Category: aliyah rites
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Contracted to real estate limbo (or, Tzur Hadassah homeowner!)
As of a two-hour meeting in the Bursa district of Tel Aviv today, we are now contracted to become the owners of our Tzur Hadassah apartment! That’s a convoluted way of saying something even more convoluted: We’ve signed and are waiting for the banks to finish their end of the deal before I can comfortably…
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Fadichot leaking all over the place.
Every other week or so when I pick up Koala from his gan, his ganenet passes me the pants I dressed him in that day and I look down and see him wearing the poofy red replacement pants we keep there. Always with the same explanation: “He leaked again so we changed him…” I guess…
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Immigrant parenting fail.
Ok, maybe I don’t exactly fail yet. But I’m headed in that direction. I attended an event tonight for the ‘gan mothers’ for which I had to push myself to go, and, not surprisingly, a room full of women + socializing + not knowing anyone + doing it in Hebrew is a mess of a…
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Paging JFK.
Maybe this isn’t very nice because once upon a time, I was just starting out, making aliyah, making ends meet, figuring it all out. But at the same time, I don’t think I was ever a brat. I’m just tired of hearing about/from people who are debating whether to make aliyah, but the angle they…
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On living outside Israel.
It happens every time I visit the States: I spend about 35% of the time thinking about the reasons I could and couldn’t live there. By now, the couldn’ts far outweigh the coulds. So it stands to reason that I’m going through the same process here in Melbourne. It’s different, of course, because it’s not…
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What have I done?
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t freaked. Though the truth is it’s only starting to dawn on me how awe-some and terrifying it is. I’m beginning to comprehend what I’ve done. It really is dawning; first the expectation of the rise, and then the initial tips of the rays. Pretty soon I think…
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How did you do it?
Funny how, so often, for so many, aliyah means getting on a plane with three bags instead of two. That’s how I did it. I had school plans in the near-distant future, a few phone numbers. Knowing I could go back and visit New York at the right price. No pressure-aliyah. With a five year…
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Leaving New York City.
I returned on Tuesday from a trip to New York. It was a family visit with some work mixed in, and it came at a time when I was starting to feel a bit… hungry for New York. Not homesick, per say, but just in the mood. I don’t know if it happens to all…
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Coming, going.
In the past four weeks, I’ve heard about a total of five actual (three) and potential (two) yeridot – leaving Israel after making aliyah. I’m not necessarily homesick, so the news doesn’t really hit me that way. It’s more like this this bizarre feeling of, am I doing something wrong? Is there something I don’t…
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The future.
Last night I found myself hanging with ‘the girls’ in Modiin. We picnic’d next to a man-made lake somewhere along the road near the mall. It’s like a (very) poor man’s Central Park. In a good way. I watched groups of teenage boys go back and forth in their boats, fighting each other with oars,…
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Take your coffee with extra חחחחח.
You know you’ve been here a while when you get all the jokes at a Jerusalem Anglo comedy show. Presenting… HaHaפuch! Tonight was the group’s opening night; you may have already heard it of it from such performances as Facebook and YouTube. How about a little description? Our comedy troupe provides the other side of Israeli life, the…
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My own Israeli Australia.
Just left the Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv. If you happen to be an Australian married to an American and you have children together, then I don’t have to tell you how much more of a pleasant experience it is to acquire Aussie citizenship and passport for your tri-citizen child. The embassy is located at…