Started talking about the settlers- apparently he stayed over by someone in Hilltop 643- the name of the settlement (i’m assuming it had like 10 families). Spoke about the father in a wife-beater and gun and his little kids all running around naked. This guy made some house out of tires and eden bottles and lives with no electricity or plumbing. The kids just go to the bathroom outside.

Disclaimer: I’m just writing the topics and a little overview- for the funny lines which were adlibbed every second you’d have to be there.

Next he spoke about Baal Teshuvas- BTs. When he came to Israel 5 years ago he had room-mates from Denver- not the midwest- and yet they still didn’t know anything. Thought Yom Kippur was a party and when Hesh put on tefilling they thought he was shooting heroin. (and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t exaggerating this point for comedic effect.)

Would I really loved were the contrasts he made between Israel and the US. Few lines:

He spoke about seminaries/yeshivas here where boys are so excited to do something without getting caught by the dorm counselor- going to a movie (we were disguised so counselor didn’t see us) is as bad/cool as doing drugs for them.

He also ranted about the Chareidi Chumra Economy. I liked that one. About how your strawberries taste like soap, and your super modern if you use fresh broccoli.

Funny- spoke about a time where he incited a Shabbos riot. He was on a bike with long hair which he had back then and few kids started screaming. So he told them that there’s more cars further down and did a riot with them.

Spoke about the hats and kippas here. How people don’t stare at you here like they do in Borough Park, and if you wear a sruga here no one cares. Mentioned that there’s no suede here. Just knitted or velvet. (how about leather? don’t see much of that either- comment mine)

Spoke a lot about Lubavitchers. Has a calendar from Alaska which they send every year because he gave them like $20 once. spoke about the whole yechi thing, and why they’re so crazy and why it’s so great to be one of them.

Mentioned the kotel. The crowd - the stoners more specifically- wanted politics so spoke of Obama’s note in the kotel, and how you can never get a/t to fit in the cracks.

There’s way more- just can’t remember all of it right now.

The guy who started the fire- which he did as a protest to badatz for allowing MP4 players to be sold- is in prison, and they recently just arrested two more people. One man for attacking a lady who he claimed was committing adultery and another man who is one of the founders of the organization and organizing multiple acts of crime.

Next on the list was Nimrod in the Golan. I’d heard on and on about how beautiful it was so I assumed it looked like the videos I’ve seen of the Golan, all green with beautiful flowers and trees everywhere. Basically it felt more like we were camping out on a mountain top. It’s a beautiful view- with the Chermon (tallest mt. in Israel) next door. You look down onto a huge valley with an equally huge Druze village. It’s beautiful in a super wild way, meaning more yellow and brown than green, but tons of wild flowers and trees everywhere. Oh, and you can barely hear yourself in the open winds.

Both of these places we stayed in tzimmers- basically vacation houses that the few people who live in these places own and rent out- cool, because many times they’re religious people so they’ll provide you with shabbos candles etc. Oh, and if you go in winter- super super cool deals.

Next on the list is Nir Etzion- also stayed there over shabbos. This place is a real agricultural kibbutz, but their second main source of income is from guests. Pretty much like a hotel, just everyones rooms are outdoors, and the dining room has pretty decent food. Visiting the animals on shabbos was fun.

Next one I can remember is Moshav Yahel in the Arava. Also have outdoor hotel rooms and serve breakfast in their dining room. Basically it’s like two miles away from Eilat- in middle of total desert land- but we didn’t even go down to Eilat on our trip. Randomly one day decided to go for two nights and so we did. Super interesting insight about the weather there- it’s super hot but because it’s super dry you don’t sweat and it’s actually bearable. I never knew 100 degree weather could be bearable, but in the right climate it actually is.

This doesn’t even mention all the random times we went to the beach, to cool places in the forest, random whatevers. But when you live in a place where nothing is more than 3 hours away anything is possible. That also has to do with my spouse’s driving skills- I got back from Nir Etzion which is up North to Jerusalem in an hour and a half- one lady mentioned to me that I should have said Gomel and I don’t think Eilat ever took up more than three hours.

Oh, forgot to mention Eilat. Also got a cool deal winter season and went for four days to a super spacious hotel. Did the Imax thing and the Underwater Observatory. Cool tip- went shopping on the other side of Eilat- outside the vacation strip to the actual city- and did super-market shopping there. So we didn’t have to buy stuff from kiosks for vacationers.

Hair-cuts, wig setting, and make-up (although I most probably won’t be doing it professionally- feel I need way more experience for that- at least I can do it for myself.)

Stick Shift Driving- due to my husband who likes to brag that his 1984 Subaru drives better than most automatic cars and takes curves and off road driving way better.

Using a Mac- My husband’s family are all super loyal Mac users. In my husband’s words: “I belong the the religion of Macism where Steve Jobs is God and Bill Gates is the devil.” He seriously hates Bill Gates and even started a site Kill IE which is a reference to internet explorer being the most outdated web browser which apparently makes his job much harder as someone who builds web sites. Good news is I have my own iBook as a result.

Hebrew- I can actually even read articles now thanks to Ulpan. I’ll have to admit that because my mother’s Israeli I had a head start, but still I definitely wasn’t doing that before.

The Beatles and Bob Marly- once you get married you gotta also learn to like your spouse’s music. Since I was listening mainly to top 40 pop and R&B (because what else plays on the radio in the US) at least now I feel like a cultured person, albeit slightly outdated.

Aihud Banai, Shiri Maimon, Adiran, OrphanLand (mix of heavy metal and middle eastern Jewish- actually quite interesting.) and a whole slew of other Israeli singers also joined the list.

Cooking- I hate admitting this but my husband’s a way better cook than me and makes dinner all the time. I’m also thankful to his mother for that. I used to send pictures to my mother of all the food he made and wounded up hearing for a whole bunch of random people about what an amazing cook my husband was. Good news is I’m learning from him and I do take credit for a lot of the Israeli salads which he knows how to make from me- ironic because he grew up in an American household in Israel and I grew up in an Israeli householod in America.

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.

If that’s a reason to ban Shefa Shuk, it would logically follow that Aleph should also be banned. Aleph is partnered with two gerrer chassidim– the most violent chassidim– and is also owned by IDB which also owns IsraAir. IsraAir just happens to be Israel’s first airline to run on shabbos. That should be reason enough for Aleph to be banned.

But Aleph won’t be banned. And I’ll tell you exactly why. Askunim don’t do things leshem shamayim, it all comes down to politics. Aleph is the quote and quote chareidi supermarket which is great because you can practically buy wholesale there and get great prices. Shefa Shuk isn’t owned by any chareidim and in economic terms threatens the “chareidi owned” Aleph. This ban may be nothing more than an evil scam by aleph against shefa.

What I’m getting at is that in general people don’t need to go to Rabbis to ask them which color socks to wear (i think i stole that phrase from somewhere). Thank God we have the torah written by Hashem which says very smart things like the fact that having superstitions is assur. When a shailah really does exist– whether or not to play or go to a concert with separate seating is not a shailah in my opinion– people need to do their correct research and consult with the appropriate rabbi. Asking a gadol hador a personal question is an ill conceived choice, because they don’t know you. Ask a rabbi who knows the situation.

Following blindly is fatally dangerous. The horrific story which I will not even mention proved a intensely frightening point: A jew who follows blindly can be no different than a Nazi. That was the Nazis defense: we were just following orders. It’s scary to think what happens when we perceive people as God. They can very well become senile one day– after all they’re only human– tell people crazy things and then people who are brainwashed — because the Israeli chareidi system does in fact brainwash– will go ahead and kill themselves if that’s what they’re told.

Frightening thought indeed.