The discussion of Israelis overseas was a topic that just wouldn’t go away this past week. First I wrote on the Israelity blog about the video campaign “guilting” expats to come home. Then, as my colleague David Brinn added, the videos were pulled by none other than the prime minister himself. Now there is a “point-counterpoint” set of articles in Ynet that promise to keep the debate fomenting further.

Liad Magen

In the first column, Liad Magen writes about why he wants to leave Israel. Like a good Rothschildian, he complains about the high prices, low salaries, a deteriorating medical system, monopolies, bank fees and even crappy public transportation. Then, surprisingly, he calls for his fellow Israelis to not work for a better society…but to emigrate.

Not only that, but he posts a status update to his Facebook profile in which he urges his friends and family to leave with him, to create an “immigration group” that will together settle a new land (North Carolina, Norway, he doesn’t say), supporting each other while looking for work and learning a new language.

Tal Raphael

Magen’s article is followed by Tal Raphael, who sympathizes with his plight. Yes, Israel is a tough place to live. Yes, the wars we are forced to fight have scarred our small nation with too many dead. Her counter-argument, though, is not for Magen to come home, but to think of his children or grandchildren.

Raphael writes: “Perhaps you will succeed in the new country, and just like your friends, you’ll establish huge companies and do well for yourself. But maybe, in 60 years or so, you’ll have a grandchild. This grandchild will apparently not be called Liad, but rather, James, or Jimmy, or something else…Jimmy will be born in Los Angeles, or in any other city, and live his life with ease and without concerns, until one day, he will want to make aliyah to Israel.”

She continues: “Why would he want to do this, you ask? Maybe because someone will call him ‘Jew-boy’ on the street, or maybe he’ll open the Bible, or learn a little history, or seek meaning. Maybe he’ll hear that the falafel around here is the best. I don’t know when and why, but it will happen, and if not to Jimmy it shall happen to his grandson, or great grandson.”

Jimmy’s story, Raphael concludes, is that of the entire Jewish people, who keep leaving home yet always return. “I have no decisive answer for why this happens,” she concludes, “but I have 2,000 years of experience.”

And that, in many ways, was the exact point of the now pulled ad campaign aimed at Israeli yordim (emigrants): you’ll never be truly comfortable outside of Israel. And if not you, then your children who, while they may be comfortable calling you “Daddy” today (as in one of the videos), will eventually betray your decision to leave and, in turn, will break your heart to return to the land of their grandparents. And so, implies the video, why not nip that eventuality in the bud and stay to fight another day.

Most of the people I’ve spoken with about the video series felt it was right on and effective for its target audience. This timely point-counterpoint only serves to bolster that contention.

I started this discussion on the Israelity blog.

Posing in Tunnel 3A

When our kids were young, we had a videotape they used to love called “Road Construction Ahead” which was all about, well, road construction. It featured hard hats, tractors and lots of concrete.

The truth is, I loved it too – I’m a nut when it comes to anything in the stages of being built – highways, bridges, airports. So, when the annual Jerusalem-area “Houses from Within” event featured a tour of one of the tunnels currently being dug out for the fast train line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, there was no question I’d be there.

Houses from Within began in 2007 with the aim of allowing Jerusalemites to peek inside beautiful houses that would normally be for the enjoyment of their owners only. The two-day event has expanded to include more than 100 homes as well public facilities (you can tour City Hall or the Jewish Agency), educational institutions (check out Beit Avi Chai or the Mormon Center on the Mount of Olives), museums, churches, hotels (a boutique inn in Ein Kerem, the half built Palace Hotel) and now, apparently, train tunnels (that fits the description of “within” though they’re not exactly a house).

The fast train, which will zip between Israel’s two largest cities in an astounding 28 minutes (compare that with the current train which clocks in at nearly two hours), has been an engineering challenge to say the least, and includes five tunnels in total. We were allowed entrance to Tunnel 3A, the second to last tunnel on the way into Jerusalem.

The 9/11 Memorial outside of Jerusalem

The tunnel is located adjacent to a little known monument memorializing the 9/11 attacks in New York, perched on a hill in the middle of nowhere (the murky directions towards the site called for us to go “straight at the T Junction”).

Once inside the construction fence, we walked into one of two 820-meter long tunnels. The ground was still rough (the rails won’t be laid until much later) and the makeshift fluorescent lights on either side reminded me of a Dr. Who episode that scared the dickens out of me when I was ten.

There are two tunnels to handle trains going in each direction. Why not save money and bore only a single tunnel? Two tunnels make it safer in case of a disaster and would allow the trains to keep running, our engineer and tour guide Sagi told us. While he explained that he was referring to a fire, living in Israel, it was hard not to think about the possibility of a terror attack as well.

Another Israeli aspect to the tour: the Houses from Within program stated that only 20 people would be let into the tunnels at a time, and they’d have to wear hard hats and reflective vests. But Sagi took about 50 of us in and there were two similarly sized groups already inside. No helmets, vests or waivers in case a boulder fell on someone’s head (none did).

Near the end of the tour, one of the participants asked whether the fast train’s construction (due to be completed in 2017) would be finished before the still-delayed Jerusalem light rail is fully functional. “Without a doubt,” Sagi quipped.

Whether that turns out to be the case, I’ll be the first in line to book my ticket. And when we pass through Tunnel 3A, I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren I was there.

This post about the train tunnel appeared over the weekend on Israelity.

Traffic along the Ayalon Highway

The evening was intended to be a gala celebration of the partnership between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles. 400 Angelenos, in Israel on a Federation mission, along with another several hundred local Anglos of Angeleno-descent, filled the Smolarz Hall on the Tel Aviv University campus. There was a program planned with glamorous entertainment: opera, performance art, modern dance and drumming, all emcee’d by the aging master of kitsch Haim Topol who, without any coaching, it was rumored would be belting out “Sunrise Sunset” in full Tevye voice.

My wife Jody, who grew up from Los Angeles, scored us a pair of tickets. It sounded like a worthwhile way to spend a few hours. But the traffic gods deemed otherwise.

The event had a 5:00 PM starting time, which is already pushing it, throwing commuters into the worst of the Tel Aviv rush hour. But our back up started even earlier: just getting out of Jerusalem took us close to an hour.

But sometimes, long rides can be serendipitous. At about 40 minutes into the ride, the radio program we were listening (Freakonomics) to began a discussion on “The Upside of Quitting.” The host’s talking point was that, when evaluating a situation – whether it’s a job, a marriage, or in our case the traffic – there are both “sunk costs” and “opportunity costs,” and both play a big role in when and whether to call it quits.

A quick economics lesson: “sunk costs” are the time, money, and more intangible commitments we’ve made to a particular project that keep us from wanting to abandon it…even if we know in our hearts it’s not the right thing. “Opportunity costs” are those things you could be doing with your time if you weren’t sinking it into the wrong activity.

I have experience with both – in 2001, for example, I took a job at a large hi-tech company. My position was esoteric and brand new; only the CEO really knew what was expected of me. He quit two days after I started. I intuitively knew I should too, but I had already accepted the job, turned down other offers, received a company car. Mentally I was “sunk.” As expected, without my patron, the job became a never-ending hell and I wound up, entirely through my fault, losing almost three years in “opportunity costs.”

Jody and I turned to each other as we listened to the program. We had sunk costs now of just under an hour. We had another hour (at least) until we got to Tel Aviv, plus a similar amount of time back. Was now the time to quit?

But we didn’t. We were too far committed. And the “opportunity” was too intangible (another night of catching up on emails?)

We arrived in Tel Aviv two and a quarter hours after we set out. We missed the reception (and what looked on the other participants’ plates to have been some very yummy food) and got the cheap seats for the show. Haim Topol seemed to be running on autopilot, exuding the enthusiasm of peasant who’d delivered way too much milk. The opera singers were proficient (and sexy, as seems to be the requirement for 21^st century classical performers), but neither Jody nor I like opera much. The drumming, which included synchronized banging on steel drums with flaming baton sticks, was excellent, however.

In his introductory words to the event, Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai lauded the partnership between his city and Los Angeles. It was logical that the two cities were twinned, he said. Both have an emphasis on the entertainment industry; there are stellar beaches; and probably about as many Israelis in both cities. But the biggest commonality? The traffic, he quipped.

With sunk costs like those, who needs opportunities?

This post appeared last week on Israelity.

In front of the Western Wall

When I backpacking around Europe and Asia, some 25 years ago, I felt a mix of disdain and sadness for the many tourists I’d encounter ensconced in their oversized, air conditioned tour buses, being ferried around from site to site, taking in the highlights through tinted windows which they’d abandon only at carefully selected cafes and for quick museum jaunts. They’d never get a chance to really know a city, I thought to myself, by walking it block by block, riding the trams and soaking in the local atmosphere.

But when my mother recently came to Israel, an organized tour was just the ticket. Despite our having lived in Israel for 17 years, this was my mom’s first ever visit to Israel and, at nearly 80-years-old, she wanted to see everything.

The two-week tour, run by the Margaret Morse travel agency, was as challenging as it was comprehensive. The 100-person, three bus “adults only” group started in Tel Aviv, headed up the coast via Caesarea to Haifa, cut across the Galilee to Kibbutz Goshrim with a stop in Safed, climbed up to the top of the Golan Heights, danced on a boat in the Sea of Galilee, drove down the Jordan Valley to Jerusalem (where they spent 5 days touring the capital’s extensive offerings) before plunging even further south to the Dead Sea, Masada and Eilat.

The tour guide on my mom’s bus was a staunch Zionist and peppered his exhaustive descriptions of antiquities and modern Israeli innovations with an hefty dose of idealism. The 2,000-year-old longing of the Jews for the land of Israel, why all Jews should move here, our tragic history and inspiring renewal in the modern state – it was all there in spades.

Now, since we moved to Israel, my mother has never really commented on our decision. Not visiting was less out of a philosophical stance than the fact that my father was disabled and never could have handled all the climbing, steps and stairs (which my mother pointed out were ever present). After he died two years ago, she began thinking seriously about visiting her children and grandchildren here.

While it’s true we never heard any outright cries of protest about our living so far from California, where I grew up and where my parents still were, we also didn’t receive any emotional support towards such a life-defining choice. Until now.

It was over a sushi lunch (these days becoming more the classic blue and white staple than the staid falafel) that my mom turned to us and mustered a few words that were as transformative for her as they were affirming for us. “I understand now why you’re here,” she said as a single tear ran down her face. “This is where you belong.” And then for emphasis: “I’m glad that you are here.”

After so many years of assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that our move here had dealt a mortal blow to my parents, a rejection of everything we’d been raised with that, in parallel, ripped their grandchildren away from the warm multi-generational embrace they had undoubtedly anticipated, these words of validation brought tears to our eyes too. We didn’t require it per se – we’re middle-aged adults ourselves and supposedly long past the need for our parents’ approval. But it’s never too late for a mother to tell her son “you done good, kid.”

Mom flew back to California Saturday night. Will the enthusiasm for our adopted home and her newfound Zionism remain, once the cheerleading of her tour guide has abated and the comforts of routine and sanitary bathrooms return? That’s not clear, though I hope a remnant at least will remain. But for a moment, we were all on the same page. And that was a happy enough conclusion to a novel that has been a long time in the writing.

All packed up for mechina

School officially started a week ago, and along with it the beginning of the “mechina” year. As our daughter is one of the new mechinistim, I thought this might be a good time to talk about what is a mechina, in large part also because our friends and family overseas have never heard of the concept.

Basically, it’s possible to defer one’s army induction date by a year to participate in mechina, a program that combines study, volunteering, hiking and getting to know who you are as a person. Up to seventy 18-year-olds live together, cook together and play together, becoming better citizens and hopefully more sensitive human beings. They also do a lot of pre-army physical preparation. The army likes the mechina system because it delivers more mature and motivated new recruits.

There are tens of mechinot in Israel, with more sprouting up every year. There are several types: all religious, all secular, boys only, girls only, and mixed boys and girls / religious and not religious. Our daughter chose the latter.

A recent article in the Jerusalem Post quoted Shmaryahu Ben-Pazi, the director at Aderet (that’s the name of the mechina our daughter is attending), as explaining that these “programs teach young people to leave behind indifference and deepen their Jewish and democratic principles and values.”

Aderet’s educational director Assaf Perry added that his mechina aims to mend the rifts present in modern day Israel. He defines those as “the rift between the religious and secular, between rich and poor, between the center of the country and the periphery.”

Studying starts early in the morning and discussions go late into the night. This is not learning for a grade; it’s what you’d call in yeshiva “Torah l’shma” – studying for its own sake. The same is true at the mechinot, as they debate provocative questions like “is it a Jewish value to die for your country.”

As excited as I am for our daughter, saying goodbye was another matter entirely. My wife and I both drove her to the drop off point last week – we only really needed one parent in the car, but we wanted to get a chance to see what the other mechnistim looked like when they were still raw individuals, before they jelled (or didn’t) into a tight group.

At the parking lot next to a McDonald’s in Beit Shemesh, I felt like I was sending my child off to college in the States (she’ll be 18 later this week and she’ll no longer be living at home, so the comparison is apt, even though she won’t be out of the army for another three years).

I also hoped to give her a big hug as she was swept away into the crowd of other eager 18-year-olds. But she wasn’t having any of that, as she instructed us to leave her a good 100 feet from the other kids.

It’s often hard (it certainly is for me) to let your kids fly away after spending so many years carefully raising them with all the right values and extra-curricular opportunities. But if we have to set them free, sending them off to a mechina might be the best thing we’ve done yet.

I first reported on our daughter’s departure on Israelity.

As the darkness settled over us, I felt an unanticipated sense of panic. I had been expecting to be unsettled, startled, certainly disoriented; I didn’t realize it would bring up so many deep and hidden emotions.

To set the stage: my wife Jody and I were dining in the Black Out Restaurant at the Nalaga’at Center in Jaffa. Nalaga’at (which can be translated as “Please Touch”) calls itself a “cultural, entertainment and training center” for deaf, blind and deaf-blind Israelis. A troupe of a dozen actors puts on a play each evening that is at once heartbreaking and heartwarming as it illustrates what it’s like to live with their particular disabilities.

Many theatergoers choose to start their night with a meal at the Black Out, a restaurant where blind and seeing impaired waiters guide their guests through a meal in total darkness. Not just “dark,” but total – not a speck of light seeped through the heavy curtains. We were even instructed to check our cell phones before entering, to prevent any light if they flashed from swarming through the room like Internet-savvy fireflies.

Our waitress Ma’ayan introduced herself to us and then led us to our table by placing hands on shoulders. We had to feel for our chairs, locate our water and glasses and silverware as if we were blind – which for the next two hours we essentially were.

There are two meal options at the Black Out – dairy and fish; we opted for the former. Within each option, there are three entrees and a “surprise me” choice, where the chef picks the dish and the diners try to discern what they’ve been served (mine was some sort or ravioli with sweet potato and peas – unusual but good).

First, though, we were brought a basket of fresh baked bread, pre-buttered with garlic and dried tomatoes. Perhaps (or probably) because one of our senses had been taken away, the taste of the bread was astonishing.

Jody and I also used the breadbasket to navigate the table, and to find each other’s hands to hold as the volume from the other diners in the small space cranked up towards metal head level, threatening to sonically overwhelm us. Ma’ayan explained that when you can’t see someone and you’re not used to that, you naturally tend to shout. The ears also compensate for the lack of sight, amplifying everything.

Which is when I started to panic. The sound level, which I am loathe to call deafening for abuse of a cliché, although it might nevertheless be the most appropriate, became oppressive, much like the humidity we’d earlier slogged through outside on the Jaffa beach.

I became silent. Jody tried to engage me in conversation. I couldn’t respond. It was then Jody’s turn to panic – had I left the table without telling her? Where was her usually unstoppably chatty husband?

Upon hearing Jody’s concern, I snapped out of my momentary melancholy fairly quickly, but my words were forced, uttered more for the sake of compassion than ordinary discourse.

Once the main meal came, my alarm was mitigated somewhat. I tried my best to eat with a fork, but lapsed too often into using my hands – after all, no one could see me, right?

Everyone will react differently to the temporary deprivation of one or more of their senses. Jody was calm but couldn’t keep her eyes open. My response to the sounds around me (made worse by the presence of a particularly boisterous group of un chaperoned teenagers) was not entirely surprising: I have always been sensitive to noise and the Black Out restaurant magnified that susceptibility a hundredfold. I can’t imagine how it must be to live like this all the time. I am thankful I don’t have to. And saddened that others do not have that choice.

This post appeared last week on Israelity.

Segways at the tayelet

The holiday of Tisha B’av has befallen us (yes, pun intended) and Jews all over the world are spending the day reflecting, fasting or otherwise using the holiday’s restrictions to avoid shaving and bathing for a day.

On the evening of Tisha B’av, it is traditional to hear the book of Lamentations (Eicha) being read in a communal setting. In Jerusalem, there is no lack of options. One of the most moving is outdoors at the Haas Promenade (the tayelet in Hebrew), which overlooks the Old City. If one isn’t sure why we still bother to mourn the destruction of the Temples so many centuries ago on this day (especially when we have regained sovereignty over the land), you can just gaze from this lookout point and imagine what if the Jewish state no longer existed and access to what Judaism calls its most holy places was cut off (as it was between 1948-1967). Rabbi Stewart Weiss’s essay in the Jerusalem Post drives the point home.

But there’s a “lighter side” to Tisha B’av, as my experience last night at the tayelet proved. The scene is quite remarkable: tens of different minyans, small and large, bumping up against each other on the paved upper part of the promenade, on the grass below, and even further down in the direction of the Peace Forest. Unlike at the Western Wall, many are co-ed. The participants range from overseas yeshiva students to egalitarian vegetarians (each with their own group and leader).

I chose to attend a mixed modern Orthodox reading. I arrived late and sat near the edge of the congregation while a man chanted the 5 chapters of Eicha in a soulful yet dirge-like voice. About halfway through, another minyan set up camp directly above me and began their own reading of Eicha. The two were out of sync, the interplay playing out like an impromptu and not entirely welcome duet.

The effect didn’t make for easy listening; I eventually closed my book and stared into Silwan, the Arab village surrounding the City of David, adjacent to the Old City. Then, inexplicably, I heard a rumble from not too far away. It got louder and closer until about 15 men and women on Segways came barreling through our Eicha encampment. The Segways  stayed to the pavement, but it was still an amusing juxtaposition – the tall, sleek, two-wheeled vehicles with their helmeted riders bobbing back and forth, zipping past hundreds of modern day mourners seated on the ground in the dark with flashlight illuminating their prayer books.

The Segways made a second pass before leaving us in peace, but I couldn’t help thinking: if the goal is to remember the bad things that have befallen the Jewish people, some in this very spot, and in my case by soaking in the visual environment rather than following the text word-by-word, couldn’t you do it just as well from a Segway as from a 2000-year-old scroll?

With the Segways gone, it was back to the dueling Eicha’s. Remarkably, the two readings ended at the same point – kudos to the conductor (or as some would say the Conductor with a capital C).

This post appeared earlier in the day on Israelity.

It’s been a good week for comedy in Israel. First, the twice-a-year Comedy for Koby show has been traveling around the country to great acclaim – I blogged about it earlier this week on Israelity. And yesterday afternoon, raunchy (and embarrassingly funny) U.S. comedian Sarah Silverman improbably appeared on a panel at Shimon Peres’ “Israeli Presidential Conference” entitled “My Recipe for a Better Future” (Silverman is also performing two nights of standup next week in Tel Aviv).

But Silverman’s introduction to Israel was in a much less glamorous setting. Last night, she attended that most mundane of Israeli activities: the school play, in which her niece was on stage. I was there too: Silverman’s sister, Susan, lives around the corner from us, and our kids go to school together at Jerusalem’s Sudbury Democratic School. (Here’s a nearly 20-year-old clip of Silverman riffing on her sister’s recent marriage:)

Part time paparazzi that I am, I was feeling pretty confident as I sauntered over to Silverman and introduced myself to the controversial comic superstar. Silverman was nearly incognito in sweats and a baseball cap – but it didn’t much matter: most of the Israeli kids there probably never even heard of her. I gave her some tips on where to eat the best falafel in Israel and wished her a good trip – her first ever to Israel.

Silverman then noticed the cargo pants I was wearing and bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t get similar pants for women. She then turned to her sister and made some racy comment – which I unfortunately couldn’t completely hear – that compared my pants with a woman’s body part. Either Silverman was already in performance mode, or she just naturally wisecracks.

I mentioned that I already blogged about her on Israelity and I told her about my personal blog, This Normal Life.

“This Normal Life,” she mused. “I’ve heard of that. I’m sure I’ve been on your site.” Sure, Sarah, nice small talk. But she continued. “So…where did you come up with the name?”

“Do you really want to hear?” I asked. “It’s a sad story.”

“What, did someone die?” she said.

“Actually, yes,” I replied.

I proceeded to explain how I started the blog in 2002 after a cousin, Marla Bennett, was killed in the terrorist attack at Hebrew University and how I wanted to demonstrate to the world that, despite all the murderous atrocities in those difficult years, Israel was still a “normal” place and we were going about our normal activities, not cowering in our homes waiting for the next bomb to go off.

I then changed the subject and asked if she’s picked up any good material yet for her act.

As the Democratic kids left the stage to thunderous parental pride, I was struck by how I had shared with the famous Sarah Silverman that inherently Jewish reality, the one that is so part and parcel of everything we do in Israel, it’s even included in the Jewish wedding ceremony: that, even in our greatest joy (meeting a celebrity, shlepping nachas from our talented kids), we must always remember our sadness and suffering. At the wedding, the groom breaks a glass. Some of us blog. Ah, the vagaries of modern life in our beleaguered state.

Welcome to the real Israel, Sarah. We’re pretty normal here. Most of the time.

This post appeared on Israelity yesterday.

When I made aliyah nearly 17 years ago, the army rejected me. I was 34, married with two kids and a job, and too old to be properly trained, I guess. Plus it was at the height of the Russian influx of immigrants – there probably wasn’t even a spare bunk for me to sleep in.

Still, I’ve always felt I missed out on something by not sharing the army experience…even if just for a few weeks or months. Now, while I’ll never be able to have the privilege of eating army food or mopping the floor on base (I do enough of that at home), there’s one thing I could do outside of the army: fire a gun.

So when the online coupon site GroopBuy offered a 70% discount on an hour of instruction and 50 bullets at the Krav shooting range, I didn’t hesitate to click the “buy” button.

Krav is located in the basement of one of the typically drab industrial buildings in Jerusalem’s Talpiot shopping zone. I met my instructor, Talia, who took me even further downstairs to the firing room. I was accompanied by a larger group of more experienced shooters. Nevertheless, Talia gave all of us the same training, which consisted mostly of how to stand and hold the gun.

The other men (and one woman) nodded as Talia went through her list; I did too but I was missing about 50% of the content. My Hebrew is OK for basic conversation, but there were a lot of technical words I’d never heard of. Not a good idea when you’re about to shoot a gun.

The situation was made even more precarious by the layout of the room. I had imagined individual cubicles, walled on three sides – protection against novices. Instead, it was simply a large open space with the shooters standing shoulder to shoulder. Not a place where you want to hear “oops.”

I picked up the gun and it was clear I had no idea what I was doing. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll help you once the others are done,” Talia offered. Good idea.

The more experienced shooters proceeded to fire off round after round while I sat in the back wearing protective goggles and noise reducing headphones. 20 minutes later, it was my turn.

Talia, it turned out, was an English speaker from Los Angeles, so there was no language barrier as she told me (repeatedly) “keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire – and don’t aim it at me!”

That would be a really big oops.

My hands were sweating as I let out my first shot. I missed by a long shot. The flash of gunpowder surprised me; the weapon jolted upward. “Not bad,” Talia said with a generous dose of California encouragement.

Over the course of the next 49 bullets I gradually gained confidence and actually hit the target 15 times (see the picture). By the end, I was already jaded, feeling like I was on a carnival midway aiming for spelunking rabbits.

Talia jolted me out of my deadly daydream. “If that had been a real terrorist,” she said, smiling, “he’d be dead.”

That’s when I realized: the Israelis who come to the Krav shooting range are not just having a good time – this is the real deal.

I walked out sobered but proud. I had entered a new stage of Israeliness. It wasn’t the same as the basic training our kids go through, but if I ever find myself needing a gun to stop a bad guy, I’ll know what to do.

I wrote about Krav yesterday on Israelity.

"You shall have your day of rest" Silvan Shalom commands

In recent weeks, Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom’s has renewed a campaign to turn Sunday into an official day off in Israel, as with other parts of the world. The Anglo community has embraced the idea. As for me, I’m dead set against it.

How could anyone be against Sundays, you might ask? Isn’t that one of the biggest complaint immigrants from Western countries have? Especially for the religious, Friday is dedicated primarily to preparing for Shabbat; it’s certainly not a day for hiking, shopping and barbecuing.

Have these same immigrants forgotten their own miserable experiences in the old country? I haven’t. Back when I was more religious, Fridays were a nightmare, mostly because you had to explain to your employer why you had to leave early in the winters and how you’d make it up on weekends (oops, there goes Sunday).

Even if your boss was flexible, your co-workers might not be so supportive. I remember one Friday when I was working towards a looming software deadline, I told my lead programmer I was leaving while he would have to toil into the wee hours. He had a few choice words for me that probably spurred my aliyah.

Then there was getting home minutes before Shabbat (if I didn’t get stuck in the inevitable Friday afternoon traffic) and having no down time before showering, changing into Shabbat clothes and rushing off to shul.

Having Fridays off in Israel is, by contrast, one of the aspects to Israeli life that I most appreciated.

Now, MK Shalom assures us that implementing “leisure Sundays” would be different in Israel. We’d only work a half-day on Fridays. And we’d add extra hours to the rest of the week.

Sure, Silvan. And have you ever worked in a hi-tech company where the hours of that so-called “rest of the week” already stretched well into the evening? The pressure to work late on Fridays could be just as forbidding as my experience back in the States.

Here’s one more downer to rain on the weekend parade. I remember years ago, when I was CEO of a startup, discussing what it took to “make it” in the Internet age. “We work 24/7,” boasted one of my colleagues. When I told him in Israel we only work 24/6, he thought I was nuts. How could we possibly compete? So now we’re going to be 24/5.5?

So, sorry guys, I’m voting against this proposal. Not that it matters. The proposal has come up several times in the past decade and never made it out of committee (if it even got that far). My beloved one-day weekend is safe for now.

This post appeared originally on Israelity.