Final Post

This blog has officially reached it's end. I will leave it up and you are free to browse the contents that I have posted for the past year and a half or so. But this was meant to be my Chutz L'Aretz blog. I know! I am simply moving domain names, so feel free to update and RSS readers you might have with the new address http://israelfix.blogspot.com/
You can access the new site by clicking here.
Shalom from Israel!

The Week

So lot’s of fun stuff this week (oh, that was a lie). On Tuesday I headed to Ramat Beit Shemesh to pick up the (loud trumpet music) The Israeli Checks and ATM Card!
They only had the checks, the ATM card will arrive NEXT week.
Besides this unexpected turn of events it gave me a chance to catch up with some people in RBS who I hadn’t seen in a while.
On to Wednesday.
On Wednesday I took my first trip ever to Kever Rochel (Rachel’s Tomb). From there I went to Maaleh Adumim to hear Rabbi Pinchas Winston speak about the Geula (redemption). Due to my desire to keep these writings as neutral as possible, I will not be detailing what he said. But take my word for it very interesting stuff.
I then spent the night at the home of a family who make Aliyah from Baltimore, the Dressler’s.
This morning, I went to Jerusalem to make my first (and probably last for a while) big purchase, the bike. I know have a set of wheels, and I must say that it was quite a feeling to be able to get around Jerusalem, at 10 mph rather than the usual 3.
So I went to the Old City and davened at the Kotel.
I’m heading to Moshav Matityahu for Shabbos and Tish B’av.
Hopefully some exciting 10mph stories next week.

Ketubot, Rabbi's and Shnekel's (and Pizza)

Well today I had the privilege of getting my first experience with the Rabbanut. I had some friends who got married last month in America, but the Rabbaut did not recognize their Ketuba, so they had to go in front of these Rabbi’s to “prove” that they were married. To do that they had to have two “aidem” (witnesses) to the fact that they were married, so my friend and I went to the Rabbanut building in central Jerusalem this morning.
An interesting fact, the Rabbanut building is the same building that used to house the Knesset. It’s right off of King George street.
I had been waiting for my first experience with some kind of hellish Israeli bureaucracy, and luckily my first experience was not directed at me.
My friend and I actually arrived before our friend and his wife, we hadn’t seen each other for a while so we had a good chance to schmooze. When they finally did arrive they started the process of whatever it was that they do behind that door.
Now the door was very interesting. Pretty much at all times the door remains locked, and you are not able to knock on it because there is a sheet of cloth that hangs suspended between the actual door and the hallway where they make us all wait for them.
The first thing they did was confiscate our Tudat Zehut’s, I’m not sure exactly why they did that. They then took the couple into the room by themselves to question them. I later found out that they wanted to make sure that our answers matched whatever they had said.
My friend and I each went in separately, my friend went first. I was wondering what kind of questions they would ask me. I assumed it would do something related to the wedding , “was the Ketuba written the correct way?” “Who was the Rabbi who wrote it…” etc.
But to my surprise, when it was actually my turn to be interrogated, they were asking me questions relating to the religious level of the my friend.
“Does he drive on Shabbat?”
“How sure are you of that?”
“How long have you known him?”
Then the actual questions of sustenance.
“You were at this supposed wedding?”
“What was the name of the Rabbi who signed the Ketuba?”
That last one I answered “Rabbi Goldberger,” and for good measure (as all of them were very Charadi looking) “and he wears a very big Striemel.” They seemed very impressed by that.
Of course the problem came when they stared asking me questions about my friends wife, and more specifically when they asked if I knew here parents. I didn’t and the pretty much told us that she was not Jewish, because we had not proof that she was Jewish, therefore they could not give them an Israeli marriage license.
Let’s just say the emotional situation in the room starting moving VERY quickly.
So we went out wondering what we were going to do when the couple remembered that she has a relative who lives in Geula (the place-not the time) who knew her and her parents. They were able to contact him, and he showed up about a half an hour later, dressed in his kaputa and hat, and looking very Chareidi.
Let’s just say that the next step went very quickly and they were accepted as a married couple. (I think there was some Yiddish involved).
When the Rabbi came out to tell them what their decision had been, there was a big sigh of relief (he’s in the army and it’s not that easy for him to get out). The Rabbi told them the good news and their instructions for getting the documentation that they needed.
As he turned to leave he turned around, smiled, and said to the two fo them “Mazel Tov.”
The last step was they actually had to go downstairs and pick up the physical document. While we were waiting for them, my friend (the single one) went to get a soda and asked if the machine too a “Shnekel.”
“What’s a ‘Shnekel?” I asked.
That was apparently his term for the new 2 shekel coin. I wonder why the name never caught on…
From there all four of hung out for a few hours. This was really the first chance that I had to hang out with friends since getting here.
We had lunch on Ben Yehuda (pizza) and then I went with them to Misrad Hapanim so that she could (finally) get her last name to be same as her husbands.
From there we parted ways and I went to pick up some things I needed. But I must say all in all, it was a very interesting day…

Neve Daniel

On Friday headed out to Neve Daniel to spend Shabbos with the Eastman’s. I’m not exactly sure why everyone call it Neve Daniel, all of the signs I saw said “Newe Daniel,” and the Hebrew had 2 vavs which usually implies a “w” sound.
I first traveled into Jerusalem to meet up with the Eastman boys before heading to the Central Bus Station (commonly referred to as “The Tachana”) and was approached be a cab driver trying to offer me his service. I’d tried to tell him that I would rather walk, and he continued to insist that he would drive me. So I asked “will you take me for free?” He looked a little surprised and I realized that he had completely misread that situation (think that I was a “rich American”).
“Ani Oleh Chadash” (“I’m a new immigrant”).
He looked at me, “From America?”
“Ken-Yes.”
“Why would you come here?”
So I said it straight to him, “It’s better here.”
I think I gave him something to think about over the weekend
So I meet up with the Eastman boys and we took the bus to Gush Etzion. Neve Daniel is on the highest mountain in the Gush Etzion region and from the top you really have a commanding view of the area. To the west we could see Beitar, and on the other side of the Efrat, and apparently on clear days you can see as far as the Mediterranean Sea.
I introduced myself to Jeremy Gimpel of Shabbos, who lives on the block next to the Eastman’s, as well as to Lawrence ben-David, husband of Laura ben-David who wrote the Aliyah book “Moving Up.”
The synagogue in Neve Daniel is quite impressive, they know how to give it its due prominence (pictures’ on the blog israelfix.blogspot.com). I’m still not sure exactly what the structure on top was (I heard, water fountain, UFO…) but it was an impressive structure.
One interesting thing I learned this week regarding the security fence that Israel is currently building is that apparently the Prophets actually write about the area that Jerusalem will cover during the time of the Third Temple. During that time all Jews will have to travel to Jerusalem, and they all have to be in the walls of the city.
The truth is that today, as large as Jerusalem has become, there still is not enough room for all of the world’s Jews.
Interestingly enough apparently the way that the security fence is being built in relation to the Eastern part of Yerushalayim, the fence is going almost exactly on the border that was prophesied would be the border’s of Greater Jerusalem 2500 years ago.
Just an interesting tidbit I picked up over the weekend.
Oh, and he pictures are (finally) up. Let me know if you have any trouble with the links.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9244&l=5a35b&id=299900444
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9245&l=5dc7e&id=299900444
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9246&l=5330e&id=299900444
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9247&l=0d9cc&id=299900444
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9248&l=fbb5b&id=299900444

Here's the picture of the Shul:

Alternative dimensions and Beit El

I am thoroughly convinced that buses in this country exist outside of the dimension the rest of the world exists in. I don’t understand how it is possible for them to squeeze into these incredibly narrow spaces, spaces that I would feel uncomfortable going through on my bike. (The other day I was on a bus that was passing another bus in an extremely narrow road, and I swear that at some point the two buses intersected and were intersecting over one another-something that, as far as I know, is impossible!)
And even more so then the extremely narrow spaces are the speeds that they send these enormous machines through the street at. Yet they always manage to stop on a dime, and navigate through cars, other buses, and pedestrians.
Besides that today I had a great “only in Israel story.” I was on the bus from Beit Shemesh to Bene Brak, and at one of the stops in Beit Shemesh a man came speeding towards the bus on his bike, with his small son in a carrier on his back. The man pulled in front of the bus and asked if the bus would wait for him so he could run his son into his house (which was right in front of the bus stop). The bus driver asked if anyone minded, and no one had a problem with it. The man took 2 minutes running inside and then running back out, throwing his bike in the bottom of the bus and finally climbed onto the bus.
At the next stop we had a guy come onto the bus wearing his tallis and tifilin. Only in the country!
My trip for the day (after I went to Bene Brak to drop off my stuff-and by “Bene Brak,” I mean “Givat Shmuel” were I’m staying) was to Beit El to visit the Arutz Sheva studio.
I got to the bus station and was waiting for the 2pm bus when Walter Bingham, one of the radio hosts, sat down right next to me.
Just so you know who this is, Mr. Bingham made Aliyah 4 years ago from Britain. He is well into his 80’s and actually fought for the British during the 2nd World War.
So he gave me a little tour as we were driving through the Binyamin region of Israel. On the way he pointed out a few Jewish towns, like Kochav Yaakov, as well as Ramallah, which we could see in the distance.
The first person that I met in the studio was Ben Bresky, cool guy who does a lot of the audio editing and mixing for the studio as well as hosting a music show once a week on Sunday.
While I was there I actually recorded a commercial for the station, I send it out when it gets played.
After schmoozing for about and hour I headed across the street to the Yeshiva there to do some learning (with all of this running around I’m a little behind in the Daf). I had a great seder, and the yeshiva was quite impressive, about 200 boys, I’d say ages 14-18 all doing their afternoon seder in the Land of Israel. This is Judaism, Torah in the Land of Israel, you can’t get any better then that.
I went back to the studio a little while later to say hi to Goel Jasper and Dovid Gancher who were there to do the Aliyah show. They were interviewing the translator of the Eim Habanim Semeicha, Rabbi Moshe Lichtman (who I believe lives in Beit Shemesh).
I then when back to Jerusalem and treated myself to my favorite schwarama resteraunt, and had a Chetzi Chetzi.
Now for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a Schwarama, but with strips of Schnitzel in it. I don’t want to imagine how good/bad it is for you, but it was sooo good.
Anyways, probably won’t be able to post again before Shabbos, which I will be spending in Neve Daniel with the Eastman’s.
Have a great Shabbos!

Pizza, Government Offices, and Cell Phones

Whew! A lot has happened in the past few days. The last time I posted I had gotten my name changed at Misrad Hapanim to the RIGHT name and had opened my bank account.
That was on Sunday. After I had posted that I went and got my cell phone (I’ll post the number at the end), and had a great experience at the Orange store. I understand that the workers there work on commission but this guy who I had was phenomenal. He spoke English, and was very upbeat and fun. After we had the phone set up he gave me first ringtone, a clip from Jeff Dunham’s skit of Achmed the Dead Terrorist, “SILENCE!! I -.”
Phone’s work differently here then they do in the States. As a tech guy I keep with all of the changing technologies and different services that are offered in different countries. In America, you are usually given a phone by the phone company (usually it’s free, but sometimes you pay a subsidized price) and then you pay a monthly fee for a set amount of minutes which either are not all used up at the end of the month, or if you use more then your quota of minutes you have to pay more if you go over. There are other perks in America, like free night s and weekends.
In you pay for your phone (as far as I know unsubsidized) but they you pay pennies for the phone service, and you only pay for the minutes you talk.
I’m not saying one way is better than the other, just the differences between the two.

Anyways, Sunday has for sure been my most successful day so far. Getting 3 things done in one day is apparently quite an accomplishment in this country.

I was speaking with someone at the Nefesh B’ Nefesh office when I was there on Sunday (not an NBN staff-someone else I knew), and he pointed out to me that what I’m doing is like registering for college. You have to run around going to from office to office for a few week’s… and then the REAL work begins!

Alright, so yesterday I went to Yerushalyim to take core of my health insurance at Bituah Leumi. I walked in thinking “here we go, a government office in Jerusalem.” I was expecting to have a 4 hour wait before I was able to get anything done.

To my surprise I was only there for about 40 minutes. I filled out my forms, and they said everything should be taken care of by next week. I was very surprised that it had gone that smoothly. And here I was at 10:30 in the morning with a few hours of free time on my hands. So what does any good Jew do when they have free time? Usually one of three things:
1. Eat
2. Socialize
3. Learn.

I did all three

I stopped by a pizza shop and had some early lunch, while listening to a shiur on my iPod. About halfway through my meal, one of my Rabbaim Rav Slifkin (the “Zoo Rabbi”) walked into the shop. He had just returned from a trip to Africa, and hadn’t know about my Aliyah. So we sat and schmoozed for about a half an hour.

Later in the day I met up with uncle to have lunch (again!...second lunch), and we schmoozed for a few hours. I then went back to Benei Brak/Givat Shmuel and picked up some stuff so I could be in Ramat Beit Shemesh in the morning to take care of bank stuff.

Teudat Zehut and other intersting things

Finally I got something done! Yesterday I went to the NBN office and picked up my Teudat Zehut without an issue. They sent someone to get it for me in Ashdod and it was waiting for me at their office in Jerusalem when I arrived.
An interesting side note, it's getting to the point now that I'm (and I'm sure other people as well) are getting very jumpy around tractors. I passed a group of Arabs working on the new subway system and one of them was in the tractor starting it up and facing right at me.
There wasn't an issue, I walked right passed, but it's just another thing to keep in mind when you're out and about. The only way to go about this is to live you're life as normally as possible and don't give into the fear. The terrorists want us to live our lives in fear and the best way to fight that is to live you're life as normally and as freely as possible.
From the NBN office I went to Maaleh Adumim to see the Adler's. I met up with the Schamroths there and we all went out to Malcha Mall for dinner (Kosher Burger King-I'll start posting pictures eventually).
Burger King was interesting, in America you have inter-transliterated siddurim, where they have the Hebrew transliterated into English. Here it's the other way around. I was staring at their menu trying to figure out what it was saying (Davel Vooper?) The Double Whooper was very good.
The one issue I had that I knew I was going to have to deal with when I got here was getting my name changed so that it included both of my middle names. I was already and Israeli citizen so when I made Aliyah I had to come with my Israeli passport. So I was back and forth to the embassy in Washington a few times between December and March. When I received my Israeli passport I opened it to discover that they had left out my 2nd middle name. My middle name is "Israel" -Yisrael, someone there must have thought that I had put nationality in the wrong box so they returned my passport without the correct name.
When I told them they just told me to go to Misrad Hapanim here and get it changed, because I would have had to wait another few months if I had gotten it done in America (they mail everything to Israel) and I needed the passport in order start being processed for Aliyah.
The truth is it was the smoothest thing that I've done so far. Thank you to Yehudis for driving me around to all of these places in Beit Shemesh to take care of my documentation-it is saving me a lot of time.
I walked into the Misrad Hapanim where the security guard-that's right, the security guard-helped me fill out all of my forms to have my name changed.
They were incredibly helpful and they changed my passport and Teudat Zehut for me right on the spot. It only took about 20 minutes.
From there we went back to Ramat Beit Shemesh where I opened my bank account-another thing that went relativly smoothly. I know when I get my first bank statement all hell will break loose-but that will be for another post.
So hopefully by the end of today (if everything goes as planned) I'll be able to check 3 things off my list:
1. Name change
2. Bank Account
3. and cell phone

We should be heading out soon to go pick up the phone. Hopefully that will also be a successful trip.
I'll update the insurance situation on the next post. NBN is going to try to help me with this.

Shabbos and more fun with Bituach Leumi!

So Friday, I got up at around 7am to go to Shacharit. Then I hung around Givat Shmuel for the morning doing some work on the computer, and getting to know my 2 other roommates, one who's Israeli, the other who's a law student in Chicago and was in Israel for the summer as an intern.
I got the bus to Ramat Beit Shemesh at around noon. It felt so good to be be back in RBS for Shabbos, where I spent Shabbos with my families good friends, the Schamroths.
Shabbos was awesome, you can't really compare Shabbos in Israel to Shabbos in America. Particularly when you spend it in an almost entirely religious community, and every single other person in the entire community is doing the exact same thing that you are. I remember seeing a list of "what we like about Israel" and one of the things on the list was "Shabbos, really feels like Shabbos."

I walked down to Ramat Shilo, where I will be moving to sometime next month, for Mincha and Shalosh Seudos, and ran into Dovid Gancher from the Aliyah show on Arutz Sheva. Nice guy, and he's a head hunter, and good person to know.
I had Shalosh Seudos with my Rosh Yeshiva, and had a very nice close to Shabbos with maariv in Ramat Shilo.

Today, more fun! I went down to open up my bank account at bank #1 and found that it was closed in Sunday. I went to bank #2 and found that they could do anything because of the situation with my tudat zehut. They can open up a bank account with me before my tudat zehut is issued, and they can open it up after I have my tudat zehut, but they can't open up the account after it has been issued but before I have it. I should be getting my tuday zehut today and will be able to open up the account tomorrow (hopefully will also be able to get my phone after that). Thanks to Yehudis for driving me around everywhere.
Another interesting story with my tudat zehut (which I'm hoping to pick up today from the NBN office), I got a call from Nefesh B' Nefesh saying that somehow my Tudat Zehut never made it from Ashdod to their office in Jerusalem! Would I mind if I could wait a day and pick it up tomorrow.
NO! I want my tudat zehut today because there are too many things I need to do that I can't do without it! I need the Tudat Zehut to open a bank account, and I need to open a bank account before I can get my phone!
Not to knock NBN they've been incredibly helpful throughout all of this, but if I'm going to be dealing with American's I have a right to act like an American!
I also went on trip #2 to Bituach Leumi (health insurance) today. The guy there was in credibly helpful but if I went through his office it would take close to month before I was insured (arrg, if only I'd remembered to go to Bituach Leumi at the AIRPORT!). He recommended that I go to the one in Jerusalem, I'll have a longer wait at the office, but I'll get insured faster.

So hopefully the next time I write I'll have my Tudat Zehut, and I might have opened my bank account and even gotten a phone. But I'm looking up! Because I know that it'll take a while but once everything is done all I'll have left are some great stories to tell.

To Yerushalayim

So yesterday was my first trip into Yerushalayim (Jerusalem). It was weird, it felt like I’d never left. There were some changes, the biggest one being the new bridge that they’ve installed right at the entrance of the city, but I walked past my favorite shawarma shop, and the Tachana (bus station) was as crazy as ever.
I decided to walk to the Old City instead of taking a bus, so I could take stop by some places along the way. One of which was the site of the bulldozer terror attack a few week’s ago.
My first stop was Mechane Yehuda (“The Shuk”) where I picked some bourekas (one thing I forgot about this country is how good the baked goods are). I then stopped by the Judaica Book Centre to take a look at what they had and to say hi to the owner.
From there I pretty much went straight to the Old City, I tore Kria right at the top of the stairs that lead down to the Kotel. Stayed for a little while, learned the Daf, davened Mincha, and then took the bus to Geula to catch a bus to Ramat Beit Shemesh.
It’s interesting, that my day in Yerushalayim seemed so routine, for 2000 years Jews have been praying to return there and now that we are back, it kind of feels like it’s taken for granted.
Anyway, short post for today, and some more press from this week’s flight.

The Baltimore Jewish Times: http://blogs.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/philjacobs/

Yeshiva World News (pics taken by my friend Yehuda): http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/article.php?p=21450

Arutz Sheva: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXByHD7o9Sk&eurl=http://www.kumah.org/

"Everything and Nothing" at the same time

Today's post will be in 2 parts

I forgot to tell one part of the initial experience after I got to Israel yesterday. After I left the airport and was driving on the Tel Aviv highway towards Givat Shmuel, my first thought was, “wow, the country looks goooood.”
You kind of get a warped perception of what life is like here from America. Largely because the only news you hear is bad news. Not that you’re not aware of bad news here, but here you can walk around outside and see a thriving economy, lot’s of people walking around enjoying the sun, and the sun, you don’t get it quite like you do in America, and you see life in the country. Quite a different experience then one gets in America.
Anyways, I had a Russian cab driver, who spoke about 3 words of English (“yes, no, pen”), so I got to practice some of my Hebrew right when I got here. I was actually surprised by my Hebrew, I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought. So far actually it seems that I’ve been speaking to everyone in Hebrew and they’ve been speaking to me in English. I’ll say my Hebrew sentence with one or two English words substituting the Hebrew one’s I don’t know, and they’ll respond in English with one or two Hebrew words mixed. It’s kinda working… Anyways I’m already expanding my vocabulary, guess how you say “energy?”
”Energy”
“Cholesterol is… well, “cholesterol.

So I asked this cab driver where he was from in Russia. He told me he was from the town of Berditchev.
There’s a rabbi, named Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, who was famous for his Dan l’kav Zchut (giving everyone/everything the benefit of the doubt). So this was the name that immediately popped into my head.
I turned to ask him “Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev?” But before I got the chance, this not overtly religious looking guy, turned to me and said, “You know Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev? That was his place.

Part 2:
So today I went to Beit Shemesh to get part 1 of bureaucracy done…and walked away empty handed. I had to go to Betuach Leumi to get registered for health insurance and they had absolutely no one there who spoke English. I'm at the stage where I can mix up the two languages, but I'm not really conversational n Hebrew (yet!). So I’m going to go back tomorrow with someone who speaks Hebrew, and get this thing straightened out.
But the day was not a complete waste; I had the completely random experience of taking a cab with an Israeli who lived in Baltimore. He said he lived there from 1991-1998 and he told me there was one thing he learned there, and it took him 8 years to learn this, “In America you have everything, yet you have nothing. In Israel you have nothing, yet you have everything.”
I’m heading to Jerusalem for the first time on this trip tomorrow, will write later.

New York ===> Israel-SHALOM FROM ISRAEL

All right, I’m writing this from Café Aroma in Givat Shmuel, about 5 miles from Tel Aviv.
Yes I made it, and it was an incredible experience. I got to JFK at around 10:30 yesterday morning, checking in went very smoothly. We then we had the departure ceremony and before long I was going through security and down to the plane.
The plane ride itself was an interesting experience. Not like you’re normal international flight. As Jerry Seinfeld says “You know when you’re sitting in coach and the stewardess close the curtain to first class they give you a little look, ‘well, maybe if you’d worked a little harder.’”
There wasn’t really any of that in this flight, there were no curtain’s and I was walking back and forth over the entire plane. First class and business class was reserved for NBN and Misrad Hapanim staff, and press, including Baltimore’s very own Phil Jacobs of the Jewish Times. But anyone was allowed to visit anyone in these seats.
My Rosh Yeshiva was sitting in First Class, and at one point I went up to talk to him, and got to experiment with the very cool chairs that they have up there, chairs that literally folded flat into a bed.
The truth is besides the seat there wasn’t anything else impressive about First Class. At least on this flight, the food was the same as everyone else’s, the entertainment was the same, and (the moment of truth) the bathrooms are exactly the same as coach (except in First Class they had soap).
The landing also went very smoothly, we debarked the plane to a hoard of press with lots of camera’s including my friend Yehuda (I’ll post his pictures later this week.
We then boarded a bus to take us the “old” terminal of Israel’s old airport. This airport has pretty much become the Nefesh B’ Nefesh airport, and the new airport is used for everything else.
We were bussed into the terminal to, we were told, 900 people waiting to greet us. There was certainly a lot of energy in the terminal, something about Jews returning home, I don’t know it makes some people excited☺
There was a welcoming ceremony, including a special presentation given to the oldest member of our flight, an 88 year old woman, who had been on the ship Exodus 61 years ago. The ship tried to get into Israel, but was sent back to Europe. Now she finally made it to Israel.
I then went upstairs to start my initial process by the Misrad Hapanim, this is where I received the first lump of my absorption money (temporary ID card), my Tudat Zakaut and my voucher for my free cab ride to my first place in Israel and made my first big mistake. The mistake wasn’t actually in that particular place, it was after I’d gone downstairs to get my luggage, I went into the entrance hall and some guy swooped down on me asking for my travel voucher so he could get me a cab. I handed it to him and 30 seconds later he appeared with a driver.
My mistake was I forgot to go and get registered for healthcare and apparently about 2 minutes after I left, they were in there looking for me. So I’m going to head to Misrad Hapanim tomorrow and get to deal with my first taste of straight Israeli bureaucracy! That should be fun.
I’m staying in Givat Shmuel for about a month or so, and it wasn’t until I got here that all sense of my rational broke down. For approximately 5 seconds I stopped and yelled “I’M IN ISRAEL.”
That was it, went back in rational mode.
One last note, for any of you who were worried about today’s bulldozer terror attack in Jerusalem, I was nowhere near it. From what I hear 5 Jews unfortunately were injured, including one who will need to have his leg amputated. We should hope that they all make full recoveries, and the terrorist (who was killed by some quick thinking citizen and border guard policeman) is brought to justice.

For press on today’s flight:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126924
(check out my guitar case)
I’ll post more as they become available. Anyways, it’s now about 11am in America? I’ve been up since 6am yesterday, and I’m going to go crash soon.
SHALOM FROM ISRAEL

NBN TV

If anyone is interested, Nefesh B' Nefesh will be broadcasting the landing on their website at http://www.nbn.org.il/index.php . The plane lands at about 1am EST, so if you're up and are interested, go ahead and enjoy.

Episode 1: Baltimore ===> New York

I’ve been pondering something. A deep question of the universe.
Can you get Listerine in Israel?
I’ve been pondering something else.
I’M MOVING TO ISRAEL TOMMOROW!!
So after about 3 days of packing, I’m sitting here in Far Rockaway, NY about 20 min from JFK so I can take off in the morning.

(Now that you have the setting we will continue with post #1)
Before I start this post I want to thank a few individuals (and teams):

My parents for being very supportive of my Aliyah and for everything they’ve done for me over the years
Lenny & Glenna (Glenny) Ross for helping me convince other people that I really am working very hard, and for all of the incredible work that they do.
Rabbi & Rebbetzin Goldberger for their guidance throughout the years
The Baltimore Aliyah experts/motivators/coordinators who just do incredible work-Rabbi & Rebbetzin Adler as well as our incredible Shaliach Neil Gillman
I think that’s it...oh and the Shamroth’s, Eastman’s, and Bolthouser’s for allowing me grace their homes for my first 3 Shabbosim in Israel.
Now I am aware that there are some people reading this who may not be aware of the terminology that I use. You can just ask, or Google it, if you have a question on anything,.

Of course the past 72 hours haven’t been without its share of enjoyable moments. Like discovering that after weighting one of my bags, the scale said 120lbs (the limit’s 70). I do have reason to believe that the scale was toying with me (as I’ve been told scales sometimes do).
Or when we pulled into driveway of the house we’re staying at here in Far Rockaway, a certain unnamed person discovered that they had misplaced the keys to the house (gender-specific terms have been obscured to protect the guil- I mean innocent)
Anyways, I’ve been asked if I’m scared, nervous etc about tomorrow, and I’m still feeling really calm about it. It’s not everyday one decides to leave suburbia America to move to the Middle East.
So for any of those who don’t know (read: have not asked me sometime in the last 6 days-seems like EVERYONE’S done that) I’m going to be staying for my first month with a friend who lives in the coastal city of Ramat Gan, and goes to Bar Ilan University. After about a month or so I’ll be moving to Ramat Shilo, a new community located near Beit Shemesh, and will be working at Yeshivat Lev Hatorah.
So this first post will be short, I just wanted to get something out today because I promised some people that I would. Tomorrow bright and early (11am) gotta be at JFK for check-in, I’ll write more about it on the plane and hopefully the next time you hear from me I’ll be in the Holy/Homeland.

Update: This Blog

For those of you who have been following this blog you may have noticed that I've been posting less and less over the past few months. This is not due to my lack of interest in this blog, but more that I've just been really busy (you can imagine as one plans to move their life to another country).

Anyways, after I land in Israel next week I will be starting a new blog, dedicated exclusively with life in the Land of Israel.

Don't worry, Trying to Fix the World will still be around, and I will even be posting all of the posts in the new blog to this one as well. This blog will turn more into my rant blog (big surprise there, as that was it's purpose to begin with), as well as other things that I feel like writting about (you may have noticed some tech related things) and the new blog will be (objective!) about my life in Israel.

It will not include political issues, it will deal purely with my day to day life.

I want to do this for a few reasons

1) I want to be able to document my first few years (and beyond)
2) I want to create a non-threatening forum so that people from across the political, religious, and cultural spectrum will be able to appreciate what life in Israel is really like
3) I want to do what ever I can to encourage Jews in America to, at the very least, appreciate Aliyah (and at the most, come to Israel themselves)

The first post will go up sometime next week, I will be writing on the plane and whenever I get a chance after I land.

First thoughts on iPod Classic

Yes I did it, I went and bought a new iPod. I figure that I now have a fresh battery which will hopefully keep me running for a few years. The other issue was that I ran out of space on my old iPod (a 30gb 5G Video iPod).
My former iPod was still running perfectly fine after using it heavily for just over 2 years (I got it in June 2006). But like most lithium ion batteries, they loose their charge as they are used, and the 14 hour playback time that was advertised when I bought was probably around 6 hours 2 years later (I don't know exactly as I never tested it, but that would be a generous estimate).
So I got the 80gb iPod Classic. Something that can give me everything I own in my pocket. What's really interesting is that I don't have a lot of music on my iPod, less then 2,000 songs. The bulk of what I keep in there are shiurim. Shiurim from yeshiva and shiurim I've downloaded from the web. I have so many shiurim on my iPod I don't think I have enough time left in my left to listen to them all (all right I'm exaggerating, I probably only have about 600 hours worth, but still that's a lot).
Anyways, a quick look at those who are looking to buy one, or replace an existing iPod.
The new iPod has a new user interface that the old one did not have. Apple revolutionized easy user interfaces in portable music players, with it's click wheel, and extremely simple menu system. Since it was first announced in late 2001, the iPod interface was very straight forward, choose music, selevt by Artist, Album etc. When video was added in late 2005 the same thing Videos>movies/music videos etc.
One thing about this simple interface was that the text for it were always located in the left side of the screen, which usually left a gapping white hole on the right half of the screen.
Deciding to take a card of the Micorsoft's Zune, with it's very colorful user interface, Apple decided to utilize this space on the right side of the screen. Now when you click over say Music, the right side of the screen will display you're album art. same with movies, screen shot's of your videos will appear on the right side of the screen.
That's mainly the major change, there are some other graphical changes, like when you're music is playing it will display the album art in 3-D, as well as the iPod now having support for 3-D ganes.
Now the thing that I noticed that was different from the previous iPod I had, was that I felt the click wheel was much less responsive. You now need to get an entire flat section of your finger on the click wheen in order for it to respond. My old iPod (and my 2G iPod Nano) have very delicate touches, you can actually scroll with your finger slightly above the wheel (it picks up your body heat).
I have a feelin that one of the reasons that Apple did this was to keep users from scrolling and overshooting their target. Then play a little back and forth before they can actually select the file that they want. It takes some getting used to, but once you get the full finger thing down, you do have more control using the click wheel.

Anyways, I know that this product came out almost a year ago butI thought I'd put my 2 cents in. If you have any questions let me know.

Update: 2 Weeks to Go!

Yes, I am well aware that the posts are starting to become fewer in number, not that I don't have material to write about, just sheer lack of time to write. But I wanted to document my Aliyah process, not only for other people to hear about it and hopefully be inspired by it, but also for me so that I can look back and see how I felt about this upcoming move, which is probably the biggest decision of my life that I've completely chosen for myself.

So...the packing...Yeah, it's kind of happening. After about a month of procrastination, I took the first big step, I found two boxes and pulled up the suitcase I'm taking with me...and they've sat in my room for the past week collecting dust. I'm not sure why it is, but I have this thing about pushing stuff off to the last minute, kind of like I think that something will change as the day gets closer and the job will be somehow easier.

So I know have two weeks and a day until that plane takes off, a plane I've been waiting for for two years. And what's funny is that I'm not excited at all. Well that's not true, of course I'm excited, but I don't have that butterfly anticipations in my stomach, the "Oh wow, I'm leaving" feeling. Other people are getting excited about it "So when are you leaving?" in a very hopeful kind of way (no, they're not, I'm joking) but I have notices myself saying that's this is the last time I'll be able to do 'X'.

I wrote a few weeks ago about a bike ride I did up Greenspring in the Baltimore area. I went about 12 miles or so up that road before I turned back. I had been planning to go last week and this week as well, but I was recovering for the accident last week, and this week it looks like rain's going to hit the Baltimore area (besides I should get a start on packing). But on Tuesday, I went to drop my sister off somewhere and found that I had a free hour. An hour that I could just take to myself, without having to worry about schedules, pickups, deadlines, and other slave masters that can run our lives.

So I decided to just drive, drive up Greenspiring. Now for those of you in the Baltimore area who have never done this I highly recommend it, for those of you outised the area, you'll have to use your imagination. I don't know what it is about this road, but it seems the further you go up it the more beautiful it gets. You cross over the beltway and find yourself in a stretch of woods and a country road. I saw a dear on my way back, which reminded me of a time about 4 years ago when biking had to stop as a family of dear crossed the road.

After this winding conntry road through the woods, which kind of act like a portal into literally another world, you're really in the country passing this incredible colonial style house sitting in enormas corn fields.

This stretchs for about a mile before you're back in the woods climbing a steep hill up to this incredible vista that overlooks more farmland. It's incredible to think that this is really what America is about these rolling hills and open areas, we like to live where the action is but sometines it makes us forget about this other side of the hill. Where people live on large plots of land really touch it and appreciate what it means to be walking on grass most of the time instead of concrete.

Anyways I drove about 20 miles out and was just thinking, this will be the last time I do this, because it is. I am moving to Israel, a country where the inhabitants REALLY love their land. These farms out in the backwoods of Baltimore, don't have to worry that their land will be given away to people who want to kill them. They may take it for granted but they have a gift, Jews in Israel, Jews in general, whether they want to believe it or not, will never have that luxery of feeling that they have finished. Because we won't, not until the Beit Hamikdash is standing on the Temple Mount and the world is begging us to be their moral compass. We ourselves need to work on heading in the right direction, part of which is not just coming home to Israel, but also to do what we can to bring Torah into our lives. I heard an interesting point made, the Torah is not a book about about how we can make G-d happy, the Torah is a book on how to become a better person, and how to change the world into a positive place.

Rant done: I'm moving to Israel in 2 weeks and I can't wait!

UNBELIEVABLE!!! Modin PALESTINE!!!

All right this one got me really angry. Of course I probabaly brought it on my self. I saw an interesting headline in the Gmail header that said "TIME Pictures of the Week." I'm always interesting in how the secular media prtrays Israel and I KNEW that there would be a picture about Israel relating to the "conflict."
This picture was taken at some protest to Israel's ecurity fence by the Arabs and to keep them from rioting the IDF threw tear gas at them. But that's not the part that got me all riled up. Take a good look at the text for the picture, particulary the last line.

"near Modin, Palestine. "

Since when is Modin Palestine?!!!
What right does Time Magazine have to make this claim. I want someone to PLEASE SHOW AND PROVE TO ME THAT THIS PLACE EXISTS IN ANY RELM OF THE PYSICAL WORLD!!! There was NEVER a country called Palestine. Before the 1948 "Palestinians" were what the JEWS were called! The Arabs did not hold Palestinians ID cards because they held cards from their home countries.
And no matter what some would believe the United Nations STILL does not recognize a state or country by that name!!!

All right I think I'm done ranting now. Oh and if you want to see unbiased pictures of the event listed above click here to see the gallary taken by my friend Yehuda

Update: Car Accident

So today I was out in Catonsville, MD selling some music equipment that I will most likely never use again, and to go to my college to pick up my transcripts.
I may have timed it wrong, and I didn't realize it until it was too late, but the time I was coming back was during rush hour. Lot's of Stop-and-Go traffic.
So there I was in the "Stop" portion of this highway traffic pattern, when a woman behind me, (who was not playing the right rules, forgot to "stop."
My car was forced 180 degrees and I was taking up 2 lanes in traffic, and it's an incredible miracle that I wasn't hit again by and on coming car in that lane (who would have hit me a lot harder than the woman behind me).
So after I checked my barrings, making sure that nothing was broken, and tested that car to see if it would still run, not knowing what condition the car was in, I managed to make my way to the shoulder of the highway.
Baruch Hashem no one was hurt. The driver of the other car was a pregnant woman with her two year old son in the back seat.
I got another dose of reminder of how G-d's hand plays in this world. The front of this woman's car was completely smashed in, with coolant leaking out from unerneath it, and the back of my car had, literally, a two inch long scratch.
We exchanged our information, and she insisted that I could leave, but I was not going to leave a pregnant woman with a two year old by herself on the side of the highway on a 95 degree day. Forger the legal aspects of it, it was just common curtisy. (Never mind the fact that she was being very emotional and I don't think would have been able to cope without someone there.)

So we got to talking, and I kind of had to laugh, because I'm moving to Israel in just over 3 weeks, and here I was on the side of 695 waiting out to see how this whole situation would turn out.

They had been planing to go to Laurel Farms, a farm in Pennsylvania where you can pick your own cherries. I kinda felt bad that I'd ruined their trip. But, as I had to remind myself, this is something that is completly out of our hands. She was frusterated about not being able to take her kid there, and (her being a Christian) I had to remind her of that.

So I'm actually waiting to hear baclk from the Rabbi about whether I have to say Birchas HaGomel or not, but I'm fine (I always wondered if and when my first accident would be) and still charging forward for that July 21st flight!

My Apple Adventure

Well for all the Apple fanboys out there (that would include me) just want to tell a little story about my adventure with my Macbook Pro.
I got the machine at the end of January, and I must say that this machine is absolutely incredible. All of the headaches I used to have Windows...just gone. No more waiting for the computer to "decide" to start working, I actually have a computer that works on my time.
But that's not what I want to talk about.
Because for the past 2 weeks I havn't had the Mac.
It was the Motzei Shabbos before Shavous, and I went to boot up the computer and was greeted with the nomal Apple signon screen, and grey background with a 2 second introduction clip.
The Apple logo appeared and the little swirly thing that show that is' working (the same thing is on the Ipod in the upper left corner when it's being synced).
Then the thing stopped moving, and the computer appeared to freeze. Not something that happens often with Macs.
So I rebooted the machine and was greeted with stark, straight darkenss. Nothing on the screen, just...black.
So I called Apple Care (ALWAYS buy a servace plan when buying a computer!! That's the only piece of technology I recommend to do this for.) and we deduced that I had a faulty Logic Board, nothing that I did, it was just a faulty model of it so I had to take it to the Apple store to drop off so they could ship it off to, I later found out, Houston.
I had Shavous to work around and wasn't able to drop if off until last Thursday at the store.
I then waited patiently for 3 business days, following the statues of the repair on the Apple Repair website.
And finally got it back yesterday morning.
Now after I got it back I noticed that they had replaced my Logic Board and hard drive. And luckily for an Apple feature that has saved I know more that one person besides me. They have a backup program called Time Machine, and the way it works is that you set it up with an external hard drive, and not only will it completly back up the contents of your entire computer and continually backup aything new that happens in your system automatically, it will save things you've deleted, inculding say text of a document.
Let's say you're working on a project for school, and you realize that you had written something the previous week, that had been edited out. Deleted. Gone.
Activate Time Machine and "go back in time" and open up the document the way it was the week before.
So I plugged in my Time Machine hard drive and waited for it to load. And hour and a half later, the hard drive which had been completly empty when I recieved it, had exactly the same contents that I had had on my comouter before. I had to download a few updates and I was good to go.
The only snag that I ran into was Garageband and Windows on Parallels. I'm a musician and use GB to record all the time. I had to re-insall the program (took about 15 minutes) and I was good to go.
Windows wouldn't load in Parallels when I booted, but I just had to do some tweaking of the settings and I was back on there as well.

All I must say I was happy with the experience. Not that I was happy I had to send my computer in, but if I had been running a Windows Machine, I would have lost so much data and spent a long time re-installing programs, and customizing it to my specification again. Way to go Apple!
As someone told me "Hardware is cheap, data is priceless." And I was able to have the computer backed up to withing 24 hours of when it stopped working and didn't loose anything at all.

Interesting Quote from Al Jazeera

Jurors at the award ceremony on Thursday singled out Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's Gaza correspondent, for particular praise for her bravery in reporting from the occupied territory. (emphasis added)

Gaza's "occupied?" I thought the Arabs ran it. Thank you Al Jazeera for speaking the truth, that the Arabs are occupying Jewish Land!

In Defense of Jerusalem and Israel

A few weeks ago on Yom Yerushalayim Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University was on Al Jazeera's Arabic TV station, being confronted with the normal Arab issues, West Bank, Jerusalem, and I felt Dr. Kedar responded very well.
Of course the one critique I have is related to one line he said regarding the future of the "West Bank" and the creation of a PA state there.
Now I will admit that he did come of very strongly, not the typical apologetic Jew that we see in the media these days (click here for an example). But there still is an idea that the Jews don't belong in YESHA.
I was speaking to someone last year about this issue, and they told me that Israel was violating "international law."
Now I'm not a law student, but I have learned enough that when someone tells me something I'm not aware of to ask what their source is. So I asked them which law they were referring to.
They explained to me that Israel was an occupying entity that came into that land, started colonizing it, and started cleansing the locals from their places of birth. This was the crime they were committing.
I of course wouldn't have it, told them that I found that either they had an incredible bias for ignoring all of atrocities committed against the Jews by Arab countries in the early part of the 1900's, or they were simply ignorant of them and victims of other people who had these biases.
But furthermore, if you go by that rational that if a foreign entity (which the Jews most certainly are not) drives natives of their land and then starts colonizing that land and claiming it as their own, then you have just displaced at least 50 Million people on the East Coast of America, and even more if you branch further out west.
Because America WAS founded on this idea of colonizing the land and driving the natives out, yet I don't think that Left-Wing academics will say that the United States is occuping the natives of America (IE Native Americans), of course they probably will claim their occuping other countries, but it is certainly not for colonization. Israel, albeit with secular motivation which might be a topic for a different post, were not invading they were returning. The fact that the Jews lived previously in the land of Israel, is only in debate by anti-Semites. Anyone with an open mind who is presented with un-biased information, will find archaeological evidence of the Jews previous reign over the land everywhere. One of the reasons the Arabs will not allow archaeological research teams onto the Temple Mount is because it would disprove their claim that the Jewish Temple never existed..

Here's the Al Jazeera interview with Dr. Mordechai Kedar (in Arabic with subtitles):

Bikin' in the USA

Recently I pulled my bike out, fixed it up, and started to use it...heavily. I pretty much stopped using my car when ever I get a chance, and when I have to go to areas in the neighborhood I'll pull the bike out.
Now I admit I'm not as hardcore as some bike riders out there (the car keys will get pulled out when it starts to rain), but part of it may just be that I need to build my strength up again and feel more comfortable traversing city streets in my renewable energy source.
I have 3 main areas of interest outside of Torah & Judaism stuff, and one of them happens to be the environment/nature. Going back as far a I can remember my idea of a good time was going on a hike and getting lost in the woods.
Of course now I'm older and and don't have as much free time as I used to, so these trips have become less and less (although I'm hoping that they start picking up again after I get to Israel)

So today I decided to bike up one of the country roads that start in our area.

I say "country" road because for the most part it is. There is a small stretch of it that runs through the Greenspring area of Baltimore, but the majority of it is winding country road (for those of you in Baltimore the road is Greenspring).

Anyways, I biked about 15 miles up Greenspring. The terrain is pretty hilly, with good long stretches where you're straining your muscles biking up and finally getting to the top for a short sprint down the hill before you have to start climbing again.

The landscape goes back and forth from woods to corn fields to small rural areas.

At one point in the trip I stopped to take a few pictures. It was hard to imagine that I was only 6 miles from my house and everything that's been bothering me for the past few days seemed so far away.

I also thought that it was kind of sad that the average person who lives in the Greenspring (the area) had no idea that Greenspring (the road) led to some incredibly serene places. It really gave me a chance to at least see part of rural America before I left it.

I passed by a few farm houses and I imagined what it would be like to live there, out in this quite are, away from city noise a hustle, your profession enabling you to work out side in quite beautiful areas...

I have just over a month to go and I have a confession to make...I'm going to miss America.
Yes I really am.
Because even though this country is not home, it is still an incredible country with incredible people, and I have to give it to them for being great supporters of Israel.

Speaking of Israel, I have to throw in this last story that happened on my trip. You see Greenspring Road crosses over the Beltway (I-695) and that's usually how for the people of my neck of the woods (suburbs) have ever traveled on it. Once you get past the beltway you hit a really good stretch of woods, followed by corn fields, followed by some more woods.
It was in these woods I ran into a guy who's car had broken down on the Beltway and he was in search of a gas station. Needless to say he was going in the wrong direction for that. So I told him to turn around and head back in the following direction.
On my way back I ran into him again. I had been thinking that if I ran into him on the way back and he still needed help I would bike home and then come back with the car to pick him up.
We got to chatting at a stop light and I made my offer, but he insisted that all he wanted to do was call the tow truck and a cab.
Thank G-d I was blessed with an absolutely gorgeous day, nice an sunny in the mid 80's with no humidity, so as strangers with noting in common we shared something we had in common...the weather.
So as I do, I mentioned that net month I'm going to be biking in some much hotter climates. The conversation went like this:
Him: "Yeah were are you headed?"
Me: "Israel."
Him: "Oh, are you going to be doing some Missionary work there?"

I of course was wearing a helmet and had my Tzitit tucked in my back pocket, so there was no obvious sign that I was Jewish.

Me: "No I'm moving there, I'm an Orthodox Jew, do you need some water?"

He looked at me with shock and nodded, so I gave him my extra water bottle and a huge smile. I asked if he needed any more help and he said he was OK, we wished each other well and I went to bike down a very nice hill.

I'll admit I'm not sure exactly what happened there, but I think (hope) he was thinking more positively about Jews after that experience.

So all in all a very nice enjoyable bike trip.

Apple and Israel

I've been doing a lot of research of Apple in Israel (in case I happened to discover an issue with the computer that had to be fixed) and decided that I would share what I've found out in case anyone else is in my situation.

Israel does have an Apple distribution center called iDigital and it's located in Tel Aviv. You can buy, from what I can tell, all Apple products from Mac to iPod. Can't buy the iPhone yet because it's not supported in Israel but you can get pretty much everything else.
Now this is only a distribution center, and not an official Apple technician shop. After speaking with the Apple technician on the phone I learned that I can not get my Mac (or iPod) fixed at this place under the current Apple warranty that I have. I'll check it out when I get there and see if they offer their own type of service for stuff they sell, because it doesn't make sense that they would sell Apple products and then sell the Apple warranty that doesn't offer support in Israel.
UPDATE 8/15/09: I had to get some work done on the computer at iDigital in Tel Aviv so here' the deal: They will honor an Apple warranty on an Apple product purchased outside of Israel, but there is a minimum of 21 business days before they are able to do any work on the product because they need some kind approval from Apple.

One of the resons that there isn't an Apple store in Israel probably has to do with OS X and iPod softwares's lack of Hebrew support. It's interesting that Apple doesn't support Hebrew, especially considering that Apple has started using Intel chips in all of their Macs and all Intel chips these days are made in the Intel R&D headquarters in Haifa.

The closest Apple stores to Israel (that I'm aware of) is in Turkey and Italy. So it might be worth it to just take a vacation for a few days and fly there to get the computer fixed (the flights are relatively cheap).

There is someone who is connected to the Yeshiva that I'm going to who has a Mac, so I'm going to ask him if he's ever had a problem with it and needed to get it serviced. He has a Mac Pro, the "tower," so it's not like he can just put it in a bag and fly to the states to get it fixed. If something happens to my Macbook Pro (laptop), it will relatively easy to get it fixed, albeit there will be issues that I'll have to coordinate, like finding someone who's going to the States who would be willing to take it and either take it an Apple store themselves.

There are some independent computer workers that will fix a Mac for you, but they won't do it on the Apple warranty, something that ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY when buying a Mac or any computer. I spent about $250 for the protection plan and I'm covered for any issues I have for 3 years after I bought it. I learned that if I had the issue that I had without the protection plan it would have cost me $1200, enough to buy a new machine.

So if anyone has any question of Apple in Israel I'll be happy to answer the questions if I am able. I still feel that you can't go wrong with getting an Apple product, especially if you live in a country where you can get full service/coverage on your product (hmmm, I wonder what it would take to open an official Apple store in Israel...would there be any money in it?)

Obama...

I;m actually going to go off topic from my normal rantings about things related to Israel.
It was announced that (unofficially) Barack Obama will be the Democratic Candidate in the Presidential Election.
Regardless of his politics, some of which I agree with, some I don't, just like McCain, I have to say that I am proud that a black man is running for president. Regardless of the individual candidate, I feel that America has finally reached a point where the numbers would even support a black president says a lot about how the country has changed.
I've recently become very interested in early American history, and looking back at the founding of the country and going all the way to the 1950's, America has been about freedom.
Who's freedom is another question.
Going back to the time when Black People were taken from Africa against their will to come to America to work as slaves, the American ideals have in reality only been fully available to the ruling elite and the wealthy.
The Black community has unfortunately never really graduated from this slave mentality, and this has been helped along by other people's animosity towards them.
Now however, there are enough people in America who have moved past those stereotypes enough so that they are willing to vote for a black candidate, and I have to so that I'm very proud.
This is not an endorsement of Obama in any way, this is just a post on the fact that America has moved past the negative stereotypes that have plauged it since its founding.
Now of course the question is, are people just going to replace their animosity towards Blacks to another group. Say...Jews.
But that's a topic for another post.

America's Memorial Day vs. Israel's Yom HaZikaron

I've only spent one Yom Hazikaron in Israel, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. The yeshiva took us all to Har Herzl, hoping to give us a taste of what the day was like in Israel, knowing full well that for some of us, it would be the first, last, and only time they would be in Israel on Yom Hazikaron.
One of the famous parts of the day is the Siren, the one that goes of at night as well as the one that goes on in the morning. The entire country just stops for 2 minutes, as a tribute to all of the people who dies in Israel's wars as well as all the victims of terror attacks.
Albeit there are two groups who do not stand at attention during those two minutes. One of those groups, not surprisingly, are the Arabs.
The other group are certain (not all) chareidim/yeshivish people, who during those two minutes make sure that they are learning Torah.
Some people may knock those Jews for doing this, but I think that there's nothing better that someone could be doing than learning Torah to honor the 20+ thousand Jews who have been killed/murdered since the founding of the State.
Israel's Yom Hazikaron is a day in which the entire country feels the pain of those lost souls, and mourn them.

On the flip side you have America's Memorial Day, which is a somber day only to those families who have lost loved ones in America's wars.
Vietnam, Iraq, Kuwait, , the Revolutionary War, all of the soldiers who died in these wars are forever lost in the lives of their families.

But that's only those families.

For the rest of America, Memorial Day is a day where everyone is off of school/work. People go hiking, light fireworks, and make barbecues. The average person may not even give a second thought that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people gave their lives in order for them to be a free person in a free country.

It's actually kinda sad about how ungrateful some people are, about this fact. We've become so obsessed with ourselves we don't even think about the things that others have done for us that we're even aware of.

So here we are on Memorial day, let's give 2 minutes to think about all of those people who have died to make this great country (hey, America may have issues, and I'm moving to Israel, but America still is a great country). We owe them that.

I'm going to go prepare the barbecue now.

Checkpoints

There is unfortunately, a large number of people who have to travel through security checkpoints every single day, whether their have to get to a business meeting, go on a school trip, or just to see family.

They are herded like sheep through a narrow walkway where, after a tremendously long wait, they finally reach the end and it is their turn.

The security guard looks them over and then starts to pat them, as if they are some kind of criminals carrying weapons. All these people go through complete and utter humiliation when the security guard "randomly" selects them to do a strip search, when it is obvious that he doesn't care at all about catching terrorists. He's just bored and wanted to humiliate the people passing through.

They are then pulled out of line, where everyone is watching them, as they are searched form head to foot while the guard says that they have to make sure that they are not a terrorist.

Babies, grandmothers, and handicapped, with their added baggage and inability to fend for themselves are routinely pulled over and searched like everyone else.

Sounds horrible doesn't it?

What if I told you hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people have to endure this kind of humiliation everyday?

Is this an accurate portrayal of how Israel treats Palestinians who travel through checkpoints?

I wouldn't know.

I was writing about about airport security checkpoints.

Milestone

Well it took me 1 year, 1 month and 28 days to reach the milestone of 1,000 visits to my blog. Go ahead and pass it along if you like it (or don't like) I welcome all viewpoints and opinion.

Funny Bush Videos

I had to do it eventually. Ever since Bush has decided that he's G-d and has the right to give land that doesn't belong to him to the enemies of the Jews, I had to, at some point, make some fun of him.
So here you go, so hilarious Bush videos:

The Ethnic Cleansing of "Palestine"

Note: the following story and analysis is purely satirical (although there's probably some truth to it)

I was in the library last week and noticed that there was a stand of book's about Israel in honor of Israel's 60th birthday.

I wandered over and started to browse through them, noticing various books, some I've read and some I haven't. Books like O' Jerusalem, Dershowitz books, and others.

Then one book caught my eye.

Located on a stand about Israel (a stand supposedly to show Israel in a POSITIVE light) was the book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

I have not read the book, I probably will not read the book, but even without reading that book, I can tell you that the book is full of lies.

You want to see ethnic cleansing, look at Darfur. You want to see ethnic cleansing, look at the Nazi's. Israel's relationship with it's Arab neighbors is not ethnic cleansing

Now I'm going to make a rather interesting statement: even though the premise of that book is false, that Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians, the creation of a Palestinian state will cause the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (Pretty strong claim right? Watch this).

According to the Arabs they are considered to have "Palestinian nationality" in that they have the right to property in the state of Israel (more commonly know is the Right of Return or Death to Israel or "We the Arabs unabashedly declare that we hate all Jews and want you dead") , whether they be first generation, 2nd generation, 3rd...it doesn't matter. If they had a ancestor that, at one point in time, owned land there, all of his descendant's have a right to that land. (Whether they even owned the land to begin with is for another post)

Here's an example of how their claims are taken directly from a page in Jewish history and twisted to meet their false agenda.

Hitler determined a Jew by a person had at least one Jewish grandparent. If you're grandfather married a Christian and your family have only married Christians since, you are still considered a Jew.

My (as in like me, the author of this blog) grandfather came to Israel (AKA, British mandated "Palestine") from Russia in the mid-30's. On his passport (wasn't really a passport, it was more like an ID card), under nationality, was stamped "Palestinian."

Ah, here's where it gets interesting, these Arabs want to claim that they are an indigenous nation, that have lived here for millennia (just like the Jews have), yet how could a Jew have the same nationality as they do AKA "Palestinian"? The only way for this to make sense is for people who lived under the British Mandate, who were issued identification cards to be given that nationality.

Now the local Arab population did not like the name "Palestinian" at all. That word was associated with all this nasty things, like the PALESTINE Post (later to be renamed the Jerusalem Post), the PALESTINIAN Airways (later to be renamed El Al), and worst of all PALESTINIAN (later to be renamed "Israeli" or another eternal name Jew/Yid/Yihudi/Bnei Yisrael).

Yes, they didn't like that name at all, in fact if you would call and Arab a "palestinian" he would shout at you for calling him a Jew.

Anyways, to get back to the ethnic cleansing. There was no ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, because the Palestinians were the Jews. But to follow the logic of the Arabs, I would be a 3rd generation Palestinian because my grandfather was given the nationality of "Palestinian" because he happened to live in the Land of Israel during the time the British were labeling people who lived there that name.

But wait! My grandfather left Israel shortly after it became a state, do I still have that lofty status as a"Palestinian?"

According to them I do. Remember, they view anyone who had, at one in history, owned property in the Land of Israel, or even just lived there, as the rightful owners for the rest of time to their ancestors. They also, even if they left, maintain the status of "Palestinians." (You can find people who claim to be 2nd or 3rd generation "Palestinian" who live in America)

So anyways according to that I am a Palestinian.

I am also an Israeli.

Therefore if there is ever (chas v'shalom) the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea & Samaria (or let's say even if they decide to make their state somewhere else, a ploy that we know is only so they can destroy Israel) I should be able to have duel citizenship to both places, correct? I should have a Israeli passport like I do now, or I should have a Palestine passport.

Right?

WRONG!

Because I would not be allowed to have a Palestinian citizenship purely because of the fact that I AM A JEW! I would not be allowed to even visit their state because the Palestinian state would be Juden Rein! No Jews! None!

But let's say that I was living in community in Judea & Samaria (something that is very likely to happen) I would be ethnically cleansed by ISRAEL with the support of the UNITED STATES, from my home there. Israel is not the one doing the ethnic cleansing because they want to drive the Arabs out of Israel, the ethnic cleansing is going on purely for the Arabs! Its' the ARABS WHO ARE ETHNICALLY CLEANSING THE ORIGINAL PALESTINIANS, THE JEWS!

So anyways, I will probably never read the book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" because it will most likely a work of fiction that doesn't examine the history correctly. As Rabbi Ken Spiro put it, "The creation of Palestinian history, is one of the most successful historical fabrications in the history of the world."

But don't worry, in another 5, 10, 50, 100 years eventually the threat of the "Palestinians" will disappear, and I can guarantee you, the Jews will still be here.

Oh, and on one last note:

ALL JEWS IN THE WORLD COME HOME AND MAKE ALIYAH!!

Busted Google!

(FOR THOSE OF YOU ON FACEBOOK READING THIS YOU HAVE TO CLICK TO SEE THE ORIGINAL POST IN ORDER TO SEE THE PICTURES)

I was looking at Israel on Google Earth and found something very interesting:


If you can take a real close look..


It says "Every Human has Rights."

the obvious implication is that the United States and United Nations don't give Jews rights.

Right?

I think more likely someone was pissed that Israel is about to celebrate it's 60th birthday and he wanted to make a hint that Israel is "oppressive" to its neighbors.

Well, as I've written about on this blog many times, there is a huge difference between IDF soldiers protecting children in preschool vs Arab terrorists who send those children out to kill themselves.

Israel is B"H here to stay, the trick is for us as Jews, to unite. Once we've done that we won't have to worry about sovereignty, terrorism or our neighbors.

Happy 60th Israel!


UPDATED: I realized that I could click on those two icons. One of them was in downtown Jerusalem, the other was in Beit Lechem. I found something interesting on the Beit Lechem one, they had profiled a guy named Abdelfattah Abusrour who was teaching Arab children theater in the hope the it would bring peace.
I have to commend the guy for his attempt, but unless Arab society on a whole has takes on a similar view there will never be a peace.

This leads to another question, what kind of peace are we talking about. Everyone likes to say "Peace" all the time, it's kind of just turned into a slogan without anyone thinking what it rally means.

We have "Peace" with Egypt, this peace has caused us to lose the Sinai, our own oil source, half opf our then territory and the very minor issue of LETTING TERRORISTS BRING WEAPONS INTO GAZA without Israel being able to do a thing from stopping them fire thousands of rockets into Sderot.

So what will a peace look like? An Israel without Yesha? How would that produce different results than Egypt? Egypt may have signed a piece of paper, but they are still preaching the most horrific anti-semitic messages, some of which rival Nazi propaganda.

So this leads to back to Abdelfattah Abusrour, is he imagining a day where Israel will give Yesha to the Arabs and that there will be no hostility towards the smaller Israel? That's going to be hard to do especially when the state sponsored television is preaching the same message that Egypt is.

The other icon lead to the same organization this time to a woman named Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who had a child killed by an Arab terrorist. She then somehow decided that her child was killed because Israel is "occupying" their land.

This is unfortunately the conclusion one will come to if they don't dig for the facts, some of which pertain to who really has the right to this land, and who actually bought it?

I can't go into detail on this right now because I don't have all of the sources in front of me, but pardon this claim, Jews were the ones who own more land in Yesha then any Arab does. They BOUGHT it from them back in the 1800's.

Add that to the fact that the Torah also goes into detail about Israel belonging to the Jews, and it's quite surprising that there is anyone claiming that the Arabs own this land. We bought it TWICE.

But now back to Google.

Google does not have a good relationship with Israel. They insist on calling Yesha "Palestine" they show parts of Yerushalayim as "Palestine."
But still, they should take a backseat on an issue like this. It's one thing to mark fabricated borders (hey anyone can make a mistake) but to put something in blaming Israel of "occupying" and not having anything about to say about, say, Sderot (I checked, by Sderot it just says "Sderot" nothing about falling rockets.

And I used to like Google as a tech company

Worth Quoting: Rabbi Riskin on American Aliyah

"You Shall posses the Land and you shall settle in it, for I have given the Land for you to possess."-Numbers 33:53
"The Bible tells us that we're supposed to live in Israel, Birkat Hamazon tells us we're supposed to live in Israel, the Amidah tells us we're supposed to live in Israel...We aren't paying attention to the Amidah, we're not paying attention to Birkat Hamazon. You know it's a pity that living in Israel isn't a chumrah like a black hat, then everyone in Boro Park would be rushing to live in Israel! It's ONLY a Mitzvah!-Rabbi Shlomo Riskin on TNL episode #2

Aliyah Update

All right I realized that I completly forgot to keep you guys updated on the Aliyah process. Needless to say I think all of my paperwork is done for both the Embassy, Jewish Agency and Nefesh B' Nefesh.
I learned that this is not going to be the easiest thing. I got my Israeli passport about a month or so ago (yay) and they didn't put my full name in it (noooo). But it's OK for me to make Aliyah with, and I'll have to stop at the Misrat Hapanim and get the name changed when I get to Israel (so not looking forward to that.
Anyway less then 3 months to go and the excitment is definitly rising, as soon as the semester I'm gong to be doing two things:
1. Learning Hebrew intensivly
2. Packing and getting stuff to bring with me

And then July 21 I head to JFK for the flight...Mashiach pending of course. They it'll be sooner.

Giving Our Enemies a Voice

Enemy.

What does that word mean.

Is someone you hate your enemy?

Is someone who hates you an enemy?

In order for two people to be enemies do they have to mutually hate each other?

I just finished reading a speech given by Barack Obama to AIPAC, in which he has an interesting quote:

And my plan includes a robust regional diplomatic strategy that includes talking to Syria and Iran

Let's ask the question why do we need to talk to Syria and Iran? Because according to the United States, the plan is that is, that sometime in the future there will (theoretically) be peace in the entire Middle East. Not an unstable peace, but a real genuine peace.

And therein lies the problem.

In order for a peace to be reached you need to have two sides who agree on something, something that will benefit both sides. What benefit does Iran have in stopping their nuclear program? Or funding terrorists in Israel who kill Jews?

When all you're doing is talking, the most Iran can fear is that they're going to be yelled at.

Then there's the other issue of really suave Middle Eastern men.

When Achmadinajad came to the US to speak back in September, I was struck by how smooth he seemed. If I didn't know who he was I would have thought that he was a nice guy.

But we know what kind of guy he is, he's a guy who stands on balconies and screams "Death to Israel and the Jews" to cheering crowds below.

What gain to we have by talking to them? To understand them more?

The fatal mistake the both the US and Israel are making is that they think that they're dealing with people who think like they do and have the same values as themselves.

George Bush seems to think that he can send the army into an Arab country topple the government, give them cable TV and they're going to love democracy.

As we've seen he hasn't been too successful at that.

But the number one underlying cause of every single conflict in the Middle East stems to down to three question.

How do you define evil?

What does America consider to be evil?

And is the definition of evil different for Obama, McCain, or Clinton?

Because this next president is going to have to be the one to define that question.

In Honor of Post #200... A Little Treat

Worth Quoting: Dave Barry on the Economic Stimulus Payment

"This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

"Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
"A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

"Q. Where will the government get this money?
"A. From taxpayers.

"Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
"A. Only a smidgen.

"Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
"A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

"Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
"A. Shut up."

A Little Pre-Pesach Torah

SEFER CHOFETZ CHAIM

Day 15 – Other Forms of Negativity

While the Scriptural prohibition against loshon hora applies only to speaking about the living, our Sages prohibit making slanderous remarks about the deceased.

It is also forbidden to speak negatively of our beloved land, Eretz Yisrael. As the Torah relates, the generation that merited to be liberated from Egypt spent forty years in the Wilderness and died there because of evil speech concerning the Land ( See Bamidbar chs. 13-14).

In truth, it is proper to avoid focusing on the negative unnecessarily even when discussing non-sacred objects. The early commentators tell of the wise man and his students who came upon the carcass of an animal. When the students commented on its foul odor, the wise man responded, “But see how white are its teeth!”

The Most Important Place in the World

Response to a Comment

I received a comment from straightchris who lives in London on the post I did entitled "How the Arabs Twist it:"

This is very interesting I don’t believe that this issue has been properly debated or researched in English.
I think that Norman Finkelstein has mentioned that a paper should be available on this topic soon.
I am for the right of return for Palestinians on principle, however, Norman Finkelstein said that Noam Chomsky believes that it is unrealistic to campaign for the right of return.
Forgive me, but I have not properly read the bill but I will be looking for responses from our respective positions and will try to promote this issue as much as I can.

I am for non-violent resistance against the current Israeli actions and politics.

There a few things I want to respond to, number one being why I posted that video in the first place.
When I was in Yeshiva we had a speaker, supposedly an Muslim Arab professor from the University of Haifa. He was going to have a debate with one of our Religious Zionist rabbi's, on the topic of who has the rights to the Land of Israel.

To make a longs story short, the guy made a claim that Israel was not a legitimate state and that the Jews should leave immediately because they were occupying and stealing Palestinian land. He talked about the Palestinian Right of Return...the usual stuff.

My rabbi responded to this claim, and then both sides took questions from the audience and we had a break.
After the break the "Muslim" was given the chance to open up, and he stood up and put on a kippah.
It turned out that he was not a Muslim, but a Jew who had been thrown out of an Arab county (I don't remember off hand which one) right after the creation of the State of Israel.

He had been acting as a Muslim in order to give us an idea of what we would be presented with in the coming years in our experience on campus and in the workforce.

One thing I also wanted to add, was I checked out this guys blog, just to know who I was dealing with. I found a link to an article from the Electronic Intifada entitled "How Barack Obama Learned to love Israel."

(Note: I want to make it very clear that I do not know this person, therefore I do not want to pass judgement on him, nor do I want anyone else to pass judgment on him, particularly because of the article. I am posting this so we have an idea of what kind of "group" he fits into, not judging the actual person)

Was a very interesting quote in the article that attempted to put Obama in a negative light due to his supposed support of Israel.

He [Obama[ recalled a January 2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).

Six months later, Obama said, "Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members."

Obama's phrasing suggests that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an unprovoked attack, but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he showed a worrying propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As anyone who checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily discover, Hizbullah only launched lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli towns and cities after Israel had heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught.

First of all that last paragraph is misleading. True Israel did start the bombing before the Hizbullah started firing rockets, but they're forgetting that Hizbullah had kidnapped 3 Israeli soldiers. And the fact that Israel was targeting Hizbullah militia and weapons that were being stored in civilian buildings, leads more the illusion that Israel was the one who fired the first shot.

Now I want to get back to the original topic of the Arab refugees. The Arabs would like to claim that what the Jews say is a myth, that the Arabs were kicked out of Israel and that the Jews in Arab countries left them willingly to Israel.

Mitchel Bard explains that the cast majority of Arabs did leave Israel voluntarily, some were forced out by the Jews, but the root of this goes back even farther then 1948, farther than the current Zionist movement, it really goes back to when the Jews were expelled from the land of Israel by the Romans.

In response to the idea that the Jews should have exclusive rights to the Land of Israel because we had a kingdom here 2000 years ago, the respondee said that it was similar to the Roman or Greek Empire returning, simply because, at one time, they ruled certain areas of land.

60 years ago I might have agreed with that, but now, 60 years after the creation of the modern day state of Israel, I wouldn't. Simply because of the amount that the state has produced in the last 6 decades.

The media would like to portray us as an occupying entity that has the sole goal of displacing the Palestinian Arabs, and forcing them off their land.

The truth is, and this may be hard for people to imagine, we as Jews want to be productive in the world. We want to contribute.

And we have

Israel has, according to Dr. Yossi Olmert (yes you can figure out who that is) Israel has the the 18th highest GDP of any country in the world, which is astounding given it's relatively small population compared to the first 17 of only 7 million.

Add on top of the the obvious goal of the Jewish people (maybe not of the government, but of the Jewish people) of returning home to the land the G-d gave to us in the Torah.

This leads to another interesting point, and this relates to the modern, secular state of Israel.


The Arab Muslims say that they believe in the Torah. They believe that the Torah says that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews.

What they believe is that the Torah is a book of laws, given to a group of people (the Jewish people) to obey. Given to obey in the Land of Israel.

Now given that, this conflict can make some more sense. Maybe if the current state became a Torah government this problem would disappear.

The Leftists on the other hand, G-d bless them want to stop an injustice when the see one. And when they look at Israel they see an occupying force that is destroying the lives of Arabs who they believe are indigenous to the region.

But what they don't realize is the the computer that they're watching the Youtube video on is powered by an Intel that was made in Israel.

They don't realize that when their grandmother goes into surgery, they're using a camera so small, it can fit on the end of a needle to find exactly where to make their incision.

They don't realize that the technology on the cell phone that they use to call their friends to plan an anti-Israel with was invented in Israel.

Personally I think that if anyone cares about the "Plight of the Palestinians" they would not be advocating for a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Arabs live under absolute worse conditions, not because Israel wants to make suffer, but because the youth have been brainwashed that the fastest way to Heaven is to blow yourself up and take a Jew with you, and because all of the money that has been given by the International Community as aid to the Arabs is not even getting past the hands of the person receiving the check. The money is heading to their own personal bank accounts.

I feel bad for them, I really do. I just don't think that carving almost 1/2 of Israel's land away will solve anything except more deaths on both sides. Especially considering the relatively tiny space Israel has compared to its neighbors.

Now I just want to put Chomsky and Finklestein in their place. Just because a Jews says that Israel should give away land does not mean that it's the right thing. Especially a secular Jews has nothing to loss by the land giveaway. They're selling out their brothers because they do have a spark of Jewishness in them, they just have their compassion misplaced because they don't have the Torah guiding them, they only have the word of Man.

Let me know if you have anymore question.