Jews Against Secular Jewish Nationalism

So I'll cut to the chase here and I'm speaking to Torah observant people from Anglo countries. Aliyah is not for everybody. And by that I don't mean that it's not ideal for everybody or not wonderful for everybody but that it's a mistake for many people and they should not do it. Generally, people with kids over the age of 5 should not make aliyah. There are mitigating factors such as one parent being Israeli. Generally, charedim should not make aliyah, particularly if they have kids over 5. The charedi schools offer minimal language instruction if at all. While there are many Modern Orthodox communities, there are few charedi Anglo ones and many of those ones are far from jobs. So unless you are coming with enough cash to buy an apartment and to take a junk job nearby, forget it. Generally, people who don't have family here should not make aliyah. All the promises of warm and helpful communities are a fantasy at best. People help family. They don't he...

I have a three legged trek to work - local bus (40 minutes) to the train (1 hour) to a shuttle bus (20 minutes). So the best case scenario is a 2 hour commute. But most days the train is late - sometimes as much as an hour. And most days the shuttle bus is late - sometimes as much as 1/2 hour, So typically it's a 2.5 hour commute One time it took me 3.5 hours to get home. That was the time an Arab's bullet struck the train. I heard that it wasn't intentional. He was firing his gun to celebrate a wedding. In other words, criminally stupid. Two bonuses were supposed to make this more pleasant. One was the onboard minyan and the other was the onboard wireless connection. To imagine the minyan experience, hop aboard a Manhattan bound A train at 8:30 AM on a Tuesday, only imagine people with even less consideration of others and a weaker sense of personal space. To imagine the wireless connection, remember the Internet during the dialup days, only less reliable. The connection w...

So here's the moment I have been dreading, where I have to clean yet again the pigeon crap from my marpeset. That's Alfred Hitchcock for those who don't know, the director of the famous film "The Birds." That film is all about an infestation of nasty birds. He should have come here to film it, probably would have saved production costs. This is another one of those little facts that aliyah people don't tell you about, the bird infestation. We hear them in our sleep. There's pigeon crap all over the place here, on the sidewalks, on the steps to our apartment building, on ledges, on park benches, on railings. So every week or so I go out on my marpeset and clean off all the pigeon crap. When we moved in, there was a nest outside the laundry room and on the ledge. We got rid of those, but the pigeons still crap up my marpeset. I am dreading what they'll do to my schach once I install it. But before I do that I must clean up the crap and the feathers from ...

This evening, my daughter came home with a handful of nails that were given to her by one of her teachers so that she could work on a project at home. One of those nails in the photo found its way into the flesh of one of our family members later in the evening. I can promise you that the nails are every bit as sharp as they appear. The epidermis is no match for them. This is the same daughter that was left by the school’s shuttle bus at the wrong bus stop one day this week and then taken to the wrong town the next day. I hope that I don’t have to explain that the 30 minutes for each incident that we spent worrying where she and her even younger sister might be was a few seconds short of an eternity. It’s been quite a week. I have heard that child safety standards are different in Israel but I can’t see how any of these actions are acceptable in any country. Now when I say Israel I should clarify that I'm talking about a frum Anglo community in Israel. And I am coming to belie...

I have experienced this before in the Jewish world, our quickness to criticize. I am going to try to find the good in it by saying that we are born with the ability to criticize ourselves, which is how the trait is supposed to be used, but in this end of days we use it on others. And so it goes, that in nearly any situation you find yourself, you are criticized if you are unhappy with that situation. What's happening here is that this trait of criticism blends pathologically with another trait of being ideological. That latter trait is also supposed to be used for the good as we try to live idealistic lives. Many people in the world go through life without goals, certainly without goals of self-improvement. At best their goal is for their local team to win the World Series. I'm talking about serious goals. They might to some extent want to be half decent people but the true commitment isn't there. Jews are built with a critical eye and with idealism that are supposed to be ...

So most of my preceding posts were written before we began work and school. In other words, we were tourists pretending to be olim. The crazy bus drivers were still a novelty. The baruch habim's were coming fast and furious. And so, the land was beautiful. It still is, but then it dominated the day. And the miracle of building a society on the sand continued to impress.  It still does, but then it dominated the day. And the thrill of fulfilling the mitzvah of yeshuv ha'aretz was the exciting mitzvah of the moment - or at least a lessening of the guilt issued by aliyah rabbis provided some guilt relief. And for Jews, that is happiness. Ah less guilty feelings today. How sweet it is. Now, we have moved into a new phase. We deal with work and school and Israeli society in general in a real way. Are you bracing yourself? Do you feel it coming? I won't rant. That's a contemporary Jewish trait I have learned to reduce. But I will tell you that the stories of frustration in de...