Only in Israel

Graduation Israeli Style

June 22, 2007

Fifteen-year-old Amir’s school held a graduation party last week. Parents were invited. The event epitomized everything I both love – and hate – about living in Israel. First of all, the evening, which wasn’t limited to just the graduating class but included every year from 7th through 12th, was called to start at 7:00 PM. […]

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Ghost Towns

June 7, 2007

We recently learned that a neighbor in our apartment complex is trying to sell his flat, identical in size and layout to ours, for 50 percent more than we paid for our place two years ago. While this is certainly good news for the value of our property, it’s bad for the neighborhood. It means […]

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Howard’s Hooters

May 31, 2007

Last month the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot carried a small item that the U.S. restaurant chain Hooters plans to open its first branch in Israel this summer. That was followed by a piece indicating that a Tel Aviv radio station is in negotiations to bring the Howard Stern Show to the Israeli airwaves. Now, regular […]

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New Radio Station Hopes to Build Bridges Through Music

May 17, 2007

Issie Kirsh, a Jewish businessman who has been involved in efforts to build bridges between blacks and whites in post-Apartheid South Africa, has a vision for promoting peace in the Middle East: soft rock hits from the 80s and 90s. Kirsh’s latest project, an ambitious joint Israeli/Palestinian radio station broadcasting in English to Israel, the […]

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5 Star Camping

May 10, 2007

I don’t get what people like about camping. The tents are small and stuffy, the ground is hard and bumpy, and the sun rises too early, leading to sleep deprivation in most people I talk to. Everything gets dirty when you’re camping and if you’re near the beach, sticky too. There are inevitably mosquitoes and […]

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The Marriage Witness

March 15, 2007

A couple of good friends of ours are getting married. In order to tie the knot, they needed two men to testify at the Jerusalem office of the Chief Rabbi that they are single and that therefore their upcoming marriage would not in fact be a case of forbidden adultery. They asked me to be […]

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Biking in the Shadow of Gaza

March 1, 2007

Tucked away in the shadow of the Gaza Strip lies a magical meadow of rolling hills blanketed with rich red anemones and long green grass. Interested in visiting? You’d better act fast – the flowers are only in bloom for another two weeks. This veritable Hobbit’s paradise is one of Israel’s true hidden gems, situated […]

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Israeli rockers to get by with a little help from.. Oleh! Records

February 15, 2007

Friday afternoon is a time when many Israelis are winding down, preparing for the Sabbath or taking a break at the end of a hectic workweek before heading out for a night on the town. But at Tel Aviv’s Levontin 7 club, situated in a seedy, rundown neighborhood in the south part of the city, […]

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Jewcognito

February 7, 2007

Ahmed, our tour guide, clearly didn’t know what to make of us. He definitely realized that something about this “typical” American family was odd. We showed a surprising amount of interest in Cairo’s Ben Ezra synagogue where we demonstrated our proficiency in reading the inscriptions in – gasp – fluent Hebrew. We were all “vegetarians” […]

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If You’re Going to Egypt…

February 1, 2007

Well, we made it back from Egypt and we had a fantastic, fascinating, amazingly awesome experience. We felt perfectly safe the entire time and never felt any antagonism, though that might have been in part that no one actually knew we were either Jewish or Israeli. See this post on how we traveled “Jewcognito,” entering […]

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