Jews call the act of moving to Israel from the diaspora aliyah. It literally means “ascending,” as in ascending a flight of stairs, or ascending to a higher spiritual realm. Conversely, we call the act of leaving Israel yeridah, or “descending,” because it connotes the opposite.
Thanks. I realized I may have to follow up with a prequel to this post titled "Ascending" to explain why I came in the first place. But in all honesty, I did find what I was looking for at the time. Now that I have them, I'm looking for different things in a new place. So all in all, I'm grateful for the experience.
To be honest, I have no idea what drives secular Jews to come here. Unless you're a religious fanatic who literally believes in divine providence, the fundamentals don't add up. Worse, any attempt to make them add up in a secular framework makes them worse.
Like most Israelis, I personally land somewhere in the middle of the secular / religious spectrum. The devout seculars are just as much of an enigma to me as they are to you. I guess the clubs in Tel Aviv are still a little cheaper than they are in LA, but that was never really my scene. For me, I had the added benefits of already speaking Hebrew and having a network of extended family, and I was really in a bind in my life at the time, and I had been smitten by the Zionist bug, so Israel it was.
This 100%. If I wasn't a religious person, I wouldn't bother. It'd be like Spain or Portugal or Greece or any other country that has nice weather and dysfunction inherent to the system. There'd be zero value added that wouldn't exist moving out of my parent's suburb to some other place like Arizona or Texas or Florida.
I hear you and I appreciate the work this essay does in wiping off some of the glossy sheen that we are often presented. But I do think that you are pretty profoundly underestimating the number of rude ignorant nincompops in the rest of the world.
As an Israeli that has appreciated living more than half my life in calm California, I get it. Just make sure you’re not returning to a ‘progressive’ majority anywhere, because lemme tell you, while you were gone, the kind progressives regressed oh, 100+ years to some old school, gross as fuck antisemitism. And if you think antizionist “Jews for the genocide of Israeli Jews” are any less abrasive than a random Israeli on the bus, well… you’ll find out soon enough.
I would suggest, as I do for any Israeli moving to the US for work, “go to a red state”. Then it’s a win-win.
Oh, I've been following. Don't worry. We landed in one of the most politically competitive districts in the country. It sure makes dinner parties interesting.
It's tough to emigrate when your personality has already been shaped by the place of your birth, and tougher still when coming from the wealthiest country on Earth with endless space and surrounded by Big Beautiful Oceans (tm) to a poorer, tiny country surrouned by genocidal enemies. I hope Western Jewry manages to come here before the civilized populations they're embedded in do what that most civilized country with the most emancipated Jewry did. In the meanwhile, no need to dump on Israelis, the only people willing and capable of defending you when the time comes. Best of luck in the US
I can't speak for @yossikreinin, but I'm predicting a 30% chance some very bad things are coming down the pike for Jews in America given where elite culture is headed on both ends of the spectrum. Horseshoe theory is real. I'm banking on staying involved with Jewish organizations and movements that are dedicated to building and sustaining intergenerational Jewish life to stay safe.
Harris said I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that. -- Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
More seriously, Jew hatred is currently normalized and even cool across the political spectrum in the US; in such a situation, all it takes is a serious economic crisis for a civilized country (which has no tolerance for economic pain) to turn on its Jews. The US has an exploding debt and no serious political force with a plan to address it; it is likely headed to the worst economic crisis in its history (in the 1930s it was a manufacturing superpower in a financial crisis; today its real economy is in a much weaker position but it has a giant high tech military - I shudder to think where this is going.) So apart from the answer, "the hows and the whys will take care of themselves like they used to for so many years across so many places", there are concrete reasons to flee to Israel right about now. (I started to say this around 2024; I am not, in my own view at least, a perma-doomer.)
> More seriously, Jew hatred is currently normalized and even cool across the political spectrum in the US
This is true, but only among the upper crust of avant-garde, subversive discourse. There is still a substantial majority of people in the United States, even in positions of enormous economic and political influence, who are loudly and consistently supportive of Jewish interests, including but not limited to Israel.
I read the Tablet Mamdani essay back in October (proper link: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/mamdani-exodus). I'm not denying that any of the anecdotes in that essay are true. I'm just saying that, yes, while there are some rather terrifying parallels between Weimar Germany and the current state of affairs in the United States, there are also quite a lot of reasons not to be overly alarmed. Unlike Germany, the political DNA of the US is settler-colonialist (a good thing!), grounded in the biblical narrative, and profoundly rooted in the borderline philosemitic Anglo-Protestant intellectual tradition. Read Walter Russell Mead's "Arc of a Covenant" if you don't believe me. It's changing, but not that much, and not that fast.
I recognize that there is a certain messianic worldview which predicts a great calamity and the ingathering of the exiles before the End of History, but I don't think we're quite there yet.
About antisemitism and how truly prevalent it is (and I'm distinguishing it from anti-Zionism, yes, I think there's a difference but I realize this is a yuge can of worms) I don't know.
What I do know is that there is zero comparison between the US and Weimar Germany. This I'm willing to fight for. The US is a 275 year old republic with a constitution, it has a variety of distinct cultures, and it has separation of religion and state. Its very founding and composition is unique. That doesn't mean its immune to insanity. I'm simply saying that comparisons with Weimar Germany are facile.
PS Edit: I read the article - actually I'd seen it before and it made zero impact on me. I dread Mamdani and didn't vote for him (I'm a NYer in case that wasn't clear) but anecdotes prove nothing. He was elected because of long term demographic changes, welcomed by the liberal Jewish elite. Shrug. Leaving NYC solves nothing. This is a national problem.
BTW since we're giving book recommendations, Colin Woodard's AMERICAN NATIONS is the best analysis of "American" culture going, IMO, more accessible than ALBION'S SEED, and broader.
Regarding Zionism - like the venerable Dr Sponder said, it's like snails and slugs: a Zionist is just a Jew with a home, if you hate one you hate the other. Nobody would say with a straight face that someone wishing to "decolonize" the US (vibes? essays?) has nothing against Americans, and nobody should say the equivalent about Israel. Also I'm from the USSR which pioneered "Zionist" as a euphemism for "Jew" and I sort of know what's required of a Jew to prove they're not a "Zionist" - good luck with that
Regarding the US vs Weimar Germany: sure, very different, the only broad point of similarity is that these are very advanced civilizations / cultures and there are many examples of Jew hatred suddenly exploding in such cultures, Germany is not unique. There is a storied tradition of Jew hatred in the English-speaking world (The Merchant of Venice is a beauty but we have countless other brilliant writers all the way to Roald Dahl and who knows whom else.) "In case of emergency, break glass." A stillborn republic and an aging empire have little in common except for a potential for that emergency to make an appearance. As to the constitution - the JDL was formed in the 60s when police said they "can't" ensure the safety of Jews; selective enforcement of laws is often enough to get things done that are nominally not doable. Failing that there are other methods (eg the legal castration of the "mentally retarded" 100 years ago or the castration of "transgender kids" today.)
I confess that I fundamentally resent calculating the odds of the majority turning on me; I don't think anyone should be in a minority if they can help it, and the reduction of tail risk is worth quite a bit of a drop in expected standard of living in my view. Triply so for the most maniacally hated minority of all time (not the most injured, mind you - the world is full of atrocities - but the one driving the hater to the most utter madness; grandmaster Valery Salov's "9/11 was foretold in the Kabbalistic ritual of the Kasparov-Anand match" theory is a good example, this guy learned Hebrew to study us in depth and obsessed nutters like this are not uncommon, the current crop of Jew hating American influencers is perfectly normal in this regard. I prefer to live in a Jewish state with rumored 2nd strike nuclear capability under these circumstances)
I should add that I wish US Jewry - and the rest of the US - nothing but the best of luck and I am not waiting anxiously for the diaspora to come here due to pogroms to then witness the rupture or whatever. And not sure I would leave the US for Israel if I was born there; I was lucky to be born in Russia which is relatively straightforward in its attitude towards Jews which helps to minimize one's ambivalence. All I can say to those staying is, avoid intermarriage - you don't want the pogrom to start inside your house - and separately I'm hoping for the best
When I moved back from New Zealand as a kid and for the full decade after I would have agreed with you.
And your arguments sure are compelling...
But these days I much prefer working with Israeli or Ukrainian straightforwardness to American politeness, followed by a feeling of antagonism behind my back (which might not be true)
I've been thinking in recent years what are the red lines for me when I have to leave the country, but those hinge around democracy and religious freedom rather than people being rude.
Maybe growing up as a kid made it easier to assimilate.
I wonder how you answered the question: Jewish or Israeli during the years you were here.
For me it switched completely from Jewish first to Israeli first
I still work with Israelis. You're right - I too value the straightforwardness of Israelis to the back-stabbing politically correct fake nice of Americans, at least in a professional setting. But I don't value the yelling, the interrupting, the talking over, the waiting for your interlocutor to stop moving their mouth so you can say what you want to say, etc. Israelis, as a general rule, are piss-poor communicators. I've adopted the strategy of staying quiet on work calls and letting them duke it out among themselves.
For me, all the airy-fairy values stuff matters much less than the actual daily lived experience of interacting with Israelis, which I couldn't tolerate any longer.
Regarding your identity question, I grew up as a diaspora Jew to Hebrew-speaking parents. So I've always kind of identified as both, but neither quite fully. In recent years, I've come to realize that the things I value most about the Jewish tradition were developed in the diaspora, not in the homeland. By contrast, Israeli culture is militaristic, aggressive, spartan, brutish, and impulsive. All of these things are true by necessity, because any other sort of culture would quickly perish in the region. I understand that. I just don't want to be a part of it any more, and I wish them the best.
Good luck. BTW in America we’re just looking inward and returning to our historical norms of being about our country. There’s overall fatigue about the entire world, including… everywhere… there’s acute MidEast fatigue.
May I politely suggest get the entire community and nation off the front page?
No one can bear such scrutiny. It’s impossible.
We 🇺🇸 certainly can’t.
Since everyone thinks we’re the world’s a__holes anyway let them think so… take a break.
No man is a hero to his Valet, and no one is a Saint to their proctologist.
I don’t know if Mother Teresa has a proctologist but if she did…no.
Wishing you well.
Just step off the screen.
We are ourselves and the shrieking has only begun.
I guess for many that is true. I saw NY devolving into a shithole and left, so I'm not removed from the act of moving myself. My point is if you keep running you'll just die tired. Hope you find your spot.
I have been trying to tell myself: The stupid are everywhere. Those with the power to choose their abode are just choosing what kind of stupid they prefer to surround themselves with.
I agree with this general sentiment. But. To some degree, every society has its folkways and mores to keep the stupid in check, if for no other reason than just to keep said society functioning. In East Asia, for example, superficial harmony is highly valued, and is enforced though unspoken values learned from childhood. The same might have been said of British society up until a generation ago. Israeli society, unfortunately, did not develop many such mechanisms, so "order" is maintained via mutually assured (verbal) destruction of one's fellow citizens. My family left Israel when I was a little kid, mostly because my US born mother just could not take the rudeness (and, TBH, we had a materially more comfortable life waiting for us back in California). I have some good memories of my time there, but one of the most traumatic was seeing the way that the Ashkenazi kids at my school beat the crap out of some newly arrived Moroccan Jews. I had never seen Jew on Jew violence before, and I could not believe that we, as a people were capable of that kind of thinking.
While Jew-on-Jew violence is indeed a jarring and foreign concept to American Jews with short memories, it should surprise no one sharing a collective memory spanning more than a couple of generations. Jewish history is littered with internecine wars: Joseph and his descendants, Kingdom of Israel vs. Kingdom of Judea, Hellenizers vs. preservationists, Bar Kochba, Essenes, Sadducees, the whole Jesus thing, Altalena, the "peace process", disengagement, judicial reform protests... need I continue?
We're a disagreeable bunch. A stiff-necked people, as it is written. Always have been, always will be. Our internal disagreements are a great source of intellectual innovation, but it must be moderated by the accompanying belief among all participants that it is a מחלוקת לשם שמים -- there is a greater purpose that transcends the debate. When we forget that, it leads to our downfall.
Well, I guess you can take the Jew out of Israel, but it's harder to take the Israel out of the Jew. I can seen from the first sentence of your response that you cannot resist the very Israeli temptation to be condescending to the American, while subtly misreading what he is saying. The experiences I had in Israel public school happened when I was around 7 years old, so I didn't yet share in the long collective memory of historical Jew v Jew violence, although I had already heard my father's and grandparent's stories of bad Jewish behavior towards each other in the concentration camps. But also please note that that what I had trouble believing in was "that kind of thinking", meaning the idea of being violent towards a fellow Jew just for being the "wrong kind of Jew". Also note that I said that I had personally never seen anything like that, at age 7, not that I, as an innocent American abroad, could not believe what I was seeing. The historical references you are making are not really pertinent, because those were instances of Jews fighting other Jews as adults with specific agendas and beliefs that were at odds with each other. My reference was to a more random kind of meanness and bullying that I later found to be more endemic to Israeli society than I might have expected. After we returned to the US I saw, and personally experienced, the same behavior, but it was interracial violence, mostly the black kids punching everyone else. Us Jewish kids stuck together on the schoolyard.
Ha! Don't take it personally. Plenty of Israelis have an even shorter collective memory than do Americans. Random meanness is a feature of every schoolyard fistfight. But it isn't exactly random.
You're pointing to a very human phenomenon that is not unique to Jews, and we certainly aren't exempt: our evolutionary programming has equipped us with an uncanny ability to separate out into in-groups and out-groups, even at a very young age. As you ascend the homogeneity ladder, the differences become smaller, and consequently, the fights become ever more vicious. If it weren't for the violent blacks, of course the Jewish kids would fight among themselves.
Since I am the only American Jew being addressed, of course it's personal!
Yes, there is a universal tendency to find in-groups and out-groups, and engage in random bullying, Jews will not be exempt. This is why I found your initial response off point, because you brought up things like the Altalena affair, which was ...a whole other kettle of fish.... Let alone ancient stories from the Torah, which were probably rewrites of older stories, for which the original motives were probably lost to memory.
I was raised by holocaust survivors who stressed Jewish solidarity, and the hope was that we would find that by the truckload in Israel. In some ways we did, but at the more local, interpersonal level we did not. When you are in first grade that's the level that matters.
As a side note, I find it hilarious when Israeli Ashkenazim , apropos of nothing, start to tell me the holocaust stories of their grandparents, as if I've never heard such a thing before, and I need some sort of education on the topic.
Really interesting piece, thanks. Even for a humble goy such as myself. :)
I would have thought the experience of shared sacrifice and unity of purpose would have served to blunt those famous sharp elbows. Maybe I’m incorrect about this, but I thought something along those lines was part of the philosophy underlying the original zionist movement: that by creating an explicitly Jewish political vehicle, the values and mores of nobility, aristocracy, noblesse oblige etc would supplant those of a perpetually-besieged, indrawn minority. Maybe eventually they will yet.
I think there was a time when the collective ethos permeated every aspect of Israeli society and culture. But that time was also defined by universal economic hardship, a one-party monolithic state, and a broadly homogeneous culture -- or, at least, everybody knew that secular Ashkenazi left-labor socialism was the top dog, and nobody had the chutzpah to challenge it. As for the broadly right-wing values you mention (any self-respecting labor Zionist would spit on the floor at the mere mention of noblesse oblige), those are arguably present in the hierarchical societies of the Haredim which are largely opaque to me, but wholly absent from the socialist egalitarian worldview of the rotten elite still running the machinery of state.
When I first arrived in Israel, I certainly imagined myself as part of a large extended family. But that feeling wore off after I begrudgingly realized that everybody treated me not as their second cousin's brother-in-law but as just another potential line-cutter at the supermarket. Again, if I had landed in some Anglo bubble where neighbors smile and wave at each other instead of a crowded favela inhabited by arsim who threaten you with violence when you point out that they failed to pick up their pet excrement, things might have worked out differently.
Your two old hags barging onto the bus made me laugh because the London equivalent is usually a group of teenagers eating fried chicken, playing music on their phones, and dropping the rubbish on the floor. Adults in London stay silent, look away, and hope not to be stabbed.
Oh, we have those, too. But the streets of Tel Aviv are generally much safer. Except for a few rocket sirens, and that one time I was in a restaurant that got shot up by terrorists and only made it out alive because the gun jammed, I've rarely felt threatened by the possibility of physical danger.
My family left israel in 1970 for just that reason: too much in-your-face rudeness. My mother especially hated it, and she grew up on the tough streets of south Brooklyn.
New Yorkers and Israelis are both known for their directness. The difference is that New Yorkers generally keep to themselves unless provoked, whereas Israelis actively project their assholishness outwards, forming a sort of impenetrable ars forcefield. Particularly noticeable with Israelis abroad in places like Ko Pha Ngan.
I have personally experienced Israelis in Ko Pha Ngan. They were similar to the ones I encountered in the East Village. The difference was that the ones in the East Village were there to work at service jobs like waiters and hairdressers. I learned to avoid the places with Israeli staff because my haircut would be painful and look bad, and I would have to really work hard to get my coffee cup refilled. I sometimes used to wish I could remember my modern Hebrew better, just so I could take them down a notch.
Why do all troll bot accounts with one note, zero posts, always have 4 subscribers. Is that like an algorithm for faking being a human? How does one gain those 4 subscribers with no activity? The world wonders.
Sorry it didn't work out, man. Hope you find what you're looking for in Chutz Laaretz.
Thanks. I realized I may have to follow up with a prequel to this post titled "Ascending" to explain why I came in the first place. But in all honesty, I did find what I was looking for at the time. Now that I have them, I'm looking for different things in a new place. So all in all, I'm grateful for the experience.
To be honest, I have no idea what drives secular Jews to come here. Unless you're a religious fanatic who literally believes in divine providence, the fundamentals don't add up. Worse, any attempt to make them add up in a secular framework makes them worse.
Like most Israelis, I personally land somewhere in the middle of the secular / religious spectrum. The devout seculars are just as much of an enigma to me as they are to you. I guess the clubs in Tel Aviv are still a little cheaper than they are in LA, but that was never really my scene. For me, I had the added benefits of already speaking Hebrew and having a network of extended family, and I was really in a bind in my life at the time, and I had been smitten by the Zionist bug, so Israel it was.
This 100%. If I wasn't a religious person, I wouldn't bother. It'd be like Spain or Portugal or Greece or any other country that has nice weather and dysfunction inherent to the system. There'd be zero value added that wouldn't exist moving out of my parent's suburb to some other place like Arizona or Texas or Florida.
And the weather's really no great shakes either!
I hear you and I appreciate the work this essay does in wiping off some of the glossy sheen that we are often presented. But I do think that you are pretty profoundly underestimating the number of rude ignorant nincompops in the rest of the world.
As an Israeli that has appreciated living more than half my life in calm California, I get it. Just make sure you’re not returning to a ‘progressive’ majority anywhere, because lemme tell you, while you were gone, the kind progressives regressed oh, 100+ years to some old school, gross as fuck antisemitism. And if you think antizionist “Jews for the genocide of Israeli Jews” are any less abrasive than a random Israeli on the bus, well… you’ll find out soon enough.
I would suggest, as I do for any Israeli moving to the US for work, “go to a red state”. Then it’s a win-win.
Oh, I've been following. Don't worry. We landed in one of the most politically competitive districts in the country. It sure makes dinner parties interesting.
It's tough to emigrate when your personality has already been shaped by the place of your birth, and tougher still when coming from the wealthiest country on Earth with endless space and surrounded by Big Beautiful Oceans (tm) to a poorer, tiny country surrouned by genocidal enemies. I hope Western Jewry manages to come here before the civilized populations they're embedded in do what that most civilized country with the most emancipated Jewry did. In the meanwhile, no need to dump on Israelis, the only people willing and capable of defending you when the time comes. Best of luck in the US
Serious question, not trolling: do you honestly believe the US will turn on its Jews? If so, why and how?
I can't speak for @yossikreinin, but I'm predicting a 30% chance some very bad things are coming down the pike for Jews in America given where elite culture is headed on both ends of the spectrum. Horseshoe theory is real. I'm banking on staying involved with Jewish organizations and movements that are dedicated to building and sustaining intergenerational Jewish life to stay safe.
How?
She went, ‘Ew, are you Jewish?’ I said, ‘Uh yeah,’ and she goes, ‘Oh, I fucking hate Jews.’” -- The Mamdani Exodus (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/mamdani)
Why?
Harris said I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that. -- Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
More seriously, Jew hatred is currently normalized and even cool across the political spectrum in the US; in such a situation, all it takes is a serious economic crisis for a civilized country (which has no tolerance for economic pain) to turn on its Jews. The US has an exploding debt and no serious political force with a plan to address it; it is likely headed to the worst economic crisis in its history (in the 1930s it was a manufacturing superpower in a financial crisis; today its real economy is in a much weaker position but it has a giant high tech military - I shudder to think where this is going.) So apart from the answer, "the hows and the whys will take care of themselves like they used to for so many years across so many places", there are concrete reasons to flee to Israel right about now. (I started to say this around 2024; I am not, in my own view at least, a perma-doomer.)
> More seriously, Jew hatred is currently normalized and even cool across the political spectrum in the US
This is true, but only among the upper crust of avant-garde, subversive discourse. There is still a substantial majority of people in the United States, even in positions of enormous economic and political influence, who are loudly and consistently supportive of Jewish interests, including but not limited to Israel.
I read the Tablet Mamdani essay back in October (proper link: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/mamdani-exodus). I'm not denying that any of the anecdotes in that essay are true. I'm just saying that, yes, while there are some rather terrifying parallels between Weimar Germany and the current state of affairs in the United States, there are also quite a lot of reasons not to be overly alarmed. Unlike Germany, the political DNA of the US is settler-colonialist (a good thing!), grounded in the biblical narrative, and profoundly rooted in the borderline philosemitic Anglo-Protestant intellectual tradition. Read Walter Russell Mead's "Arc of a Covenant" if you don't believe me. It's changing, but not that much, and not that fast.
I recognize that there is a certain messianic worldview which predicts a great calamity and the ingathering of the exiles before the End of History, but I don't think we're quite there yet.
Thanks for the link; I'll read it.
About antisemitism and how truly prevalent it is (and I'm distinguishing it from anti-Zionism, yes, I think there's a difference but I realize this is a yuge can of worms) I don't know.
What I do know is that there is zero comparison between the US and Weimar Germany. This I'm willing to fight for. The US is a 275 year old republic with a constitution, it has a variety of distinct cultures, and it has separation of religion and state. Its very founding and composition is unique. That doesn't mean its immune to insanity. I'm simply saying that comparisons with Weimar Germany are facile.
PS Edit: I read the article - actually I'd seen it before and it made zero impact on me. I dread Mamdani and didn't vote for him (I'm a NYer in case that wasn't clear) but anecdotes prove nothing. He was elected because of long term demographic changes, welcomed by the liberal Jewish elite. Shrug. Leaving NYC solves nothing. This is a national problem.
BTW since we're giving book recommendations, Colin Woodard's AMERICAN NATIONS is the best analysis of "American" culture going, IMO, more accessible than ALBION'S SEED, and broader.
Regarding Zionism - like the venerable Dr Sponder said, it's like snails and slugs: a Zionist is just a Jew with a home, if you hate one you hate the other. Nobody would say with a straight face that someone wishing to "decolonize" the US (vibes? essays?) has nothing against Americans, and nobody should say the equivalent about Israel. Also I'm from the USSR which pioneered "Zionist" as a euphemism for "Jew" and I sort of know what's required of a Jew to prove they're not a "Zionist" - good luck with that
Regarding the US vs Weimar Germany: sure, very different, the only broad point of similarity is that these are very advanced civilizations / cultures and there are many examples of Jew hatred suddenly exploding in such cultures, Germany is not unique. There is a storied tradition of Jew hatred in the English-speaking world (The Merchant of Venice is a beauty but we have countless other brilliant writers all the way to Roald Dahl and who knows whom else.) "In case of emergency, break glass." A stillborn republic and an aging empire have little in common except for a potential for that emergency to make an appearance. As to the constitution - the JDL was formed in the 60s when police said they "can't" ensure the safety of Jews; selective enforcement of laws is often enough to get things done that are nominally not doable. Failing that there are other methods (eg the legal castration of the "mentally retarded" 100 years ago or the castration of "transgender kids" today.)
I confess that I fundamentally resent calculating the odds of the majority turning on me; I don't think anyone should be in a minority if they can help it, and the reduction of tail risk is worth quite a bit of a drop in expected standard of living in my view. Triply so for the most maniacally hated minority of all time (not the most injured, mind you - the world is full of atrocities - but the one driving the hater to the most utter madness; grandmaster Valery Salov's "9/11 was foretold in the Kabbalistic ritual of the Kasparov-Anand match" theory is a good example, this guy learned Hebrew to study us in depth and obsessed nutters like this are not uncommon, the current crop of Jew hating American influencers is perfectly normal in this regard. I prefer to live in a Jewish state with rumored 2nd strike nuclear capability under these circumstances)
I should add that I wish US Jewry - and the rest of the US - nothing but the best of luck and I am not waiting anxiously for the diaspora to come here due to pogroms to then witness the rupture or whatever. And not sure I would leave the US for Israel if I was born there; I was lucky to be born in Russia which is relatively straightforward in its attitude towards Jews which helps to minimize one's ambivalence. All I can say to those staying is, avoid intermarriage - you don't want the pogrom to start inside your house - and separately I'm hoping for the best
When I moved back from New Zealand as a kid and for the full decade after I would have agreed with you.
And your arguments sure are compelling...
But these days I much prefer working with Israeli or Ukrainian straightforwardness to American politeness, followed by a feeling of antagonism behind my back (which might not be true)
I've been thinking in recent years what are the red lines for me when I have to leave the country, but those hinge around democracy and religious freedom rather than people being rude.
Maybe growing up as a kid made it easier to assimilate.
I wonder how you answered the question: Jewish or Israeli during the years you were here.
For me it switched completely from Jewish first to Israeli first
I still work with Israelis. You're right - I too value the straightforwardness of Israelis to the back-stabbing politically correct fake nice of Americans, at least in a professional setting. But I don't value the yelling, the interrupting, the talking over, the waiting for your interlocutor to stop moving their mouth so you can say what you want to say, etc. Israelis, as a general rule, are piss-poor communicators. I've adopted the strategy of staying quiet on work calls and letting them duke it out among themselves.
For me, all the airy-fairy values stuff matters much less than the actual daily lived experience of interacting with Israelis, which I couldn't tolerate any longer.
Regarding your identity question, I grew up as a diaspora Jew to Hebrew-speaking parents. So I've always kind of identified as both, but neither quite fully. In recent years, I've come to realize that the things I value most about the Jewish tradition were developed in the diaspora, not in the homeland. By contrast, Israeli culture is militaristic, aggressive, spartan, brutish, and impulsive. All of these things are true by necessity, because any other sort of culture would quickly perish in the region. I understand that. I just don't want to be a part of it any more, and I wish them the best.
Good luck. BTW in America we’re just looking inward and returning to our historical norms of being about our country. There’s overall fatigue about the entire world, including… everywhere… there’s acute MidEast fatigue.
May I politely suggest get the entire community and nation off the front page?
No one can bear such scrutiny. It’s impossible.
We 🇺🇸 certainly can’t.
Since everyone thinks we’re the world’s a__holes anyway let them think so… take a break.
No man is a hero to his Valet, and no one is a Saint to their proctologist.
I don’t know if Mother Teresa has a proctologist but if she did…no.
Wishing you well.
Just step off the screen.
We are ourselves and the shrieking has only begun.
In India and Pakistan we don't have a term like frier.
But the mentality dominates those nations. That's why people leave
Jews in Israel- I gotta get outta here.
Jews in the diaspora- I gotta get outta here.
Me- Pick your ground, find your people, dig in and never stop improving your position.
Existential discomfort is kind of our brand. Always has been. We straddle the valley between the immanent and transcendent like nobody's business.
I guess for many that is true. I saw NY devolving into a shithole and left, so I'm not removed from the act of moving myself. My point is if you keep running you'll just die tired. Hope you find your spot.
I have been trying to tell myself: The stupid are everywhere. Those with the power to choose their abode are just choosing what kind of stupid they prefer to surround themselves with.
I agree with this general sentiment. But. To some degree, every society has its folkways and mores to keep the stupid in check, if for no other reason than just to keep said society functioning. In East Asia, for example, superficial harmony is highly valued, and is enforced though unspoken values learned from childhood. The same might have been said of British society up until a generation ago. Israeli society, unfortunately, did not develop many such mechanisms, so "order" is maintained via mutually assured (verbal) destruction of one's fellow citizens. My family left Israel when I was a little kid, mostly because my US born mother just could not take the rudeness (and, TBH, we had a materially more comfortable life waiting for us back in California). I have some good memories of my time there, but one of the most traumatic was seeing the way that the Ashkenazi kids at my school beat the crap out of some newly arrived Moroccan Jews. I had never seen Jew on Jew violence before, and I could not believe that we, as a people were capable of that kind of thinking.
While Jew-on-Jew violence is indeed a jarring and foreign concept to American Jews with short memories, it should surprise no one sharing a collective memory spanning more than a couple of generations. Jewish history is littered with internecine wars: Joseph and his descendants, Kingdom of Israel vs. Kingdom of Judea, Hellenizers vs. preservationists, Bar Kochba, Essenes, Sadducees, the whole Jesus thing, Altalena, the "peace process", disengagement, judicial reform protests... need I continue?
We're a disagreeable bunch. A stiff-necked people, as it is written. Always have been, always will be. Our internal disagreements are a great source of intellectual innovation, but it must be moderated by the accompanying belief among all participants that it is a מחלוקת לשם שמים -- there is a greater purpose that transcends the debate. When we forget that, it leads to our downfall.
Well, I guess you can take the Jew out of Israel, but it's harder to take the Israel out of the Jew. I can seen from the first sentence of your response that you cannot resist the very Israeli temptation to be condescending to the American, while subtly misreading what he is saying. The experiences I had in Israel public school happened when I was around 7 years old, so I didn't yet share in the long collective memory of historical Jew v Jew violence, although I had already heard my father's and grandparent's stories of bad Jewish behavior towards each other in the concentration camps. But also please note that that what I had trouble believing in was "that kind of thinking", meaning the idea of being violent towards a fellow Jew just for being the "wrong kind of Jew". Also note that I said that I had personally never seen anything like that, at age 7, not that I, as an innocent American abroad, could not believe what I was seeing. The historical references you are making are not really pertinent, because those were instances of Jews fighting other Jews as adults with specific agendas and beliefs that were at odds with each other. My reference was to a more random kind of meanness and bullying that I later found to be more endemic to Israeli society than I might have expected. After we returned to the US I saw, and personally experienced, the same behavior, but it was interracial violence, mostly the black kids punching everyone else. Us Jewish kids stuck together on the schoolyard.
Ha! Don't take it personally. Plenty of Israelis have an even shorter collective memory than do Americans. Random meanness is a feature of every schoolyard fistfight. But it isn't exactly random.
You're pointing to a very human phenomenon that is not unique to Jews, and we certainly aren't exempt: our evolutionary programming has equipped us with an uncanny ability to separate out into in-groups and out-groups, even at a very young age. As you ascend the homogeneity ladder, the differences become smaller, and consequently, the fights become ever more vicious. If it weren't for the violent blacks, of course the Jewish kids would fight among themselves.
Since I am the only American Jew being addressed, of course it's personal!
Yes, there is a universal tendency to find in-groups and out-groups, and engage in random bullying, Jews will not be exempt. This is why I found your initial response off point, because you brought up things like the Altalena affair, which was ...a whole other kettle of fish.... Let alone ancient stories from the Torah, which were probably rewrites of older stories, for which the original motives were probably lost to memory.
I was raised by holocaust survivors who stressed Jewish solidarity, and the hope was that we would find that by the truckload in Israel. In some ways we did, but at the more local, interpersonal level we did not. When you are in first grade that's the level that matters.
As a side note, I find it hilarious when Israeli Ashkenazim , apropos of nothing, start to tell me the holocaust stories of their grandparents, as if I've never heard such a thing before, and I need some sort of education on the topic.
Really interesting piece, thanks. Even for a humble goy such as myself. :)
I would have thought the experience of shared sacrifice and unity of purpose would have served to blunt those famous sharp elbows. Maybe I’m incorrect about this, but I thought something along those lines was part of the philosophy underlying the original zionist movement: that by creating an explicitly Jewish political vehicle, the values and mores of nobility, aristocracy, noblesse oblige etc would supplant those of a perpetually-besieged, indrawn minority. Maybe eventually they will yet.
I think there was a time when the collective ethos permeated every aspect of Israeli society and culture. But that time was also defined by universal economic hardship, a one-party monolithic state, and a broadly homogeneous culture -- or, at least, everybody knew that secular Ashkenazi left-labor socialism was the top dog, and nobody had the chutzpah to challenge it. As for the broadly right-wing values you mention (any self-respecting labor Zionist would spit on the floor at the mere mention of noblesse oblige), those are arguably present in the hierarchical societies of the Haredim which are largely opaque to me, but wholly absent from the socialist egalitarian worldview of the rotten elite still running the machinery of state.
When I first arrived in Israel, I certainly imagined myself as part of a large extended family. But that feeling wore off after I begrudgingly realized that everybody treated me not as their second cousin's brother-in-law but as just another potential line-cutter at the supermarket. Again, if I had landed in some Anglo bubble where neighbors smile and wave at each other instead of a crowded favela inhabited by arsim who threaten you with violence when you point out that they failed to pick up their pet excrement, things might have worked out differently.
Your two old hags barging onto the bus made me laugh because the London equivalent is usually a group of teenagers eating fried chicken, playing music on their phones, and dropping the rubbish on the floor. Adults in London stay silent, look away, and hope not to be stabbed.
Oh, we have those, too. But the streets of Tel Aviv are generally much safer. Except for a few rocket sirens, and that one time I was in a restaurant that got shot up by terrorists and only made it out alive because the gun jammed, I've rarely felt threatened by the possibility of physical danger.
My family left israel in 1970 for just that reason: too much in-your-face rudeness. My mother especially hated it, and she grew up on the tough streets of south Brooklyn.
New Yorkers and Israelis are both known for their directness. The difference is that New Yorkers generally keep to themselves unless provoked, whereas Israelis actively project their assholishness outwards, forming a sort of impenetrable ars forcefield. Particularly noticeable with Israelis abroad in places like Ko Pha Ngan.
I have personally experienced Israelis in Ko Pha Ngan. They were similar to the ones I encountered in the East Village. The difference was that the ones in the East Village were there to work at service jobs like waiters and hairdressers. I learned to avoid the places with Israeli staff because my haircut would be painful and look bad, and I would have to really work hard to get my coffee cup refilled. I sometimes used to wish I could remember my modern Hebrew better, just so I could take them down a notch.
Why do all troll bot accounts with one note, zero posts, always have 4 subscribers. Is that like an algorithm for faking being a human? How does one gain those 4 subscribers with no activity? The world wonders.