Tag: israel

  • An Israeli workday.

    This hasn’t happened in a while, but today was a high terror alert in Jerusalem so the police were everywhere. Here’s what I watched from my office window after police discovered a suspicious package near the Malha mall:  The bomb squad guy getting the act together with (Israeli) man’s best friend.   Traffic backed up…

  • Serious message from the streets of Jerusalem…

    A serious message from the streets of Jerusalem: The Hebrew alphabet is written out with every third letter underlined and the message below is “One out of three women are raped…” Eerie in any language.

  • All aboard: Morning minyan on Israel Railways.

    New from Israel Railways: Pray for the train to be on time… Late for work or school because of long Morning Prayer? Do you get stuck in traffic because you were held up at shul? Israel Railways presents ‘Synagogue Coach’. Project’s initiators at Union of Synagogues wait for green-light from transportation minister, generous donor to…

  • Now they're taking *our* semester breaks?

    A little ironic after my last post, but: Universities set to cancel vacations to make up strike time There are so many three, four and six-letter words running through my head right now (bilingually), I can’t really write anything else. University officials say that students will probably have to give up their semester break, and…

  • I'm no Bar Rafaeli, but…

    As is known, I work for an American (Israeli) hi tech Internet company. Thanks to Dapper, (another American (Israeli) hi tech Internet company) we’ve been dabbling in creating Facebook applications as a word-of-mouth marketing tool. Last week I got messaged from a guy who was interested in interviewing me for an article he was writing…

  • Last year's a charm.

    I just found out that for my last year of studies, to get my tuition paid for by Misrad Klita/Minhal Studentim, I need to volunteer 120 hours with little kids, the elderly or other olim chadashim. Apparently they only make you do it in the third year of receiving money from your aliyah rights. The…

  • Re: israel stuff

    I’ve been here almost three years, and the other day my mom forwarded me an email I wrote home a few weeks after I first got here in January 2005. Thought it would be fun to remember, especially since things are so different now. Here are some excerpts so you can get a feel for…

  • Students' protest; teachers' strike.

    Walking to the bus stop this morning – passing the empty school on my block – I heard loud chanting and clapping and honking; it was 8 am and the kids were supposed to be school-less and asleep. When I arrived at Yochanan Ben Zakai, a healthy-sized street that borders my neighborhood, this is (a…

  • Hump Day.

    My mom has this thing that on Wednesdays she announces that it’s Hump Day. Of course, the first time she said this to me I freaked. Then she explained that Wednesday is the middle of the week; when you get past the hump of Wednesday, you’re halfway to the weekend. What’s funny is that Hump…

  • Cancel the semester, will stab myself.

    I don’t like waking up on my one-day-a-week of school and seeing this headline: University presidents: Semester may be canceled And I don’t like reading this in the first paragraph: As the third week of the university lecturers’ strike gets underway, professors are not optimistic on the chances of the protest ending anytime soon. Representatives…

  • Organizationally challenged.

    I’m taking a class this semester on conflict in organizational structure. Doesn’t seem like it’ll be that difficult; the professor is friendly and the material is familiar. So far I’m finding it quite entertaining, actually: being taught organizational conflict – in Israel – by a middle-age tzabar, a gever-gever who served more than his fair…

  • Making the next move.

    We spent the weekend as a pilot trip in Tzur Hadassah, a small yishuv right next to Beitar and Gush Etzion. It’s 15 minutes from Jerusalem (without traffic) and it’s the kind of cozy, neighborly community that a young, childless married couple uses to kick off into becoming an experienced, childbearing married couple. Tzur Hadassah…