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

An American student in Jerusalem asked me recently what was the biggest surprise about living in Israel. I told him that the crazy Israeli personality wasn't the biggest surprise because I knew about Israelis from many odd encounters in New York. And like a fool I came here because a zionist rabbi who dresses yeshivish told me that Israelis have no derech eretz but they'll give you the shirt off their back. That is generally false. They are shockingly selfish. Most of them won't give you the shirt off of your back. I have so many scary stories of israelis being incredibly selfish. The biggest shock was the hatred that each group has for every other group here. An American has never seen anything like it, unless perhaps he lived in the South in 1937, but I'll bet that wasn't even as bad. It's particularly jolting because the aliyah pushers tell you to 'return home.' They'll tell you that you are coming back to family. I'll tell you this, any famil...

"There are too many Arabs in London, so I moved to Israel." Unpack: EY has 6 million Arabs, which is 50% of the population. It is surrounded by 1/2 billion Arabs. As I'm typing this I'm listening to Arab construction workers screaming at each other.  London has 8,799,800 people and 139,791 Arabs, which is 1.6% of the city. ( Source ) 70,602 people in London speak Arabic. That's 0.80% of the population. In EY, around 6 million people speak Arabic.  ---------- On the danger of living in SSOI:  "It's better to die here than to die there." Unpack: Terrorism has taken the life of 5,373 Jews in EY in the last 100 years, 4,688 (87%) since 1948. 27% of them died in 2023. (That includes those who were killed by the Israeli military on Oct. 7)  How many Jews were murdered for being Jewish or even Israeli in 2024 in the USA, Canada, France, UK, and South America in total? Maybe there was one or two but that arguably was because of ac...

  Walking down the street, I was passed by a well-dressed frum man with a trim beard who looked at me and smiled in a friendly manner. I knew instantly, that he wasn't Israeli and probably wasn't a New Yorker. New Yorkers tend to ignore you as if you didn't exist. And Israeli men give you a look of death as if they want to kill you.  Being curious, I asked and sure enough he was from Melbourne, Australia. He's been in SSOI for three decades but hasn't lost Australian social sensibilities, at least not that one.   I recall other interactions in my life. A gentile man smiled at me in a rent a car parking lot in Ohio. In Jersey City, a man stepped back to allow me to enter the Fed. Ex place first, and did the same as I approached the front desk after stopping to pick up a form. I listened when it was his turn at the desk. He had a Southern accent. You get a different since of life when people are friendly and are not ignoring you or staring you down. The nerves relax a...

 Excerpts from BECOMING TRADITIONAL: SOCIALIZATION TO BUREAUCRACY AMONG AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS IN ISRAEL by KEVIN AVRUCH, George Mason University  Full article "Seven years ago, when I first came to Israel," said Aaron, "I was surprised by how much life here was permeated with the need for licenses and stamps on official forms. You can get used to that. What I really had to learn was the system. In the U.S., when you go to a government office, the clerk is there to help you. He'll tell you the rules, and he'll help you tollow the rules, and within the rules he might even help you to get around the rules. Not here. Because the rules don't apply to everyone equally, so if the pakid ("clerk," "bureaucrat") doesn't know you, or God forbid doesn't like you, you're dead. This is really part of the whole Israeli complex..." "Another immigrant, Jonathan, has lived in Israel for five years. In the United States he had worked for ...

  Every article about war. Every article are war, terrorism, and militarism. War, war and more war And more war and violence You call his geulah? This isn't even a normal country in golus. You want to bring your children here? Compare to the Chicago Tribune where you see articles on all sorts of subjects including business, ballet, and sports. Imagine enjoying life. That doesn't happen in the secular state of Israel.  I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field, [that ye awaken not, nor stir up love, until it please] (Shir HaShirim 2:7)  By the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field. R. Eleazar explained: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel, ‘If you will keep the adjuration, well and good; but if not, I will permit your flesh [to be a prey] like [that of] the gazelles and the hinds of the field’. (Kesubos 111a)

The money machine told me that my card was soon to be retired, and I had to get a new one by going online or into the bank. I went online but it told me I can't login because I haven't logged in in six months. So I went to the bank. I was hopeful as I walked in because there were few customers. I figured I'd be seen in minutes. There were ten customer service clerks and six customers. But you can't walk up to an open window. You have to wait for the light board to call your number. But it never did. The clerks didn't tell it they were available. Some sat and chatted with each other with the six people waiting for them. Others seem to be doing some kind of work, very slowly. 45 minutes passed before a clerk was ready for me, and that clerk promptly scolded me for not speaking good Hebrew. What amazed me most was not the laziness or inefficiency but the lack of concern for others. We all sat there waiting and none of the bank people really seemed to care. That's I...

I used to work on Wall St. with a salesman who was very successful selling software that didn't exist except in rudimentary form. When I asked him how he managed to pull this off, how the clients couldn't detect his ruse, he said, "We show them what we want to show them." In other words, it was sleight of hand. Show them a bit of this, a bit that, talk real fast, sound credible, pat them on the back, and you got a sale. Then he'd hand over the account to the onboarding people who would be under insane pressure to deliver something. There was disappointment on all sides, except that he was happy that he made a sale. Note, this was at a company that won awards for being a great place to work. Such a sham. So, too, aliyah pushers try to give the impression that SSOI is just busting with the world's greatest technology. After all, it's a country full of Jews, and Jews have won 1/4 of all Nobel prizes (178 ). However, that statistic doesn't apply to Israel ...