One Year

OK, so today is the same date that we left Arizona to come here to Israel, one year ago.  Tomorrow, June 27, is the day we arrived.  So I thought it would be worth going over a few points, a few overall things I’ve noticed in our first year here.

1. That whole thing about how your kids will be fluent by Hanukah – complete nonsense.  Maybe its just that we’re in Ra’anana where there are a lot of English speakers, and that they were stuck at home for two and a half months with COVID, but they are nowhere near fluent. Yes, they are learning Hebrew, but slowly and painfully.  
2. Everything here is smaller. This may seem obvious but its for real.  And its not good or bad, just different.  Arizona is a particularly “big” state – everything is spread out, the houses are big, the cars/trucks are big, etc.  Maybe its a different story for those coming from New York, but for us the differences are huge.  That said, its not entirely a bad thing.  Distances are smaller, you can walk to lot of places, a drive across town in Phoenix would put you three to four cities away here in Israel.  There are always people around.  For some this may seem stifling, but I find it nice.  It is a young country and there are always kids out on the streets, parents with babies, people walking around.  It feels very alive in that way.  It feels small, cozy, manageable.  
3. Yes things are a bit more expensive here.  However, you end up living on a contracted budget.  We have spent about 1/3 of what we were spending in the US on a month to month basis.  Don’t ask me how or why, it just works out that way.  Some of it is no private school tuition, some is not paying for healthcare, some is that we live in a smaller apartment vs the big house we had in the US (although we actually are paying close to the same for this apt compared to the mortgage on our AZ home 😳), part of it is having only one car instead of two, and part of it maybe doing less the past few months with COVID.  But my overall impression is that you just get by with less, and because its an entirely different culture you just don’t notice it.   Somehow it works out.  
4. I was warned up and down about the horrible Israeli bureaucracy, but I have not found it to be that bad.  We did wait in our share of lines in the beginning, but with the electronic ticket system things move pretty smoothly.  At the dentist or doctors office things run very much on time once you get there (traffic is another story….)  And all of the people we have dealt with at the various places we’ve been have been very nice and helpful, really going out of their way to help us.  
5. Being Jewish here is just not the same as back home.  This one takes a bit more time to explain.  Let’s say you’re in the US and you’re a middle of the road Jew, somewhere between reform and conservative, and you want to learn a bit more or somehow see what’s its like to be “more Jewish.”  In the US there are not many options.  To go “try out” an orthodox shul, you’d have to drive there, be embarrassed about driving there in the first place, possibly park a block away so you could walk in, etc.  Then sit with a crowd of people in dark suits and black hats who clearly are not you and are wondering what the heck you’re doing there.  And no matter how nice and welcoming they may be, its just pretty obvious that you’re either “all in” which means literally buying bunch of black suits and a black hat, or you’re not.  And if you’re not, then what’s the point, anyway?  Maybe at a chabad house you can “check things out” and do what you want, but you have to seek them out, and although they are wonderful and have done great things for the Jewish community, they are a bit “off the beaten path” for many American Jews.  On the other hand, here in Israel, Ra’anana to be specific, there are about six orthodox shul that I know of all within walking distance from my house.  You can try them out one at a time, move from one to another, and no-one cares.  And further, while there are black hats to be found (not that there’s anything wrong with that – some of my best friends have black hats 😀😂), there is an entirely different breed of orthodox Jew here that I seldom see in the US – the kippah-wearing, tzitzit-wearing orthodox Jew who just walks around in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals.  There are just many more options such that you don’t get locked into an “all or none” paradigm.  And if you just want to replicate an exact US style conservative or reform synagogue; well, they have that, too.  
6. It is a very mixed country.   This means internationally: There are people just here in Ra’anana from the US, Britain, Scotland, France, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Holland, and that’s just off the top of my head as I’m sitting here.  This also means racially/ethnically:   Many here in Ra’anana are Westerners (America, South Africa, Britain, Australia, etc – white english speakers for lack of a better term)  – but at least half the city is of middle eastern descent, and while smaller in numbers here in Ra’anana, there are also African Jews from Ethiopia, as well as many African non-jews here on refugee visas for work, and many South East Asians here on standard work visas.  The bottom line is that it is very mixed ethnically both within the Jewish community and of course even more when you include the non Jews as well.  And it also is international in regards to business and job opportunities.  There are companies here that do business in all corners of the world, from the US and Western Europe to Russia and all the former Soviet bloc countries, to India, Africa, South East Asia, and China and Japan.