Aliyah Diary 10: Getting Driver’s License

Previous diary entries:

Part 1: Preparation for departure over here.
Part 2: First Few Days
Part 3: Moving In
Part 4: First Day of School
Part 5: Two Weeks In . . .
Part 6: Getting Comfortable
Part 7: Ready for Guests and Yom Tov
Part 8: Visiting Jerusalem – Kotel and Concert
Part 9: Nasrallahed All over the Floor

Cat Update

A new cat has appeared – Apache. He is about the size of two hands held together in a fist:

He attacks yellow hoses among other things – very playful. We don’t touch him (or stray cats in general) and we’re not sure how healthy he is.

Kfar Rut Farms

Modiin is a major city – built up with many tall apartment buildings. Just on the other side of the highway is Kfar Rut … occasionally I drive into other yishuvim (towns) to see what’s there … there are miles and miles of road with open fields all around … and this is surrounded by cities. There are fruit stands with freshly picked fruit (a pineapple was almost $20!), bee honey, horseback riding – very unexpected next to an urban area and between residential neighborhoods:

The speed measuring device has a nice smiley face when you’re below the speed limit:

Urban Life

While on the topic, when traffic lights turn green around here they give you a chance to start pressing the gas having no need to “floor it” to get started:

Road design here is very desirable. There are so many fewer road sides than in the United States and the roads are made to keep you at a safe speed with (unlabeled) speed bumps, roundabouts, and greenery – the driving is just … pleasant. Drivers here know how to navigate a “zipper merge” and here’s an example of good urban planning:

There’s a wide sidewalk next to a dedicated bike path and parking … with a single lane for cars so a certain speed limit is “automatically” maintained rather than a speed trap. In the median is another park area / walkway and some cafes … and the same on the other side of the road. Up the street were some protestors will bull horns where screaming at a police station about the hostages. Not sure what a police station can do about it. Israelis like to protest like college students in America – protest at walls.

Food Stores

Rather than mass production type of … everyone bought the same thing from Costco, stores are more specialized here and often unique – the meat store:

The candy store with beer-branded malt drinks – alcohol is sold in many places here (not in the candy store) and I see a lot more people smoking here, though not that many:

Yesterday I was at a restaurant in the outdoor seating area and someone started smoking at the next table … it’s been so long since I’ve seen that. Even outdoors it’s not allowed at a restaurant in the United States. Also … it’s nicotine here whereas in America it’s marijuana that I smelt all over. (Smelled? Hard to remember two languages.)

Food here has much less sugar than the United States – that’s the way it is in most of the world. In the United States, doctors and the government sold us biased studies saying that fat was evil so Americans started putting sugar into everything. There’s about 30g of sugar in regular yogurt in the United States – here, even the chocolate milk is healthy and the banana milk is great for making sure no one else drinks my stuff:

Here’s the shul in the supermarket – which is another interesting thing – except for the Russian supermarket (which still has lots of kosher products), the supermarkets here are 100% kosher:

Around Our Neighborhood

Here’s our park about 100 yards from our house, or as it’s called, “desha haGadol” – big field. There’s actual grass and some playground-like things:

The sign lists the silent hours – including from 2pm to 4pm during the day! Those are rest hours though less so in modern times. Another interesting fact: in Hebrew times are written in 24 hour notation and stated orally in 12 hour format.

Up the hill a little is our “garbage pit”:

The trashcans outside our house are only for garbage in big plastic bags. For other items we walk to the garbage pit – there are many of them around the yishuv – and throw in anything … cat litter, boxes, Russian nasrallah, whatever. There doesn’t seem to be a limit. In the United States anything with 10 cents of metal would be taken by people driving by for scrap and some things wouldn’t be taken for weeks or required hiding in something else (so I’ve heard) and here … just dump in the pile and done. Keeps the neighborhood much cleaner since it’s not in front of houses waiting for pickup.

Passports and Driver’s Licenses

You don’t get an Israeli passport for one year after you immigrate … apparently people were abusing it by getting the passport, their money, and leaving. They give you some sort of document that lets you come in and you still have your foreign passport for other countries.

My driver’s license in America is expiring and they wouldn’t mail my new one because my mail in the United States forwards to another address. At the DMV it was very difficult to change my address … online it was easy to change my address to my office and they mailed it there. However, I wanted to get my Israeli driver’s license now anyway – you have a year – to get it done, I started the process, and apparently it lowers my car insurance.

I could not get the website to give me an appointment …. the nefesh b’nefesh representative was able to do it, somehow, getting me an appointment in Yerushalyim. This wasn’t tourist Yerushalim … this is a street with car dealerships and a large government office. I went in … with very limited security … and “took a number”. There are big screens telling you when your number is called and which window to go to. This is exactly like the DMV in the United States! When called, I gave the lady my teudat olah (document I got when entering the country saying that I’m an immigrant), current New Jersey driver’s license, and old New Jersey driver’s license. You have to show you’ve been driving for five years to get an automatic transfer of your license. Twenty minutes later, she called me back and gave me this temporary driver’s license:

I redacted my personal information – then you have to pay for it … not at the DMV. You have to go to the post office, use your phone, go to some stand somewhere, or go on their website:

It was 568 shekels to get the driver’s license – about $155!

One nice thing about getting the driver’s license is that I “felt naked” – that I had no paperwork with me. It’s all online – the reservation, the photograph taken of me (at a separate location before …), and so on. It seems they used to use paper forms, like they still do in the United States:

Look how empty the place with the forms is … and the colloquial, “don’t forget your Stuff here”.

I didn’t get a great picture of the DMV though you can see it is squeaky clean, spacious, and what looks like, foreign workers from Thailand or Sri Lanka or somewhere waiting, and both Arabs and Jews at the windows:

Another fun fact: if you want to practice Hebrew, speak to Arabs. Israeli Jews tend to know English so they respond in English. Israeli Arabs tend to know Arabic and Hebrew so they don’t respond to you in English and you get to practice your Hebrew. Irony.

Speaking of Speaking Hebrew to Arabs

I was in “Home Center” in Jerusalem and managed to get in and out without a word of English. I bought / looked for an extension cord, a clock, and a laundry basket … well, with the aid of Google Translate for “laundry basket”. I’m proud of myself! I’m sure this sounds like nothing to many people though this is the slow progress I see while living here.

Make sure to overemphasize the last syllable of words here … then no matter what you say, they understand you.

Also: this isn’t a third world country. You can find everything here. Twenty years ago when I was here, it was very different. Just trying to find blank CDs for burning was very difficult. (It’s more difficult now …) Even in terms of choice, there’s plenty of it for just about anything. I even found Ticket to Ride in Hebrew … in a store that sells only board games!

Leaky Shower Stalls

In Israel the common shower design is one where all walls can rotate to open the shower. One of mine has an acute crossbeam to keep a side from moving though that’s the exception:

This leads to water outside the shower – when you’re waiting for the water to get hot the water is bouncing off the doors/walls and escaping. When taking a shower, water can also leak. My contractor in the United States refused to install sliding doors on my tub because they leak. Here, leaking is a feature, not a bug. (Side point: there are few bugs around here … and no squirrels! – I have seen a fox and lizards though.) The floors are identical in and out of the shower and sloped into the shower stall so it works … and the water usually dries quickly.

I also learned about the water bill. Israel allots you a certain amount of water per person living in your house with the minimum allotment being for two people. If you go over your allotment, which is fine, you are then charged a higher rate. The water, in my opinion, is very good here and very clean. It’s mostly desalinated water now and Israel no longer has a water shortage.

Expensive Health Insurance

For an extra $100 a month for the family or something negligible by American standards, you can go to a gym twice a month for about $7 and two more times a month for about $14. It’s no Planet Fitness pricing though still very inexpensive. You can also get a massage, acupuncture, and some other things with a doctor’s note.

New Apps on My Phone

I use a minimal interface on my phone – it’s just a list of the main apps I use; swipe right for a full list of apps; swipe left for hidden notifications. I need to get around to re-configuring because I use so many more apps now – and such a list should be shared with new olim:

• Google voice for American number
• Artscroll for Gemora with chavrusa via video now
• Bit for person to person transactions
• Internet mesh router app
• Find a minyan
• Gett – Israeli taxis (like Uber and Lyft)
• Home Front Command for emergency warnings
• My Profit for the gym
• Paybox for person to person transactions
• Some app to turn on Shabbos mode on my refrigerator
• Tailscale to tunnel through my internet connection in my U.S. Office
• Tzofar for emergency warnings
• Bank app
• Health insurance app

Neighbor from Yemen

Lots of interesting people are to be met here – it’s not like everyone is a white Ashkenazi guy whose family came from Poland (or maybe a country neighboring Poland). In Yemen Jews were barred from most professions, had to walk only on the left side of the street, could ride only donkeys and not horses, and couldn’t carry a sabre the way all the Yemenese did.

In 1948 the Jews thought moschaich had arrived (the messiah). The Yemen government didn’t let the Jews leave until 1954 … and then, only taking a single suitcase per person. My neighbors parents traveled for days by donkey and on foot through desert until they made it to a boat to Israel. In Israel the lived in tents and his father got a job planting seeds. When he drives by the Jerusalem forest he says, “I planted that!”

These same Yemenese people are the ones shooting rockets towards Israel. It’s one thing to think Jews can live safely in the United States and another when your choices are to be in Yemen or Israel. Also, the reason so many Jews immigrated to Israel in the 1920s is because the United States closed their borders to Jews. The anti-semitism is what made Israel what it is today.

Part 11: Packages.