The statistics have never been in favor of the institution of marriage.
As of this year, data from the Central Bureau of Statistics show that one out of three Israeli couples divorces, and in Tel Aviv the situation is even worse - one couple out of every two.
Since time immemorial, the culture has loved to deal with marriages as well as their end.
The wallowing in the question "What went wrong?"
She is no stranger to Jackie Levy and Yael Mashali, who connected on the occasion of the launch of a new podcast from "Israel Hayom" called "HaHaim our Beget".
Both of them have already visited the rabbis, gone through the ancient ceremony, survived divorces and are here to tell.
Relocation for a relationship
On one side of the microphone: Jackie Levy (59), journalist, broadcaster and presenter, publicist and writer, divorced and remarried to Noam, father of five.
On the other side: Yael Mashali (62), writer, editor and marriage counselor, mother of seven (two of whom she adopted as infants), divorced after 37 years of marriage.
We meet on a pleasant winter day in Mashali's spacious and colorful house in Shoham, where the new podcast is also recorded, a happy house full of pillows, blankets and books, as if waiting for children and grandchildren to come.
Why do almost everyone get divorced?
Jackie: "Something went wrong, without a doubt, and it's something deep."
Yael: "Everyone gets divorced because it's possible and easy, or at least on the face of it that's what people think. Both men and women can get divorced, and it's also easier financially to get divorced today. Ease is the key to all of this, unlike in the past. Even in terms of branding, today's world is open to the possibility of divorce and perhaps even invites it. The more divorces there are in your immediate environment - the more enticing and beckoning it becomes, and when people photograph in stories the free, fun and liberated life after the divorce and in Chapter 2, it looks enticing compared to the routine and challenging day-to-day of my life Marriage, it makes me want to."
Jackie: "The biggest compliment I get is 'you made me want to get divorced'. One of the goals of our podcast is to make people want to get divorced. I don't think that everyone who gets divorced today is really doing the right thing; there are reasons for divorce, and in my opinion people are more considerate today their own lives and believe that they deserve to be loved and deserve to live a full life, not half a clutch.
"The trendy reason I'm less enthusiastic about is relocation. People believe that they just have to change - change address, leave the job or the jerk you've shared the bed with for years - and suddenly everything will be great. In most cases they're wrong, and when they find out they really sink into a terrible grudge ".
"I take it a bit cynically," admits Yael, "the thought of 'I deserve' to be happy and fulfill myself, which leads to dissolution. In my eyes, what is more important are the values that are hidden behind the 'I deserve'. What guides my life? There are situations in which the This one will never be filled, because there will always be someone happier, and someone will have a more successful relocation. If you don't know how to work on what will make you happy and hang it on who you're married to - or your job, or your weight - it won't lead anywhere good ".
"And I think everyone deserves to be loved in the family unit, to feel loved and supported, and those who don't feel that way - should get up and go," adds Jackie.
What is your status today?
"I'm a luxury," says Yael and laughs, referring to the title of her latest book, "Luxury", which was published this year.
"I have an inner objection to the word divorced, but that's the way it is. I've been divorced for three years."
"I am happily married," declares Jackie, "in my 17th year I am divorced.
My second marriage was religious but not legal.
Just recently I compared the years of marriage to the years of divorce.
I was married for 12 years, divorced for 12 years and remarried to Noam for 9 years, in chapter 2."
And is it true that everyone asks how you get along with your ex?
"We are in the relationship that our parents require, and we will talk about it in the podcast," declares Yael, and Jackie hurries to clarify: "This is not a yellow podcast, and we are not going to provide juicy details from the train that accompanies every divorce system in Israel, including the liars who say they are 'for Abu Dhabi.' I am in contact with the ex only when I have to, in my dreams I would like every divorcee, and certainly me, to be able to call the divorcee or divorcee and talk about the children we share with love, tell them what they did with pride, but this is not the case, and we only have procedural, cold conversations, which are also healthy ".
Why is this so?
Jackie: "Because of the way they divorce. I have a bitter disappointment, and it was personal for a short time. But today both of us, Yael and I, receive divorce stories from women and men every day, and we know that this is not personal but general. I have a concern about what It can do to our company.
"Society is built from families, and a community is built from families. We believe in the importance and sanctity of the family, and we are raising a generation of children, between a third and a half of whom grow up in a whirlwind of divorces that could have been done differently, in a less painful way, than raising children in two conflicted homes. And we will pay for it the price".
Yael: "It doesn't stop with the children - it permeates the next generation, the grandchildren. It also has an effect on the young couples in the family. The crisis and the upheaval the family went through affects everyone, up and down."
Who pays the price?
The differences between the two presenters are evident.
Jackie, as mentioned, is remarried and the father of small children, and Shali is the mother of grown children, some of whom have families, and grandmother to a distinguished collection of grandchildren.
"Jackie's and my challenges are different, and one of the things we will talk about is the differences and the unique challenges for each age and stage of life, and also the gender differences," says Yael.
"We are shocked by what some of the women's and men's organizations are doing, who have defined two camps as if there is a war between them, and there are interests of the women and the men. In my eyes, this is a distorted picture," Jackie explains, "You have to look at each case individually. Today it is enough that you say 'any case by case' - and you have already taken a political side in the debate about how divorce should be. We are in a time when men are supposed to pay a price for divorce."
Yael: "It is clear to me that in certain matters men are systematically harmed, because the view is categorical and there are issues within the divorce where women are categorically harmed, for example in the rabbinical court, and the discussion should really be according to the family and its specific situation. The system here does not allow that. It throws people into a fight and quarrel".
"We are raising a generation of children, between a third and a half of whom grow up in a whirlwind of divorces that could have been done otherwise."
Mashali and Levy, photo: Eric Sultan
What was the biggest difficulty in your divorce?
Yael: "Personally, the direct losses hurt me: the loss of the relationship, the loss of the shared future and the loss of the extended family. It happened and it happens. In every other respect, my life today is very good."
Jackie: "There was a time during the divorce when every few days I would get a new, noisy one on my head and I didn't know where it came from. I realized that I had entered a system that wouldn't find the tools to hurt and that anything could happen and that it was going to be ugly. I was terribly naive and I didn't know where I was getting into. There were engagements in my ex-wife's immediate family, and not only was I not invited - I didn't know about them. I heard about it retroactively from the kids, and then I realized that's how it would be from now on.
"The price I paid, of not being part of the joy of someone who was my first degree relative, was done solely to hurt, it seems to me with the criminal guidance of lawyers, who in my view are the number one perpetrators of damage in what is known as the culture of divorce in Israel, and I wonder why that is good And where does it lead us.
"If there are children, every couple that gets divorced will continue to be a family until the day they die, that's what people don't understand.
It is entirely up to them what kind of family they will be, a family from hell or an embracing and functioning family."
"The reality checker is cracked"
The two have known each other for 24 years.
They worked together and became friends.
"Yel's posts on Facebook really moved me," Jacky recalls, referring to Yael's writings on the Internet about the divorce process she went through.
In her writing, Yael was careful not to defame her ex-husband.
"I have nothing bad about him, he is the man I wanted to live with all my life. Today I know that one of the first things you lose in a breakup is the feeling that your reality check is normal. For example, in my case, I didn't expect it and I didn't know it would come," she says candidly.
"The first thing that crashes is the sense of security. Wait, if I didn't understand that, what else do I not understand? About the world, about life? Maybe I'm not a good mother either? The loss of self-worth and self-confidence, where everything becomes blurred and lost, I remember. We made the agreements between us at a time when I was not myself, and it took me a while to collect myself and for clarity to return to me."
Jackie: "When I was still married, an offer came up to host a morning show on one of the channels - something good and long-term - I told myself that I wouldn't be able to make sandwiches in the morning and bring the children to kindergarten, so I said no. Years later, when I was already in the divorce process, I found I myself hear that I'm not a benevolent father, that I'm only pretending to be interested in joint custody, when it's claimed that no man really wants joint custody of his children, when in fact I'm allegedly saying just reduce my alimony - and that's a terrible injustice."
Both serve as a wall for men and women who are on the verge of divorce and feel comfortable turning to two familiar personalities, who speak relatively freely about the shocking experience.
In Israel as in Israel, there is no difficulty in getting a phone call from the one who knows the other, and when over the line the father is shocked or the mother is upset, Jackie and Yael pick up the glove and listen to the stories upon stories that reach them.
Jackie: "Today a good friend called me, someone whose marriage I thought was fine, but complete strangers also call. This is not a marginal phenomenon, it happens all the time."
The two are experienced in the vicious gossip that emerges as soon as the close environment finds out about the separation.
"They said that I have a child that I don't know about," Jackie shares, "Many were convinced that I had a child out of wedlock in the Talpiot area. Divorce is a turbine of gossip. In general, whenever you encounter personal vindictiveness in this process, you need someone wise to put it on you Yad..."
"...and say it's burning," Yael completes him.
"I understand revenge and I understand the fire from the inside," she says, "we'll talk about it in the show, about 'do's' and 'don'ts'. I learned it because I didn't know it before."
Jackie: "It's an unspoken topic. When I 'came out of the closet' and agreed to talk about my divorce, it suddenly became clear to me that I was the first in a big way - to the edge of Rand - also quite lonely in the campaign, who does not keep the pain deep in my heart. People of public status refused to reveal that they They didn't see their children for a long time, because they were afraid that it would hurt their careers or that they would be bullied."
Jackie says these things while smiling his familiar smile but adds, "It's an unreal smile."
What is your first practical advice for newly divorced people?
Jackie: "To mobilize all your humor resources and ask for help. I turned to psychological help for the first time in my life. You have to have the ability to take your story and put the personal pain aside, be able to look at it as if it happens to someone else and be able to delay how long to tell On him as if it never happened to you."
Do you believe in love today?
Jackie: "I try to believe in eternity and growing old together because I'm a romantic. However, we need to talk about the fact that most of the people in Chapter 2 are post-traumatic people, and I don't have the tools to understand yet what that does to the way they manage their second marriage ".
Yael: "I strongly believe in love, relationships and family in its traditional structure, I think this is what holds the world together. Our society is founded on a small nucleus and a larger nucleus, from such circles."
"Circles of love", Jackie concludes our interview, but feels the need to add the last word for sure: "Divorce is Catholic. It is for life. You will always remain divorced. It's like with Gaza - people think 'we will break away.' No".
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