Avivah Werner

Category: aliyah

  • Comparing cost of living in US and Israel

    >>We are a frum (Jewish Orthodox) homeschooling family from New York working towards making aliyah within the next year and we were told by NBN that properties in the North, specifically “villas,” “cottages,” and “plots,” are extremely affordable and available compared to the rest of the country and here in the US as is the cost of living expenses; reduced tuition (not applicable in our case), reduced health insurance, reduced food expenses, use of solar panel/power energy systems to reduce bills, etc… – your post however, suggests the opposite! May I ask if you can please slightly elaborate on what would be considered an “expensive house” vs an “affordable apartment” in Karmiel or Maalot, for example, and what that same house and apartment would cost in a place like Bet Shemesh, or Maaleh Adumim, for example? It would really assist us in putting things into perspective…<<

    Housing – What you consider expensive or affordable is relative to where you’re moving from and where you’re moving to. Since you’re coming from NY,  it’s likely that everything will seem fairly reasonable to you.

    When you buy in Israel, it’s generally accepted that you put down between 30 – 50% of the purchase price.  This obviously affects how you perceive affordability so keep it in mind!  We initially were told we would only need a 10% downpayment and thought we’d be able to buy a private home, but in the end the mortgage broker told us we’d need to put 30% down.  If you have someone co-sign your mortgage, you can have a much smaller downpayment, but we didn’t have that and we didn’t want that.

    I can’t give you accurate prices for other parts of the country, but I can tell you fairly accurately what local prices are.  (You mentioned Maalot, and their prices are lower than Karmiel.)

    Karmiel prices for the Dromit neighborhood (this is the central neighborhood where most of the recent Anglo olim have moved to) – prices range between about 500,00 shekels for a smaller apartment (2 bedrooms) on a higher floor, going up to about 950,000 for a larger ground floor apartment (4 or 5 bedrooms) with a garden.  Obviously it depends on location, condition, etc.  But that’s a pretty accurate range, though you can find apartments that go outside of that.

    Private houses – the prices range from 1,290,000 shekels for a smaller house (120 meters and up) to 2 million shekels for a very large home (250 + meters) in excellent condition.

    These prices are drastically cheaper than in the Jerusalem area.  Someone told me they sold their small Jerusalem apartment and are now buying two apartments for cash, one to live in and the other as an investment property.  Another person told me she has plans to do the same thing.  Someone else told me she sold her small apartment on a high floor in a less expensive Jerusalem neighborhood and was able to buy a large apartment here with two gardens, and buy a car to boot – she went from feeling like a pauper to someone living in style!  So it’s true that housing is much cheaper in the north.  But I still wouldn’t call it cheap – real estate in Israel is high, and constantly rising.

    Tuition – much, much cheaper than the US.  And my Shabbos guests this week told me that tuition in this area is much cheaper than in the center of the country.  How inexpensive it is depends on how heavily funded the school is by the government, as well as the age of your child.  I’ll share our local costs but remember that this can drastically differ from school to school, and area to area.

    Ds5 has no tuition costs this year, since he’s in gan chova (mandatory kindergarten) and this is free for all children at this age throughout the country.  He has a 60 shekel a month materials fee.  If you want private reading tutoring for your child (15 minutes, 4 times a week during school hours), it’s an additional 900 shekels a year.

    Ds4 – his tuition for gan is something like 160 a month plus 60 shekels a month materials fee.  (This is less than I remember paying for ds18 when he was this age!)

    Ds9 – the cheapest due to the school he attends (highly government subsidized) and being the second child in our family to attend, so the 10% discount was applied to his tuition.  70 shekels a month.

    Dd11 – 110 shekels a month; same school system as ds9.

    Ds12 – 380 shekels a month (less extensive government support).

    Dd15, dd17 – 140 shekels a month each.

    High schools for boys are much, much more expensive.  We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it! 🙂

    This doesn’t include trips, books, transportation, or hot lunch (currently only applicable to ds12).  But it’s clearly hugely less expensive than private school in the US.  Since we were homeschooling, this is actually a few hundred dollars a month that we weren’t paying before we moved here but it would be an incredible area of savings for most people.

    Health insurance – we aren’t yet covered by the national insurance and have to pay for private insurance until our waiting period ends.  If you’re an oleh, you get free insurance for a year right away, so this wouldn’t be an issue.  Only the basic coverage is free, and then there are costs for different levels of supplemental insurance. We had insurance through my husband’s employer so this is another cost we didn’t have before.  The coverage I had was much better than the standard level, so I wasn’t used to paying for the things that I had to pay for here.  But this will depend on what kind of insurance you’re used to.

    Food – I’ll write a separate post about this with details.  In short, the only thing that has been notably less expensive has been produce, and even that isn’t always a big price difference.  If I wasn’t used to shopping the way that I am, and implementing frugal strategies toward food buying, there would definitely be an increase in this area.

    Utilities – I was previously paying a combined bill for gas and electric, and don’t remember how the costs broke down.  It averaged about $200 a month (ie 700 shekels).   The bills arrive every two months here, and I was shocked at how high my gas bill was, since the only thing we use gas for is cooking on our stove top – 728 shekels for two months, electric was 523 shekels for two months.  These prices are for our initial months here, so there were no a/c costs or heating costs, though it was during the holidays so there were a few days that the gas was on for 25 hours at a time.  So about 1250 shekels for two months versus 1400 for two months – a bit cheaper here, but not a significant area of savings.  Take into account that in the US I regularly used my dryer, my hot water was heated by gas, we used a/c window units in the summer and heat in the winter…if I did the same thing here, the costs would definitely be much higher.

    The one thing that surprised me was that our water costs were lower here.  Water is much more expensive here, but our two month bill was only 126 shekels, compared to about $160 for a three month bill in the US.  I don’t know how to account for that, since I have teenagers who shower daily so you can’t say we’re minimalists when it comes to water usage.  I was very grateful, though!  (Edited to add: we just got a bill for a full two months – apparently our first bill was only for part of a billing period.  The new bill was 387.02.  So it looks like this is comparable to what we were paying in the US.)

    I dislike when people make the case to move to Israel because life is so much cheaper.  It’s definitely something to consider, and if you’re paying private school tuition and private health insurance you can save big, but life isn’t cheap here.  Not at all.  And there aren’t cheap stores like Walmart to buy at, or amazing thrift stores.  Everything costs a lot more here.

    And salaries aren’t generally commesurate with US salaries.  So the equation generally is, higher expenses, lower income.  I would caution you to be careful who you get your information about aliyah from.  NBN is a great organization but they do have a goal, and that is to get people to make aliyah.  I think overall they give good advice, but financially their advice isn’t always on target.  My mother is planning to make aliyah soon, and the advice they’re giving her will compromise her long term financial stability.  But even though I’ve explained to her why I think it’s such bad advice, she keeps going back to”but that’s what NBN recommends”.

    About specific communities, check with those who live there for what the costs are.  I attended an NBN webinar about Karmiel before I left the US, and when I saw their quotes on real estate, I sent them a private message in the middle of the presentation – I told them they were way too low, not reflective of the actual real estate market, and would lead people to mistakenly conclude they’d be able to afford much more than they actually could and then be very disappointed.

    Now when it comes to quality of life, the US can’t even come close.  But that’s not a dollars and cents issue!

    Avivah

  • Me and my dd11

    I don’t often do this, but just for fun I felt like putting up a picture that someone emailed me.  We were at a bat mitzva for a friend’s daughter on Thursday, and all mothers and daughters in each family were invited.  Dd16 and dd15 did all the baking and some cooking and organizing as well, and while they were busy being involved in running around and getting food sent out from the kitchen to the guests, a friend across the table from me got a picture of me and dd11.

    Me and my youngest daughter.  We rarely get a picture with just the two of us.  Isn’t she lovely?

    Avivah

    ** It seems this isn’t showing up for a number of you – I’m wondering if it’s not showing up for ALL of you!  If you can see it, please let me know.  It shows up for me even when I’m not signed in and am a visitor to my site, and I can’t even begin to guess why it wouldn’t show up for anyone else.  Sorry for the tease in posting a picture you can’t see!  

  • Three month aliyah review: schooling

    A huge change when we moved to Israel was that we decided to put our children in school.  After eleven years of homeschooling, this was a very big shift for all of us.

    I think when people talk about the difficulties for children in making aliyah, what it mostly refers to is going to Israeli schools, learning the language, and making friends.  I had planned to homeschool all of our children except dd15, believing that it would ease the transition for them in coming to a new country – our lives could continue in many ways the same by homeschooling, and it would give them a chance to slowly make the language and friend adjustments.  Those plans changed very quickly after we got here.

    We came to a city where the schools don’t have much experience in dealing with Anglo olim, so to a degree our children are the guinea pigs.

    So how is everybody doing?

    Ds4 – He is in a huge class of 34 boys – this is far from ideal, although his teachers are very good.  He understands everything, but doesn’t really interact much with the other kids in his gan (preschool) yet.   This matches his nature of sitting back and watching, and not jumping in until he knows all the rules of the game.  He every so often asks me why he has to go to gan ‘every single day’, but goes willingly. He really enjoys the daily craft projects and every week displays at our Shabbos table all of his projects and pictures from the beginning of the week (he saves them all).

    Ds5 – His teacher is so overflowing with praise about how wonderful he is that it’s almost embarrassing.  He’s outgoing and self-confident, and right away spoke to the other kids, even when it was in English.  There was a point where he was subdued in class, when he realized he couldn’t communicate in English or Hebrew, and his attempts to nonverbally be friendly were rebuffed.  His teacher was very aware of this , and repeatedly asked me to tell her about even little things that might be an issue.  With some time and changing seat partners in his class that weren’t a good fit for him, he’s doing great!

    He has one very close friend who he speaks with in a mixture of English and Hebrew (the friend is a Hebrew speaker), and it’s very, very cute to watch the two of them teaching each other words in their mother tongue.  At this point he understands most of what goes on in kindergarten  and can form simple sentences in Hebrew.  His teacher is amazed that he is more advanced in Hebrew writing and understands the concepts of letters better than most of the Hebrew speakers – she told me one day when they were learning the letter Bet, that she asked the boys what started with this letter – and ds5 called out two words before anyone else had a chance to think of anything!  His Israeli accent is perfect and he gets along well with the kids in his class.

    Now for the harder situations – all of the older kids.

    Ds9 (fourth grade) – His school right away arranged for a private tutor for him to help him learn the language, for about 2 – 4 hours a week.  Unfortunately, the books the tutor needs have yet to arrive, which has limited the effectiveness of their time together.  He has no English speakers in his class, and he tends to withdraw when people try to speak to him, since he doesn’t understand what they’re saying.  I’m trying to teach him to smile and look them in the eye, but he feels self-conscious.

    He has a wonderful teacher who is incredibly caring and sees him struggling socially, and has called me to ask what he can do to make it better for him.  I honestly don’t know why he is so eager to go to school every day, because he has no friends or anyone to talk to, sits for hours listening to classes he doesn’t really understand….But his teacher told me he can see his comprehension is growing.

    It was really nice this week when our guests had an eight year old son he could play with all Shabbos – being able to speak to someone makes a big difference in your supposed social skills!  He doesn’t really have anyone to regularly play with outside of school, either.  This isn’t as bad for him as it sounds since he was already used to being with his siblings a lot.  A couple of days ago I requested and received his class list, and my thought is to directly contact parents of boys in his class that he feels somewhat comfortable with to invite them over to play one on one.  Unfortunately, there’s only one boy in our general area who is in his class – this was a down side of not sending him to the boys’ school that most families in our community sends to.  (I don’t feel it was a mistake to send to this school, though.)

    Dd11 (sixth grade) – her school has also arranged tutoring for her, although it didn’t begin until October.  Until then she had no assistance in any way, and just spent hours sitting in class not knowing even a bit about what was happening.  She meets with her tutor just a couple of times a week, so even now most of her time is sitting and not knowing what’s going on!  They also have yet to receive the books for her.

    She has one English speaker in her class, but plays with the Israeli girls during recess – fortunately at this age they still play outdoor games that she can figure out and participate in without understanding all that is said.  Like ds, she doesn’t play much outside of school, though at least there are a couple of girls in her age range (a few nine year olds, a couple of twelve year olds) who speak English.  She really enjoyed the twelve year old girl who spent Shabbos with us, and afterwards told me how nice it was to have someone she could speak to.  She said that in her class, people don’t know who she really is, because without speaking Hebrew well she convey that.  For her, my impression is that girls think well of her even though they can’t communicate with her much.  So I think as she gets the language, it will continue to improve.

    Ds12 (eighth grade) – Hashem was very, very kind to us because this could have been the most difficult adjustment, and instead was one of the easiest.  He has three English speakers in his class, and he likes them all; one of them is becoming a very good friend.  His teacher is fantastic and ds is a strong student; he catches on quickly and even with only partial understanding of what is said, mentally fills in the gaps by making educated guesses about what is said.  His comprehension is building very fast, and he can communicate in very simple sentences.  He’s very athletic and active in the schoolyard, which is a good way to make friends even when you can’t speak much.

    Our biggest issue with him is what to do about high school.  At this point, we’re thinking of leaving him in eighth grade another year.  Then he’ll go into high school fully fluent in Hebrew and caught up on the material he’s missing now, and be positioned to really shine.  If we send him this coming year, he’ll do okay but will always be having to work to catch up.  Since we skipped him to eighth when we got here, letting him stay another year in eighth means he’ll be in the grade where he’s actually supposed to be, agewise.

    Dd15 (tenth grade) – Her school had done absolutely nothing to assist her with learning Hebrew until very recently, a change that came about after I very strongly expressed to her principal my disappointment (she said she had been working on it before I spoke to her, though).  Several weeks ago, she got a tutor, and though they meet only once or twice a week, dd feels she’s learning a lot.  She’s also picking up a lot of Hebrew.

    It helps a lot that as homeschoolers, our children learned to take responsibility for their own learning, and it means they are willing to work and educate themselves in the absence of outside help.  I think the transition from a school in the US to here would have been much more difficult than it was for them as homeschoolers.  Dd recently spent three hours online, trying to figure out the math lesson so she could complete her homework.  The next day, the teacher asked her if she did the homework, and dd said she did, so the teacher responded, “Oh, good, so you understood what I taught?”  Dd told her that she didn’t understand the Hebrew, but she googled different terms, etc, and found different math sites online to help her work through the material.  The teacher was very impressed since the rest of the class didn’t do their homework since they said they couldn’t understand the material (not a language issue)!

    Unfortunately, there’s really not much going on socially for high school girls here, which I hadn’t anticipated.  I thought since there was a high school, there must be plenty of girls her age living locally, but it’s not actually true since many girls come from surrounding areas to attend this school.  This has been a disappointment for her – there are just four girls in her entire class who live in the city.  Fortunately, one of them is an English speaker, and additionally, there’s another girl who speaks English (not a native English speaker) in her class who lives in a different city.

    Dd16 (eleventh grade) – This is the child who should have had the easiest time adjusting – after all, she studied here last year, started school with a working grasp of Hebrew…But this change has been challenging for her.  She was used to having loads of friends (she lived in a dorm last year), being popular, and having people know her.  The girls in her class like her, but she told me the same thing dd11 did, that people in her class can’t really know who she is because of the language gap, that she isn’t herself when she’s speaking Hebrew.

    She graduated from high school almost two years ago at the age of 15 (she’ll be seventeen in just over a week), and so she doesn’t need to be in school for credit purposes.  She’s there because she wanted to make friends locally and become fluent in Hebrew, and this had seemed like the best possibility to do that.  But now she feels like she’s not accomplishing what she had hoped to by attending school, and really wants to do something productive.  Some options that would be very good for her aren’t logistically doable, as they are located in the center of the country and we’d like her to be living at home right now.

    I had a talk with her last week and told her that being that we’re in a Hebrew speaking country, we can find other ways to help her learn that language than insist she remain in school.  We’re looking into possibilities, and we agreed that we’d set a limit of a month, to give ourselves time to find something she’d enjoy doing.  By the time the month is over, she can leave school.

    Ds18 – he’s really happy in his American post high school yeshiva program.  Learning the language, integrating into the culture?? Not happening much.  I believe it will come with time, but he’s always going to be an American living in Israel, which I think is true of the oldest three kids as well as dh and I, and possibly ds9, dd11, and ds12 – when you come past a certain age, you can learn the language well, but you don’t change your mentality to become an Israeli.  And that’s really okay.

    As far as my transition from homeschooling to sending the kids to school, initially I felt a little bereft – I’ve been home with them for so many years and it took some time to shift to an altered reality – but I’m enjoying it now.  Since the kids are almost all home every day by 1:30 – 2 pm, we still have a lot of time together. I don’t feel like I stopped homeschooling; it’s more that I’m delegating some of their education to the schools.  Dh and I remain very involved, emotionally and educationally; we don’t rely on the schools to give the kids all that they need, which means we don’t have high expectations of what the schools do or don’t do.  And that means we don’t have lots of frustrations with the schools, either, because we don’t expect them to do what we would do.

    I enjoy my quiet mornings with ds2, and find my mornings are full.  Now that the kids are in school, they don’t share the chores the way they used to, and so there’s a lot more for me to do.  So my mornings are busy but fairly quiet, which I appreciate – I like having a nice hot lunch and clean house to greet them with when they come home, and more than that, I appreciate having the head space to enjoy being with them when they get home.

    To sum up, I’d say school is going as well as we could hope for everyone, and a big part of this transition continuing to be successful is to give everyone time to really learn the language.  As that happens, I think it will get dramatically easier for them all.

    Avivah

  • Three month aliyah review: housing

    Time is flying by, and we’ve now been living in Israel for exactly three months!  Overall it’s been a great move and we’re so happy to  be here, and in honor of this anniversary I’m going to post over the next few days about some specifics of our transitions to life here.  I’ll also add some thoughts based on feedback from olim in different parts of the country.  (Feel free to ask about something particular if I haven’t addressed it and you’d like me to.)

    It’s definitely a change to go from living in a private house to living in an apartment.  Whittling down our possessions to what would fit in our suitcases before we left wasn’t easy, but it makes it much easier to live comfortably now.  If we had all the stuff we used to have, we’d feel crowded, but thanks to having eliminated lots of potential clutter, our apartment is comfortable for us and the transition to apartment living wasn’t at all difficult.  And  it makes keeping things neat and orderly much less time consuming!

    I’m very, very glad we chose not to take a lift, though I undeniably miss some things that I wasn’t able to bring along (eg my canning equipment, sniff!).  We don’t have to force our Israeli size home to accommodate our American sized belongings and were able to buy things that are suited to the available room space.  Though I think minimizing the lift and buying major furniture and appliances here rather than bringing it from the US is a very  logical thing to do, our ‘stuff’ has a lot of emotion to it, and with the transition to living in a different country, letting go of that stuff (or thinking seriously about it) is almost traumatic for a lot of people. So it’s not surprising that very few people choose to go this route.

    I think many people making aliyah make the mistake of trying to maintain the same materialistic quality of life that they had in the US, where everything is SO much less expensive.  A real estate agent that I’ve spoken with told me that she’s seen so many olim spend disproportionate amounts of money on housing that’s out of their financial range, and resist living in apartments that are typical in Israel for families their size because they are unwilling to shift from their US standards.

    When people get used to living according to US standards here, they have a hard time downsizing their lifestyles to accommodate the realities of the Israeli housing market later on.  An even bigger mistake is to come to Israel with the expectation that you’ll live on a higher material standard.  Yes, people do this.  If someone wants to live on a US standard, it’s going to cost much more to do here than to do in the US, and if you want to live above their standard in the US, it’s going to take a LOT of money.

    Many olim are told that in order to have soft landing, they should get something bigger, nicer, more central.  And that sounds logical; after all, you’re making so many changes that why make things harder on yourself by depriving yourself of physical comforts?  And as long as you can afford the standard you’ve chosen, get the nicest home/location that you can!  But I’ve seen that many people underestimate their expenses in living here, and can too quickly find their financial situations deteriorating with their housing expenses eating up a huge part of their budgets/savings.  Living here means a person needs to be prepared to adopt Israeli standards from the beginning, if that’s what he can afford.

    When making aliyah, being in a place where you’ll have a feeling of  belonging is much more important than the size of your home.  Making aliyah means leaving behind all your friends and family, and very often starting off here is beginning with a blank slate.  The absence of a social network is difficult, and the nicest home will feel empty when you walk around feeling like no one knows or cares that you live there.

    This can be justification for choosing to live in a smaller home what is often referred to derogatorily as an Anglo bubble.  I chose to avoid the Anglo bubble and am glad I did, but it’s important to be realistic about the cultural differences between countries.  Moving here and learning to speak the language fluently won’t make you an Israeli – you’re likely to maintain the mindset of the country where you grew up.  So while there are a lot of affordable housing options in the periphery of the country (including where we are in the north), don’t go somewhere that you’ll be the only English speaker.  It’s just too socially isolating.

    However, I think that people exaggerate the difficulty of living in any but the most central locations in the country.  This locks them into very, very expensive real estate.  The further from the center you go, the more affordable prices become.  Granted, that doesn’t mean that the work or educational opportunities that you need will be in those areas, but don’t assume that they aren’t before investigating!  I’ve too often heard people wistfully saying they wish they could afford to buy their own apartment, but the fact is they aren’t willing to buy what/where they can afford.  One of the appeals of moving to the north was that we could purchase a comfortably sized home for our family, and we were willing to buy in an area where there weren’t yet a lot of Anglos or religious families (both of which drive up the price – but when we bought our apartment I was fairly confident that both of these factors would shift steadily in the next few years, which I already see happening in the short time we’re here – the apartment across the hall from me was just sold to a religious English speaking family).  And then prices rise and people bemoan how they wish they had bought when it was less expensive, forgetting that it was also less desirable at that time and that’s why it was cheaper!

    What I miss about not having our own house is not having a yard for the kids to run around in.  Particularly after we built a six foot security fence around our property in the US and installed a full size playset (swings, slide, fort), it gave the littles so much freedom to go in and out of the house to play without me needing to be with them every minute (giving me freedom as well, since I could watch them play through the window and simultaneously do things in the house).  I miss having that kind of space for them to run around and play freely – there are plenty of lovely local parks, but that’s not the same as having your own space.

    The second thing that’s challenging about apartment living is that you need to be very aware of your noise level in consideration to your neighbors.  When you have very sensitive and/or difficult neighbors, this can cause extra tension and pressure.  Fortunately, we bought an apartment with a second floor, which has been a huge blessing since there’s a place that I can send the kids to play noisier games without having to worry about how many thumps and bumps they make in the process.  We remain careful and aware of our noise level, but we don’t have to keep them from acting like children.

    Another bonus of living here is that because housing is so much more expensive, it’s common for families to live in smaller quarters than the US.  That means less social pressure because everyone’s expectations are on a different level.  This weekend we had a family of four staying with us – the parents in the guest room, and each of the kids sharing rooms with our children.  In the US I often felt self-conscious about what I was able to offer as a host compared to others (and would have been reluctant to make an offer like this), but now that we feel so much more free about opening our home to others, it makes hosting more enjoyable.

    Avivah

  • Reflecting on my birthday

    Did you know that every nineteen years, the lunar and Gregorian calendars line up?  Not a well-known piece of information, but one of interest to me today.  Today is my birthday, and the third time in my life my lunar and Gregorian birthdays fall out on exactly the same day – and the first time since I learned about this factoid several years ago.

    So yep, that means I’m now 38 years old!  I don’t have any plans to celebrate today in any special way – I feel very content and grateful for my amazingly normal and wonderful life, surrounded by people I love.  Here’s an excerpt from the lovely message my husband wrote for my birthday (I asked if he minded if I shared it here first), who I feel so blessed to be married to for almost two decades:

    “Thank you for being such an understanding, accepting and loving wife.  Thank you for running our home with dedication, positive energy and joy.  Thank you for being a loving mother to our children.”

    I feel almost overwhelmed at how quickly what seemed like an impossibly unreachable dream of moving with our entire family to Israel happened, when just a year ago, I was feeling so grateful that I would be able to make a short trip to visit my daughter who was studying here, something I didn’t think would be financially or logistically in our reach.  It wasn’t until March 2011 that we decided we’d like to make the move, and a few months later, here we were!  Sometimes I feel like pinching myself that we actually live here, and it’s just normal for us to be here.

    This morning I was looking at an affirmation that I copied down a while back, and thinking how nice it is that it’s not just something I want to have in my life, but something I feel is my life right now (here’s part of it):

    “Life is wonderful and I have lots of time to experience it fully….I love looking out of my windows at the beautiful environment.  I have a spectacular view, which continually inspires me.  I am so grateful for all of the beautiful riches that are continually overflowing my life!”

    It’s not easy starting all over in a new country, new language, new everything at any stage, and with nine kids who have to make the adjustment, too, it’s really not simple.  I feel very grateful that we are are getting to know people and starting to feel like part of the community.  On Thursday afternoon, I passed a few mothers chatting, and one of them called after me (I didn’t turn around because I didn’t think anyone would be calling me!) and then followed after me to let me know that she and several other parents were having a kiddush in shul (synagogue) this week and wanted to be sure I knew about it and was invited to come.  I was so appreciative – a little thing like that makes a big difference when you’re new, that someone thinks of you enough to do that.

    And when I actually was there on Shabbos morning at the kiddush, my kids had what used to be a familiar experience – being ready to leave, and having to wait for me repeatedly since I kept stopping to talk with someone else.  Do you know how nice it is, to be here less than three months, and already have so many people I can talk to, and not feel like a wallflower standing to the side?

    No, my life isn’t perfect – I have challenges and frustrations that I deal with on a daily basis, like everyone.  But seeing how fast the years go by, I really try to fully enjoy and appreciate all that I have on a daily basis, and not take it for granted.

    Since on his/her birthday, a person has a special power to bless others, and it’s well-known that words do have power to influence things, I’d like to use this opportunity to wish for every single one of you peace, health, love, meaning, and an abundance of everything good.  And also to bless you that you are able to see and appreciate all the wonderful things that are already in your life, and to bring joy to those around you by sharing some of what is beautiful in our amazing world with them.

    Avivah

     

  • Enjoying our multinational guests

    Last night I was giving the kids a rundown of who will be hosting for the next three weeks, and one of them commented that since moving here, we’ve had guests from a lot of different countries!

    I hadn’t really thought about it, and then realized he’s right!  Since beginning to host people about six or seven weeks ago, we’ve had guests from Poland, France, Tunisia, Switzerland, Australia, Ukraine, Germany, Brazil, and of course, the US and Israel.  Next week we’ll be having someone from Vancouver BC (we met years ago when we were living in Seattle, and now we’re all living in Israel!), the next week we’ll have friends from Baltimore, and just a few weeks after that, one of my blog readers from Germany will be visiting!

    We have a number of people we’d like to invite but have to wait a couple of weeks until our schedule clears – the first time we have guests, we prefer to have them on their own so we get to know them, and then later on, will have them with other guests.  We also like to keep the Shabbos (Sabbath/ Friday) night meal for our family only, and mostly have guests during the day (Saturday), but there are not infrequently exceptions to that.

    A few weeks ago, we discovered one of our guests shared some common history with us, but didn’t recognize him at all when he came with his family.  Years ago, I was a young working mother, pregnant with two small children, and my husband had been hospitalized.   It was less than ten days before Pesach (Passover), and a friend who knew I was spending hours every afternoon after work traveling to and from the hospital knew I didn’t have any help, time, or energy after all I was doing, called the post high school yeshiva I worked at and asked the the head of the yeshiva to send some young men to help out. It was a busy time for everyone and the guys were already on vacation,  but one young man volunteered and came to my house for two or three hours to help me clean – the only time I’ve ever had cleaning help (outside of my immediate family)!  And now, over fifteen years later, he appears at my house, married, bearded, and with three kids – and I had invited his wife and didn’t even know his first name until the end of the meal, when he mentioned his child was named after the head of the yeshiva I worked at, and from there we simultaneously realized who the other was.  He remembered my 2.5 year old (my oldest), who was sitting right next to him during the meal and is now 18, the age that he was when he came to my house.  It was a very interesting feeling.

    The world is a very small place, and with Israel being the tiny melting pot country that it is, we’ve been discovering that first hand!

    Avivah

  • A chat with my downstairs neighbor

    At about 9:45 on Shabbos morning, my ds5 went out of the building to do an errand for me, and when he returned a few minutes later, he was very upset.  He said (and my daughters confirmed since they could hear from all the way up here) that the downstairs neighbor yelled at him – in English – to stop running around and making noise in our apartment.

    When he told me this, I didn’t say a word.  On Shabbos mornings, I like to sleep in late, but because I have young children, I don’t actually sleep.  What I do is stay in bed, and since I don’t want them running around unsupervised, they join me and we read and play together there.  From the time they woke up at 7 am until 9 or 9:30, this is where they were, and it wasn’t until then that I allowed them to run around and play with each other (in their bare feet, because shoes would make more noise).  I’ve tried to accomodate this neighbor and reduce our noise in a number of ways, but once my child was verbally accosted, a line had been crossed that was unacceptable to me.

    So I got up, got dressed, and still without saying a word, left our home.  But my desire to be prudent prevailed and I decided to get advice from a neighbor who was here for many years before speaking to the difficult neighbor.  I then learned that this neighbor has told others that they’re hoping to make us so miserable that we’ll move away, and also complained that it’s not bad enough that we have children, but that we even have guests over (the person who was told this was shocked they weren’t embarrassed to say these things out loud).  After speaking to her, my initial anger was over, but my desire to take care of this issue wasn’t.

    I’ve said before regarding discussions about homeschooling that I won’t have conversations in which I’m put on the defensive, and that means sometimes turning things around and putting others on the defense instead.  There’s probably a martial arts term for this.  🙂  And this is what I felt needed to be done now, because he was viewing our niceness and efforts to be accommodating as weakness and I was certain he would continue to escalate unless we showed him we wouldn’t tolerate any more.

    So I went to his apartment, and pounded on his door as hard as I could.  This was to let him know someone who was very serious about something was going to be on the other side.  As soon as he opened it, he started yelling at me for banging on his door, but he didn’t have much of a chance to talk, since I started yelling over him: “How dare you yell at my son!  If you have a problem, you come to me.  Don’t start up with my children, and don’t start up with me!”

    He told me how loud my eleven children are, starting from 5 am in the morning, and I shouted at him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that we don’t have eleven children, they certainly don’t wake up at 5 am, and most of my children are older and aren’t making noise that would disturb him at all – so he’s clearly saying things that don’t make any sense.

    He got a little embarrassed here, and said, well, how many children do you have?  I told him it’s irrelevant, and his complaints about us are ridiculous, and even the police he sent to our house could see it was absurd.  He told me how  we should go buy a private house and live there, that we could have bought a house for the price we paid for our apartment (as if!), and I told him I’d be happy to buy a house and move there as soon as he gave us two million shekels to do so.  And until then we’re staying put and have no plans to go anywhere.  I told him if he doesn’t like living in a building with other people, then he can sell his apartment and buy himself a house if he thinks that’s so simple, but otherwise he’s going to have to accept things as they are.

    Then he told me if our kids want to play, they can play outside at a public park, not in the house.  I told him our children are entitled to play in their own home, and they’ll continue to do so.  I said I was sure when his son was young that he didn’t forbid him from doing anything but walking quietly across a room.

    As we continued to talk, he started to back down, and told me that he didn’t really yell at my son, and when I said he did, he said that he doesn’t feel well and so he sometimes he gets upset.  I told him I don’t care how upset he is, maybe he needs to take aspirin or vitamins but there’s no excuse to yell at a little child not even doing anything wrong.  So he  apologized for yelling at him.

    As the conversation continued, he became more reasonable, and then it was finally possible to talk to him.  He told me someone in the past replaced the tiles on the floor of my apartment, and didn’t put in any sound proofing.  I told him I understood why that would be a problem, but this was the first I was hearing of it, and I couldn’t afford to retile the majority of our living space to change this.  But at the end of the conversation, I said that if he was willing to pay for half of the cost, I would pay the other half.  He told me it was my apartment and he wasn’t going to pay a penny, so I shrugged and said it didn’t make a difference to me, that I don’t have extra money to throw around and would rather not have to spend any money on this, but was making the offer as a concrete indication of our willingness to find a solution.

    He told me to try to be more understanding, and I told him that I couldn’t be any more understanding than I had already been, and that there was nothing more I could do.  I wanted to be sure when we finished the conversation that he was clear about this.  So we parted, not exactly amiably, but at least I had a good feeling that some things had been straightened out.

    A friend, learning about this later in the day, said she couldn’t imagine me yelling at someone.  The things we do for our kids.  😛  Really, a big part of why I felt this had to be done so my kids would know that I wouldn’t let people hurt them if it were in my power.

    Although I was yelling and looked and sounded upset, I was watching myself the entire time, almost from a distance.  I felt almost like I was in a play, and was doing a good job playing my part convincingly.  When I first left my home, I was planning to speak to him in English and let him puzzle out what I was saying, because when I feel pressured, I tend to forget some Hebrew vocabulary, and I didn’t want to be at a language disadvantage.  But since I wasn’t angry by the time I spoke to him, it was no problem to yell at him in Hebrew.  🙂

    I’m not naive enough to think this will end the situation with him – he has a long history of being a difficult neighbor.  But my kids can feel safe walking into our building now and that’s a big thing, and hopefully this conversation will help him to rethink attacking us next time he’s feeling upset about something.

    Avivah

  • Halloween – but no one knows or cares!

    At dinner, after discussing the heavy snowstorm that hit the northeast US, I asked the kids, “Do you know what today is?”

    Blank looks all around.  I prodded, “Today is October 31 – does anyone know what that means?”  Continued blank looks.

    “It’s Halloween!”  I announced.  “Really??” they asked in surprise.  Back in the US, it would have been impossible for them not to have been aware of it.

    Another benefit of living in Israel – our kids are in tune to the Jewish holidays, and nothing else.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Clothing exchanges in Ramat Beit Shemesh

    After my post in September in which I shared about great used clothing bargains I found, I was asked by a number of people for the details on where I went.  I don’t track my readers, and though I know there are people reading my blog in a number of different countries, it’s been an eye opener that so many people in Israel were reading this well before I moved here!

    There are clothing exchanges (gemachim) all over the country, but I don’t know about most of them yet, and probably won’t, since I’m not going to travel all over to get used clothing!  Here’s the details on where I went in Ramat Beit Shemesh, which is about a forty five minute drive from Jerusalem.

    1) 23/2 Reviim – this is where I started, and where I recommend anyone going starts out. Their prices are the least expensive and there’s a very large selection.  The woman running it is an incredibly special person who a good friend of mine has told me about for years who I had long wanted to meet – I was just sorry to learn what her last name was later that evening, after I was long gone!  The prices are 2 shekels for a pair of shoes, 2 shekels per item for kids ages 12 and under, 3 shekels an item for over age 12.

    Dd11 is tall for her age, so the clothes I bought her were size 16 – 18 (girls), but I was told that since I was buying them for someone below the age of 12, to pay the children’s price.  That was very nice, don’t you think?!

    They also have backpacks, purses, some linens, and tzitzis.  I think the backpacks were a shekel each, I don’t remember now for sure, but the tzitzis were definitely a shekel a pair.  That was an amazing price since I needed a few pairs, which would have cost me about 30 shekels each.  The woman who runs this is an English speaker.

    2) The second place I went wasn’t a clothing exchange, but was a person who every couple of weeks does a used clothing sale. I’m going to include her information here, since she does it regularly enough for it to be a good resource to be aware of.  Her address is 3/16 Nachal Zohar, the third floor.  You can call her beforehand to find out when she has a sale – 050-678-9422.  She is a native French speaker, so you’ll need to speak to her in Hebrew unless you speak French.

    The used items were 5 shekels each, and she had a bargain box of things that were damaged or for whatever reason not selling (eg kids clothing with words on it) – anything in the box was 3 items for a shekel.  She also has brand new things – I bought brand new womens’ skirts with the tags still on for 10 shekels.

    3) 40 Sorek – this is the most expensive of the places I went, and I think it’s good to go to the most expensive places last – if you can find what you want more cheaply, than why not?  The entrance to this isn’t in a building, but down a huge flight of stairs outside – maybe three flights down?  This is also run by a lovely woman who is an English speaker.

    I believe the prices were 5 – 20 shekels per item; 5 – 10 for children’s clothing, depending on what it was, and the ladies clothing was 10 – 20 per item.  There were some very nice things there and you can really find something lovely for Shabbos or the holidays.

    For my Israeli readers: have you ever gone to any of these places?  Are there other gemachim that you’d recommend and can share the address of?  For my non-Israeli readers: where have you found great bargains on clothing?

    Avivah

  • Medical permission to go back to school

    Well, the holidays are over, the kids are over the chickenpox, and they’re all back to school.   For those who were concerned about ds12, thank you so much for asking; thank G-d he is doing much better!  All any of them have left of the chickenpox are some residual pox scabs, which are rapidly disappearing.

    The day after we sent ds9 back to school (before dd11 and ds12), we got a call telling us to pick him up – they needed a letter from the doctor that he was allowed to be there.  So he came home and I took him, along with three other kids, to the doctor that morning – my first time going to a doctor here.  (Dh took ds12 to the emergency room at the hospital, so they also didn’t go to the doctor.)

    The pediatrician was pleasant.  He did a quick basic exam on each of them – height, weight, heart, spine.  He made a note in each of their files that they had chickenpox, and then told me the school nurse would probably request that they have their booster shots for the chickenpox.

    I thought I might be misunderstanding something (because of course all these conversations are entirely in Hebrew), so I said, “But they had the chickenpox already, so why would they need a shot?”  He told me that they’ll have to get the booster shot so they don’t get chickenpox.  I told him that didn’t make sense, they had it and now have immunity so why would a shot help?  He said it’s to keep them from getting it again.  I responded, statistically it’s a very small percentage of people who get chickenpox more than once, and it didn’t seem logical to give all the kids a booster shot for a childhood disease they already had that people usually only get once, to keep them from getting it again.  He told me he’s just letting me know the school nurse will want them to have it.  Okay, fine.

    So we got letters for all of the kids that they’re clear to go back to school, and I asked if this is something they have to have every single time they miss school because they aren’t feeling well.  He said it depends on the school policy, and to speak to them.  I rarely need to take the  kids to doctors, so the idea of taking them for a note every time they have a cold and stay home for a day or two isn’t appealing.  I have to get used to this school frame of mind, I guess.

    This morning we got a call from the school nurse – I was washing dishes so my hands were wet, so dh took the call.  When I realized who it was, I mouthed to him that I wanted to speak to her, and after the first sentence with her telling him they wanted vaccination records for ds12, he passed the phone right over.  🙂  She told me they need ds12’s vaccination records, and since we came from the US and the vaccination schedules are different than in the US, he’ll have to have make up shots to be sure he’s on track with the Israeli vaccination schedule.

    In Israel, kids have their vaccination records at school and can be vaccinated without your prior knowledge at school.  It’s not like the US, where they just want to know that your kids have had the necessary shots.  But a school nurse vaccinating my children without me knowing about it isn’t acceptable to me.  Fortunately, I was mentally prepared for this issue, because I think you really have to come across very confidently the very first time something comes up.  It cuts down on the conflict significantly.  Otherwise you’re at a big disadvantage and you end up getting into long and protracted arguments from the position of being on the defense.  I told the nurse his medical records will remain with me, and that I will take care of any vaccinations he needs with the doctor myself.  If you don’t submit their records, they can’t receive vaccines at school.

    This was a very short and pleasant conversation.  She told me they will need an authorization on file that I refuse to allow my child to be vaccinated at school, and said ds12 can pick up the standard form from the school office to bring home for me to sign.  It’s nice when something is so easy!

    Avivah

    Related to the chickenpox issue was an interesting experience I had when I took the kids to shul on Simchas Torah.  They hadn’t been contagious for several days, but still had pock marks.  I was astounded to have virtually the same conversation with almost every single person who looked at them.  It went like this:

    “Chickenpox?”  Me – ‘yes’.  “We don’t have chickenpox here, everyone is vaccinated.”  (Me, thinking to myself, do they think I brought it over from America with me??)   Me – “No way! None of my kids in the US have ever got it, and within five weeks of arriving here, my five year old caught it from someone in his class – and there were eight kids in his class who all had it the same time as him.”  “Really?”  Me – “Definitely.  And anyway, even kids who are vaccinated can get the chickenpox.”  Them – “Yes, but it’s a lighter case.”  Me – “Yes, but the point is that they get it.”

    Then two pregnant women told me they never had chickenpox, and one said she got a vaccination because of the danger to her unborn baby.  The other didn’t and told me she wants her kids to get chickenpox, but not until after she gives birth because of the above concern.  So I said, “You see, it’s not so simple not to get chickenpox when you’re young because then you can end up in more complicated situations like this.  Better the kids should get it young, have immunity, and not have to worry about it later on. ”  Them – agreement.  LOL.