A few minutes ago I saw in my stats (yeah, I can be a little bit obsessive about those sometimes) that someone tried to use the contact form to send me an email (around 8pm, Israel time). After not receiving any email, I checked my blog setup and discovered that the contact form was not [...]

Here’s a new piece of Israel-born ingenuity. From the creator of the Arrow defense missile, we now have…Arrow garbage recycling:
The idea sounded simple enough: to treat solid waste using water. But their point of origin, says Zadik, was revolutionary. “Europe was still considering how to treat segregated trash, and assumed they could teach the public [...]

So far, I have been outed (ie: identified by someone who I know in real life as being connected with this blog) by new friends and neighbors at a pretty fast pace. Each Shabbat (which is the only time when you have any real interactions with people beyond those who live on your street and [...]

I saw a response to my Taxes in Israel II post by “Kalashnikover_Rebbe” on Hashkafa.com:
I was actually almost in this situation (in the end I didn’t end up working so it was irrelevant). I would just “neglect to inform” the Israeli government about that income and pay the MUCH lower US taxes. But ideally I [...]

Like most places in Israel, there are lots of dogs where I live. Some are wild (there is suppossed to be a guy whose job it is to catch them and bring them to the pound) and some are “domesticated”, living in people’s houses. There seem to be lots of families with dogs here, and [...]

See The Dollar Effect on Israel’s Real Estate Market:
For the first time in four years it looks like there is a reason for prices to drop in the attractive Israeli real estate market. The main culprit is the low dollar. Foreign buyers from the US may be deterred from buying due to the combination of [...]

Check out this 6 minute short-movie of the Pesach story.

We are moving to Yad Binyamin.
We first heard about Yad Binyamin from some friends a few years ago. We had been talking about potential communities to live in, Yad Binyamin came up in conversation as one of the new "in", up-and-coming communities in Israel that Americans (including young families) were beginning to flock to. As [...]

This Shabbat we ate a meal with a couple visiting from the US. Part of the conversation (as usual this year) was about shemittah, how difficult it is to observe, what to buy and what not to buy, etc. Then, as another example of something else that they might find interesting about buying food in [...]

Last night, Adina made a frosted chocolate cake to bring to work, in honor of one of her coworker’s birthday (who wouldn’t want some cake for their birthday?). I forgot to remind her to take it this morning, and when I spoke with her, asked her if she had remembered. She had, and I said [...]