mentalblog.com comments:
B"H - Tehilim DO work! a refuah shlaima, b'karov
Not leaving your kids behind works better
There have been a number of tragedies among vacationers in the last few weeks, often involving Chareidim, and too often resulting in deaths. In this case, the kid came out alive.
Israeli vacationers (in Israel and as backpackers overseas) frequently do not treat nature with the respect it deserves. People drown routinely at city beaches. City people, and especially Chareidim, go out climbing and hiking in desert heat and do not wear appropriate clothing or take suitable supplies (like sufficient water!). A very experienced tour guide told me, following a heat-caused death of a Chareidi hiker a week ago, that it was criminal negligence. (It was nearly 50 deg C, about 115+ deg F, in Ein Gedi, where they were hiking that day.)
Be careful out there.
There are some other interesting issues in this story, not mentioned in the CNN article.
The water in the Dead Sea is extremely salty. If it splashes onto your face, you will be in considerable pain until you wash it off thoroughly with fresh water. Getting it into your eyes or swallowing any of it is out of the question. Shneur had to keep his head up and face clear for hours.
There are some boats on the Dead Sea, but very very few. I don't know the details, but you don't want to maintain a boat or engine that operate in what is essentially a potent chemical bath.
Apparently the IDF fired flares into the sky to help illuminate the search area. The Jordanians, on the other side of the Dead Sea, were apprised of the situation so that they wouldn't get the wrong idea.
I guess if you have 12 kids it's easy to misplace one or two.....
why - is this a phenomenon unique somehow to the charedi world? what about the piece in last weeks NYT about the good folks who left kids in car seats on hot days - why single out chareidis? BH this is a wake up call for all parents - leave the charedi bashing to scotty
Chareidim have featured in recent tragedies for several reasons:
1) It is Bein HaZmanim and they are taking vacations, nevermind the dangerously high temperatures.
2)Chareidim tend to have many children and they also tend to let them run around unsupervised. What most people call "negligence" Chareidim (especially Chassidim) call "accidents". I see it many times every single day and night in Yerushalayim.
3) Chareidim are remarkably unpractical people, viewing working for a living as some kind of Tum'a. They don't understand things like climbing, hiking, dangerous dehydration, driving, crossing the street and simple physics.
4) Chareidim tend to actually BELIEVE that they don't have be careful, because Tehillim will fix anything. Surprise: it won't!
Chareidim feature prominently in traffic accidents for the same reasons.
Driving in Chareidi neighborhoods in Yerushalayim and Bnei Brak is an obstacle course in avoiding pedestrians who jump into the street without so much as a glance. And you should see the many young mothers who push their baby carriages into the street without bothering to see if a bus is going to crush the baby. I have seen it happen, when the baby was thrown a long distance. Not pretty.
Within a 20-30 minute walk of where I am now in Yerushalayim, there have been nearly a dozen pedestrians killed in the past year. Old men, young mothers, little girls and boys. In any other place, this would be considered a plague. Here, it's Hashgocho Protis????
I have never heard of anyone floating overnight in the Dead Sea, certainly not a little boy. This is a remarkable case. The other recent cases were not so lucky.
P.S. Non-chareidim get in trouble plenty, too, especially when they personally suffer the same ills and foibles listed above.
Five Yeshiva bochurim took a jeep into the Arava desert yesterday. They apparently got onto the wrong trail and their jeep fell at least 130 feet into a ravine. The driver is injured, 4 others (including 2 brothers) were killed.
A commentator on TV said that because Chareidim (the term used throughout the discussion) are not out and about much during the rest of the year, statistically the few weeks of Bein HaZmanim can be expected to sound tragic. He also pointed out that Chareidim are frequently poorly equipped and trained, noting that Yeshiva bochurim go hiking in the desert "in Shabbos shoes".
Some common sense and intelligence together with a bit of responsibility could avoid most or all of these tragedies.
Note: This is also an Israeli issue. Non-Chareidi and non-frum Israelis who travel to faraway places quite frequently end up with the same stories, and for all the same reasons. Israeli backpackers in remote parts of India have just disappeared or been murdered on several occassions - but they keep on going back there. Same for some parts of Central / South America, mountain hikes in snow, etc.
omg,poor kid.his parents FORGOT him,left him to float in a sea....parents of the year for sure
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