Contemporary Germany

I found a fascinating video about life in contemporary Germany. Two British journalists go to Nuremberg and try to be average Germans. They come out with this sense of a very well run, sensible country.

Some findings:

A German factory worker with an average salary will get 30 vacation days a year
The typical mother of a three year old child stays home to raise the child.
Germans work hard but only for 7 hours. During those 7, they don't chat or go to facebook. But they don't work frantically either.
You can get a really nice multi-bedroom apartment for $500 a month.
Half of German youth go into apprenticeship programs for industrial work.
Day care is extremely inexpensive.
Germans are big on clubs. They have 1/2 million of them.
They are big on rules and correct each other often, eg how to drive, being on time, etc.
Not only is there no stigma against stay at home moms, there is a stigma against moms of small children who go out to work.
Credit cards are unpopular. Germans save 10% of their income verses 1% in Britain. The German word for debt is guilt.
There's a big emphasis on parents, particularly mothers, spending time with children.
There's much more small business,  focus on quality, and group pride in work.
By law, Sunday is a religious day and shops are shut. And there are actual fines for disturbing neighbors on that day.
1/2 of the country is religious!

One of the British journalists compares all this to Britain and note that the British are not as hardworking or community oriented. The lady journalist complains endlessly about feminist issues. You can be your own judge of that. I found her complaints rather shallow and one-sided.

I'm seeing that America gets much of its decadence from Britain or maybe it's the reverse.

Compare all this to America with our 10 hour work days, double income families, insane housing costs, and obsession with making a religion out of the liberal arts education.

What a tragedy that these people are also capable of a Holocaust because otherwise we can learn   from them. Of course, it's a very big otherwise.

Now, there must be another side to the story too. The low marriage rate is not mentioned. Rather, lack of inclusion of non-native Germans is highlighted by these very liberal journalists as a criticism. And I guess it is although I suspect that cultural clash is part of the problem there. Neither is mentioned bizarre moves like exemption Moslem children from education in the history of the Holocaust that is required of other German children. I'm sure there's lots that this documentary left out because like most journalism they were trying to be shocking via exaggeration. But we still can learn from the video a bit about the German economic machine and how it connects to traditional German values. And we see some of those values in the German Orthodox community.

Maybe it's exactly as R' Hirsch says, life run without a Torah mesorah can turn on you in a flash. Your strengths become your weaknesses.

Here's the video. Skip 6 - 6:50 and 54:20 -54:30 and 55:40-55:50 and 57:54-58:00 which aren't so modest. There are occasional references to Xianity.