Eva’s Notes

Exciting news for me: just got accepted into Machon Tal for the upcoming year. (no semesters in this country- you have to start from the year’s beginning.) Great because I can finally follow up on one of my long delayed goals and get a degree from a real college where I have to follow through with the program- this aint community college, you must meet all their planned requirements for every major from the beginning.

The greatest thing for me is that I pretty much get it free because I made aliyah. and being that college expense was the biggest thing stopping me- that in addition to not really knowing what I wanted to do- pretty much leaves me with no excuse.

It’s things like this that make the country so great- maybe I’m biased because of all my benefits. Free health insurance instead of paying $500 every month, no tuition, and free schooling- even if you didn’t make aliyah schooling is about 100 times cheaper here. The Israeli government looks at education as a means to enable people to eventually earn higher pay and pay more taxes and so the schools here are almost subsidized completely- even the private ones.

I’m 22 now and this news especially exciting for me because I’ve had such a long journey- from first trying out a Jewish private college Ma’alot to find that it wouldn’t help me at all because it wasn’t accredited and only select super expensive private schools would accept you afterwards which were usually a minimum of $100,000. (I may only be slightly exaggerating.)

An awesome story about Ma’alot: Afterwards I went to Santa Monica College, but I was still finishing up finals at Ma’alot because the semesters overlapped. I told my Bus 101 teacher that I’d be absent for the next class because I was taking a final at a different school. She asked me which school and I told her it was an all-girls school that she probably had never heard of. When she persisted and I told her Ma’alot she exclaimed that her good friend from the department was teaching Bus 101 there whom she had referred after the school had first requested from her but she wasn’t able to. Pretty much for the same teacher and the same content- I’m being 100% literal here- I was paying $70 instead of $600. Yep, it was $600 for every class in Ma’alot.

Well, after two semesters in Santa Monica College it turned out that I was pretty much driftless with no clear direction- and although I could have continued to take classes and learned more about what I liked and what I wanted to do- it didn’t really work out for me and I stopped going. I tried doing few online courses but I guess I’m not that self motivated and need the discipline of a classroom.

I’ve done a lot of things this year which I could only do in Israel: I took a hair cutting and make-up class once a week for a couple of months. Yeah, I know technically I could have also done that in the US but it was a lot more convenient in a frum environment. The particular course is from sukkos until pesach because it relies on seminary girls to come in as models. Only in Israel do you have that many girls willing to come in for a free haircut.

I went to Ulpan for awhile. I made aliyah so that was free also and I’m hoping my Hebrew’s good enough to make it through college. (I did pass there Hebrew for foreigners test, but it was ridiculously easy and definitely not college level.)

Since I’m pretty much ethically opposed to spending a fortune on education- because fact is you’ll have student loans to pay off for years and unless people rise to management super quickly people really don’t make too much money for a nice couple of years- it works for me.

So I know the dying question you’re all having is What’s her major? Well, I’ll be majoring in computer science and I hope to eventually be a programmer. Pretty much, I see the future there in terms of jobs especially since Israel is pretty much number one in the world in high tech. Plus, it doesn’t pay too bad and you can pretty much sub-contract and work for yourself. And even within a company you have alot of your own independence.

Another things which Israel is super conducive to learning, albeit slightly different: stick shift driving. stick shift is super popular here and even when people get brand new cars many times they’ll order stick shift. It’s not only better control of the car it’s also because stick shift it way more eco friendly and gas efficient. Gas in Israel is like double the US- maybe now its a bit less because the US is also seeing hikes, but its still more than substantially more expensive.

*Most people who work in companies, though, get free gas because it’s all company paid- most companies here give a car and free gasoline (דלקן ) as a benefit. Kind of like health insurance in the US, because here there’s already free health insurance. Another perk which you’ll only find in Israel.

So when I constantly hear Americans complaining about how hard it is to live in Israel and why they can’t live here I really don’t understand them. In my biased view they have an attitude problem. I can understand some specific circumstances that might make it super difficult to live here but in general when I hear of someone with no commitments at all who just can’t live here it’s hard for me to understand.

Israel happens to be the most progressive country in the world. This country grows at a faster rate than any other and while the American dollar keeps falling every year the shekel only gets stronger and stronger- irrelevant to the dollar.

Another known stereotype is Israeli bureaucracy. Guess what? Ask anyone who went to the American embassy and they’ll let you know clearly who has worse bureaucracy. I can accurately say that making any freaking appointment for anything in Israel is 100 times easier and friendlier than the US. Service here is just way better and complaints here have super fast results- if a government department is understaffed by the next week they’ll have enough employees. Definitely can’t say that for the US.

I think that many American Jews are in denial because of their quote and quote safety and comfort. Fact is that one of the most important mitzvos in the torah is ישוב הארץ and for some reason many religious Jews decided that that isn’t a mitzvah anymore. By the way I’m not even talking from a religious zionist perspective, I’m talking from a religious Jewish perspective.

But then again that has a lot to do with most religious Jews today (especially chareidim- one famous rosh yeshiva said he won’t mind moving back to Vilna) making up their own religion which has nothing to do with the torah. But I see this post is getting too long so that’s for another post.