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

  Three bedroom apartment, outside of Jerusalem, $1.2 million reduced from $1.5 million. It's described as 5 room even though there are only 3 bedrooms because there's a living room and a dining room.  A 3 bedroom house in the less expensive non-religious area. $1.4 million.  Can we say it already? Aliyah is for the rich. And all that talk about people staying in Chutz because they are materialistic is stupidity. 

Yesterday I went for a medical test. The only available testing site was in Modin. This required a 1 1/2 hour bus trip, plus 15 minutes of waiting for the bus and 15 minutes of walking. That's 2 hours each way for a 10 minute test. I had to take the day off from work. 

Here's the blurb for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art at touristisrael.com: The  Tel Aviv Museum of Art  is almost undoubtedly one of the greatest museums of modern art in the world. With a massive newly opened wing, the museum has a great collection of works by both Israeli and leading international artists showcased in an incredible building. The TA museum has 10,000 square meters of gallery area.  However,  Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which is a museum of modern art has 17,000 square meters. Paris has another museum of modern art Musée National d'Art Moderne, which has 18,000 square meters. Paris also has countless galleries. That means the city of Paris has at least 38,000 square meters of modern art, nearly 4x that of Tel Aviv. And that's not including the world's biggest art museum the Louvre, which doesn't have modern art.  The  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art in NY each have 15,000 square meters of gallery space. NY a...

  Make aliyah and enjoy the country where this is the day's news: What no real estate, education, sports, religion, theater, arts, recreation, weather, restaurants, technology? No, the news in Israel today concerns corpses. How ghoulish is that? Dead bodies that have been rotting for a year. That's the news. And still they'll claim that the geulah is upon is. In the real geulah the dead will come back to life. Here it's decayed corpses that stay dead. Maybe Hashem is showing us, no this is not geulah. It's just a depressing place to live, and die.  

 As I have discussed here, the apartments in Israel are small (yet expensive). It is not enough that we are told to be fruitful and multiply and have as many children as possible? That's quite a burden--let's be honest about it. Do we also have to pack 6 kids into tiny 3 bedroom apartments where they have no privacy ("How goodly are your tents Jacob"), no place to play or do homework, difficulty sleeping because of all the people in the room? So what do people do? They build extensions onto their tiny little apartments. You see them all over town, rooms on patios, rooms on stilts, rooms hanging off of buildings. This room looks like it's part of the building but it is an addition.  These are the homes whose owners have the cash for construction. Many people do not. Oftentimes, the neighbors object because the additions causes leaks or block the sun. Also disturbances are created as the workmen drill and hammer sometimes for months.  Here's a permanent obstruct...

Oh so you heard about startup nation and the wonderful Israeli economy. Here's the Israeli economy: Germany Is Buying Israeli-made Spike Anti-tank Missiles in 2 Billion Euro Deal The major deal was signed through NATO with EuroSpike, Rafael's European joint venture, in which it holds a stake. In 2025 alone, Germany purchased 315 million euros' worth of Israeli weaponry – more than in the previous four years combined So if you work for the defense industry in your home country, maybe there will be a job for you in Israel, if you can learn Hebrew. This country is a military base. That's what happens when you take the land by force, and the entire society is built around it. That includes much of the economy. The tourist industry, which is based on it being the Holy Land, not on anything else, has been decimated by the military and its failures and excesses. If you are a military man, maybe you'll like Israel. As for everybody else, I don't recommend it. 

  6,000 NIS =  1,822.63 dollars.  Here's an ad for a 3 bedroom apartment for 6,000 shekels. The going rate for jobs, if you can get one, for olim who are not fluent in English is 5,000 shekels. I had several jobs here for 5,000 shekels. It's the same with other olim I know. That's not enough to pay the rent. One of the jobs was at a yeshiva, doing fundraising and computer work. The yeshiva was generally 5 five months behind on my paycheck and still owes me money.   Then I got a job at a regular business for 7,000 NIS which is $2,126.41 a month. But that's still less than the rent after taxes. I am not unskilled. In America I earned over $120,000 a year, which is 5x the amount I earn in Israel. But the rent on the apartments here costs more than my mortgage in America. There I had a four bedroom brand new condo with big rooms that had big closets. We had also a dining room, living room, and den. That's 3 separate rooms. In Israel they would call that a ...

A friend pointed out to me that living in Israel is like living in prison. It's a minimum security prison. You dwell in these little concrete encased rooms. Since you can't afford a car, you rely on buses which  put you in a kind of curfew. You must leave wherever you are by 12 PM or you'll be stuck.  It's unpleasant outside the apartment. It's even unpleasant walking down the stairs with the crumbling paint and dirty walls. You enter the parking lot, which is ridden with cracks and loose tiles and garbage. You don't see trees, not many. You see more dreary apartments and garbage. There are no benches. You walk around for half an hour like you would in your hour a day in the prison yard.  Half the New Jersey sized country is desert. Half of the remainder is Arab, which means either unsafe or prohibited to Jews by law. The quarter that remains is mostly a dump, with prison like housing. There's not much to see but you can't even get there anyway without a...

Here's the difference between  Americans and  Israelis. I'm playing baseball with my kid in the park. We pause when people pass so as not to hit anyone. The Americans either pause so as not so interrupt or hurry by walking clearly around the bag we are using as home plate. Most smile warmly as if to say isn't that cute. One points to the wall behind us and says you can use that for stickball. The Israelis literally neither pause nor hurry nor walk around. They stomp right over the base or bump into it just as they do people when walking by them. They make no acknowledgement of us at all. One Israeli, with his shaved head, kippah sruggah, and sandals, stopped right where we were playing and called back to his family "Aifo Shai?" He stood there in our spot for about two minutes without acknowledging us at all. It's not as if we didn't exist, as if he wanted to inconvenience us and pretend that we didn't exist.  Potential olim imagine a country full of ol...