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 [...]

To the person who searched Google for “can one take a job knowing that he wont be able to daven” and ended up at my recent Rules of Chazzanut post – why are you going to Google for this? If you know that this might be a halachic issue (it most certainly is), and you [...]

Here is what this post is not about: How do I get an American company to pay me a salary or hire me as a contractor while I am living in Israel? How do I get anyone to pay me a US-level salary while I am living in Israel? You are on your own to [...]

Unemployement in Israel is the lowest it has been in 12 years. Say what you want about Bibi – his economic plans (which others denounce as being cruel to people who rely on the government to pay all of their bills) have saved the country from economic ruin (if you want to see what a [...]

Article in the NYTimes called High-Tech Industry in Israel Goes From Bust to Boom. Israel’s high-tech sector is having its best year since the dot-com implosion in 2000, and the evidence includes this working-class town, where bulldozers are rapidly clearing acres of land for a huge, state-of-the-art chip-making plant. (For more see NYTimes original article [...]

Read Double tax trouble for US olim by Debbie Inker at Globes Online. (If you are having trouble getting to the article, try here instead). This article talks about how American olim could suffer some serious tax setbacks due to lack of a social security tax treaty between Israel and the USA. I had not [...]

A number of articles were published in Arutz-Sheva over the past couple of weeks, all speaking positively about the economy and job market (at least for hi-tech) in Israel). Looks like the economy is definitely out of its slump. See Blossoming Job Market for New Immigrants , Hi-Tech Start-Up Aids Unemployed Anglos in Israel and [...]

A month before our recent pilot trip I had sent a query to an Internet mailing list that I frequent asking if anyone could give us some advice on communities. During my ensuing conversation with RSM he said that while he did not have too much info for me about communities, he might be able [...]

Over a Shabbat meal during our pilot trip, we had been talking with our hosts for a couple of hours about the community, their aliyah experience, the parshah, etc. Then my host asked me “sorry for asking, but what is your profession?”

This article was published in the Baltimore Jewish Times on February 20, 2004 (with pictures). It is also posted on the NBN website. It is a very good overview of what is becoming more and more common for new olim: telecommuting to their US jobs from Israel, or flying back several times a year for [...]