We were at Home Center (a home goods store – the Hebrew name is הום סנטר rather than what you might think it would be, something like מרבז הבית) on Friday, looking at different options for curtains to hang in one of the rooms for our house. Predictably, it is hard to choose among all [...]

Today’s Arutz Sheva email had three aliyah-themed stories, all playing along the same theme: the Jewish Agency (the government sponsored organization whose mission statement used to be directed towards encouraging aliyah) doesn’t really care about olim from North America (read: the US) anymore. And Nefesh b’Nefesh does. 1) Is Aliyah from American being Shunted Aside: [...]

Just saw this article on Arutz 7: The 6,493 households which made aliyah through NbN between 2002 and 2008 have yielded a whopping 989 million shekels, with the cost of absorbing them standing at only NIS 528 million, leaving the immigrants’ contribution at NIS 461 million so far.Visiting friends and family of NbN olim have [...]

Well, the latest round in the Nefesh b’Nefesh vs. Jewish Agency feud has ended in favor of NBN: Jewish Agency Signs Pact: Nefesh B’Nefesh Takes Over Aliyah: The Jewish Agency has ended a long-standing dispute with the highly successful Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) organization and has agreed to allow it to manage the immigration of Jews [...]

From YNet: Those Israelis whose income places them in Israel’s top 20th percentile pay 80% of the taxes that are levied in Israel, according to the yearly report published by the Finance Ministry’s State Income Authority Sunday. In addition, the salary of almost half (47%) of salaried workers in Israel is not high enough to [...]

Seeing a Jewish blogger complaining about the two three-day sets of Shabbat/Yom Tov** led me to wake out of my blog-slumber (two months since my last post, and only one in the two months before that, my driest spell since I started nearly three years ago). As you can see from the time when I [...]

One of the common pre-aliyah worries I have heard (and something that we definitely thought about before coming over) was the loss of Sundays. In the United States, custom is (despite all claims of separation between church and state) for Sunday to be a “day off” from whatever it is that you may be doing [...]

One year and one day ago we made aliyah on NBN’s Chanuka 5766 flight (lit candles for the third day of Chanuka in Kennedy Aiport, for the fourth day in Kochav Yaakov). Though I am too busy to write anything substantial in commemoration, I did put together a little list of every-day things for which [...]

Check out this interview of Rabbi Shlomo Riskin by my friend Go’el Jasper (host of the Aliyah Revolution show on Arutz Sheva radio). Some of the highlights: Let me tell you very, very seriously. A rabbi can never truly and effectively preach something he does not practice. Most of the rabbis who took non-mechitza [partition [...]

Although despite NBN’s best efforts, everything is not as neatly tied as it appears, (there is no music in real life, the actual ruach on the flights may not be what you expect and the soldiers might not be there) these videos are really great. I remember watching them every few months before making aliyah [...]