a year earlier by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, the Ministry of Education sought to impose a financial contribution on every parent attending after-school programs in the "subsidized after-school" arrangement, but in the end the government decided not to approve collecting money from parents and the Ministry of Education was not prepared for free after-school programs. The clerk's words were so strong that I couldn't even tell her what I thought of her office since she was just a clerk who recited answers.<\/p>\r\n
I thought that this year the birth pangs were finally behind us, and we wouldn't have to endure another month where we had to leave in the middle of a workday every day and worry about the children finding a solution for employment and nutrition for each child at a different time, but again, like in the story of our old woman from the Women's Aid, this year too it appears that we won't have after-school care at the beginning of the school year, why? Again because the Ministry of Education has budgetary matters, and again the solution is to hit a population that has no choice.<\/p>\r\n
Once again, they decided to condition the opening of after-school programs on a contribution of about 300 shekels per month, and a minimum of 22 children in a kindergarten class, which means that a significant portion of the public will not be able to afford this additional expense on top of the multiple expenses anyway, and once again the benefit of going to work will be weighed against the expense of after-school programs, and finally, we will once again see a serious harm to women's employment and the employment of Haredim.<\/p>\r\n
And I wonder if the purpose of this puzzling bureaucracy is indeed to save money, and if the employment of women and ultra-Orthodox people is not really of interest to anyone, why don't they leave the after-school programs behind, and take the missing money from the unnecessary advertising budget that encourages women and ultra-Orthodox people to go out to work?<\/p>\r\n
And on a more serious note, I appeal to anyone who can do something about it. Please, this is an especially important issue that has a great impact on our lives. There are many less important issues that can be cut back on instead of hurting the pockets of the middle classes and below.<\/p>\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every year, as if according to a written script, the opening of after-school programs is delayed, causing financial damage and emotional distress to parents. This poor management raises a simple question: Does it really matter to anyone that the Haredi mothers went to work?","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[7049,889,6986,7050],"class_list":["post-72948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-138","tag-7049","tag-889","tag-6986","tag-7050"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n