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May
12
Where should I live?
May 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
There is a facebook group which is discussing places to live in Israel for young (poor) anglos. I created this poll to help. Let’s see if it works:
Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll provide a topic.
Sep
29
I just downloaded this new blogging software called w.bloggar and am using it to post this. I haven’t been blogging for a long while because I’ve been busy working for a new startup and it has made me insanely busy. The truth is that I got very disappointed when I was doing my IAO’s and nobody seemed to notice or care. But really blogging should be for me and not for anyone else. Although if that is the case, then why do it online? I used to have a diary program on my computer before I even heard of the internet and I would write entries in it religiously for a while and then I would stop for a while and return and stop and return. After a while I guess I just didn’t feel that writing things down did anything for me. Although, when I came back to those entries a long time later it was really interesting to read what I had written. Most of it was adolescent rambling about fitting in and religion. I wish I had a copy of it to look at now, but it has been lost to the ethers of time and the trash heap where my old floppies went.
Maybe I’ll get back into blogging with this new software. It certainly makes it a bit easier. You don’t have to open up the browser and the program is pretty light. We’ll see. That’s it and that’s all for now.
Jul
27
Christians United for Israel Tour
July 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
Boing Boing brought to my attention this post which discusses CUFI marching for Israel. The author says,
I have covered the Christian right intensely for over four years. During this time, I attended dozens of Christian right conferences, regularly monitored movement publications and radio shows, and interviewed scores of its key leaders. I have never witnessed any spectacle as politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre as the one Christians United for Israel produced last week in Washington.
You may ask, what do Jewish Israelis think of this type of support? Well, I can tell you. We’re fine with it. Yes, they believe that by supporting us they will eventually bring about our agonizing deaths in a lake of fire along with our fellow unbelievers. So? We think they’re just a bit flakier than a Kellogg’s factory. Frankly, my feeling is, we’ll take whatever we can get. I suppose that on some level it is like a funeral director who invests in Phillip Morris, but since in this case, we’re Phillip Morris, again, I’m fine with it.
I guess that the real question is how come our only supporters are fruitcakes and nutjobs? Must be all that milk and honey flowing everywhere.
Jul
26
IAO 8 - On Collars and Cravats
July 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment
In order to appreciate where I’m coming from on this day’s IAO some more background information about me is necessary. I made aliyah in 1998 when I was 23. Since I was 12 years old, I have had to work to earn spending/living money. You see, my parents never really gave me an allowance. Instead they instilled a very strong work ethic which was reinforced by basically matching or exceeding any amount of money that I would spend on something important. For example, if I wanted a new bike, I would work to earn $50 to which my Mom would add $50-60 and I could buy the bike I wanted. Now that I have children of my own, I think that I would like to try to do the same thing for them as they grow up. What I learned from this was that even though I had to work to earn the things that I wanted, my parents were always there to help me achieve my goals. Reassuring, but not relieving me of my responsibilities. So, starting at age 12, I’ve worked at the following jobs in the US:
- A babysitter
- A lifeguard
- A busboy
- A waiter
- A cleaning engineer (janitor)
- A shoe salesman
- A computer salesman
- A computer instructor
- A computer installer
- A desktop publisher
- A graphic designer
With the exception of being a babysitter and, of course, a lifeguard, at all these jobs, I had to wear a tie. Even when I was a janitor, I had to wear a disgusting green bowtie. Granted it wasn’t hard to get dressed in the morning, I only had one pair of pants that matched the Ugly Green Bowtie, but it was very uncomfortable and very ugly.
I hate wearing ties. I have a fairly wide neck and I hate having to button my top button and hate even more having to tie a piece of cloth around it and pull it tight. All that background information leads me to today’s IAO:
Never Having to Wear a Necktie
This one pretty much speaks for itself. But since this is a blog and not a newspaper headline, I will simply say that with very very few exceptions, NOBODY in Israel wears a tie. Not at work, not in shul, not at weddings, not at bar mitzvahs, and not even in the government! It just isn’t done. Perhaps it is the heat. Perhaps it is the resistance to authority symbols. Perhaps it is simply that finding a tie to match those stupid Israeli tourist hats (here known as a “kovah tembel” or “a**hole hat”) is very difficult. Whatever the reason, ties and Israel just don’t mix.
And I am very very grateful.
Jul
17
IAO 7 - On Excuses and Exhaustion
July 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I have been very lax in posting updates to my Israel Appreciation Observation series due to the fact that I have just started working on a new project and it is taking a lot, if not all, of my free time. However, since right now I am waiting for feedback on some things and I am also tired of working for the moment, I thought I would post a brief IAO for today:
Hebrew Speaking Children
I have 3 nephews and 2 nieces. My wife has 4 nieces and 7 nephews. They range in age from 18 years to less than 8 months. The older ones have had years of Jewish education and indoctrination and have studied the Torah in Hebrew and learned the prayers.
My 4 year old daughter, Eliana, speaks fluent Hebrew and understands brachot and tefilot better than any of them. She knows what Hebrew month it is. She can recite prayers from memory that I still don’t know by heart. I am raising children who do not have to learn what language their ancestors spoke. They already speak it.
It is still amazing to me that after thousands of years and most of that in exile and scattered around the world, the milk tongue of the Jewish people is alive and well and will continue to live long after we are gone.
Jul
9
IAO Day 6 - Of Mice and Magic
July 9, 2007 | 2 Comments
Today’s IAO is not something which everyone will understand. If the previous posts were directed to a broad audience (see, I’m still optimistic), today’s post is going to appeal to a very few select individuals. Today’s observation about why I am glad I am in Israel is about:
Being Closer to Disneyland Paris
Let’s give a little background. I love Disney. I love Disney movies, Disney characters, and, more than any place else in the world, I love Disneyworld. My family has taken vacations in Disneyworld since I was 10 years old. I’ve been to Disneyworld in Florida at least 6 times, maybe more. The last time I went was with Sorelle when we visited the US after our engagement (we called it our engagement tour). That was the last time I was able to go and it was more than 5 years ago. I am raising our girls on a healthy diet of Disneyana. They have almost every Disney DVD that has been released since they were born and a bunch that I bought before I was even married. They know Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Minnie. Since way before they were born, I have been waiting for the day that I could take them to Disneyworld. Unfortunately, being in Israel not only makes travelling to the States expensive and difficult, since my parents live in NJ, it makes travelling to Disneyworld almost impossible.
However, where there is Disney, there is magic.
Despair had reached out her cold and clammy hands and grasped me by the scruff of the neck when suddenly a lightening bolt struck me from above. Or perhaps I was sprinkled with some pixie dust. Disneyworld in Florida may be around 6500 miles away, but Disneyland Paris is practically around the corner! A mere 2100 miles away from my home lies a bright, colorful, shining beacon on the outskirts of the Parisian sprawl. And with a little luck and a LOT of magic, we just might be able to take our girls there sometime soon.
It might not be much, but it’s Mickey!
Jul
7
IAO - Day 5 - Semantics and Prayer
July 7, 2007 | 3 Comments
Shavua tov anyone or everyone (I try to be optimistic - can you tell?). Today’s IAO is a tough one. If it seems like I’m making little sense, please forgive me. The reason that it is so difficult to write about is because today’s IAO is about:
Prayer
For me, prayer is hard to talk about. On the one hand, I go to shul on shabbat and holidays and I pray. On the other hand, I don’t usually pray during the week (good thing my Dad doesn’t read this blog). Like most people who were raised Orthodox, I was taught to pray in elementary school. I was taught the Hebrew prayers the way you teach kids their alphabet. By rote. They sing them to you when you are a child, then they listen to you sing them, and as you get older they make you repeat them over and over again until you know them by heart. I was never taught the meaning of prayer until I was much older and by then I had developed such cynicism about Judaism that learning that prayer can be meditation as much as “Talking To God,” did not do very much for my appreciation of the act of prayer.
I learned the translation of the words of the prayers fairly early on. I had my ArtScroll siddur and I read the translation alongside my daily prayers for many years. On the High Holy Days I mostly prayed directly from the English translation since I wanted my prayers to have meaning. Of course, that was a long time ago. The Hebrew prayers were just words. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes lyrical and often times even poetic, but just words. It wasn’t until today that I experienced something that could not happen to me living outside of Israel.
The prayers made sense.
Not that the words made sense but before they were simply words. I’ve understood the sentiments behind the prayers since I was a teenager. But what happened to me today was something that I’ve never experienced before. I was reading the prayers in Hebrew as I have done many times before. But today, the words read like my actual thoughts. I did not have to consciously meditate on the meaning of the words to understand them. I don’t even know if I can explain that coherently. Let’s try to approach it from another direction.
When I was in college, I studied Fine Art and did my concentration in Graphic Design. As part of the Graphic Design program, you had to do a year-long senior thesis project which consisted of a well-researched thesis paper and an installation work that would be shown at the senior show. My senior thesis was about language. I did research into the way that language takes thoughts and abstracts them into symbols. Language presents a map for people to understand ideas. That is something that I learned by reading brilliant semanticians like S.I. Hayakawa and Alfred Korzybski. The main thing that you learn when you read about semantics is that each language draws a different mental map for the speaker and that until you truly begin to think in a particular language you cannot truly read the map that the language creates.
I’ve lived in Israel for almost 9 years now. I speak a fairly fluent modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is different from Biblical Hebrew in syntax and grammar, but the roots are the same. Today, when I was reading the Hebrew prayers, I felt, for the first time, that I was reading from the same mental map that my ancestors read from. I was able to hear the words in my head, not as lyrical, but as conceptual. Not as poems, but as ideas. Without having been exposed to Hebrew all around me, albeit modern Hebrew, I would never have been able to make that mental leap.
Living in Israel has made me think like a Jew.
Jul
6
IAO (Israel Appreciation Observation) - Day 4
July 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment
So I’m going to start abbreviating the titles of these posts because I’m getting tired of typing Israel Appreciation Observation over and over again. Since today is Friday, Erev Shabbat, I think that the choice for today’s post should be obvious. Our IAO for today is:
Shabbat in Israel
I don’t even really know if this one needs clarification. Anyone who has ever experienced Shabbat anywhere in Israel knows that there is literally a palpable feeling of sabbath no matter where you are. One possible exception was when we were in Eilat for Shabbat, but since, technically, Eilat is not part of Eretz Yisrael and only really part of Medinat Yisrael I’m going to ignore that exception.
It doesn’t matter if you are in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, when Friday evening comes in Israel, you can feel it. There is a quiet that descends upon the land. If you close your eyes and listen you can actually hear hundreds of thousands of women making the blessing on the Shabbat candles. You can smell the shampoo from the freshly showered and shaved men on their way to shul. You can taste the sweet challah and feel the week end. It is truly a unique experience. Of course, if Shabbat in Israel is like a night of peaceful rest in a pleasant hotel on the beach, Shabbat in Jerusalem is like spending the weekend in the palace of a king. I’m sure that analogy has been used before, however, let me elaborate by saying that it is like a weekend in the palace of a king who has decided that he no longer wants to be in the king business and is therefore passing all his material wealth and privileges onto you and furthermore has instructed his palace staff that you are now “king in residence” and that if anyone does anything to make your stay other than spectacular his head will be decorating the front gate. Sorry, I got caught up in the visual.
Shabbat in Israel. It is definitely worthy of appreciation.
Jul
5
Israel Appreciation Observation - Day 3
July 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment
If yesterday’s post was fairly specific, then today’s post is going to be very general indeed. Today’s Israel Appreciation Observation is about something that native Israelis just can’t understand nor ever really appreciate. Today’s observation is about:
Aliyah - aka Coming Home
I was 23 when I made aliyah and moved from the US to Israel. Growing up, I experienced the same things that most Diaspora Jews experience no matter where they are from. I remember many times wishing that I was not Jewish just so that I could fit in. I remember thinking that to be a “goy” would be so much easier than being Jewish because I could go out anywhere I wanted and never be stared at or looked at as “the other.” I personally experienced anti-semitism. Whether it was from the neighborhood kids calling me a “Jew boy”, kids on busses throwing pennies at me, or a college professor who took an inordinate amount of pleasure in treating me just a little bit different than my classmates. I remember being annoyed that the restaurants in Disney World weren’t kosher and being pissed because where we went on vacation was dependent upon my Dad finding a minyan. All these things did not ruin my childhood. I never felt underprivileged or sorely lacking. I just felt slightly out of place my whole life.
And then I made aliyah.
Now, Israel sucks, trust me when I tell you this. But the spirit of these posts is to find the positive aspects of being in “The Holy Land”, so let me tell you something amazing. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can beat the feeling of knowing that (practically) every place you go, everyone you see, every clerk, every policeman, every soldier, every stranger (almost), is just like you. I know, there are Arabs in Israel, there are Druse, there are Russians who are not Jewish, and there are foreign tourists everywhere. But unless you have lived here, you can’t possibly understand what it means that if you are Jewish, Israel is home. The first time that a religious oleh walks into any grocery store and knows that he he can buy meat and fish from the same counter that everyone else can, he feels that his whole life has been building to that moment. The first time a single secular oleh goes to a bar and realizes that his mother would be happy if he brought home any girl there, he realizes that he was missing something and he might not have even understood what it was. It is what makes Israel special for Jews. It is why I made aliyah and why I stay here even though I often want to leave.
For thousands of years, we have been “strangers in a strange land.”
Not anymore.
P.S. For your enjoyment and cathartic crying, I present a video made by Nefesh B’Nefesh which always makes me feel proud that I made aliyah. If you are Jewish and you can watch this without being moved, you have a heart of stone and you won’t be getting dessert tonight.
Jul
4
Israel Appreciation Observation - Day 2
July 4, 2007 | 1 Comment
Since yesterday’s post was such an outstandingly interesting observation, today we’ll try to shoot for something a bit more mundane. For 20 years, before I moved to Israel, I lived in Elizabeth, NJ in the US. Now, for the most part, I had a fairly delightful time in the city of brotherly mugging. But there was one thing that was sorely lacking in Elizabeth which, I believe, is still lacking from most Jewish neighborhoods in the Diaspora. That missing ingredient to a perfect life is the topic of today’s Israel Appreciation Observation:
A Vast Selection of Kosher Restaurants that Deliver
In Modiin, where I live, there are at least 6 kosher pizza places that I can think of. Chinese, Indian, pasta, and a couple of BBQ places are all just a phone call away. When I used to live in Tel Aviv and, after that, when I used to live in Jerusalem, you could add sushi, Thai, Mexican, Moroccan and Turkish to that list. Since both Sorelle and I work from home and have 2 kids who require a LOT of attention when they are around, it is very nice to know that we are no more than a 40-50 minute wait from (edited by Sorelle) that a delicious, if a little oily, lunch or dinner which is kosher will arrive within 40-50 minutes at our door AND is available with your choice of tasty sauces.
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