I went to the bible lands museum today (overall rating: not spectacular, but still pretty good). They had a temporary exhibit on the shofar (horn blown on special occasions like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). I learned, among other things, that the shofar was sounded when a Jew was put in herem.
They also had a wonderful documentary about the blowing of the shofar at the kotel during the British mandate period from 1923-1947. The British had allowed Jews to pray at the kotel, but did not allow them to pray loudly, have torah scrolls, or blow the shofar for fear of disturbing the Arab population. Every year though, the shofar was blown at the end of yom kippur as an act of civil disobedience. The British of course tried to arrest the violators, some of whom were caught, and some of whom were sentenced. The documentary was made a few years ago when someone decided to get the remaining living shofar blowers together to tell their stories, and tell they did. The stories are funny, touching, sad, and joyful. My favorite is when one man explains how when they spied a British undercover agent the Jews communicated in Hebrew (which the British did not speak) by simply singing their message in the same tune as the prayer service.
As a followup to a previous post where I complained about the lack of transparency in Israeli cell phone plans (it’s actually a symptom of a larger problem – there is no transparency here in any large institution – banks, government, telecommunications, commerce, etc.), I finally found a solution. Rami Levy. Initially a chain of discount supermarkets, Rami Levy has been expanding. Rami Levy has entered the cell phone market as a virtual network operator (MVNO). They have no physical infrastructure, but buy airtime in bulk from pelephone, and resell it cheaply. They have made a public commitment to being open and transparent about their pricing, as well as to being cheap. So much so that while Orange can’t even tell me what their rates are, RL’s are published in the newspaper. When I walked into one of the new RL cell phone stores, the first thing that happened was someone handed me a flyer that detailed their plans and the costs. Needless to say I’m now a satisfied Rami Levy customer.
Now here’s a few things that struck me as interesting. Rami Levy is buying air time from pelephone for 0.14 per minute, and resells it for 0.20 per minute. Pelephone and Orange sold comparable plans where they charged 1.00 – 1.20 per minute. Since I assume Pelephone is still making a profit on the airtime they sold to Rami Levy for 0.14, their profit margins must have been obscene on the plans they sold. How on earth is it that none of the big three decided to undercut the other two by lowering their margins to increase their volume? (Otherwise known as “competition in the western world). The answer, unfortunately, appears to be simple: collusion. This also demonstrates a serious flaw in the Israeli system where there is no transparency and large duopolies and triopolies dominate almost every industry: price fixing and collusion are rampant. Already the competition has done good – 2 of the 3 big cell phone companies have slashed rates in response to Rami Levy. Rami Levy is apparently going to be followed by several other new MVNOs in the next few months, so perhaps the stranglehold of the big three will be broken. Hopefully Rami Levy will also decide to keep being disruptive and break a few other industries open as well.
I’ve heard many (many many many) fellow IT employees complain about how the industry is so male dominated. I don’t claim to know the source of the problem, but I know that scantily clad booth babes certainly don’t help.
One of the things that drives me nuts about Hebrew is that the word for “like” is the same as the word for “love”. Every so often I’ll be watching a TV show (srugim BTW – great show), and one character will profess feelings for another. But I’m unclear – did they profess love or just affection?
Here’s a fun game to play with your friends next time you’re sitting down for shabbat lunch. See if you can figure out how many times Jerusalem has been attacked, besieged, or conquered. The answer, courtesy of Eric Cline’sJerusalem Besieged:
There have been at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia—conflicts which ranged from local religious struggles to strategic military campaigns which embraced everything in between. Jerusalem has been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked an additional 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, been the scene of 20 revolts and innumerable riots, had at least five separate periods of violent terrorist attacks during the past century, and has only changed hands completely peacefully twice in the past 4,000 years.
Via Flickr:
At the tower of david (a large citadel built by herod to defend the city of Jerusalem), you can still see large stones the seleucid Greeks used to pelt the Hasmodeans (Maccabeas) during the time of the Hasmonean revolt. The culmination of the revolt was the military victory celebrated during the holiday of Hanukkah.
Hebrew as a language imports a decent number of words, mostly from Arabic and English. Several English greetings have become legitimate Hebrew words including Hi (היי), Bye (ביי), and O.K. (או קיי). I’ve also heard people using Hello and wow. The interesting thing about the last item in this list is that since the w sound doesn’t exist in Hebrew, it is usually transliterated as a double vav (וו). The o in wow would be made by a single vav, so as best I could tell the word wow would be spelled ווווו. Imagine my disappointment to learn that it’s actually spelled וואו.
speaking of Hanukkah, my brother in law Shmuel has started a small series of cooking videos on youtube, and the first is entitled the cure for the common latke. His first recipe is called the green glory latke. If you’re looking for some delicious and interesting latke recipes, check it out.
Hanukkah starts tomorrow night, and for perhaps the first time in my life I’ve had this new sensation leading up to Hanukkah that I don’t normally have. I’m feeling….. excited!? Allow me to explain.
On its technical merits, Hanukkah is not the biggest or most important of Jewish holidays. In fact, it doesn’t even crack the top 10. Culturally though, it ranks fairly high for two reasons. One is the obvious reason – it’s proximity to Christmas has led to many natural parallels and converted it into a “Jewish Christmas”. Kids are off from school, stores have sales, everyone is giving out presents, so Jews tend to take advantage of these other happenings and integrate them into Hanukkah. The second thing is that the very unimportance of Hanukkah makes it more attractive to non-religious Jews, who use Hanukkah as one of the primary factors in their Jewish identity. The rigid ceremonial aspects of the more important holidays can make them very distant and inaccessible to the less religious Jews who struggle to find meaning in, say, eating dry crackers for a week or giving up cell phones for a day. Hanukkah has very little of this (there is the candle lighting, and pretty much nothing else), and almost no restrictions that the average person would notice. This leaves people free to innovate and find ways to make the holiday meaningful, fun, and accessible to them. Just in the last few decades we’ve seen the creation of Adam Sandler Hanukkah songs, gift giving, dreidel spinning contests, and days of service (which conveniently fall on Dec 25th – when we are usually off from work anyway).
We Orthodox Jews in turn have always tended to shun innovation of this sort. We find meaning in Jewish holidays through the older minhagim and halakha, both of which change at a glacial pace. While it may seem stale to the outside world, we derive meaning from experiencing the timelessness of our culture – infusing the present with a dash of the old. It connects us to something larger than ourselves, reminds us of our place in history, and helps us find our place in the world. We therefore tend to pull back from Hanukkah, and while I would never want to imply that I or any of my coreligionists would ever disparage one of our holy days, we certainly do look down on Hanukkah somewhat as “the holiday for the non-religious Jews”. We think of Hanukkah as if it were the training wheels for Judaism – you might need it at first, but us “real Jews” don’t need to bother with such things.
Now this brings me to Israel. There has been little to no cross pollution with Christmas because Jews are actually in the majority. People wish each other a happy Hanukkah at the right times! There are no presents. There are sufganiyot for sale at every bakery. Housewares stores are selling hanukkiot and candles (but you can find better prices in the shuk). There are large hanukkiot in public places and they’re actually the center of attention – not just small tokens of Christian guilt placed in the shadow on a giant Christmas tree. Museums and malls have Hanukkah events for kids. Minhag Yerushalayim is to light the menorah outside, and while I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, from what I’ve been told that the city will be littered with hanukkiot. (I’ve also seen a large number of hanukkiah boxes for sale – they’re basically clear containers that will keep your candles from getting blown out by the wind). For the first time in my life I understand what my Christian friends meant when they referred to the holiday season, because for the first time in my life I’m actually experiencing a holiday season. Frankly it’s hard not to get a little excited for the holiday, and that feeling in itself is both new and pleasantly unexpected.
Apparently I accidentally broke comments some time back when I was trying to fix some spam prevention plugins. I have disabled the offending plugin until I can get it working properly, so commenting should work fine now. if it doesn’t feel free to email me and I’ll fix it.
A week ago was our 1 month anniversary of arriving in Israel, so I figure it’s a good time to do a general check in for all of you who have been dying to know how things are going.
Settling In
I initially gave us a 2 week target for getting all the basic services we needed set up. For the most part, we succeeded. We got cell phones for the two of us, a checking account, got our visas in order at misrad hapnim, got internet access, found a gan (pre-school) for Aliza, kashered the kitchen, bought some necessary home accessories, put up mezuzahs, unpacked, and got he process started for getting health care. (More on that later). I originally had the two week deadline in mind for two reasons. One is that I hate dragging out up front costs -get them all out of the way so I can start reaping the benefits of all these things. The second is that I was under the impression that I was going to have some contract work beginning in mid-November, and they wanted me on the project as soon as possible. Of the two companies for whom I was doing some sub-contracting, one project (the one supposed to begin around mid-Nov), appears to have been delayed somewhat indefinitely. The other was also delayed a few weeks, but did kick off this week. This is, I suppose, the life of a contractor.
Wanderings
On the plus side, what better time to be unemployed than when you’re in an exciting new country? I certainly wasn’t complaining (and you’ll notice I didn’t start begging for more contracts or calling headhunters :-)). We still had to find a gan for Maya, getting health insurance has taken about a half dozen trips to various offices (so far), and Jerusalem has no shortage of wonderful things to explore. I picked up a copy of Rogov’s ultimate guide to Israeli wine (released in Israel but not yet in the US), and found an excellent local wine store. We’ve been taking advantage of the plethora of kosher restaurants (wow – we can actually go somewhere and NOT have to bring food or snacks for us or the kids! This is an entirely foreign concept to us).
Health care
The basic way it works is that because we have to be here 6 months before we can get into the national healthcare system. (Most Israelis have some costs deducted straight from their paychecks. It’s a percentage of salary, and the unemployed are still covered even when their income is zero). Until then, we have to buy it privately, which is actually fairly inexpensive. We’ve been to the health ministry and the healthcare providers offices a combines total of five times now, and each time we got a little bit closer. The first time the ministry wasn’t open on Wednesday mornings, the second time we got what we needed, but then had to go sign up with a provider, the first time we did that they lost our paperwork, and the second time we did that they needed me to come in separately to sign since they wouldn’t accept only one spouse’s signature. We should be insured in the near future. (Until then, don’t worry, we still have COBRA).
Health
Getting insured will be good because it seems like we’ve all been continually sick since we got here. I suppose a new country with new germs which none of us are attuned to, plus two children in nursery school will do that.
Israeli Institutions
The banks suck, the phone companies suck, the cable companies suck, the ISPs suck, the government is bureaucratic and arbitrary, can’t get anything done without having connections, and everyone tries to take advantage of you pretty much all the time. The Israelis (and other immigrants) I’ve talked to seem to just accept this.
The Girls
Aliza had been in a Hebrew immersion program in the states for a few months before we came here, and it was definitely worth it. We also started reading Hebrew books and putting an emphasis on using Hebrew phrases and words around the house. She’s been in gan (pre-school) for a few weeks now and it suits her. Her teachers commented after the first day that she acted as if she’s been there for months. (Although who knows, they may just say that to reassure us). She’s always been in preschool and daycare type settings so she’s used to the structure and peer interactions. The gan is dati (religious but not haredi). They have a shabbat party every week, they discuss the Jewish holidays and learn holiday songs, and do the usual running and jumping 3-5 year olds do. Her Hebrew has improved incredibly to the point where she has now taught me words I didn’t know on two occasions. I look forward to the time when I will have her translate for me in stores.
Religious Life
So here’s the thing about Israel, and especially Jerusalem. It’s really easy to be Jewish. I mean really easy. Only once have I walked away from a restaurant because I didn’t trust the hecksher, and only twice have I picked up a product in the grocery store and put it back because of the questionable kashrut status. (Both times it was a product made in Asia with a triangle-K on it and no other visible hasgacha. Go figure). Only a few weeks after I arrived I had already reached the point where I had practically stopped looking for kosher certifications and had to keep reminding myself to check for them. When we were looking for gans one of the ones we looked at was a non-dati (non-religious) gan. They still served only kosher food, separated meat and milk, discussed the Jewish holidays, and had a little shabbat party on Fridays. That’s right, that’s what counts as a non-religious preschool here. The second Friday night I was here I hadn’t bothered to find a local shul, so I simply walked out the front door and started walking. Within 3 blocks I came to an ashkenazi shul that was just starting minchah. In the mornings I see plenty of people carrying tefillin bags, and if you forgot yours, chabad has set up stations at heavily trafficked locations (like the central bus station), so you can put on tefillin while waiting for your connecting bus to arrive. Steimatzky, the Israeli equivalent of Borders, sells mikraot gedolot. Bookstores sell biographies of the Rambam next to biographies of Ariel Sharon and Steve Jobs. Streets are named after famous Jews and Jewish events. The malls have shuls in them. Every corner store sells hannukiahs this time of year. In the malls, next to the cell phone stands are stands selling judaica. Flower stands appear on Fridays. Streets are empty on Friday night. In fact the most difficult thing religiously has been that I have gotten completely used to the things we (non-Israelis) do because we’re in a non-Jewish country. For example you don’t necessarily have to tovel new dishes here. However you do have to follow all the agricultural rules (maaser, orlah, shmitah, yovel, etc.) As American Jews, I think we have partially built our identity on our status as a minority group, and that clearly cannot exist here. I’m actually going to flesh this last point out into a post in its own right later.
Security
I include this only because when I started telling my friends we were engaging in this endevour, a couple people included “stay safe” with their farewell wishes. I think most of the people who said that had probably never been here, and it is easy to get a very skewed view of what it’s like from only reading the news. The truth is that when you walk around Israel it looks like any other country. People simply go about their lives like anywhere else. There are clearly areas of heavier security (for example near the prime minister’s house), but that’s no different from the higher security around the whitehouse. There main difference from anywhere else I’ve been is that here there are also security checkpoints in front of malls, banks, and other establishments. However the checkpoints are fast and non-invasive. They take a quick glance in your bags, make you go through a metal detector (sometimes), and ask you if you’re carrying a weapon. I’ve never had the process take more than 20 seconds, and I’ve never had to wait in line more than 60 seconds. If you’re pushing a baby stroller, they usually skip it and just waive you through.
