Aliyah Diary 12: October Sun and Understanding the Jew

by tostien · October 25, 2024

Article Outline:

Introduction
Jews Feel They are Jews Here
The Israeli Mentality
Preparing for Succos
Working American Hours from Israel … during Yom Tovim
Other fun facts:
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Introduction

If you have one month to travel to Israel, it should be in October. The weather here is perfect. Sunny. Low in the 60s at night. High in the 80s during the day. Low humidity. It’s beautiful – when America gets depressing with short days, greyer days, and colder days Israel’s blue skies, warm water, and scenery are at their best.

It is a dream to live a forty minute drive to the Har HaBayis (Temple Mount), a forty minute drive to beautiful Mediterranean beaches, and a forty minute drive to something else I have to discover and should have thought through before starting this sentence. ( EDIT WHILE ADDING PICTURES TO THE ARTICLE: I found the picture below. However, it was about an hour to the desert oasis hike so a little further than the paragraph said – the next diary entry will be about the trips: )

We moved to Israel right before three three day yom tovim … not going to lie … it was certainly an enticing reason to do so. This is when Rosh HaShana, Succos (or Sukkot … sticking with the Ashkenazi pronunciation for now because it is what I am comfortable with), and Simchas Torah all abut up against Shabbos making three out of four weeks in a row holidays from Wednesday night until Saturday night. In Israel, Succos and Simchas Torah are only one day so there’s a “regular” day between each and Shabbos. . . . and the weather is beautiful.

This year the holidays are very late in the year (5785 / 2024) because we’ve added a leap month to keep things in sync, pushing the calendar forward 20-something days compared to the previous solar year, while it then falls back 11 days until the next leap year which comes every 7 out of 19 years in a mathematically beautifully prime cycle.

There’s something “lighter” about the holidays here. I’ve been here during yeshiva, though I always kept two days as I didn’t actually live in the land. That’s even heavier because everyone else is out traveling while you need a shower. In America, Rosh Hashana in shul takes about 6 hours in the morning … on Yom Kippur, it’s about 11 hours for the entire day with a 45 minute break. In Israel, somehow they say the same exact things, sing the same exact songs (or close to them) and yet, it’s 4.5 hours for Rosh HaShana and you feel more excilerated under bright blue skies and a “this just feels right” atmosphere.

As I write this, the day after the last holiday ended, it’s kind of like … wait … where did they all go so fast? Better to want more than to be dreading that last day where you’re sitting in the sukkah, it’s cold, and you know you’re not really supposed to be sitting there anyway … it’s not actually Succos, yet … I think I learned the real reason for it. First, we need the extra days to really divorce from the secular world around us and encapsulate into the attachment to G_d through the holidays and second – the Rabbis wanted us back in Israel where everything is proper. The holidays are at the proper time and you don’t have to search for religion or spend an extra day getting into it. In Israel, popular secular restaurants have Sukkahs, like this one:

Find that in America! Basically, in America the default is that it isn’t kosher and you have to look for what is. In Israel, the default is that it is kosher and you have to look for what isn’t. Major supermarket chains here carry only kosher food – except this one:

“Tuv Tam” is advertising that it is “open also on Shabbos”. It is a supermarket catering to Russians and is the exception. The point of exception is the advertising point, just like a dog catcher might advertise that he also specializes in cats . . . though I’m told if you need to buy something right before Shabbos you can go there and find 50%+ of the store is kosher food.

Jews Feel They are Jews Here

Around here, even secular Jews feel they are Jewish. Walter Matthau once said that his son asked him if he was fasting on Yom Kippur and he said he didn’t know when Yom Kippur was. In Israel, that’s impossible. Even the secular Jews don’t drive on Yom Kippur! It’s the day of the bikes when the roads aren’t closed by law – they are closed by universal convention and secular Jews ride their bikes on highways because … there are no cars. My secular Hebrew teacher knows she’s descended from a great Rabbi and when I said we were related through Rashi and asked if she knew who that was … she said, of course! I grew up secular and never heard of Rashi, or for that matter, the holiday of Shavous. I wanted to know what it was about and ended up learning Torah regularly from Shavous in the year 2000 onwards. An Israel would see the cheesecake and close the gym closes early for the holiday.

In short, in Israel, a Jew can be himself. We don’t need to explain why we’re not in the office today, leaving early tomorrow, wearing strings from our pants, or shaving our horns. As my bald spot grows, so does my yarmulke and you can’t even tell it’s starting to “comb over”. That’s another thing – sorry – tangent here: you tell an American barber to make the hair on the top, where it’s receding, “longer” and he laughs at the joke. Here, they literally just don’t cut those hairs.

In Israel, the school calendars are also the same, whether secular or religious. That’s a kind of unity amongst Jews that is beautiful … and then … we specifically have Yeshiva Week break in the United States so we can go on vacation when the goyim are in school! Here, we all have off at the same time, though interestingly, the lines here aren’t anything like they are during Yeshiva week at kosher establishments in Orlando, Fl or the local kids ball jumping maze climbing thing … you know those places?

The Israeli Mentality

It is sooo tranquil here. The World Economic Forum puts Israel as the 4th happiest country in the world. I’ve seen Israel listed 6th in other places with descriptions of why other countries are up there – always Finland, Sweden, Norway and then … the website equivalent of a blank stare as to why Israel is there. (Personally, I’m all for socialism after working in America for 20 years and then dropping the 1/3 of my expenses on the Israeli taxpayer for the nearly free schooling and healthcare that socialism provides.)

Then, you know, there’s that thing where terrorists are always attacking and they got powerful enough to control governments and quasi-governments. This is a fictional, yet realistic conversation between an American Jew and an Israeli Jew:

American: “I support you, though I’m staying in America where it’s safe.”
Israeli: “Safe? You feel safe in America? How?”
American: “Huh? The police protect us here.”
Israeli: “Yeah, they have to because of so much anti-semitism and one day they may not.”
American: “So I should come there where there’s missiles?”
Israeli: “Yes, here we can protect ourselves!”
American: “You shouldn’t have to.”
Israeli: “I don’t understand you. You’re a Jew. This is your fight too. You should be here with us sharing the burden of what it means to be a Jew.”
American: “I keep Torah and mitzvos.”
Israeli: “You do mitzvos for G_d, yes. You do mitzvos for yourself, yes. Can you directly take action that serves the Jewish people?”
American: “With money …”
Israeli: “We do kapporos with chickens here. No watered down Judaism.”

Preparing for Succos

So going into Succos, I bought my arba minim at a place that looks like this:

“Do you want a Chinuch set” … a barely kosher set for a child … “no, I want an basic adult set”. Okay, regular sets are 150 shekels.

Some things in Israel are 3.7x the price as America.
Some things in America are 3.7x the price as Israel.

For example, see a gas price in shekels? Convert it to dollars and that’s about what it actually costs.
See a lulov and esrog price in dollars in America? That’s about what it costs in shekels in Israel … and it’s much better quality:

Above is a “basic” hadas … that translates to something in English. There are three leaves at each level that are supposed to lineup. When I was last in Israel for Succos … 20-something years ago, my Rav told me the set I had where the leaves didn’t line up were “barely kosher” and he bought me another set, which he could do while I had a “3 day yom tov”. In America, the “barely kosher” sets are the norm. Here, even a basic set is what we consider “mehudar” – or extra special – in America. I’m sure there’s a parable in that somewhere.

Sukkahs cost about 1/4th the price here:

This is my new sukkah with telescoping poles, measured in meters. Metric wins the day here – no mistakes made! Three meter poles and boards all around. Being able to sit on your own front porch, in your own sukkah, with 72 degree sunny weather in the mostly shade of the schach, feet up . . . wishing the ferral cat would stop groking at your food . . . it’s living the dream.

One more thing – wine is sold everywhere:

^ that’s literally a candy store. On the left the sign says, “all sweet …” something. On the right are shelves of wine and hard alcohol behind a counter with Mike and Ike’s and protein powder. It is amazing what never having gone through Prohibition will do to your country. Protestants women decided to be all progressive after WWI and decided funny things like men shouldn’t drink alcohol at polls after women get the vote.

When alcohol did come back, it was no longer allowed at voting booths and candy stores, precisely the places where kids don’t belong. (Bet you thought I was going to make a joke about women voting – nah, they are too much of a voting block to offend.)

Working American Hours from Israel … during Yom Tovim

Asked my Rav here for a psak … that is, to tell me what exactly I can and can’t do with American work while I’m Israel. e.g. the holidays ends in Israel at about 12pm on Thursday, America time. However, in America it continues until … Saturday night. So … what do you do? The Rav said to work based on where I am. Doing business with non-Jews when it isn’t my holiday, even if they are in America, is fine.

Okay – so I had voicemails from Hung Chen and Brian Edelman (making up the names). I called back only the non-Jew … turns out “Chen” is an Israeli name pronounced CH-ayn … like … “grace” and he’s Jewish. Not actually, though that did happen to me one time. This Chen was Chinese, silly … and I let slip out that I was in Israel because I felt so strange talking to him when any other religious Jewish lawyer that day wouldn’t have answered the phone – and it’s not like there’s a shortage of those. Chinese and Arabs, especially, seek us out. An Arab might lob a Molotov at my second cousin in Israel, yet in America he’ll ask me to file a patent for it.

Other fun facts:

In the United States, Dora the Explorer teaches kids Spanish.
In Russia, Dora the Explorer teaches kids English.
In Mexico, Dora the Explorer says things like, “let’s go quickly! Quickly!” … because she just repeats the word rather than teaches a foreign language.

Adding cutsey endings to words is also built into Hebrew. “Smoke your marijuanica” and “drink your gin and tonika” actually seeks on point:

That’s for a Japanese restaurant. Other words you may see … “CHad p-ami” <– one time, e.g. one time use pans. “Chatuli” <— my cat, “haCli Sheli…” <— my tool, etc, etc.

Then there’s this not surprising message on a local Whatsapp chat: