The title of this article may seem unclear at first, but by the end of the article you will understand with clarity its deep meaning.
How insane can a law memo (“Atsaat Hok”) be?
The sky is the limit! Some people travel along an illusionary path forcing their perception of what’s “in the best interest of the child” like a freight train trampling the “old fashioned” natural parental authority with complete lack of healthy common sense or reality.
The new proposed bill “Tazkir Chok Horim Veyaladim – 2012” (http://index.justice.gov.il/Pubilcations/Articles/Pages/TazkirChokHorimVeyaladim.aspx)
This proposed bill drafted by the “Shnit Committee” is just an additional blow to the already crippled parental authority in the Israel of today, an affront to good parents begging for more tools in order to educate their children and less government involvement.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the proposals, just a few examples (my free translation from the Hebrew original version):
- The bill: “Every girl and boy are entitled to exercise their rights and have their parents ensure that these rights will be exercised under the Covenant (Following ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child), among these rights, their right to be named and registered by a honorable name”.
The meaning: If when your beloved son Moshe is 15 he decides he hates that name and wants to change it to Eisav, he can ask the State for free legal representation – which he will be granted at the tax payers’ expense where a Judge will decide whether or not he has the right to change his name.
- The bill: “The right for rest, leisure time, and to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to their age, and to participate in cultural life and the arts”
The meaning: A child may have all these needs and rights, and the parents must accept all these obligations. Did anyone consider that the parents might not have the financial means to fulfill all these recreational, cultural and arts “needs”? Did anyone ask them about their priorities based on their faith and principles in life?
Who will decide what is an “appropriate cultural life”? Can you imagine an Arab child being dragged to a Yad Vashem exhibit because someone else decided it is appropriate for him? Or an ultra-orthodox child being forced to read Nietzsche (“G-d is dead”) because it is deemed universal reading?
Can you imagine a child forcing his parents to enroll him in (and pay for) the nearest fancy country-club? Or enroll him in some new program offered by some crazy youth group?
- The bill: “Allow children to request, receive and express ideas of any kind, from a variety of national and international sources, especially those promoting their social, spiritual, moral, physical and mental health;”
- “Enjoy the freedom of thought, conscience and religion and to become familiar with their own culture and use their own language;”
The meaning: It’s Chanukah time, your traditional Jewish family is gathered together and Sarah, your oldest daughter of 15 years old, brings home her new non-Jewish boyfriend and also a surprise, a small Christmas’s three claiming she has the right to express “freedom of thought, conscience and religion and to become familiar with their own culture”, “express ideas of any kind, from a variety of national and international sources”. She wants the Christmas’s three in the salon as part of her right of expression! Claiming it is her new culture from now on.
A Visionary Man
Some of us are visionaries. Some in their own field of expertise, some on politics and some in law. Jerome Frank was a visionary not only in his main expertise, the law, but also in education, among others.
Jerome Frank proposed that judicial decisions were motivated primarily by the influence of psychological factors on the individual judge, a statement that dropped like a bombshell on the legal and academic world in the 1930’s. This was true then and this is very true today in the entire world, emphasizing the State of Israel even if the system keeps denying this truth.
But the way he expressed his thoughts and the clarity, the way he explained his views, it was no doubt the highlight of his life.
“We are on the trail of a stubborn illusion. Where better then, to look for clues in the direction of childhood?
For in children’s problems, and in children’s modes of meeting their problems, are to be found the source of the most of the confirmed illusions of later years.”
It is indeed true, however platitudinous, that the child is father to the man. With more or less awareness, educators have always applied that truth; they have known – and not those in the Catholic Church alone – that attitude formed in early years persist and play important roles in the views and opinions of adult life. Yet but it is yesterday that psychiatrists began systematically to relate the bad habits of the youth to the maladjustments of later life. And only today are psychologist noting that the behavior patterns of early childhood are the basis of many subsequent adaptations. At long last, they are using a genetic approach; the emotional handicaps of adult life, they now tell us, “represent almost invariably, if not always, solved problems or the partially solved or badly solved problems of childhood.””
Law & The Modern Mind by Jerome Frank (1930)
I wonder:
What kind of childhood these people in the “Shnit’s committee” had? By what they suggested in the bill, it must have been a very troubled life indeed.
This committee was composed of many respected people and somehow (by “coincidence”?), included all those who expressed in the past the same beliefs as the honorable Mrs. Livni (It is Mrs. Tsipi Livni’s responsibility as Minister of Justice)
Some names among the honorable members: Judge Mrs. Hanna Rotchild (Family Law Court), Rabbi Avraam Sherman (Rabbinic Court), Attorney Yad Zahalka (Muslim religious court), psychologists, social workers and many others from the academic world.
A last word:
This committee was formed mainly in order to accommodate the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and to find amendments or improvements to a most painful issue: Custody of Minors in Divorce. But during the process it became just another tool to the detriment of our already weak parental authority.
A few organizations, psychologists, academics and others are verbally opposing this proposed bill and probably (so I hope) the bill won’t pass into law in the Knesset, but still it is sad to see how disconnected from the real world our law makers can be.
It is sad to see where the government is spending our limited resources (these committees cost quite a lot of money to run) in addition to the precious time of many good people being wasted in draconic laws disconnected from reality.
The education we are giving today to our children is what will make the man of tomorrow – our next generation. Let’s be careful before giving more and more rights without demanding responsibility and accountability, or soon we will discover that we have created a generation of irresponsible “free thinkers” who refuse to be accountable for their own choices and actions and instead blame society and everyone else for their mistakes.
