Not Kedai for most people--Moving to the secular state of israel (SSOI)

Here's the house I visited yesterday, a relative who 'made aliyah.' Sounds so noble when you hear it, no? Made aliyah. One of the non-materialistic good guys. Here's a house just like theirs in their neighborhood: You don't know the backstory. You just hear that they made aliyah. So let’s see, they have lots of family here, are intensely Zionistic, speak Hebrew from day school (one has a surgeon for a father), are Modern Orthodox so they don’t have the battle with the army, and they have 2 million dollars for a big house that would be fancy in Monsey. Are they retirees with a lifetime of savings? Nope, they came when they were twenty. Are they lucky business owners? Nope. He works in the government and she has an online job for a marketing company.  Somebody handed them millions of dollars. Oh they try to play that down by saying 'they got a good deal' and 'they bought it used.' Meanwhile it looks brand new. I know many stories like this, people who ...

  Q: Is Hashem also Elokei Yisroel of the assimilated Jews? A: Now you must know that Yisroel means only those who are ma’aminim baHashem , ma’aminim in Matan Torah , ma’aminim in briyas ha’olam yesh me’ayin .  Although there’s a maamar that says ישראל אף על פי שחטא ישראל הוא, it doesn’t mean Yisroel who’s an apikores .  No. שחטא means he sinned; let’s say there’s a Yisroel who did certain sins, but he’s a Jew who believes in everything. And therefore he’s a Yisroel.   But once he stops belonging to the Klal Yisroel that believes in Elokim, in briyas ha’olam yesh me’ayin or in Matan Torah , then he doesn’t belong at all to the Am Yisroel.  Of course he can come back if he does teshuvah , but in that state of meridah, of rebellion, he does not belong to the Am Yisroel.   The truth is, we’re not even mechuyev to worry about his life.  If he’s in danger, we’re not interested in saving him.  I don’t want to say it in public, but...

On a car at the airport in Israel. This is the most important issue to some of these people. Not healthcare, not housing, not the economy, not even safety but getting Haredim in the military. That's what matters to them. The sticker says "Military conscription should be for all." So if you are Yeshivish or Chasidic, how can you possibly move here? They consider you the enemy over here. If you are sane, how can you move here if this is what concerns these people? What kind of society is it going to be if this is the #1 goal? The goal of Zionism, said Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, is to destroy the Torah. 

A local yeshiva is sending out Succah decorations to its donors, most of whom live in America. The only donors here are a few Americans. Israelis don’t give. So the staff stuffed 300 envelopes and took them to the post office, after making an appointment as is required and waiting three days. Guess what? The post office which is located in one of those so-called Anglo communities only had thirty international stamps, each of which needed to be licked. There were no self-adhesive sticker stamps So now the yeshiva clerk must make a new appointment for when the stamps that were ordered come in. Who knows if that will happen before Succos. I asked the woman who is handling all this for the yeshiva what her view is of Hershel Schachter's declaration that Israel has "all the modern inventions." She said the following: "It's ridiculous." I asked, "Why does he say it?" She thought a moment and said tentatively, "He wants it to be true, maybe. But it i...

 

A Mississippi man served 15 years for a murder his own DNA disproved. Kennedy Brewer sat in prison since 1995. The test came back clean. Someone else's semen. Someone else's crime. The district attorney had a choice. Admit the mistake. Or protect the record. He picked a third option. An accomplice, he said. No accomplice existed. No evidence backed it. The theory kept Brewer's file — and the prosecutor's win — intact.  Psychologist Carol Tavris studies this exact moment. Not the lie people tell others. The one they tell themselves. She calls it self-justification. The DA didn't see himself as corrupt. He saw himself as right. Reality had to bend to match.   Same mechanism that buried Ignaz Semmelweis in 1847. He proved handwashing cut childbed fever deaths. Colleagues rejected the data — not from ignorance, but from the horror of admitting they'd been killing patients for years by coming to the delivery room directly from morgues without washing their hands.  Sa...

My friend called up the Qumran National Park to inquire about it's hours. He was told "I don't know," by the employee who picked up the phone. He asked for someone who would know. After a half hour wait, another person got on the phone and said, "I don't know." Welcome to Israeli customer service and pride (or lack of it) in one's work.  Welcome to the experience of trying to pursue any of your interests here. My friend, who is intellectual, also tries to order books since books in English are not sold here. However, the mail service is atrocious in Israel and it's an ordeal to have books shipped to you. You wait for months. It's also expensive, and many sellers don't sell to Israel. Most of eBay does not ship to Israel. I am trying to arrange a visit to the Rockefeller Archeology Museum in East Jerusalem. The website says "The Rockefeller Archaeological Museum is temporarily closed to visitors." The same website provides a link...