"It's not safe!"
Because, you know, Brooklyn is safer.
I am getting more and more amazed by the mentality that pervades those who live here in New York. There seems to be this idea in people's heads that there is safety, security, economic potential growing on trees, and that anywhere else is horrible by comparison (forget a different country - you ever see a Brooklyn person talk about "out of towners"?).
In Brooklyn, we are terrified of letting our kids play outside on their own, ride public transportation till they are mid-teenagers, or playing with strangers' children in the park. We pretend the rash of car break-ins and street muggings does not exist, that the looted stores following hurricane Sandy (including the Kings Plaza mall!) were an aberration, and that the ani-Semitic graffiti on the shuls doesn't mean anything. We're "safe".
In Israel, children hitchhike without worry (or much worry, anyway). They ride busses from the age of six or seven. The streets are filled with children playing, shopping, being kids. There is an awareness of what the security risks may be, and it is tempered by the awareness that we belong there - it is ours. (Neither would be true of pretty much anywhere else.)
It is safer to live in Israel, anywhere in Israel, than in New York.
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