Jerusalem Post is Copying Me Again

It's funny that I just wrote that post today on absentee, or largely absentee homeowners in Israel. Jerusalem Post is covering the issue today, too. I think they stole my idea.

Jerusalem, as I said, is particularly afflicted with this problem. Essentially, rich American Jews buy a home in Jerusalem and leave it vacant for 11 months out of the year. They don't rent it out, they don't share it, and this has really driven up prices in the area.

Check out this article for the whole story. Here's an idea: Hook me up when I'm in the army. I'll only be there about two weekends out of a month! If you want to be a good fellow Jew, email "dannybrothers@gmail.com" and let me just put my stuff in the closet! I'm a good guy, ask my mom!

Old England in Netanya, Israel

Isn't that just beautiful? Most people don't seem to realize that Israel is on the Mediterranean, and being that the Mediterranean bears ethereal magnificence, Israel is graced with some of the most breathtaking beaches around. Yes, yes, the Caribbean and Thailand are great, but if you walk three minutes from an Israeli Mediterranean beach, well, you're walking on some Biblical site, in some Biblical town, by some Biblical characters and their homes.

What you're looking at in the picture is a view from a balcony overlooking some of the beaches in Netanya. Netanya is slightly north of Tel Aviv, obviously on the coast, and it's well known for having the Ikea store. That and the best coastline in Israel, at least according to me. Not only do kids surf there, but it's also a hot destination for riding horses on the sand. Considering its physical qualities, the foreigners have moved in en-masse.

Land values in Israel are on the rise, astronomically, in no small part due to the rise in foreign-owned property. Rich Americans, Canadians, Brits, and French are notorious for buying up apartments, old Turkish houses, and land in areas like Baka and Katamon in Jerusalem (the German Colony). These neighborhoods are literally the Little Americas of Israel. You can walk down the street in Katamon and hear Hebrew, but if you walk by a school in the morning, I can guarantee you you'll hear a mother or father talking to a kid or two in English. If you get on the number 18 bus on Emek Refaim and don't hear some English, you might want to make sure you didn't have a concussion and wandered somewhere else.

Those communities in Jerusalem are so Americanized, or owned by non-native Israelis, because they are gorgeous locations. Emek Refaim and the surrounding Baka/Katamon neighborhoods were expensive areas in the time of the Turks, and they haven't ceased to be the most desirous since. An example? When the German Templars (a Christian sect that owned this area) were evicted after WW2 by the British because of their support of Nazi Germany, where do you think the British officers lived? Yup, they squatted on the houses in Baka, Katamon, and on Emek Refaim. How nice are they? You can't buy a place for less than a million, and that's probably a junky attic.

I went to Netanya for the first weekend of Passover (Pesach). I have a good friend whose step-father is a Brit, and besides owning a nice apartment in, you guessed it, Katamon, they have a place in a community in Netanya actually not known as Little America, but rather as Little England. On the way to synagogue one morning, I ran into a random British guy, and he asked me where I was going to daven.

I told him "Young Israel," the synagogue that my host goes to. The guy looked at me, chuckled, and like a good Brit he came back with some biting wit. "Yeah, more like Old England." The synagogue is populated by a bunch of old guys. I guess it takes a lifetime of income to afford one of these places.

It seems strange to me that there are definitively American places, and as if there is any need to further subcategorize Western, non-native Israeli areas, there's also those definitively British and French spots as well. That's one aspect to the whole 'Israel as the center of Judaism,' where Jews from all over the world come here to live or play. You don't think of this country as being large and diverse enough to merit definitively foreign clusters, but humans are humans, and we tend to group ourselves as we find most comfortable.

That being said, most of that "foreign" business is American. In Jerusalem, in general, if you see an Indo-European text on a sign, it's probably in English. However, if you are walking on Rechov Nice (a street) in Netanya, those signs are going to be in French. At first I unwittingly laughed at the stupid Israelis, putting "cacher" instead of "kosher" on a restaurant ad. Use a spell check! But, remember the street name, Danny! It's not Nice as in "nice to meet you," but rather Nice, the French Riviera resort city. At least in Jerusalem they name the streets in Hebrew! Usually.

We had our Pessach seder at my friend's step-father's apartment, which is right on the beach, and has a view of the ocean. I've been here before, and I was anxiously awaiting going back to see that terrific seascape again. I was unaware, however, at how many people were going to be there. After I found out that about 16 bodies were going to be staying at the apartment, eight of which were girls under the age of seven, I got a little nervous. Then my friend, her brother, and her sister and I went over to their friend's apartment. This family happens to be doing Passover in Italy, if you get where I'm going with this. I've known all these people for a while now, but I guess I'm always a little taken aback when I see their places.



Let's just say I'm constantly plagued by the worst of the deadly sins.

If You Build It, We Will Come

For once, every news outlet in the world is saying the same thing: Israel totally kicks ass at spying. Well, besides that Ben-Kadish guy that got busted last week for giving nuclear secrets over to Israel, which doesn't even make sense considering Israel has had nukes for decades. Anyway, if you remember my blog post on the Israeli attack against a Syrian nuclear facility back in September, you'll know that there was an official media blackout on the alleged incident. The government literally didn't even acknowledge that it occurred. Not a peep.

For some reason the U.S. Congress is being briefed on all of it, however. And of course, like our good media and government tend to do, we are going to get the leaks. We already got a little bit: Israel can put a spy ANYWHERE.

"The evidence includes pre-attack images taken inside the reactor building, which closely resembles the one at the Yongbyon nuclear center in North Korea...

It is believed that the video was shot by Israeli intelligence or a mole for the Israelis, the source close to the administration said."

That's according to CNN. How in the hell did we put someone inside that nuclear facility?

Hmm, OK, Israel kicks ass. We've established that now. Let's see what Al-Jazeera had to say about the potential Israeli spy.

"...intelligence chiefs planned showing US legislators a video which, they said, showed the alleged Syrian reactor had a core design similar to the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon...

It is not clear how the video was obtained."

This is one reason that Israel has always defeated the armies of the Middle East, the ones that have attacked us: They are too proud to admit weakness. As the poet Emerson said, "Our strength grows out of our weakness."

Pyromaniacs in Jerusalem

(This picture, which I think is great, is from the site SaveTheAssistants.com. If you're an assistant, you'll love it).


Saturday night was the beginning of Passover (פסח), the holiday celebrating the Jewish departure from Egypt under the direction of Moses. In terms of the solidification of the Jewish people, this event and the following 40 years spent in the desert was the real beginning of the Nation of Israel. We were the Jewish people before we left Egypt and that period of slavery, but with our exit we showed G-d our true faith, we accepted the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and eventually we entered the Land of Israel in order to claim our homeland. The Passover holiday is a celebration of the birth of our nation and religion.

So how do we celebrate it in Israel? We set fire to parks in order to burn our chametz, or any leavened bread product. The custom is to clean your apartment like it is infected with mold, every inch of it in order to rid it of any chametz, and then finally you perform what is called bedikat chametz - literally checking of chametz. After you get a symbolic amount of this forbidden food together, a ritual you perform at night, the next morning you have to burn it completely. Everyone does this at the same time.



Hence the fires. This picture isn't even half representative of how large this flame got. As we were burning the goods, about five different guys came by with their chametz and asked, angrily, "Why did you make this fire right here? It's too big."

You know who started the fire? The city cleaning worker that left it unattended as he made his way around our street. Honestly, I think you'd get sued if you did that in America. Here, he was just being a good, although slightly irresponsible, Jewish citizen - providing a useful service for the masses. This guy here is performing bitul chametz, saying the prayer after burning the chametz.

Hebrew Is Gobbly Gook!

Interesting Article Here!

This article that was on the Jerusalem Post website a few days ago is actually an answer to a question that I've had for a few years now. Considering that I am working with great effort on learning the Hebrew language, sometimes I look at its non-Indo European character set and I think, "Is this gobbly gook to anyone else?" I mean, do Israelis look at Hebrew text and see it like I see English -- as plain as my image in a mirror, as distinct as red and blue and green, as natural as the glare of a summer sun?

Apparently not!

Hebrew University did a study whereby they found that slightly jumbled words are more recognizable in English, and other Indo-European languages, than they are in Hebrew. For instance, "tutrle" and "mcie" are easier for English speakers to reorganize, instantly, into turtle and mice than their Hebrew equivalents would be.

This is because Hebrew is a root-based language. The Hebrew root is essentially a string of a few letters which have a definitive meaning, but can be used in tons of different forms (from verbs to nouns to adjectives) to carry on the meaning in a different context. You can't change them up.

In English, however, we would just have a totally different word with no connection between them. The best way to characterize the difference between Hebrew and English is that whereby English has thousands of more, distinct words, Hebrew is based more on context, structure, and these precious roots. Distinct words versus distinct word forms.

The roots can make for some really cool trivia. L'hosif, Yosef, tosefet - never mind.

Anyway, this makes me feel great! I kept wondering why my very smart teacher couldn't recognize a word in my homework because two letters were backwards. So those native Hebrew speakers actually don't have that instinctive recognition of Hebrew either! There's hope yet.

(If anyone wants to hear more about how AWESOME Hebrew is, comment on this post).