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

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...

  You know a man is something special when Charles Barkley gets choked up talking about him. In 1991 an orphanage worker in Romania told Ernie Johnson's wife, "Don't take this boy, he's no good." Ernie said, "Then bring him home." Their son Michael had muscular dystrophy and lived on a ventilator. For years Ernie bathed him, shaved him, and told him he loved him every single day. Michael passed away in 2021 at 33. That is what kind of man Ernie Johnson is. That is what true love looks like. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a gentleman. Ernest Thorwald Johnson Jr, August 7, 1956, Milwaukee, Wisconsin , U.S. https://x.com/ohnohedidnt24/status/2115566430879961564/video/1

I grew up in New York. There, you see no soldiers. You see monuments to World War veterans who fought and died across the ocean. Any references to the Revolutionary War are quaint and the Civil War wasn't fought in New York. But in Israel, it's war, war, war.  Recent wars, ongoing wars. And terrorism too. Soldiers everywhere. You see plaques like this that talk about arms caches in synagogues.   Maybe that thrills you, but it makes me feel sick. Don't move here unless it thrills you, and if it does study some mussar.  And side note, how about not rebelling against the nations as the Gemara instructs? If they had to hide weapons in basements to oppose the ruling power then they rebelled against the nations in an attempt to force the end of exile. 

Ben Gurion. First thing you see is some kind of promotional poster about soldiers. Then you see more soldiers, and guns. At other airports you see excitement about the city, its history and activities, its new projects. You see none of that at Ben Gurion, just flags and flags and flags and pictures of soldiers. Israel really does come across as a military dictatorship. On the approach in we get instructions that Israeli authorities require everyone to be seated 1/2 hour before landing, no exceptions. Already they start with the military dictates. No other country does this. It is obvious that this is a security measure, fear I would suppose of terrorists commandeering a plane and crashing it into something, as if that ever happens here. Is this the geula that Professor Hershel Schachter speaks of? It amazes me that Professor Schachter, who flies to Israel several times a year, goes through the New York airports, which are quite impressive in scale, accommodations, and technology (at le...