Jews Against Secular Jewish Nationalism

It was the early Norwegian settlers who gave the country the name  Greenland.  In the  Icelandic sagas , it is said that the Norwegian-born Icelander  Erik the Red  was exiled from  Iceland  for manslaughter. Along with his extended family and his  thralls , he set out in ships to explore icy land known to lie to the northwest. After finding a habitable area and settling there, he named it  Grœnland  (translated as "Greenland"), supposedly in the hope that the pleasant name would attract settlers. The Greenland ice sheet (Greenlandic: Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometres (660,000 sq mi), roughly  80%  of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet

NBN needs to change the name of its “Buddy Family Program.” The wording suggests a service much more comprehensive than the reality. The word buddy suggests a meaningful relationship, emotional support, a knowledge of one another’s lives, and actual in person encounters, and the word family suggests that this relationship applies across the entire family, from family to family. They are warm and comforting words but they don’t match the reality which is a phone number where a person can ask occasional questions. The other option is to train buddy families how to reach out and how to provide a substantive service. As it stands now, the program doesn’t qualify as a program. It’s more of a phone list. And the entire enterprise is deceptive and disappointing.  We have had two "buddy families." The first made one quick call and told us that they couldn't meet us for a while because they had family staying with them. A few months later they sent an email but didn't respond ...

So here's what I'm talking about, here's some copy from a NBN ad: "Mediterranean beaches, the Carmel mountains, career, culture & community.  Can I have it all?  Try Aliyah to Northern Israel!" That's the way they sell aliyah, like you are an orchestra conductor moving to Tuscany. This kind of talk makes me nauseous not just because it isn't Jewish but because you won't get those things moving to Israel. It borders on lying. Or at least it's quite a stretch. There are mountains; although I wouldn't recommend random hikes because there could be Arabs lurking out there, Heaven forbid; one can have some kind of career, although without fluency in Hebrew, which is quite hard to attain, it might be a career sweeping floors or working a customer service line 9 hours a day. There's some culture, nothing compared to any major city in America or Europe, or any college town in those places or even Raleigh, North Carolina. The community is much l...

Be'er Sheva - lots of Arabs, Russians, and sweaty, old, tiny buildings. Now on the bright side it was less crowded than the center and for desert lovers, it is in the desert. So I won't say that some people can't call it home, but I wouldn't believe the NBN story line about paradise in the desert, as I wouldn't believe any of their story lines. In general, groups like NBN  project America onto Israel. They give you the impression that in Israel you get an American lifestyle only in the Holy Land. Look at their ads with the smiling beautiful people in front of brand spanking new houses on the beach. The best of all worlds. The good without the bad. NBN is a marketing organization, an ad agency. It's mostly myth. I am not going to tell you where to live and I hope that nobody tells me where to live. Jewish religious life is not necessarily better in Israel despite all the hype. Sorry to be a bourgeois, decadent capitalist American, but bracha and religious life of...

Holding onto your brain is one of the hardest tasks in the world today, including the Jewish world. Actually it's particularly difficult in the Jewish world because one's voice gets drowned in the shouts of opinionated people everywhere. In the frum world, there's the additional challenge of dealing with all the traits of cults, which include a ban on independent thought. So not only does none of that go away in frum Israel, but it gets a lot of worse. Olim are not the sanest of people and certainly they tend towards magical thinking and fanaticism. As we know, one is not allowed to leave a cult. That's one of the rules of cults. They need that rule because how else are they going to keep you while they ruin your life? Once you come to Israel you are not allowed to leave. You are not even allowed to think clearly or factually about the place or your life here. Any "negative thoughts" as they call them are the product of your yetzer hara. That's the way mos...