“I can’t have my daughters living in a place like that,” [Zion] Zibly said of Israel. “They grew up in a country with Jewish democratic values and it is becoming undemocratic and [more] Jewish — not in the direction of my Jewishness, but in a manner in which they dictate to me what being Jewish is.”
Hey, he’s even named for the place. But no one with half a brain (and Zibly, now director of neurosurgery at Yale, has a whole brain) would let a daughter grow up in haredi Israel.
August 2nd, 2023 at 8:50PM
If it continues, this will be a windfall for the US (mostly) as well-funded universities can attract major minds to their faculties. Israel has brilliance in every discipline. Is it irony, tragedy, or both that this mimics the brain-drain leading to the flowering of US research just before World War II and the decades afterward?
I do recall that another prominent scientist went to New Zealand and it would be good for other nations to benefit. It will be difficult to compete with the endowments at top flight US institutions which are at least partially set up to give the best blank checks when the opportunity presents itself.
August 3rd, 2023 at 8:39AM
Dmitry: You’re right on all counts. As Israel shrinks to a shtetl, the larger world will benefit in many ways from the good people who leave Anatevka for NY, London, etc.
September 25th, 2023 at 7:59PM
[…] the Tel Avivians, but she wonders how many will want to keep fighting the fight. Large numbers of rational, self-respecting people are leaving Israel, and who can blame […]