Joseph: I refer to being arrested for being unable to pay your debts. This happened to a friend of ours: yes, there is debtor’s prison here. If you have debts you can also have a hold placed on your passport so that you cannot leave the country. We have personally never been arrested, baruch Hashem, but we have received notices from various places that we were on the verge of having a hotzaat hapoal action taken against us, which means in addition to having a freeze placed on your bank account the city sends licensed thugs to come into your home and steal anything you may own of value (including the means by which you earn your parnassah). I have seen this happen to several people as well. In our case we borrowed and went without food in order to pay the debts (some of which were extortion but that’s another story). We have also had a ridiculous falsified claim made against one of our kids for which he was indicted and we had to yet again borrow money to pay for a lawyer and go to court repeatedly. *Eretz* Yisroel is beautiful. *Medinat* Yisroel is not the government Americans are used to. You can get into all sorts of trouble here that you never imagined in the old country.
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