My wife’s a tough chick.
One of the tricks many Arabs like to play when they need to go to an appointment, is they just show up, cut in line, say that DO have an appointment, and push their way in. A few weeks ago, my wife had an appointment with a specialist. She got the first appointment in the morning, at 8:30 a.m. When she arrived at the office, she saw five Arab men sitting there. Knowing exactly what was going to happen, especially since the specialist was an Arab and she had no relationship with him, she said to all of them, “When are your appointments!?!” At first, they pretended not to speak any Hebrew, so she pushed them “WHEN are you appointments!?!?” Finally, one answered “8:00 a.m.” This was at 8:25 a.m. and the doctor had not yet opened his door. “Nonsense,” she replied, “since my appointment is the first and it’s in 5 minutes.”
Suddenly, the doctor opened the door, and they all made a rush to him. He demanded to see everybody’s appointment slip from the machine (which you are supposed to get when you walk in). They ran to the machine (or to leave), and my wife, who knew the machine was broken, since she had tried to use it, went up to the doctor, told him that she had an appointment, and that was that.
Not bad.
“The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are unlike the Egyptian women, for they are midwives (or ‘beasts’); before the midwife comes to them, they have given birth’” (Shemos 1:19)
The wife of a good friend of mine is automatically considered "high-risk" by doctors every time she is pregnant. Thankfully, they have a growing family and everything has gone well. During the last pregnancy, my friend was speaking to a specialist concerning his wife’s situation and future pregnancies. The doctor, who was completely irreligious responded, “I don’t know what to tell you. Ultra-Orthodox women are beyond the statistics and are able to do things others cannot.”
When Hashem desires the Jewish population to grow, it will grow. When He desires it to shrink, it will shrink. Whatever people think or do, Hashem has ways, some natural and some not-so-natural to accomplish his goals.
I remember years ago reading a piece in Ha'aretz praising a group of non-religious Israelis who had set up branches in all cities. Their goal is simple: Keep the religious out. For example, when a religious school was petitioning to get a building instead of the caravans they were using, they had no problem admitting they went out and did whatever they could to stop it. They protested, they tried to get signatures, they spray-painted the school’s buildings, etc. The religious population in that city was very small, but the open goal of that group was to squash it. Oh yeah, did I mention Ha'aretz was PRAISING this group?
Same thing happened where I live. When a yeshiva was going to open up, around 10 people from this branch did whatever possible to stop it. It even went to court, where they gave a multimedia presentation on what will happen to the entire community if the yeshiva was allowed to open up and more Ultra-Orthodox moved in. The judge threw the case out, and the head of the group, who was in the process of selling his apartment, sold it to an Arab (because he’s soooo concerned about the community).
While in some geographical locations, such as the U.S., the Jewish population is probably dwindling (thanks to false conversions and intermarriage, a good percentage of Jews are not really Jewish), here in Eretz Yisroel, the religious community is growing. Between the high birth rate and a growing amount of baalei tshuvah, there is a stronger and stronger religious presence. Ben Gurion did not feel a need to declare war on the religious community. He felt that it would disappear within two generations. Well . . . Hashem had other plans.
Michael Winner