It all started with the dishwasher.

Twenty years ago, as my wife Jody and I were buying appliances for our new apartment in Jerusalem, we bought our first dishwasher. Weâ€d never owned one while we lived in the U.S., so we had to choose not only a brand but the appropriate approach per halacha (Jewish Law) for how we were going use the dishwasher within the confines of keeping kosher.

This was at a point in our lives when we were unequivocally Orthodox, so keeping to the letter of the law was important to us. The problem was: when it came to dishwashers, thereâ€s a whole alphabet of competing approaches.

We started by asking our friends who owned dishwashers what they did. Everyone seemed to have a different story.

Some used the dishwasher for either milk or meat but not for both.

Some bought two sets of dish racks and swapped them in and out depending on whether the dishes were fleishik or milchik.

Some used just one rack, but ran an empty load of hot water in-between the milk and meat dishes. Some used just one rack but ran an empty load of cold water in-between.

And some just used the same rack for both milk and meat (but never together) without any empty loads separating them.

There seemed to be rabbinic authorities for every approach: Rav Ovadia Yosef said this, the followers of Rav Elazar Shach did it that way.

It was more than confusing – it prompted our first true religious crisis.

Jody and I both came to Orthodoxy as baâ€alei teshuva – returnees to observant Judaism from secular upbringings. My own introduction to Judaism was through the Ohr Somayach yeshiva in Jerusalem, where I learned that there were clear, unambiguous answers to every halachic question.

Yes, different Jewish groups might have slightly varying customs, but the religious ideal I absorbed in those years was to pick a community and then do what they do.

One of my teachers at Ohr Somayach was Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo. He taught a daily, class in Jewish philosophy in which he would mix halachic, secular and even non-Jewish concepts, with a healthy dose of Freud, Kant and Woody Allen. Cardozoâ€s class was challenging to the worldview I was eager to adopt, but also terribly exciting.

Cardozo, who is now the founder and dean of the David Cardozo Academy (and a Jerusalem Post contributor), has always been a maverick. These days, he pushes the Jewish envelope even further with thought pieces entitled “Let us violate Shabbat so as to sanctify it” and “The joy of religious doubt.”

Cardozo and I couldnâ€t be more different in our approaches to observance today – heâ€s still firmly committed, albeit fiercely combative, while I now identify as secular yet searching. But when it comes to our thinking about halacha, we find ourselves surprisingly on the same page.

Indeed, if Iâ€d consulted Cardozo 20 years ago, perhaps buying that dishwasher wouldnâ€t have precipitated such an existential Jewish dilemma.

In a recent column, “The problem and future of true halacha,” Cardozo lays his cards on the table from the get-go.

“Most religious Jews are not aware that halacha has nearly become passé,” Cardozo writes. “They believe it is thriving. After all, halacha is very ‘in†and there are more books on this subject than ever before. Despite this, it lacks courage.”

Cardozo believes that halacha has become fossilized; that “we have grown scared” of innovation. Provocative ideas “are condemned as heresy.” As a result, “trivial, simplistic, and often incorrect information replaces significant ideas [which are] reduced to a catch line … yet still presented as ‘the answer.â€â€

Cardozo takes aim at yeshivas for baâ€alei teshuva like his old employer. “Outreach programs, although well intentioned, have become institutions that, like factories, focus on mass production and believe that the more people they can draw into Jewish observance, the more successful they are,” he emphasizes. “The goal is to fit them into the existing system.”

This was not the way it always was, Cardozo stresses. The rabbis in the Talmud “were not interested in teaching their students final halachic decisions, but instead asked them to take those decisions apart, to deconstruct them so as to rediscover the questions. The greatness of the Talmudic sages was that they shared with their students their own struggles and doubts and their attempts at solving them.”

The dishwasher was our Talmud. After extensive research with friends, community members and even a few rabbis, we came to the conclusion that there is no one conclusion. All of the answers were right and we wouldnâ€t be sinning if we chose one over the other.

At the time, we were disheartened – what did that say about the immutability of the halacha? Today it feels liberating. More important, it started a personal process that is still in progress, and is about much more than just dishwashers.

I donâ€t remember anymore whose opinion we opted for when we made our dishwasher kosher, but it has stayed that way all these years and no one has ever poked his or her nose into the sudsy water to question whether our rinse was cold, hot or none of the above.

In that way, I like to think we are practicing what Cardozo calls “the art of audacity” – the only way to be authentically Jewish.

I hope Rabbi Cardozo would agree.

Why do Jews live in Israel? That was the question Jerusalem Post editor Yaakov Katz asked in his Friday column two weeks ago. With Yom Haâ€atzmaut just around the corner, itâ€s a question we should all be asking ourselves.

Katz sets up – and then deconstructs – two answers popular in recent years with Israeli hasbara mavens: Israel as the Startup Nation, and Israel as a Light unto the Nations engaged in tikkun olam – doing good around the world.

The hi-tech narrative is an easy one – especially for me, since I write about startups for a living. Israel is a worthwhile place to live, Katz writes, because of “the amazing innovation that originates in the Jewish State.”

Thatâ€s certainly true: Israel has more companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange than do India, Japan and Korea combined, has more venture capital investment per capita than anywhere else in the world, and is number one in the rate of per capita R&D spending.

The results of this hi-tech culture are manifest, including global market leaders such as Teva Pharmaceuticals, Check Point Software Technologies, and Mobileye, whose hugely successful IPO and subsequent $15 billion sale to Intel were among the biggest in Israeli hi-tech history. Just about every major international tech company – Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Motorola, Apple, eBay, PayPal, Facebook – has an office in Israel.

The other story – tikkun olam – is equally compelling.

“Israel is a state you should support,” Katz writes, “because it treats wounded Syrians and developed the most innovative drip irrigation used to grow crops in places like India and Rwanda.”

Israel sends rescue teams to Haiti, Turkey, Nepal and wherever natural disasters hit. Our water desalination prowess, writes Seth Siegel in his book Let There Be Water, is a “solution for a water-starved world.” Israeli scientists are international experts in smoking out the medical benefits of marijuana.

But there is a problem with both the Startup Nation and tikkun olam narratives, Katz points out. “They are “generic stories…that could apply to any other people in the world.”

Katz understands why these depictions are so popular.

“Israel, especially for the last 30 years or so, has become a divisive topic,” he explains. Tikkun olam and Startup Nation, by contrast, “can connect youth to Israel and potentially give them a reason to be Zionists. [But] while that is commendable, it cannot be the bottom line.”

The Jewish people did not return to Israel out of a desire to bring life-saving technology to Africa or the opportunities to receive venture capital funding. Rather, “those inventions were made possible exactly because Jews live as a free people in their historical homeland,” Katz writes.

Thatâ€s a good answer, but itâ€s not enough, either. Because it says why we came but not why we ought to stay (at least for those who have a choice to leave or the one-third of Israelis who tell pollsters theyâ€d consider emigrating).

And if weâ€re honest about Israel, this country has significant problems: violence and crime, xenophobia and racism, ongoing terrorism, government corruption, an enormous gap between rich and poor, high taxes, crippling bureaucracy, religious coercion, and as David Brinn wrote in The Jerusalem Post Magazine two weeks ago, rising road fatalities.

I could go on, but letâ€s stop, because our reason for being here, as Jews, is actually very simple.

Itâ€s to make things better.

The re-establishment of the State of Israel after so many years is truly a historic, once-in-a-millennia opportunity. But what kind of Israel will it be? An egalitarian nation of equal rights and wise policies; of superior education and a population that is gracious and loving to one another? Or something darker?

Right now, weâ€ve got both – the good and the bad (and a lot of gray in-between). Our job is to do our small part to push Israel towards the light. To make this a place worth living in – and to give Jews outside of Israel a reason to keep coming, whether as a tourist, or on aliyah, like we did over 20 years ago.

Can one person really make a difference? The answer here is an emphatic yes. That smile you gave to a stranger, or the person you made room for on the highway, reverberates in ways you can never fully track. Your vote for a particular party can result in political changes that impact millions.

When our family lived in the U.S., I never felt that any individual action I made had much of an influence. Here people and issues are so close, it really does.

And if itâ€s not me, let the revolution come from my children (and their children), who I hope I have raised with the kind of values and interpersonal behavior that will result in Israel becoming a better place to grow and thrive.

Itâ€s time to get our own house in order and thereâ€s so much to do. It wonâ€t be easy, it will frequently be messy, and the obstacles will often seem insurmountable. But we have to try.

Yes, we should continue to innovate and do even more tikkun olam, but the real answer to the Yom Haâ€atzmaut question – why do Jews live in Israel? – is to actively engage in the greatest Jewish experiment of the modern era: figuring out together what type of civil and religious society we want to build – and then going out and doing it.

How could I not want to be a part of that?

I first wrote shared my answer to the Yom Ha’atzmaut question at The Jerusalem Post.

Image from Adam Jones, Kelowna, BC, Canada (Facade with Israeli Flags – Jerusalem – Israel)

It was while visiting the doctor that I finally snapped. I had waited months to see a particular specialist. I needed some answers to an ongoing ailment – it was an important appointment.

“Can we speak in English?” I said as politely as I could. It was more a statement than a question.

“No,” the doctor replied.

“No?” I sputtered, surprised by the abruptness. Itâ€s the rare physician Iâ€ve found who canâ€t conduct business in English.

“But…I need to understand whatâ€s happening with my body,” I explained. “My Hebrew isnâ€t good enough.”

“No,” he repeated. “You are in Israel now. We speak Hebrew.”

I get the sentiment. The revival of our ancient tongue as a common denominator for a nation of newcomers is a source of pride and cohesion. I have no quarrel with its underlying importance.

But what if you just canâ€t do it? What if youâ€re no good with languages? What if you’ve never passed your spanish clep practice test because of the language impediment?

Hebrew has always been difficult for me. Iâ€ve taken no less than five ulpans during my twenty plus years in the country, from five month stints at Ulpan Etzion and Beit HaNoar in Jerusalem to the intensive daily one-on-one approach of Ulpan Or.

I always seem to get to a certain point and then I hit a wall. My last Hebrew teacher, upon noticing my recurring inability to comprehend conjugation and sentence construction, suggested I might have “FLLD.”

FLLD stands for “Foreign Language Learning Disability.” Originally identified by researcher Dr. Richard Sparks, FLLD reflects the difficulty otherwise bright people, who are often-excellent communicators in their mother tongue, have in picking up a new language.

Sparks has since walked back on his research, stating that use of the term “was premature.” But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that FLLD is real.

The website Educational Research documents several such stories.

Matt is a native English-speaker originally from the U.K., with advanced degrees in engineering and science. He has been living in a Russian-speaking country for over ten years, is married to a native Russian speaker and has two bilingual daughters.

“After years of exposure and attempted use of a language in a native environment, I would expect to be fluent to some degree in the language,” he writes. However, “it has been an immense struggle and hugely frustrating. I would estimate that I understand only roughly 60 percent of the spoken Russian I hear. My ability to speak Russian is incredibly poor.”

Matt admits to the same kind of difficulties with Russian that I have with Hebrew – problems with tenses, gender, and adjective-related endings. “I haltingly speak the language, but with a huge number of errors and, as time passes, I do not improve,” he concedes.

Robert, like Matt, lived in Germany for ten years with his German-speaking wife and kids, “but after four attempts to learn German at deutschkurs hannover, I am at a loss,” he laments.

Closer to home, Celeste Aronoff explains that “when I speak Hebrew, my giant box of metaphorical tools is reduced to the equivalent of a hammer, a screwdriver and a few misshapen nails. When I speak English, I can access every tool there is with finesse, grace and eloquence.”

With Hebrew, she continues, “even though I feel a mystical connection to thousands of years of history, religion and identity, I am isolated from the ordinary conversation around me.” Celeste is now back in the U.S., pursuing a masterâ€s degree in Jewish Education.

“I can actually speak Hebrew pretty well,” my friend Dan shared with me. “The problem is when people respond. Then I donâ€t understand half of what theyâ€re saying and I wind up nodding and feeling like an idiot.”

“Whatâ€s the problem?” my wise (and fully bilingual) daughter asked. “So you have a hard time with Hebrew. Why does that bother you?”

“I canâ€t fully participate in life here,” I replied.

“There are enough things going on in English to keep you plenty busy,” she shot back, which is entirely true.  In Jerusalem, in particular, thereâ€s a thriving Anglo sub-culture (although instead of the Cameri, we get community theater).

“Itâ€s the snarky comments Israelis make when they hear me fumbling in Hebrew,” I told my daughter. “Theyâ€ll ask, ‘how many years have you been here…and you still donâ€t speak Hebrew?†And then I feel ashamed.”

“Thatâ€s so unfair,” she responded. “You shouldnâ€t feel embarrassed. You should get angry. Fire back at them: ‘So, Iâ€m not good in languages. What things are you not good at?â€â€

Sheâ€s right, of course. Why should I feel abashed over any kind of limitation? My father had polio as a child. He could never play ball with me or run or roughhouse. He didnâ€t apologize for who he was.

In the end, the doctor spoke to me in his very passable English. He didnâ€t fix what was wrong, but I figured out what I should say to the next linguistically combative physician I encounter.

“I agree with you that itâ€s really important for the Jewish people in the modern state of Israel to speak Hebrew and I tried many times but I just couldnâ€t master the tongue. So I do my best to contribute as an Israeli using the skills that I have. Rather than chastise me for my FLLD, how about saying kol hakavod, good job, for sticking it out in Israel despite all the frustrations of not being able to communicate fully?”

I first shared my FLLD story at The Jerusalem Post.

Image from Drdpw [CC BY-SA 3.0]

I didnâ€t go to synagogue this Yom Kippur. To be frank, I didnâ€t even fully fast. My ongoing rebellion against religion has turned into a full-fledged insurrection.

As my wife Jody left the house without me for Kol Nidre, she turned and said, “I can understand that Jewish Law and prayer donâ€t speak to you anymore. But if youâ€re not even fasting, youâ€re really separating yourself from the rest of the tribe. Seventy-three percent of Jewish Israelis fast on Yom Kippur.”

And then she added this kicker: “How are you even still Jewish?”

Thirty years ago, before I became religiously observant (only to more recently leave it), my answer would have been something along the lines of, well, I was born Jewish and I feel Jewish.

Not very deep, I know, but true enough for someone who didnâ€t know which side of the Tefillin goes up and who figured the “four species” of Sukkot must be the name of a high-end hotel.

The problem with gaining a little knowledge, as a few years of yeshiva learning and living a religious lifestyle for double decades provided me, is that then you know too well what youâ€re not doing.

That often leads to binary, either-or thinking, like: if you used to be scrupulous about keeping kosher but now youâ€re not, youâ€re not just a tinok shâ€nishba – a child who sins inadvertently as a result of not having been raised with an appreciation for the thoughts and practices of Judaism – but rather youâ€re an all-in apikorus (a heretic).

And yet, Jodyâ€s question begs an answer. How am I still Jewish?

How am I not Jewish?

My life is infused with Jewish content and practice at every turn – from the electronically unplugged Shabbat and holiday meals we eat together as a family every week to the classes on Jewish texts and philosophy we go to at places like Pardes and Beit Avi Chai.

Thereâ€s the funky but respectful Seder we make, the museum exhibitions on Jewish history and art we visit, the Jewish publications I seek out for my daily news obsession, the Jewish music we listen and dance to, the Jewish Renewal community we sing with in Jerusalem, the topics I write about here in this column.

It may have turned more cultural than observant over the years, but that doesnâ€t make it any less Jewish.

And then thereâ€s Israel.

Admittedly I came to this country as a very different person, and Israel itself has dramatically changed. But Iâ€m still here after 22 years. Itâ€s just that my Jewish identity has morphed from a sukka-seeking Diaspora Jew with delusions of Kotel to a – well thereâ€s no other way to say it – an Israeli.

Which is both surprising and strange since I have few Israeli friends, my Hebrew is stuck in kita gimel, and many of the norms and behaviors of the people around me drive me nuts.

And yet, I do this one seemingly illogical action, day after day: I show up.

Iâ€m committed to making my small contribution to the continuity of the Jewish State and the betterment of the Jewish society around me, even if the majority of what I do is just try to live a normal life.

But those small things matter.

I vote. I pay my taxes. My children serve in the army. I always clean up after my dog.

Above all, I take continuing pride in being a willing if not always entirely enthusiastic part of the greatest Jewish adventure in 2,000 years.

And when the politics and religion of this place get me down, or when the missiles start flying from Gaza, I donâ€t flee to another, less war-prone country (if that even exists). I stick it out because my presence, however minuscule and seemingly insignificant, I have to believe, does have a long-term impact, even if I may never see it.

Historian and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Harari would say Iâ€m afflicted by an over reliance in what heâ€s dubbed the “Liberal Story,” which posits that if only we liberalize our political, economic and religious systems, “we will produce paradise on earth, or at least peace and prosperity for all.”

But the Liberal Story, he writes in a recent column in The New Yorker, is imploding all around us. Disillusionment triggered first by the financial collapse of 2008 and continuing through the botched Arab spring and the alarming rise of nationalism, extremism, isolationism, terrorism and Trumpism, has led to mass disenchantment and fear for the future.

I canâ€t give up hope, though – not for Israel nor for the Jewish people (those two identities now inextricably fused, for me at least). That would be the true turning away from my Jewishness, much more than whether I chose to eat a bowl of cereal to wash down my anti-depressants this Yom Kippur or not.

Zionist Union Knesset member Manuel Trajtenberg put it more eloquently when he wrote that to live “as a believing Jew” means “believing in the uniqueness and historic role of the Jewish people… and in the need to…create a better world for future generations.”

And so I will continue to show up, day after day. I refuse to stop trusting that I can contribute, however obliquely, to that quintessential Jewish value of tikkun olam – repairing the world – or at least our little corner of it.

I guess Iâ€m not such a heretic after all.

I first answered this question about my Jewishness at The Jerusalem Post.

Kol Nidre picture attribution: Zagler, A. R. S. Schenker Keller, Jacob (museums.cjh.org  Center for Jewish History, NYC)

As I was researching The aliyah premium – how much more does it really cost to live in Israel?, I quickly realized that the only fair way to deal with the wide variances in individual earnings and tax rates was to stick with official and presumably impartial government sources like the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics or the U.S. Census Bureau.

But real life rarely conforms to the averages you get from published data, as the hundreds of messages I received on social media made abundantly clear.

By focusing on “average household income,” my social media correspondents told me, I was missing out on the stories of the not-so-average families and individuals who chose to make aliyah and who – except for a relatively small demographic of hi-tech workers able to transition into well compensated employment in Israel – more often than not “traded down” career-wise.

Trading down happens in two ways. Either you earn significantly less after aliyah (think a doctorâ€s earnings in the old country vs. Israel) or youâ€re compelled to change careers entirely because the job you were doing isnâ€t available in Israel, requires language skills youâ€re missing, or entails a long and difficult process of certification.

Eve Jacobs worked as an elementary school teacher in the U.K., but says continuing in that field in Israel would have meant “retraining and living on very little pay” – a double whammy.

“As a doctor, my Israeli salary is 10-20 percent of what it was and the hours are 50 percent more,” one person wrote to me on Facebook.

“Talented hard-working people in business or the legal field can earn much more in the U.S.,” wrote another.

This is not unique to Israel, of course. People changing countries everywhere tend to trade down, with the usual justification that “weâ€re doing it for the children.”

“True, youâ€ll take a pay cut. But the trade off is you belong. You are the landlord and not the tenant here,” wrote a Facebook friend.

Why is it so hard for immigrants to make ends meet?

“When you leave your country of origin, you leave the connections and the subtle cultural understandings that give you an economic advantage,” wrote Brett Batzofin

Rachel Selby echoed that insight. “In the U.S. you are familiar with the system, you have a good education, you know the language with all the nuances, and you have family connections and a network of old friends.” You lose that edge when you move away.

Rachel Berger, director of post-aliyah and employment at Nefesh Bâ€Nefesh, sees the glass more half full.

“If you look around at the cities and neighborhoods where new immigrants have settled, youâ€ll see that people are not packing their bags and leaving,” Berger said. “People complain but, at the same time, we are seeing a lot of growth and development.”

Berger classifies those making aliyah into two categories: “professionals who are passionate about their trade and want to continue in it, and those who – after taking the leap of aliyah – also want to do a career leap and transition into something different.”

I found that in my Facebook comments too – a move beyond the negative towards reinvention. Many people were flourishing after making aliyah. The common denominator: being an immigrant had pushed them to embrace change and often to find an entrepreneurial spirit they didnâ€t know they had.

Eve Jacobs, the schoolteacher from the U.K., opened up Jerusalem Holiday Homes, which manages short-term holiday rentals. Business is booming.

“There is no way I could have lived as a single mother in Jerusalem on a teacherâ€s wage,” Jacobs said. On a good month, she says she is able to earn “more than three times as much as my previous salary.”

Shira Gura trained in the U.S. as an occupational therapist but took time off to raise her children. She started writing a blog about how to get “unstuck.” It caught on. Her first book is due out later this month and she has launched a business involving coaching, workshops and retreats.

“I never would have dreamed Iâ€d be an author, entrepreneur or anything other than a stay-at-home mom,” Gura said.

“When I first made aliyah in the 1970s I was a geneticist,” wrote Barak Tom Salakoff. He went back to university, got a degree in education, and has been “a teacher for over 40 years. Aliyah was good for me in so many ways.”

Then thereâ€s Joel Haber who worked as a screenwriter before moving to Israel. He knew he wouldnâ€t be able to continue in the same profession in English, so he retrained and became a tour guide here. “My career life is way better for me than it was when I was in the States,” he said, adding that being willing to switch careers to something “that is needed here or that better fits oneâ€s skillset” ensures “much greater chances of finding professional success.”

That might describe my own post-aliyah career trajectory, as well. I worked in hi-tech for many years before transitioning to freelance writing. Iâ€m much happier even if my compensation has dropped.

I often wonder, though: if Iâ€d stayed in the U.S., would I have gotten bit by the same entrepreneurial bug? Or would I have stayed the hi-tech course?

We can second-guess the choices we make forever. Still for me – and apparently quite a few other immigrants – aliyah has been anything but “trading down.”

I trade up to write for The Jerusalem Post! This article appeared there.

Itâ€s no secret that immigrants to Israel from North America take a financial hit. But as I finished up my U.S. taxes last month (as an Israeli with dual citizenship, I am required to file in both countries), I stopped for a moment to ponder exactly how big that hit has been.

What is the “aliyah premium,” I wondered – the difference between how much I earned in Israel over the past 20 years and what I might have earned had Iâ€d stayed in the U.S.? Did it add up to tens of thousands of dollars over a couple of decades? Hundreds of thousands?

Or is the whole differential a kind of fiction, a “woe is me” story we tell ourselves about why life is so hard in Israel but that might not hold up against the actual data?

I decided to try to crunch the numbers. I read through articles and statistics, spoke with accountants, business journalists and even a day school admissions director. Hereâ€s what I found. Keep in mind Iâ€m not an economist, so any figures I present will be pretty gross generalizations.

Letâ€s start with mean household income – the average income earned by all breadwinners in a home. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, American households earn $72,641 on average vs. $56,892 in Israel. The latter figure comes from Israelâ€s Central Bureau of Statistics and includes income from all sources – labor, capital, government stipends and familial assistance.

So, data point number one: Israeli households earn a gross amount equal to 78 percent of their American counterparts – thatâ€s a 22 percent “aliyah premium.”

But what about taxes? Surprisingly, the tax rates arenâ€t that different. The Israeli statistics folks say that same Israeli family pays 18 percent of their earnings for income tax, national insurance and health tax. My Israeli accountant ran the numbers for the same salary and it came out higher – closer to 24 percent. But he advised me up front that he hadnâ€t calculated the various credits and deductions (number of children, gender, etc.) that inevitably bring the total rate down.

In the U.S., taking the same gross calculation and similarly ignoring all manner of discounts and deductions, the average household income of $72,641 for a married couple filing jointly would be subject to income tax of 17 percent and another 7.65 percent for social security – in another words, almost the same as Israel.

But, as my U.S. tax preparer told me: that too is fraught with complexity. “A family with many children, high medical expenses, that itemizes their deductions or gives a lot of charity could very well wind up paying a lot less.”

Offsetting that to a certain extent are state taxes, although these vary considerably. Some states have no tax at all (Nevada and Florida); most add another 3-5 percent to the tax bill, my tax preparer said.

“You have to be careful gathering data from different sources to make comparisons,” my colleague financial journalist David Rosenberg warned me. The best way, he said, “is to take your data from a single source like the OECD.”

The OECD data tells a much more sobering story. Looking at household net disposable income (which the OCED defines as the money available to a household after taxes for spending on goods or services), Americans wind up with $41,355 on average vs. just $22,105 for Israelis.

Data point number two, then: the “aliyah premium” might be as high as 47 percent.

And thatâ€s not factoring in the higher cost of certain purchases in Israel, such as cars (which carry a 78 percent Israeli tax mark up), gasoline (triple that of much of the U.S.), electronics and many food items (remember the cottage cheese protests). Housing in Israel is famously expensive, but then so is real estate in most major metropolitan areas of the U.S.

“I donâ€t know if itâ€s fair to compare the U.S. and Israel from a strictly economic point of view,” says Jacob Richman who operated the popular Computer Jobs in Israel website and email list for 23 years. “There are many social and Jewish aspects to living in Israel that are hard to put a price on.”

Jacob is right, of course: thereâ€s no way to calculate the true value one gets living in a Jewish State, following a Jewish calendar and being part of Jewish history. But my analysis here is strictly about the money.

Nevertheless, there are some mitigating factors that narrow the financial gap.

The cost of private Jewish day school in the U.S. is a huge consideration. I spoke with Yelena Spector, the director of admissions at the Akiba-Schechter Jewish Day School in Chicago. The price per child for tuition maxes out at $18,165 a year for children at her school. Bus fees add another $1,000 plus per child; hot lunches and fundraising drives even more.

If you have three children in day school, “thatâ€s $60,000 coming straight out of your income,” Spector told me. And while some states have vouchers for private education, thatâ€s not on the federal tax level.

As a result, “even ‘well off†families apply for financial aid,” Spector says. Aid granted varies widely but itâ€s rare that tuition would drop below $5,000 per child, she added. So, even with a big break, an American Jewish family making that OECD average household income could be paying up to 36 percent of their net for schooling alone.

(Thatâ€s not an entirely fair analysis, as such an “average” earning family would probably not be able to afford Jewish day school in the first place, even with generous financial aid.)

Private school exists in Israel, too, but itâ€s not a necessity in the same way that it is for a family in the U.S., which has decided that Jewish education is a priority. Figure about $100 a month per child per month for books and class trips at a public school in Israel. But even factoring in these Israeli fees, the much higher private school costs for U.S. Jewish education narrows the gap from the OECDâ€s 47 percent “aliyah premium” to just 27 percent.

What about healthcare? In Israel, universal health coverage is included in that Israeli tax number of between 18-24 percent. Not so in the U.S. where itâ€s much more complicated

I pretended to be a family of five applying for coverage on a website affiliated with the Affordable Care Act in the U.S. I picked California, which is where I used to live. I plugged in my average household income numbers. The result was a mess of options that makes calculating a single tidy figure a Sisyphean impossibility.

I could pay a few hundred dollars a month and have a reasonable deductible and co-pays for doctor visits and pharmaceuticals, or I could pay much less but have deductibles exceeding $10,000. The number of options – gold, silver, bronze and platinum plans; multiple providers – set my head spinning.

I asked a colleague who heads a non-profit in U.S. what his employees generally pay. He says around $200 a month. Assuming a family will use up at least some of its deductible, that could easily add up to another, say, $5,000 a year – some 12 percent off the OECD household income total.

Many Israeli families buy supplemental health insurance (add another $100 a month at least). Still, even factoring in the Israeli health extras, in this admittedly unscientific analysis, the “aliyah premium” has now been sliced to a mere 15 percent.

Finally, social security might be only 7.65 percent if youâ€re a salaried employee in the U.S., but if youâ€re independent, youâ€re responsible for both the employer and employee amounts. Take off another 7.65 percent and you can see that the “aliyah premium” has nearly evaporated.

Clearly, every familyâ€s situation is going to be different. If youâ€re a hi-tech worker with no kids and you donâ€t get sick much, you could probably earn a lot more in the U.S. But, on the other hand, your Israel startup could get bought or go public, leaving you sitting pretty in Tel Aviv.

Thereâ€s so much I havenâ€t included: property and worldwide capital gains are taxed differently (higher in Israel), synagogue dues ($2,000 for a family in the U.S.) are not widely applicable in the Jewish State, summer camp fees in the U.S. are sky high (add another $4,000 per child), life insurance premiums are higher in Israel, as is long term care insurance. Retirement programs and pension saving vary. And this analysis only concerns the U.S. Comparing costs between Israel and Europe is an entirely different tub of hummus.

So, have I lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in my 20 years here? It doesnâ€t seem so. My bottom line “aliyah premium” is far more manageable that I anticipated.

Is being a part of this modern Jewish experiment called Israel worth a 7-15 percent hit on income? Everyone has to decide for him or herself, but for me, Iâ€m more than happy to run with those numbers.

I originally crunched the numbers over at The Jerusalem Post. There has been a lot of discussion of this article on Facebook. If you’re not a friend already, just ask!

“Itâ€s called re-entry syndrome,” my therapist friend Nomi explained to me as I was describing the difficulty I was having returning to Israel after our recent vacation abroad. “It happens to everyone.” Itâ€s especially acute, she added, when youâ€ve just come from an especially polite country such as Norway, where weâ€d just spent two weeks hiking up waterfalls, gazing at glaciers, and most pertinent to my surprisingly strong resistance to coming home, re-discovering the meaning of the words “customer service” and “patience.”

I certainly wonâ€t be the first person to point out that Israel can be a tough place to live. Itâ€s a rough neighborhood, yes I know, and our history has given us ample reasons to dispense with many of the social pleasantries that our neighbors in the West so value. Moreover, my wife and I were, after all, on vacation in Norway, interacting with service providers primarily in the tourism industry, not the general population. Who knows what life is really like in a place like that?

But still, it can be jarring. At least on the surface, everyone in Norway was just so nice. Like Eden at the front desk of the Vangsgaarden Guest House in Aurland, who went out of her way to strategize the best trekking routes and let us borrow the hotelâ€s bikes for an hour at no charge. Or the manager at the sweets shop in Geiranger who, after we ran into her and her staff on a team building day and took their picture, insisted we come in for hot chocolate on the house. Or all those drivers on the narrow switchback mountain roads who never tailgated or honked or flashed their lights at us, and never, ever tried to pass when it wasnâ€t safe. If a tour bus needed room to maneuver at a tight curve, car drivers would simply wait.

On our return, the contrast came as quick as the ride from Ben-Gurion Airport back to Jerusalem. Our taxi driver cut between other cars with feckless abandon, while texting on his phone most of the time. A few days later, my wife and I were in a clothing store. Could the saleswoman have looked less dour? At the evening concert at the annual Hutzot HaYotzer arts and crafts festival, a burly guy with a crew cut and a white t-shirt insisted on sitting on the back of his seat. Why should he care if he was blocking the view of those behind him? Megiah lo – he deserves whatever he can take.

Israel can be a wonderful place, I thought to myself. If only it was filled with Norwegians.

When I told my kids about my bout with re-entry syndrome, they were quick to offer excuses for their fellow countrymen. “Maybe that salesperson had a boyfriend in the army on the border with Gaza and sheâ€s really scared,” said one. “Or maybe the guy at the concert lost someone to a terror attack,” suggested another.

“Iâ€m not trying to blame anyone for their behavior,” I replied. “I accept that this is the way it is here. I just wonder sometimes if itâ€s worth it. I mean, is this how I want to live out however many years I have left?”

That was how I felt, a few months earlier, when I had a near meltdown at the bank. After waiting close to an hour, the clerk in charge of my account couldnâ€t find the papers she needed and yelled at me (or maybe she was just speaking normally, itâ€s hard to tell in Hebrew), telling me to come back another time and rudely dismissing me with neither an apology nor an explanation.

As I walked home, I was drained, defeated, and found myself questioning some pretty big life choices. “Why are we even here?” I blabbered, as I recounted my experience at the bank to my wife Jody. “Iâ€m just so tired, all the time. Maybe we should consider leaving.”

“What would that look like?” Jody asked, entertaining my question seriously.

The truth is, Iâ€ve pictured this scenario before. But it always crosses into the realm of fantasy. The only way I can relieve the existential angst of leaving Israel and all the messages of betrayal and cowardice it brings up is to imagine going totally “Jewcognito.” That is, moving to a place and ditching any remnants of an Israeli – or for that matter a Jewish – identity in order to blend in without baggage.

It would have to be some city where we didnâ€t know anyone. That rules out all the places weâ€ve lived in the past as well as anywhere near family. We wouldnâ€t join any kind of organized Jewish community and weâ€d take neutral stands on all the burning Jewish questions of the day – BDS, Iran, anti-Semitism – that is when we werenâ€t ducking having opinions entirely. I doubt weâ€d move to Norway – that would be too far-out – but a small town in Iowa might fit the bill. Weâ€d have to invent an elaborate backstory and stick to the script, like Don Draper from Mad Men. (Wait a minute, that didnâ€t work out so well for him in the end, did it?)

Fantasies, of course, are just that; black and white escapes routes born out of frustration that donâ€t take into account the 67 shades of grays that give life its real richness. Short of the ultimate extreme makeover, coming to terms with Israel as it is would probably be a better long-term solution. Worse comes to worse, I can always retreat into the Anglo bubble that characterizes my southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka and leave the interacting with the outside world to more stoic souls like my wife.

Now, Iâ€m aware that my post-vacation beef with the boorish behavior of my neighbors might come across as trivial; a wimpy whine expanded into an artificial crisis obsessed primarily with the most superficial of qualities. “Israelis may not always be the easiest on the outside,” one of my kids pointed out, “but they will always have your back.”

I know that, along with all the other big picture arguments for making a go of the Jewish state: the historic opportunity of Zionism and the ingathering of the exiles, a country run by the Jewish calendar, the casual creativity that infuses everything from startups to wedding attire, the positive qualities of aggressive openness, the democratic responsibility of prodding change in those systems that are infuriatingly broken, the excellent humous. But thatâ€s missing the point: I needed some help with getting past my very real re-entry syndrome.

My therapist friend Nomi used to work at the AACI where she counseled new immigrants on coping with culture shock. There are some interesting overlaps with re-entry syndrome, she explains. For aliyah, Nomi cites a five-stage process developed originally by Lucy Shahar, co-author of Border Crossings: American Interactions with Israelis.

The first stage is ”euphoria,” a honeymoon period where everything Israeli is wonderful. This is followed by “depression,” however, “characterized by a sense of homesickness, nostalgia for the familiar and a sense of loss,” Nomi goes on. “This second stage is also marked by a negative stereotyping of Israelis; a sense of them and us, and of not wanting to be around them.”

Fortunately, the depression usually passes, followed by an “adjustment” phase. But itâ€s also short lived, and about a year into oneâ€s aliyah, a new downer arises, “disillusionment,” with a feeling of “is that all there is? Wasnâ€t aliyah supposed to improve my life in a more meaningful way?” If you can get past the disillusionment, and you make the choice to stay, you finally reach the fifth and final stage, “bi-culturalism,” where you can function and live a full life in both your original and new Israeli milieus.

“The Catch 22 is that you have to wait until youâ€re bi-cultural in order to decide if you want to be bi-cultural,” Nomi adds, wryly.

Nomi uses the five stages to give immigrants insight into their initial transition, but every time you leave and come back to Israel, she says, you go through the entire process again in miniature. In my case, I seem to have skipped over the euphoria phase and landed somewhere between stage two, depression, and stage four, disillusionment.

“Eventually youâ€ll get over the re-entry syndrome and regain your previous sense of equilibrium,” Nomi reassured me. “It may take a few weeks, or even longer.”

I hope so. Living in this livid limbo is no fun. Iâ€m pretty sure Iâ€ll get back to my version of Baka bubble bi-culturalism and Iâ€ll be fine.

That is, until the next vacation.

I first wrote about re-entry syndrome at The Jerusalem Post.

Ever since making aliyah, weâ€ve joked that we could never leave Israel, and certainly never move out of Jerusalem…because of the challah. All that changed two weeks ago when the bakery that has been the source of perhaps the best kosher sweet whole wheat challah in the world closed down. After 43 years in business, the main branch of Peâ€er Bakery in Jerusalemâ€s German Colony shut its doors.

The reason, explains owner Shoshana Sharabi, who has been at the cash register while her husband Moshe has tended to the ovens all these years is simple enough: “Di!” she exclaims, using the Hebrew expression for “enough already.” Her husband Moshe is turning 70; Shoshana is not far behind.

“Iâ€m tired. Iâ€ve been asking him to close for three years. Only now has he agreed. We want to travel, see the world,” she tells me. After 43 years, who am I to take that away from this 13^th generation Jerusalemite who wants to spend her remaining years generating experiences that donâ€t all have to do with the proper allotment of poppy seeds and raisins.

It hasnâ€t always been easy for Peâ€erâ€s proprietors, either. Most recently, the Sharabiâ€s went up against the Israeli Rabbinate, which temporarily revoked their kashrut license when Shoshana refused to pay. “They were sending a mashgiach [a kosher inspector] once a month for an hour. If Iâ€m going to pay, he should come more often. He should do his job.” The Rabbinate fined Peâ€er and Shoshana flirted with moving over to city councilperson Rabbi Aaron Leibowitzâ€s Hashgaha Pratit private community kashrut organization, but it never took and closing shop loomed larger.

“Where will you go now?” I ask Shoshana as I wait for Moshe to pull the final challahs out of the oven. “India is on the top of the list,” she says, and I feel the same tinge of excitement I do for young Israelis heading east after their army service. “Do you like Indian food?” I ask. “We canâ€t actually eat anything there, we keep kosher you know,” she scolds me. I tell her about the plethora of strictly vegetarian restaurants that are everywhere in India. Her eyes light up. Despite her role baking a very traditional Jewish food, Shoshana is, surprisingly, a recently converted vegan.

And yet, for a few days after I heard the news, I was devastated. Every Friday, for nearly 20 years, I have run the pre-Shabbat errands for our family, which include buying a copy of The Jerusalem Post, stopping at Marzipan for their gooey half-baked chocolate rugelach, and schmoozing with Shoshana while picking up my challot. Every once in a while, Iâ€d try to mix things up and get a challah from somewhere else. The kids would always put me in my place and the following week, Iâ€d be back at Peâ€er.

Challah became even more important in the last five years when our family instituted a new Friday night ritual. After realizing we were always full after eating just the challah, dips and chicken soup, and that no one had room for an entire meal afterward (though weâ€d eat it anyway and then complain), we dumped the meat, potatoes and salad and only serve soup, bread and dessert.

Before moving to Israel, getting our weekly challah was much more of a pain. Living in Berkeley, California in the late 1980s, there was no kosher challah nearby; weâ€d have to drive 20 minutes to the Grand Bakery in neighboring Oakland. Later, when Noahâ€s Bagels opened its first store in Berkeley and began baking kosher challah, it was easier, but weâ€d still have to order in advance and there was always the possibility our bag would be given to someone else by mistake, leaving us Shabbat challah-less. At Peâ€er, the supply of braided bread on Friday seemed endless.

As I lamented a post-a-Peâ€er-calyptic world, Jody reminded me that Iâ€m “grasping,” one of the essential sins against mindfulness that Iâ€d just spent so much time working on during our recent 6-day silent meditation retreat (see This Normal Life, April 17, 2015). Much of our suffering, I know, comes from frantically trying to hold on to whatâ€s good, or its converse: resisting the unpleasant. Both will pass – sooner than you think; itâ€s the nature of the universe. Moreover, grasping and resistance are ultimately about the fear of death. If I canâ€t get past my attachment to a particular bakery, how will I ever deal with the truly inevitable?

Peâ€er isnâ€t vanishing from the scene entirely. A satellite branch in Mahane Yehuda, run by the Sharabiâ€s son, is staying open, with the same recipe (for now at least). Itâ€s not as convenient, but if we invite Shabbat guests who are regular shuk shoppers, maybe they can give us an occasional blast from the past.

“Why didnâ€t you offer your son to take over the German Colony bakery?” I ask Shoshana. She has other plans for the building, which she and Moshe own. They plan to turn it into apartments for rent. The thought of the venerable Peâ€er building, where Iâ€ve spent so many fleeting moments, becoming another luxury ghost village, rattles me, but again, megiah lah – after 43 years, the Sharabiâ€s have earned it. They donâ€t owe us anything. Itâ€s business. And surviving nearly half a century in a city where restaurants are lucky to last half a year is commendable.

The truth is, there are plenty of alternatives to Peâ€er in the neighborhood already: a new bread shop on Emek Refaim Street and another on Bethlehem Road in Baka have opened up recently. French patisserie Ness bakes up a doughy challah, though itâ€s not sweet enough for me. The Coney Island Knish shop sells a pretty tasty whole wheat loaf. And thereâ€s always the reliable Herby from Beit El. Maybe Iâ€ll even take up baking – homemade always trumps store-bought.

Clearly, we donâ€t have to make yeridah – that is, to leave Israel – just yet.

My Pe’er lament appeared originally at The Jerusalem Post.

An article a few weeks ago in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz questioned why someone would ever want to make aliyah from a comfortable country like the U.S. Especially these days – with the murders of the Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shear and Eyal Shach still on our minds, the revenge killing of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khaider stinging at our collective conscious, followed by hundreds of Hamas missiles from Gaza and the thunderous response of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza – why, asked writer Vered Kellner, would a family pick up and leave friends and family, “a renovated apartment in the heart of Manhattan, a lively Jewish community and kids in some of the best schools around,” to come to what is these days among the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world?

Why indeed? Even as a not-so-recent immigrant to Israel, itâ€s a question I still ask myself sometimes.

Kellner, an Israeli living in New York for the past two years, became obsessed with a particular family making the move to Israel. “I followed them on Facebook and peeked at them in synagogue, trying to pick out from among their words and glances the reason why they were taking such a dramatic step,” she writes. Kellner admits she misses the Israeli pressure cooker with its intense, bipolar emotions, as she puts it. “Iâ€m already addicted, a lost cause,” she says. “But what about the new immigrants, the ones who choose it?”

Like the family in New York, I left a good job in hi-tech to move 7,500 miles away from all but our immediate family and Iâ€m still struggling, 20 years later, with accepting that I will never fully speak a language whose backward squiggles and ornate verb constructions are so completely foreign from the English in which I make a living expressing myself as to render me prime parody fodder for an Israeli TV comedy show like Eretz Nehederet.

And then thereâ€s the missiles. Itâ€s not that I didnâ€t know there was the possibility of sirens and running for shelters in my future. During the first Gulf War, I had a transistor radio at my desk in California tuned in all day to the local all news station. I would hear the sirens, the reports of Saddam Husseinâ€s Scuds and the purposely-vague descriptions of where they landed. But just like the parent I would soon become, I put it out of my mind. When our kids grow up, there will be peace, I cooed. We wonâ€t need an army and there certainly wonâ€t be any more rockets.

The day we made aliyah, Nachshon Wachsman was kidnapped. I can almost hear Kellner crying out, “What were you thinking!”

The truth is, I was never supposed to be here. I came to Israel almost by accident. After I graduated from college, I dreamed of traveling around the world. I loaded my arm up with inoculations that would allow me to go anywhere – Africa, India, Southeast Asia. Israel was just a stop along the way.

But from nearly the moment I landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, I was captivated. Even though (or maybe because) I grew up utterly assimilated, with no bar mitzvah, Yom Kippur just another school day, and the highlight of Shabbat mornings our weekly bacon breakfast, I couldnâ€t tear myself away from this place. The trip around the world was put on hold, I stayed for three years and met my wife-to-be. We returned to the U.S. to jumpstart our careers, started a family and made aliyah for real a few years later.

Bomb shelters were never a part of the narrative. So, maybe the question is not whyâ€d you want to come here, but why do you stay?

We have a family trip to Ireland planned for the end of the summer. (The irony of visiting a country that had its own long-term terrorism problem is not lost on me.) As the missiles fell, my daughter asked if we could move the date of the vacation up.

“Could we maybe get out now…just for a little while?” she asked.

“You know what youâ€d be doing, right?” I replied. “Youâ€d have your news app open on your iPhone all day and youâ€d be Whatsapping with your friends non-stop and be totally unable to enjoy the trip.”

That was the experience of Allison Kaplan-Sommer who was vacationing in Rhode Island during Juneâ€s kidnapping crisis. She was looking forward to the trip as a break from the “sadness and strife” of the Middle East. But try as she might, “I havenâ€t been able to give myself that break…it seems wrong to wake up and read a local morning newspaper where the top story is a feature celebrating the fact that the shin-guards worn by the American soccer team in the World Cup were made in Rhode Island.” And so she spent much of her vacation glued to streaming video and social media out of Israel.

To friends who have helpfully suggested to Kaplan-Sommer that maybe she ought to pack up the kids and “find a safe refuge until the storm blows over,” she responds that sheâ€d “rather be here experiencing it than far away wondering what the country is going through.” She likens it to when a family member is ill. Itâ€s easier somehow to cope when youâ€re right in front of them, “with your finger on the pulse of their condition.”

Kellner gets it too. “Why settle for a seat in the balcony when you can have one in the orchestra?” she mused.

And yet, that seat in the orchestra can be so difficult. Why choose to put yourself in harmâ€s way when, as an immigrant with two passports, you always have an easy way out?

Michael Oren says itâ€s a matter of responsibility. Oren is the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., and an eminent historian – his “Six Days of War” is by far the best and most comprehensive volume in English on the 1967 war.

The rebirth of the state of Israel is an historic opportunity for Jews who care about their Judaism to take responsibility for making the country all that it can be, Oren told a sold out crowd at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies earlier this month. “The notion that as Jews we are responsible for one another is a time-honored Jewish definition…and what Iâ€d call the base definition of Zionism,” Oren explained.

Yes, Israel is beset by a myriad of problems – economic, political, social, racial. “Sovereignty is messy,” Oren said. “But taking responsibility for that mess is what Zionism is all about. Itâ€s very easy for me to talk about Israelâ€s astounding achievements in hi-tech, medical science and Nobel Prize winners. But what Iâ€m proudest of is the mess, the chaos. And right now, we have no shortage of it.”

(Maybe thatâ€s why our Jewish mothers back in the States have such a hard time with us being here. They spent their entire childrearing years trying to coax us into avoiding getting messy.)

Our youngest son sings in a unique Israeli-Palestinian teen choir. The Jerusalem Youth Chorus, which has been meeting for two years now under the sponsorship of the Jerusalem International YMCA, has performed all over the country – including singing backup for veteran Israeli guitarist and peace activist David Brozaâ€s Israel radio chart topping cover of “Whatâ€s So Funny ‘Bout Peace Love and Understanding.”

The groupâ€s weekly meetings alternate rehearsal time with “dialogue,” led by trained facilitators. The conversations are not always easy but for the 32 teenagers in the choir, an understanding and respect for the “other side” has developed.

Sometimes, though, I wonder: whatâ€s the point? A couple dozen kids are being educated towards coexistence? Big deal. How is that going to make a difference on the national level? Can any of them personally stop the missiles? How, in fact, is my being here rather than in the U.S., also not being involved in anything political, going to make a change in Israeli society (other than, say, encouraging dog owners to pick up after their pets in the park)?

But you donâ€t need to educate a whole society for change to occur. A single individual can have profound impact – for better or for worse. Maybe one of the kids in the chorus will grow up to be prime minister and figure out how to forge peace in a way no one has yet thought of. Maybe, because of this experience, one will not grow up to be a terrorist (Arab or Jewish). And hereâ€s one for believers: maybe one will grow up to be the messiah.

When you hear the sirens, itâ€s easy to succumb to despair, that this is too overwhelming a mess. “But I look at it the other way around,” Oren concluded his talk. “I can think of no greater blessing than to be alive at a time in Jewish history when I as a Jew have to deal with this mess.”

I get that and agree. But a little less mess, that would be OK too.

This article originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post Magazine and blog.

Ever since we moved to Israel 20 years ago, Iâ€ve always felt like I donâ€t quite fit in anywhere. Iâ€ll never be truly Israeli, since I didnâ€t grow up with all the pop culture references someone born in the country knows intuitively. And Iâ€m not fully American anymore either, since I havenâ€t resided in the U.S. for more than a month at a time for nearly two decades.

Now, it turns out, thereâ€s a term to describe me: Iâ€m whatâ€s known as a TCI – a “third culture individual.”

The expression isnâ€t new. It was first coined by researchers in the 1950s to describe the children of American citizens working and living abroad (in that case, theyâ€re often called TCKs for “third culture kids”). These TCKs are not part of their parentâ€s culture and not entirely at one with their new countryâ€s culture, hence the appellation “third culture.” The term received visibility when a very famous TCK became president of the U.S. (Barak Obama was born in Hawaii but grew up in Indonesia).

While TCKs are generally children and young adults who have spent a good chunk of their developmental years outside their parents†culture, a TCI can be anyone who has significant living experience in a culture outside his or her own. Which means that I am a TCI, but my kids are not: even though two of them were born in California, they came here when they were young enough that their culture is 100% Israeli.

Despite being a TCI for close to half of my adult life, I hadnâ€t realized that I was part of a specific subculture until I met Lital Helman, COO of the web startup GradTrain. Helman was sitting next to me at a networking event sponsored by JNext, a new organization in Jerusalem that is working hard to foster an interdisciplinary ecosystem for entrepreneurs in Israelâ€s capital.

The event was an invitation-only moderated discussion between Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg prior to the latterâ€s receipt of the Genesis Prize last month. It was held at the Hansen House, the former leper hospital turned hi-tech and design hub. Helman and I struck up a conversation while drinking mid-day champagne and eating mini-quiches and chocolate éclairs.

Helman was born in Jerusalem and grew up here, but has been TCIâ€ing it in New York and Pennsylvania for the past seven years. She moved there for school where she quickly discovered that a preference for hanging out with her fellow ex-countrymen was not unique to Israelis. In fact, TCIs often have more in common with other TCIs – even those from entirely different countries – than with the majority culture around then.

So, for example, I as a TCI in Israel might relate quite resonantly to the travails of an American expatriate who has lived for 15 years in Japan or a Swedish Ph.D candidate in Canada, even though it would seem that our day-to-day experiences would be quite dissimilar.

Helman ought to know. Her company, GradTrain, is a peer-to-peer video coaching platform that helps students from one country wishing to study at a university in another figure out the nuances of everything from application essays and scholarship options to what to expect from roommates and healthcare. The company was founded last year and is growing steadily with several thousand unique visitors a month, a couple hundred active coaches and 20,000 social media followers. Coaches charge for their insight and time; GradTrain takes a percentage.

While most students come to GradTrain to figure out how to get into a graduate program overseas, many return to their coaches for follow-on sessions once theyâ€re been accepted to school, as “third culture” issues start to arise. (All of GradTrainâ€s coaches are themselves TCIs, so theyâ€ve walked the same road as the people theyâ€re mentoring.)

Language is a big part of being a TCI. Helman gives the example of someone saying “thatâ€s interesting.” In Israel, she says, “that means the person wants to hear more. In the U.S., it often means ‘letâ€s change the subject.â€â€ The same is true when an American says, “letâ€s have lunch. The real meaning if often just ‘nice to meet you.†In Israel, Iâ€d invite that person for a meal!”

This lack of understanding can be very disconcerting for a TCI in a new culture. “People who travel abroad to study are usually very motivated and talented. Theyâ€re used to having conversations where they understand whatâ€s going on, so not getting the reaction they expect can be very confusing. It can really break a person,” Helman says. “They wonder if something has happened to them, if maybe because theyâ€ve moved to a new country, theyâ€re not the same person anymore. It takes time to learn the rules.”

Helman advises TCI students to do the opposite of whatâ€s often suggested for faster acculturation, to hang out only with locals from their adopted country. Rather, “they should keep some friends from back home, or hang out with other people with international backgrounds,” she says. “That way, you wonâ€t be the only one around who doesnâ€t get whatâ€s going on.”

Iâ€ve certainly seen the language issue in action with my TCI friends in Israel. Even the most Hebrew-fluent Anglo might not fully appreciate the word play of the legendary Israeli pop band Kaveret like a native. In the same way, Israelis will never get the cultural “stickiness” of Gilda Radnerâ€s “Never mind” or Steve Martinâ€s “Excuse Me” on the gut level of a 70s child growing up in the U.S. with the first generation of TVâ€s “Saturday Night Live.”

Another example, this one not from Israel: on a recent episode of the U.S. public radio show “This American Life,” author David Sedaris described his experience living in Paris. He shared how he structures which establishments he patronizes and which he avoids in large part according to where heâ€ll have an easier time communicating in his limited French.

Maybe itâ€s because weâ€re both writers, with all the perfectionism we attach to communicating with grace and facilité, but like me, Sedaris is devastated daily by the withering comments a salesperson can lob in his direction for an awkwardly constructed phrase in a language not his own. All the more so in Israel, where the resurrection of an ancient tongue is a source of national pride and, even after two decades in the country and attendance at no less than six Hebrew ulpans, my still fumbling attempts at ordering anything more complicated than falafel are fodder for communal outrage.

Helman, 34, ultimately found she was tired of being a TCI in New York and together with company co-founder Jacob Bacon (despite the unlikely name, he is Israeli like Helman), returned to Israel earlier this year to run the company from the city of her birth. They are currently operating out of the JVP incubator in Jerusalem.

Helman discovered upon her return that being a TCI can go both ways. “When you come home, it can be like starting all over again,” she says. “Youâ€re not the same person. People and places have changed. You sometimes feel like youâ€re now a foreigner” in your own country.

Do most TCIs stay in the country theyâ€ve found themselves in or return home? Helman says it depends on the nationality. “People from Eastern Europe want to stay in the place theyâ€re moving to and often use their studies as a gate to immigration. Israel, Germany and China have programs in place that provide a lot of incentives for students to come back.” The Chief Scientistâ€s “returning academics” program in Israel is an example.

As for TCIs from the United States, “99 percent of Americans who study abroad go back,” she adds.

Iâ€m not planning on becoming part of that 99 percent and abandoning my own TCI status to return to California. Indeed, I think thereâ€s probably something a little different about the crazies among us who make aliyah, at least in terms of our commitment to a new culture.

After 20 years, though, perhaps now is the time to embrace my essential TCI-ness, awkward moments and all. After all, Iâ€m not just an anomaly. Iâ€m a trend!

This post appeared originally in The Jerusalem Post’s Friday Magazine section.