Here's a little pre-Shabbos tidbit:
Cleaning help here is paid by the hour. Of course, cleaning help in the US is paid by the hour as well, but here it's a totally different thing. Here, the cleaner says, "I have x amount of hours available for you. What would you like me to do?", which is quite a change from, "I have looked at your house and estimate it will take me x hours to clean and here is what the total will cost"!
We have cleaning help two hours a week, which is enough time for the floors to be cleaned (can't believe how good they look and feel after she's done), two bathrooms done, the front stairs and main mirpeset/balcony (unless we have guests and then she cleans the third floor guest room and bathroom instead of the outside spaces).
Just another little tidbit of "things are very different here"!
Friday, November 9, 2018
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Blessings
We've been getting blessings from the oddest place lately--our front door! I bought a doormat that says "Come in Peace" when you enter
and "Go in Peace" when you leave:
Here it is in all its glory. I looove it (never thought I'd say that about *doormat*, of all things)!
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Election Update: It Was a Real Nail-Biter!
So now we've learned what happens in a close race here! The Mayoral race was a real nail-biter. Waking up the next morning, we found out that Mr. Incumbent was ahead by 100 votes. 100 votes! Those of you who feel like your vote means nothing might want to consider moving to Israel.
By the end of that day's counting, Mr. Incumbent was ahead by 250 votes and the race was so close that the secondary ballots needed to be counted. These are ballots from disabled people who could not get to one of the handicapped-accessible voting sites, soldiers in the army, and prison inmates (!) (Google told me that, in the US, only Maine and Vermont allow inmates to vote while incarcerated). It was interesting to hear how these groups of people voted: on the outside of each voting envelope, the voter wrote his/her name and national identity number. After the votes were delivered back here, the identity information was recorded at the polling places. The voting slips were then taken out of the envelopes, mixed up and then counted.
And when that was done, Ms. Challenger found out that she had won by over 500 votes! Woohoo!
Frankly, why anyone wants a job in politics is beyond me, but being Mayor of this city, which has a population about a diverse as I can imagine there being, seems like a particular challenge. b'eH Ms. Challenger, erm, I mean "Ms. Mayor" will do a great job and be able to implement the vast majority of her expansive platform. Welcome aboard, Ms. Mayor!
By the end of that day's counting, Mr. Incumbent was ahead by 250 votes and the race was so close that the secondary ballots needed to be counted. These are ballots from disabled people who could not get to one of the handicapped-accessible voting sites, soldiers in the army, and prison inmates (!) (Google told me that, in the US, only Maine and Vermont allow inmates to vote while incarcerated). It was interesting to hear how these groups of people voted: on the outside of each voting envelope, the voter wrote his/her name and national identity number. After the votes were delivered back here, the identity information was recorded at the polling places. The voting slips were then taken out of the envelopes, mixed up and then counted.
And when that was done, Ms. Challenger found out that she had won by over 500 votes! Woohoo!
Frankly, why anyone wants a job in politics is beyond me, but being Mayor of this city, which has a population about a diverse as I can imagine there being, seems like a particular challenge. b'eH Ms. Challenger, erm, I mean "Ms. Mayor" will do a great job and be able to implement the vast majority of her expansive platform. Welcome aboard, Ms. Mayor!
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Voting!
Municipal elections are held every five years, so this is our first election season experience here. Local election day has recently been declared a national holiday (national elections have been days off for a while) with schools and businesses closed, and those that are open (i.e. malls, as this seems poised to be a huge shopping day) having to pay their workers double their regular salary. Everyone else gets a paid day off. I'm interested to see what voter turnout is like here!
Today we voted for Mayor and City Council. Since we're not horribly displeased with Mr. 2-Term Incumbent, we're in a win-win situation (although I do think things will be improved if Ms. Challenger wins).
Voting here, in "Start Up Nation" is surprisingly low-tech. In fact, I couldn't believe that nothing seems to have substantially changed since the voting scene in the 1960s classic movie Salach Shabati, where he enters the voting booth and does a "some of these-some of those", stuffing his envelope with tons of ballots for all the parties that tried their hardest with promises of favors and outright bribes to get his vote (not that anyone tried to bribe us, but a STUNNING amount of improvements to the city have come about in the last few months, leading to a frequent comment of "Wouldn't it be great if it was always election season?!").
We voted at one of the local kindergartens and checked in with our teudat zehut national identity card. I didn't quite understand the "intake" process, as one person checked our card against her roster and then announced our number out loud and SEVEN other people working the polls checked us off of their lists. I have no idea what it meant, as she was the only person checking people in and there was only one voting booth....). We were given one envelope for each race being held and then entered a voting booth, which was a child-height table with a cardboard enclosure, like from a science fair. In the booth there was a selection of paper ballots representing each group running for City Council (one does not vote for individuals for City Council, rather for a particular political party who has put your supported candidate(s) on its slate. In our case, a slight dilemma as a woman from our neighborhood [who hosted us our first Shabbos here] was running on one party, and someone we're friendly with from ulpan was running on another party. Both parties supported our choice for Mayor. What to do, what to do....). Ballots are little paper rectangles with one or two big letters standing for the Party's name and the full name written beneath.
We learned that it's very important when voting to check that no hanky panky has been done to your ballot, because if the ballot you choose
is bent
or wrinkled
or has anything written on the front or back (even a scribble)
or you put more than two in a ballot envelope
......your vote is invalidated.
I did experience a brief moment of panic when staring at the TON of ballots for the different parties running for City Council. As there was only one voting booth, I wanted to make sure I didn't hold up the line...There were about 16 different parties running, and I could see how hard it would be for someone with little Hebrew (although I'm not sure it justifies the "tip" below, which was sent out in an innocuous-looking pamphlet called, "Your Guide to Easy Voting" [which perhaps should have been more aptly-called "Your Guide to Easy Voting for Our Party and No Other"]:
After exiting the booth, we deposited our envelope in a big cardboard box (just like in the US, but way more low-tech), took our Identity Cards back and woohoo--we had our first experience participating in Israeli democracy!
Today we voted for Mayor and City Council. Since we're not horribly displeased with Mr. 2-Term Incumbent, we're in a win-win situation (although I do think things will be improved if Ms. Challenger wins).
Voting here, in "Start Up Nation" is surprisingly low-tech. In fact, I couldn't believe that nothing seems to have substantially changed since the voting scene in the 1960s classic movie Salach Shabati, where he enters the voting booth and does a "some of these-some of those", stuffing his envelope with tons of ballots for all the parties that tried their hardest with promises of favors and outright bribes to get his vote (not that anyone tried to bribe us, but a STUNNING amount of improvements to the city have come about in the last few months, leading to a frequent comment of "Wouldn't it be great if it was always election season?!").
We voted at one of the local kindergartens and checked in with our teudat zehut national identity card. I didn't quite understand the "intake" process, as one person checked our card against her roster and then announced our number out loud and SEVEN other people working the polls checked us off of their lists. I have no idea what it meant, as she was the only person checking people in and there was only one voting booth....). We were given one envelope for each race being held and then entered a voting booth, which was a child-height table with a cardboard enclosure, like from a science fair. In the booth there was a selection of paper ballots representing each group running for City Council (one does not vote for individuals for City Council, rather for a particular political party who has put your supported candidate(s) on its slate. In our case, a slight dilemma as a woman from our neighborhood [who hosted us our first Shabbos here] was running on one party, and someone we're friendly with from ulpan was running on another party. Both parties supported our choice for Mayor. What to do, what to do....). Ballots are little paper rectangles with one or two big letters standing for the Party's name and the full name written beneath.
We learned that it's very important when voting to check that no hanky panky has been done to your ballot, because if the ballot you choose
is bent
or wrinkled
or has anything written on the front or back (even a scribble)
or you put more than two in a ballot envelope
......your vote is invalidated.
I did experience a brief moment of panic when staring at the TON of ballots for the different parties running for City Council. As there was only one voting booth, I wanted to make sure I didn't hold up the line...There were about 16 different parties running, and I could see how hard it would be for someone with little Hebrew (although I'm not sure it justifies the "tip" below, which was sent out in an innocuous-looking pamphlet called, "Your Guide to Easy Voting" [which perhaps should have been more aptly-called "Your Guide to Easy Voting for Our Party and No Other"]:
After exiting the booth, we deposited our envelope in a big cardboard box (just like in the US, but way more low-tech), took our Identity Cards back and woohoo--we had our first experience participating in Israeli democracy!
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
The World Needs More People Like This!
Our city is built on a big....height. It's taller than a hill and smaller than a mountain. I'm not sure what the word in English is (if there even is one!), but the word in Hebrew is rama. There's a lot of "uphill" in walking around here (and remember that cars aren't anywhere near as common in Israel; for example, while I know many people with 0 or 1 car, I know *no one* who has two cars).
One of the main roads in town is a straight shot up. It's one of the few roads that you can see the top of when you're at the bottom, and it can be a bit daunting, especially when it's a hot day (which it is most of the year. It's mid-October and I haven't put on so much as a light sweater yet). So it was a delight to discover that there's a family of absolute tadikim who have made part of the entrance to their home into a water station:
There's a water fountain with cups, a sign with the blessing to say before drinking water, and a sign asking that every blessing should help bring healing to a person special to them. The sign on the left says, "Know this, dear one: the Creator of the World loves you very much". During the hottest part of the summer, they put a few chairs out as well.
The world needs more people like this!
 |
| Arial photo (cropped by me) by Seth Aronstam (thank you!). More daunting at street-level! |
One of the main roads in town is a straight shot up. It's one of the few roads that you can see the top of when you're at the bottom, and it can be a bit daunting, especially when it's a hot day (which it is most of the year. It's mid-October and I haven't put on so much as a light sweater yet). So it was a delight to discover that there's a family of absolute tadikim who have made part of the entrance to their home into a water station:
There's a water fountain with cups, a sign with the blessing to say before drinking water, and a sign asking that every blessing should help bring healing to a person special to them. The sign on the left says, "Know this, dear one: the Creator of the World loves you very much". During the hottest part of the summer, they put a few chairs out as well.
The world needs more people like this!
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Sukkot #4!
Is every post this year going to start with, "I can't believe this is our 4th (fill in the blank)"? Umm, maybe! So not much to say about the holiday of Sukkot that I didn't already say in past years, but here are a few photos:
Chag sameach!
 |
| the largest etrog I have ever seen (by FAR). Usually they are about the size of a lemon. We didn't buy it ("Can you imagine the hand cramp you'd get holding that thing?!" was Shalom Shachne's thought) |
 |
| just about ready to go in our eating sukkah |
 |
| and in the sleeping sukkah off the master bedroom |
Friday, August 31, 2018
Year Three(!) Wrap-Up
We just noted our three year aliyah-versary!!! Wow--we're really doing this!
This year has had some highlights that I didn't blog about at the time, among them:
--Last year, I ran the local 5k race alone. It was a really great experience for me and after hearing me wax rhapsodic about it, Penina took up jogging this year, and we ran the 5k together. It was one of the best mother-daughter bonding things I think I've ever done with her and we're hoping that others in the family will join us next year (and I came in 6th place in my age group)!
--In a very different sort of highlight: On erev Pesach, a 7 year-old boy with severe autism went missing while shopping with his mother in the mercaz. Just hours before Passover, the holiday that requires the MOST intense preparations of any of them, a giant search party was formed with hundreds of volunteers fanning out to search every nook and cranny of the city. The search was complicated by the fact the boy is totally non-verbal and does not even respond to his own name, and also that the family wasn't from here, so it's not like he might know the people searching for him (although not sure that would have helped him, anyway).
Chana, Penina and Ilana joined the search party (I kept on working in the kitchen so we would have food for the holiday). Their job was to go up and down the street near our house that leads out of town and see if they saw him, or anything unusual in the fields and hills that line the road (we live at the very end of the city).
b''H, shortly before the holiday began, the boy was found by members of the local volunteer EMT service which has an off-road vehicle for just such situations. He had walked over a mile from the mercaz and gone out of town (likely walking right through our neighborhood, in fact) and ended up in the middle of a construction site and was stuck in mud up to his chest.
While it certainly would have been nicer had the whole thing not happened, it was beautiful to see the people of our city coming to help someone in need, even at a time that certainly could not have been convenient for most of them....
--Ilana's bat mitzvah in Israel was also a year highlight. At her school, the rule is that all the girls celebrate their bat mitzvah in the classroom. I loved it. We made tons of gluten-free cookies, Penina made a gorgeous cake, and we had fruit platters and chocolate fountains. Ilana spoke for 20 minutes (in Hebrew) about the blessings for various foods and the girls did a project making a card with the blessings before- and after- each type of food. We showed a slideshow of her life and then the girls danced to the set list of songs Ilana had put together. It was fun, sweet and totally reasonable :). I loved that no bat mitzvah could be "over the top" because how over the top can you be in a 6th grade classroom?!
--I'm not sure if this is a "highlight" or a "lowlight", but it amuses me that "new olim" moments, while (thankfully) less frequent, have still not ended. For example, at Ilana's school, ordering school books for the next year can only be done through a company that uses a computerized system that is in Hebrew. I was delighted to see that I was able to order the books much easier this year than last year, until I got totally stumped trying to order the last item on the book list that the school had given out. It didn't seem to exist on the system (and the system, of course, is totally automated and there is no way to speak with a human being). Finally, I asked on the class mom's Whatsapp group only to find out.....that the "book" I was trying to order was not a book at all, but a required fee for using the system :) .
Or the time when, after Ilana's horseback riding lesson, we were all so hot (not that I'm comparing standing in the sun *watching* a lesson to actually riding the horse, but, hey, Chana, Penina and I were hot too!). We were so hot that we decided to stop at a nearby supermarket and buy some popsicles. While there, we noticed they had Italian ices and decided that, yum, they would be even frostier! The cashier gave us rather an odd look when we check out with our lone product and asked if she could give us some spoons, but we didn't think too much about it....
When we got in the car, Chana tried it and said, "Blech! This is terrible! It tastes like really strong orange juice". Penina tried it and agreed it was terrible. And then they read the ingredients and found out that they were eating.....orange juice concentrate, straight up. (In our defense, look at that picture--doesn't that look like orange Italian ice?!)
This year has had some highlights that I didn't blog about at the time, among them:
--Last year, I ran the local 5k race alone. It was a really great experience for me and after hearing me wax rhapsodic about it, Penina took up jogging this year, and we ran the 5k together. It was one of the best mother-daughter bonding things I think I've ever done with her and we're hoping that others in the family will join us next year (and I came in 6th place in my age group)!
--In a very different sort of highlight: On erev Pesach, a 7 year-old boy with severe autism went missing while shopping with his mother in the mercaz. Just hours before Passover, the holiday that requires the MOST intense preparations of any of them, a giant search party was formed with hundreds of volunteers fanning out to search every nook and cranny of the city. The search was complicated by the fact the boy is totally non-verbal and does not even respond to his own name, and also that the family wasn't from here, so it's not like he might know the people searching for him (although not sure that would have helped him, anyway).
Chana, Penina and Ilana joined the search party (I kept on working in the kitchen so we would have food for the holiday). Their job was to go up and down the street near our house that leads out of town and see if they saw him, or anything unusual in the fields and hills that line the road (we live at the very end of the city).
b''H, shortly before the holiday began, the boy was found by members of the local volunteer EMT service which has an off-road vehicle for just such situations. He had walked over a mile from the mercaz and gone out of town (likely walking right through our neighborhood, in fact) and ended up in the middle of a construction site and was stuck in mud up to his chest.
While it certainly would have been nicer had the whole thing not happened, it was beautiful to see the people of our city coming to help someone in need, even at a time that certainly could not have been convenient for most of them....
--Ilana's bat mitzvah in Israel was also a year highlight. At her school, the rule is that all the girls celebrate their bat mitzvah in the classroom. I loved it. We made tons of gluten-free cookies, Penina made a gorgeous cake, and we had fruit platters and chocolate fountains. Ilana spoke for 20 minutes (in Hebrew) about the blessings for various foods and the girls did a project making a card with the blessings before- and after- each type of food. We showed a slideshow of her life and then the girls danced to the set list of songs Ilana had put together. It was fun, sweet and totally reasonable :). I loved that no bat mitzvah could be "over the top" because how over the top can you be in a 6th grade classroom?!
The class picking Ilana up on a chair
and with their completed projects
--I'm not sure if this is a "highlight" or a "lowlight", but it amuses me that "new olim" moments, while (thankfully) less frequent, have still not ended. For example, at Ilana's school, ordering school books for the next year can only be done through a company that uses a computerized system that is in Hebrew. I was delighted to see that I was able to order the books much easier this year than last year, until I got totally stumped trying to order the last item on the book list that the school had given out. It didn't seem to exist on the system (and the system, of course, is totally automated and there is no way to speak with a human being). Finally, I asked on the class mom's Whatsapp group only to find out.....that the "book" I was trying to order was not a book at all, but a required fee for using the system :) .
Or the time when, after Ilana's horseback riding lesson, we were all so hot (not that I'm comparing standing in the sun *watching* a lesson to actually riding the horse, but, hey, Chana, Penina and I were hot too!). We were so hot that we decided to stop at a nearby supermarket and buy some popsicles. While there, we noticed they had Italian ices and decided that, yum, they would be even frostier! The cashier gave us rather an odd look when we check out with our lone product and asked if she could give us some spoons, but we didn't think too much about it....
When we got in the car, Chana tried it and said, "Blech! This is terrible! It tastes like really strong orange juice". Penina tried it and agreed it was terrible. And then they read the ingredients and found out that they were eating.....orange juice concentrate, straight up. (In our defense, look at that picture--doesn't that look like orange Italian ice?!)
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