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

The following are excerpts from a public letter from an oleh who is trying to raise money via crowd funding to cover his debts. As you can see from his writing, he's an intelligent person, but he struggles to earn a parnassah in Israel even though he is fluent in Hebrew. He left London, which has a prosperous economy, due to his belief that "every Jew must live in Israel." He is now separated from his wife and children and preparing to deliver a get. He and his soon to be ex-wife seemed like a compatible couple. I have spent a fair amount of time around them, even in their home. But the strain of aliyah did them in. Please note that he is not a kollel avreich and is perpetually seeking employment. He has worked in grocery stores and various factories which hire and fire depending on their monthly receipts.  "Today I completed and printed all my documentation to officially declare insolvency, taking full legal and financial responsibility to clear the slate for my fam...

Stories like the one that follows are rampant. No, it's not antisemitic to tell them. It's important information for the life decision concerning aliyah: ----- Her visa is gone. Now Thailand wants to make sure she never comes back. A 33-year-old Israeli woman arrived in Thailand on 26 September for a holiday on Koh Phangan. Within weeks, two police complaints had been filed against her. According to Thai authorities, she allegedly used services at Than Sadet National Park and at a hotel without paying, insulted staff, and threatened to physically harm employees and tourists. A special committee chaired by Koh Phangan District Chief Phaisit Thongjerm reviewed the evidence. Its members agreed that her behaviour broke the conditions of her stay. Investigators also say she had been offering breathwork and art therapy classes on the island without a work permit. Her visa was revoked. She was handed over to immigration police, who are holding her while her flight to Israel is arrange...

At the same time that we are dealing with the bed rip off  and the botched refrigerator delivery , we are dealing with a trade school in Bene Brak that wants to charge us thousands of shekels for a program that somebody in our family attended once and chose not to continue with. The Charedi woman from Bene Brak who teaches the class claims she should charge us for the entire year, even though payments are made monthly.  And as usual, she is rude, stubborn, arrogant, and accusatory. You are always the bad guy with Israelis even though they are the worst people that I have ever encountered. This is a toxic society. It's not just the Chilonim. It's nearly everybody. This a Charedi woman from Bene Brak!  Living here, you spend your days and nights in fights not just over religion or politics, but over your basic rights, your money, your apartment, your children's play space. It's an evil society, like Sodom. That frum people continually make excuses for it and try to mak...

We tried to order some fabric from an Israeli company but the order kept failing. It's not even clear to me that the company is still in business because they don't answer emails, but that could be because they are Israelis. So we ordered from a Swedish company. The fabric never arrived. But because the customer service people are normal human beings, opposed to Israelis who are not human beings at all, they responded immediately and with well written and polite note. You see that offer for a full refund? That never happens in Israel. There are no refunds even if they send you the wrong product. Again and again you will see it, there are human beings and there are Israelis. It's two different types of creatures. 

Guy boards a Jerusalem bound bus in Beit Shemesh. On the outskirts of the city is a stop for the industrial zone where he works. The driver skips the stop. When the passenger points this out, the driver says "בעיה שלך," which means "it's your problem." Passenger says, "can you please stop at the next stop," which is not an official stop for that bus route, "so I can walk back?" Driver says, "we're going to Jerusalem. You can take the bus back from there." That's 1/2 hour away, which means an hour of driving plus waiting for the next bus. This means he'll be more than an hour late for work.  Today, I went to the hardware store to get a replacement hinge for my kitchen cabinet which breaks every two months. In the past, I or the fixit guy just screws it back in, but the hinge is just plain broken at this point and we need a new one. At the hardware store is an American who is helpful but he was surrounded by customers incl...

In Israel there are two paths for religious people: Dati Leumi and Haredi. Dati Leumi are less religious than the least religious people in Teaneck. I have been to shivas for soldiers from Dati Leumi families in communities that are purported to be more religious and couldn't tell if I was sitting with Torah observant people or not. The men don't necessarily wear yarmulkas. The women wear pants and don't cover their hair. They carry on at the shiva like it's a pub. There are exceptions, particularly Olim from Yeshiva University who were tricked by the rabbis there to move to Israel while those rabbis stayed comfortably in America. Charedim are no more religious than Yeshivish and Chassidic Jews in Chutz L'Aretz. It's a myth that Jews in Israel are more religious. There are lots of Jews in Monsey and Williamsburg and Monroe who are just as religious as those in Meah She'arim. There might even be more.  However, the not actually so religious so-called Charedim...

There isn't a significant purchase I have made in Israel from an Israeli where some kind of ripoff wasn't involved. Whether it be appliances, computers, real estate, insurance, trade school, anything, there's always trouble. There's trouble with smaller purchases too, for example taxis. With Anglos you can get a fair deal, but not with Israelis. Actually, with the Anglos it depends how long they have been here. You can't even trust a dentist if he has been here for a while and absorbed the attitudes. I dealt with a dentist like that. So here's the latest. I bought a fancy mattress with a bed frame and headboard, from this store: עולם המזרונים רוזנפלד בית שמש, Nachal Zohar St 10. It was more money than I wanted to spend, but I went for it anyway for a member of family. Since the mattress was expensive, it was thicker than the usual Israeli mattress, and the headboard on display at the store seemed too low to fit it. The salesman assured me that at the factory the...