Jews Against Nationalism

1. It doesn't have a hospital. The  nearest one is in Jerusalem which I promise you is not close. Put it this way, every time I take the bus, the ride lasts an hour. The nearest emergency center is near the train station which is a 15 minute drive without traffic, 45 minutes with. And as emergency centers go, it doesn't look very large or elaborate. More like a doctor's office. 2. There's no Ulpan in the summer. And there aren't many offerings during the rest of the year. Few tutors too. In general, there's not much of a language learning effort going on in Beit Shemesh Aleph. 3. The commute to Tel Aviv is formidable. 45 minute bus ride to the train. 45 minutes to the first train stop in Tel Aviv. 4. There's a minimal police presence. Not that I like to have my community swarming with police, but it's nice to have a few around given the quantity of enemies we have in this country. 5. The bus drivers take your money as they drive and often fiddle with the

My coworker and I are trying a new approach to the commute. We are driving today. Given the traffic situation. We must leave at 5:30 AM, in order to get there in time for minyan and then for work. It's 5:24 now and the world is pitch black and I'm half asleep feeling like I'm leaving for the airport for an overseas AM flight. Wonderful isn't it. This is what you have to do to drive to work from Beit Shemesh.

My suspicions started on Aliyah flight. Where were all the frum people, I wondered. The flight from Newark contained mostly tourists. Supposedly the plane was 1/3 olim. Where were the kippas? Nearly all of the olim were college kids headed for the IDF. It was like a singles event on the flight. There were a few retirees and just two frum families. It was the same in the airport as we did the paperwork. There were more NBN people with kippas than olim! In all of Beit Shemesh Aleph there are 20 or 30 olim kids in the city Ulpan, that's of all ages. Since the Charedim amazingly, incredibly don't participate in the program, I'll assume, given that the number of Charedi schools with olim in them, that there are about 50 olim kids in Ramat A. Darchei Naom has about 5. I'll assume that Magen Avot is a bit more. So what I'm saying is that not all that many religious Anglos come to Israel. The Aliyah numbers consist mostly of non-religious people. And of the religious ones,

It's not the Israelis, ie the chilonim. The Israeli government doesn't paint exaggerated pictures of life in Israel. They don't romanticize the place. They don't minimize the struggles or glamorize them. They don't promise that you'll just 'pick up' the Hebrew. It is, I'm so sorry to say, frum people who are the culprits. It is they who live in a dream. It is they who push you and guilt you and make wild promises about all the help you'll get when you come here. I could call them liars but I think mostly they are just plain delusional. Torah observance need not be fantastical. One can observe the Torah while being practical and rational. However, many observant people do not practice it that way. They live in fantasy. They live in delusion. They are delusional about the world and about themselves. It is sad to watch. But to be the victim of it is much worse than sad. It can be tragic. I'm not talking about all religious people. Indeed, many A

So do you have fantasies about escaping corporate America by coming to Israel? You can drop the fantasy because it's not only just as bad here. Job security is even worse. There is no security. People come in and out of the high tech sector like a revolving door. The pressures are immense, the demands unreasonable, and the people just as cut throat as on Wall St. The work hours are as bad and with the commute times, overall worse. You'll make friends at work, your comrades, your fellow prisoners. There are decent people here. But the bosses are the same bosses. Meet the new boss. It's the same as the old boss. Maybe you had fantasies about Jewish companies and Jewish rachamim. Maybe you have the same fantasies about the government here. Maybe you are picturing First Temple Israel. No, this is second Temple Israel. The Romans are in charge. We just live here.

1. The overwhelming military presence. There are solders everywhere. I'm not talking about solders lording over Arabs because that actually is another surprise I'll address. But it seems like half the youth is in military fatigue, coming back from their bases. One gets a palpable sense of historic anti-Semitism and the violence that came with it just by the site of regular kids armed with rifles and lots of older people with guns on their belts. I'm also surprised by how much it's getting to me. It's quite unnerving and depressing. 2. How integrated a society it is. One hears in the media these charges of apartheid and I have found that to be so far from the truth. Arabs are everywhere, on the same trains, stores, and amusement parks. Nobody bothers them. I also see many Asians, Africans, and Russian gentiles. It is a remarkably mixed society. 3. How trying to be an Israeli isn't working out. By that I mean adopting an Israeli personality with all the informalit

The Israel Museum is only opened at nights on Tuesday so, having traveled there on a Tues., I wandered over to the Bible Lands museum nearly. It was great. It's got these twenty rooms/areas covering archaeology and history of biblical times. It's full of artifacts. You wonder, where the heck do they get a pot from the time of Moses? The layout takes you chronologically through history. And you get overwhelmed by the idol worship and really take note of Avraham's accomplishment. I got also for the first time a real sense of how empires got bigger and bigger with Bavel being quite regional but Persia really spreading across continents as the Megillas Esther says. They have audio in English and English signage.

Well my Ulpan started at long last. Took four months as there's nothing here in the summer. I didn't expect much. I have learned to tone down expectations. But then comes along this wonderful teacher. She's a Russian lady and just a marvelous teacher, very much rooting for us to learn the language, lively and creative in her methods. A great surprise.

My assumption was that the kosel would provide my most emotional moments. But yesterday I visited the government center in Jerusalem and found myself getting rather emotional. I sat in the kennest, watching debate, and reflecting on how my great-grandfather fled Russia to escape the 30 year draft. I reflected on how Rav Hirsch petitioned the German government for decades in order to establish an independent community. And here we are with our own legislative body. And the building was quite lovely, very well laid out. So too was the Supreme Court very impressive, nicely designed, with an impeccable library. I left feeling very inspired, very proud and feeling connected to this country. Maybe the charedi approach of love of the mitzvos of the land or the yeshivos here isn't enough, maybe a feeling for the medinah is necessary for some of us.