Ireland vs. Israel: My Thoughts After 5 Years

This is a post that I have been planning to write for about two years.

And what better time than now?


What Brought Me To Write This


Having lived in Israel for close on five years at this point (otherwise put, half a decade!), I think I am in a fairly good position to write up a comparison between Ireland and Israel as countries to live in.

The Irish and Israeli flags during a high-level diplomatic engagement at Taverne Du Dan.

With just four hours until Shabbat, the week is effectively done and — as I just wrote — this week marked the first week of full productivity that I have enjoyed in about six months.

So I will make a busman’s holiday out of my weekend and use it for just a little bit more writing!

Besides thinking it would make for an interesting piece of writing, I have been inspired by (among many others) my friend Peter Duffy, who recently jotted down some notes about his trip to Japan separating between “keep it” and “leave it”. (Another friend, upon visiting a country, writes a missive to the population at large, which I now receive in newsletter form, citing its flaws and redeeming qualities. After a recent visit to Israel he shared his main grievance: there are not enough power outlets on the walls!).

(As Duffy attended my wedding this summer, and has a unique worldview which places high precedence on the importance of understanding “systems” and inherent social structures, I’d be interested to hear his evaluation of Israel, although his trip to Israel was substantially shorter than the time he spent in Japan).

Although whenever the word ‘Israel’ is mentioned this becomes difficult, I’m going to try keep this post as apolitical as possible — focusing instead on non-controversial issues relating to quality of life.

I am also going to try to be as honest and open as possible about my experience living here. something which I am not good at and trying to improve on (of course, it is rarely socially expedient to divulge all one’s feelings). I am also, at this point in the preamble, shoving political correctness firmly out the window!

For the purpose of simplicity, I’m going to divide this into two main sections:


Part One: Things I Prefer About Living in Israel ??


1: Better Weather

Having “Jerusalem’s luxury rooftop experience” named after me has to rank as one of the biggest honors of my life. The glorious Taverne Du Dan on a glorious summer’s day.

(Note as I edit this, because I’m not sure it’s clear: this section was intended tongue in cheek!)

It wouldn’t be fair to begin a comparison involving Ireland and some other country without first mentioning the weather!

Israel receives a lot of sun but — the population not consisting of sun-deprived Irish people — some seem to perplexingly regard the weather as something they have become inured to rather than something to enjoy.

More perplexing yet, people do not drop work, family and social obligations to flock to the beach at the slightest hint of good weather.

Nor do they engage in the traditional Irish practice of frying themselves like lobsters whenever the weather is good because, as everyone from Ireland knows, “sure, it turns to tan eventually.”

Of course, one’s desire to roast themselves lobster-red being significantly higher the less sun that person has access to, this is hardly surprisingly — desperation is a function of scarcity, after all.

However, having spent my fair share of time on the vaunted beaches of Tel Aviv, I am also convinced that said sun-aversion is significantly exaggerated in the holy city of Jerusalem where people prefer to bask in the light of the holy scriptures than that emanating from the solar system.

To my eyes, an astoundingly high proportion of the city’s denizens appear perennially ghostly pale and also appear to hold the sun in pork-like high contempt, lathering the highest-SPF sunscreen they can get their hands on at the slightest sign of good weather and wasting no time in adjuring herds of following children about the dangers of the sun’s radiation.

While observing the sun-avoiding habits of Jerusalem’s citizens over the years, I have found a direct correlation between one’s level of religiosity and the degree of one’s paleness.

This rule, however, does not apply to those of Sephardic or Mizrahi origin, who look as if they permanently have a sun tan regardless of their level of actual sun exposure (remember what I said about political correctness?).

An aversion to sunshine and the great outdoors seems to be an accessory to traditional Jewish lifestyle, but one which I cannot help but believe is ancient in origin.

As it says in Bereishit (Genesis), 25:27:

“And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.”

So there you have it — in black and white.

Judging by their complexion, many of Jacob’s modern-day Jerusalemite descendants must indeed spend the vast majority of their time — if not the totality of it — learning in modern-day tents, following true to the old description.

But coming back to the weather.

A breathtaking sunset on Taverne Du Dan. One of the only decent photos I have ever managed to take. Filter-free — using only a Redmi Note 7!

Sunshine, we can probably all agree, is a blessing and Jerusalem’s climate is actually much more livable than that of Tel Aviv on several accounts:

  • It has a dry summertime heat, compared to Tel Aviv’s shirt-drenching humidity
  • Almost year-round cool evenings thanks to Jerusalem’s unique topography. (Tel Aviv, and most of the coast, does not cool down at night to an appreciable extent and the sheer heat can be overwhelming.)

Compared to Ireland, the climate is far drier, which, as an asthmatic, I find beneficial.

One facet I do find remarkable is the suddenness with which the seasons change — and am always amazed by their correlation with what is described in the Bible.

Year and after year, the first rains fall, just as the Torah foretells it will, after the Sukkot festival which commemorates harvests (those less religiously inclined will surely be thinking that climates can, to a certain extend, be predicted; but the first rain seem to consistently fall around Sukkot which is only a week in duration).

Ireland, by comparison, is permanently temperate, cloudy, and wet with only modest climatic variations by season. An Irish winter is cloudy and wet. An Irish summer is slightly-less-cloudy and slightly-less-wet.

Of course, the sun-drenched and very predictable climate of Israel has an obvious downside to it , which any Irish readers may already have predicted: weather-related banter is sadly not a thing.

For those that are not aware, or have not visited, the weather is a permanent conversation point in Ireland such that — when lost for what to talk about — one can fill minutes or even hours talking about the latest forecast, what temperature might be expected today, what is in store tomorrow, etc.

Just as entertainingly, the forecast itself is anticipated very earnestly and greeted with hushed silence when it comes on the television after the evening news. Likewise, television forecasters accrue near celebrity status and – as I previously reported for IrishCentral — occasionally even have to issue public apologies when their prognostics go amiss.

In Israel, things work a little differently.

Feeling sentimental, I once attempted to initiate a typical Irish discussion with an otherwise very talkative Israeli coworker that went something like this:

Me: Lovely day we’re having, isn’t it?

Coworker: (Perplexed silence for 20 seconds because the last 100 days could also have been described as “lovely”.)


2: Living A (Much) More Vibrant Jewish Life


Whenever I have discussed some of the deficiencies of life in Israel with my friends from Ireland (who are not Jewish) I can’t help but remember that this point is not factoring into their conscience and that my decision to continue living here might therefore seem inexplicable as this weighs so heavily on the “pro” side for me.

And why would they possibly think about that?

My very reason for moving to Israel stemmed, in large part, from the desire to live in a country in which I was not the “odd one out” — or part of a tiny minority.

As I mentioned in this blog’s about page, which I recently re-wrote, I grew up in Cork, Ireland, a city now almost bereft of any permanent Jewish presence — but still pretty bereft when I lived there! (I recommend this video to anybody interested in the subject; a younger version of me with a much thicker accent makes a cameo appearance).

To the best of my knowledge, I was the only Jewish student at my secondary school, and had to do things which felt awkward for me like receive exemptions from religious studies.

I don’t want this to come across the wrong way.

Presentation Brothers College (PBC) was a great school and my days there were some of the happiest of my life.

Growing up in Cork was, overall, a similarly positive experience, and my friends in Ireland remain as close or closer than many of those I have made in Israel.

Wasting a perfectly good day off work participating in Israel’s farcical election process. I said if a third election happens I’m staying home — and might get the chance!

However, there are those that relish or are at least not bothered by the idea of being “special” (which often confers the responsibility to represent that minority community) and those that consider it to be a burden.

Call me a contrarian, overly self conscious, or a pessimist (I am actually all three, thank you very much!) but I have always sat squarely in that second category.

For as long as I can remember (or probably, more accurately, since I participated in a Birthright trip!), I wanted to live in a country where there was no obvious dissonance between my religion and my nationality. A country where I belonged. One where I didn’t have to request time off work or school to celebrate religious holidays. Where I didn’t have to live in a special part of town to be close to a Jewish community or synagogue (the Jewish diaspora in a nutshell). And where I could eat anything on the menu without compromising my religious dietary beliefs.


I Moved Here to Be ‘The Same’ (I Think)


Enjoying prancing round Shuk Mahane Yehuda in ethnic costumes with some visiting friends originally from Ireland (now in Hong Kong and the UK)

If you are Jewish and share this desire for sameness (which is strange, because in most other respects I am a non-conformist), then the list of countries that meets that criteria is very small (hint: there’s only one!).

This, of course, is a little different to the classic arguments often advocated for Zionism (“the Jews need a country because of the Holocaust”), but also, in my opinion, merely the other half of the same coin.

Judaism, as a religion, is intended to be practiced in a community setting and — however you cut it — it doesn’t translate well to a Diaspora environment (according to a majority opinion, 26 of the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, in the Jewish Torah can only be fulfilled in the Land of Israel).

Judaism and the Land of Israel are inextricably linked and, in my view, so long as doing so is at least remotely possible the only logical place in which to live, as a Jew, is in that land very land, specifically its modern incarnation, the State of Israel.


My Ideological Motives For Being Making Aliyah


Unexpected disclosure: understanding the traditional Jewish / halachic approach to the State of the Israel as a construct — and attempting to square that with some of the government’s actions — is a philosophical challenge I have long grappled with

As I noted in the about page, I have read, considered, and attempted to digest such wildly divergent arguments as those advanced by True Torah Jews and Eim HaBanim Smeichah (the latter highly recommended!)— grappling with the question of how, religiously, the modern State of Israel should be conceived.

I still haven’t entirely resolved that debate internally, but these days (with some reservations about the government) I sit far more closely towards the “it’s a good thing” side of the spectrum.

Living a fulfilled religious Jewish life requires proximity to religious institutions, the provision of kosher meat for carnivores, and the availability of a community for everybody.

Within the framework of a non-Jewish majority — the necessary paradigm for Jewish life for 2,000 years — I see no other means for those factors to exist other than within a ghetto. And — at least to my mind — ghettoization sounds like a very quick path to drawing the animosity of those around you.

Human nature being human nature, many any will choose the path of lesser resistance and simply opt to subsume into the majority. Assimilating, but losing their religious identity in the process.

For this reason alone, and to give people at least the option of avoiding that fate, I support Zionism — the Jewish people’s movement to re-establish a permanent presence in their ancient historical homeland. Instinctively and viscerally, I react against any argument in favor of the State’s existence that is predicated upon any external cause, such as the Holocaust and the threat of anti-Semitism — however well-intentioned those advancing such arguments might be.

(Please note: this means supporting Israel as a construct and affirming its right to exist, despite some of the consequences of its founding. It also does not extend to espousing every one of the government’s policies.)

More concretely than the above, living in Israel resolves most of the issues of maintaining Jewish observance.

This photo (Wikimedia Commons) captures pretty accurately what Jerusalem looks like halfway through the afternoon before Shabbat. I really miss “proper” weekends!

In fact, the only part of being Jewish that I find harder in Israel is (ironically) preparing for Shabbat — because in West Jerusalem, with a religious Jewish majority, virtually everything is closed by mid-afternoon (as is already the case as I am writing this post!)

In truth, however, and despite the above, I would not be adverse to the idea of moving to another country solely because it wasn’t Israel (at least temporarily).

I think that Israelis moving abroad for better financial and career opportunity, with the intention to return (as I have often thought of doing), is not necessarily a bad thing but rather the way of the modern world.

This kind of migration pattern has been a staple of Irish life for decades, but in Israel — where Jewish migration is so bound up with demographic arguments — it is often subject to the unfortunate and unjustly pejorative judgment that surrounds the entire question of yeridah (lit. “descent”; meaning: leaving Israel). A former prime minister once famously branded those who chose the route “weaklings.”

If I were to leave, I would definitely want to live somewhere with a more substantial Jewish community than that which I knew in Cork — if only so that I wouldn’t have to be a vegetarian again!

(I went through phases of vegetarianism and then pescetarianism in an effort to keep kosher in Ireland, which meant eating a lot of pasta and then fish. Only my close family know this and anybody else probably just thought I was going through a ‘veggie’ phase. The one happy outcome of this process was discovering Indian cuisine, with its abundant vegetarian options).


3: There Are Some Cultural Aspects I Prefer


I will get to the cultural aspects which I don’t like about Israel shortly, but firstly let me list those which I do:

  • Everything is very frank. Hierarchies, if they exist at all, tend to be loose. If you’re trying to find the right contact at a company, for example, getting through to the CEO is typically not that difficult.
  • As a result of the above (not by coincidence, I’m sure), disagreements tend to get resolved very quickly in Israel. On the flip side, this societal openness (in my opinion) leads to a far higher incidence of vocal disagreements between people. As somebody originally from Ireland, fond of gentler means of conflict resolution, avoiding such issues altogether, or even, I’m sad to say — resorting to classical Irish passive aggression — I find the sense of constant fighting, gesticulating, and the sheer amount of altercations one encounters on a daily basis somewhat jarring and mentally exhausting.
  • Self-criticism is okay. Immigrants to Israel tend to wear rose-tinted glasses — encouraged to move here by organizations that often do the same. Although I have not made as many Israeli friends as I have fellow ex-pats, this is one of the reasons I often prefer their company. Israelis see Israel as it is, deficiencies and positives, and there is no stigma against pointing out some obvious defects, such as the price-gouging and poor customer service everybody that lives here has to become accustomed to. This is partially why I’m not afraid to write this post. Criticism of Israel by those living here is well-tolerated and sometimes even encouraged. Besides the fact that I originally intended to become a journalist, and hold a degree in it, this is a reason why I find Benjamin Netanyahu’s constant vilification of the media (and trumpeting of Israel’s successes) so disappointing and antithetical to what I see as traditional Jewish values of modesty, introspection, and thoughtful self-criticism — the latter two being essential ingredients to the broader Jewish remit of tikkun olam.

4: (Vastly) Better Healthcare


If you’re fond of visiting doctors and taking prescription medications, then Israel is a pretty good place to be.

As an asthmatic, myopic, and all-round-hypochondriac, I have put Israel’s health services through their paces — and overall, I have pretty good things to say (except my recent hospital stay for gallbladder surgery — that was terrible!).

Unsurprising given that this is the Startup Nation, Israel’s healthcare system makes liberal use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Because Israelis are so informal, you can basically demand everything from antibiotics and steroids to benzodiazepines from your family doctor without having to leave the comfort of your living room*

Healthcare in Israel is:

  • Cheap: everything from prescription medications to doctors visits are highly subsidized. My asthma inhaler and stomach acid drug both cost a fraction of what they would in Ireland. I love the fact that I don’t have to think about the cost when deciding if I should go to the doctor because my breathing is bad — or whether I need Singulair or could “live without it” this season.
  • Quick. I’ve been referred to surgeons and pulmonologists and on both occasions got an appointment within a week. Compare this to the months or often years-long wait times to see consultants in Ireland’s national health service, the HSE.
  • Online: You can do everything from book doctors appointments to receive blood test results directly from an online interface. Israel has four health funds (kupot) and each citizen needs to be registered to one. I am with Macabbi. To inject some variety into your life, you’re allowed to change fund twice a year.

The easy and affordable access to healthcare in Israel is something that I do not take for granted — and it scares me to thin how stressful it might be to live in a country, like the US, that doesn’t have the safety net of socialized medicine.

At times, it can be bureaucratic. Systems that should work together are disjointed. And care from socialized medicine providers can feel cursory.

But overall, it’s a hugely positive facet of living here.

*I hope my weird sense of humor is coming through at least partially. You can’t actually do this.


5: Better Food!


I’ve covered my love of ethnic cuisines elsewhere in this blog — as well as my rather ridiculous pantry consisting of more than 200 grains, legumes, spices, and seasonings.

At the confluence of so many world cultures, and home to a huge mix of nationalities, Israel is a particularly good place to be for somebody with this interest.

As I have, by now, set my curmudgeon credentials on full display, I have three interjections to make here:

  • I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about humus — even at supposedly the best humus places in the country. It’s a decent side dish. That’s about it.
  • I don’t think a lot of what’s considered classic Israeli cuisine is all that good, although I do love many of the immigrant cuisines that are popular here. Exceptions: falafel, tahini.
  • For the most part, Israelis have a very low tolerance for spicy food. If you’re also a chilli-addict, you need to really emphasize this incredibly to get a nicely incendiary falafel (key phrase to repeat: ohd ha-reef).

Israelis eat a diet that is replete with fresh ingredients, which is where I see this differing most significantly from Ireland.

The culture of microwaving ready-made meals from Dunnes Stores or Marks and Spencer thankfully hasn’t arrived here yet and Israeli foods, in general, make spartan use of preservatives (you see this most noticeably in the speed with which supermarket bread goes bad here).

Falafel: I quite literally lived on this for four years

Additionally, as a keen fruit enthusiast, Israel grows many excellent varieties of fruit — although the seasonality of when that is available is another stark contrast to Ireland.

Thankfully, Israel’s large Ethiopian community have opened numerous restaurants throughout the country and I have spent plenty of enjoyable evenings cramming misir wot wrapped in injera down my throat. That’s a cuisine I’m particularly fond of.

On the downside, there are relatively few Indian and Chinese restaurants — or traditional takeaways — and far too many falafel restaurants and pastry bakeries in the country!


6: Proximity to Interesting Countries


Taba, Sinai, Egypt

This is something I wish I had time to take more advantage of — and hope that one day I will.

Although Israel’s neighbors are commonly cited as “disadvantages”, or “problems” I’d like to propose a different perspective.

I’ve been learning Arabic for a few years and the fact that, living in Israel, you can take a bus and taxi and find yourself in Egypt is greatly exciting. I visited Taba, just across the border from Eilat, last summer. Although I wouldn’t recommend the food poisoning, I can say great things about the beaches there — and value for money is infinitely better than in the Israeli resort just 5km up the coast.

Speaking of places you can hop on a bus to from Israel, there was once a direct bus line between Jerusalem and Cairo. But for obvious reasons (the security situation in the Sinai and the entrenchment of ISIS-affiliates in parts of the peninsula must be big ones) it no longer operates.

Other easy and relatively inexpensive local trips you can make from Israel:

  • ?? Turkey (I visited Antalya and would go back solely to pick up more of my amazing automatic Turkish coffee makers)
  • ?? Jordan, including Wadi Rum and Petra. (I’ve heard that Aqaba and Amman are both relatively uninteresting)
  • ?? Cyprus
  • ?? Italy

Part Two: Things I Prefer About Living in Ireland ??


1: Some Cultural Aspects

Ireland’s national carrier (Aer Lingus) and Israel’s one (El Al) on adjacent stands. I can’t remember what European airport I took this from, but I think it was Zurich (LSZH)

No two ways to put this.

By comparison to Israel, Ireland is a far more easy-going culture.

When I reach Ireland after the usual stopover in some European city (this is soon to change — El Al are launching direct flights!), I feel as if someone has turned down the volume on the speaker of life. I mean this as a good thing!


Israelis Love to Argue. The Irish Love to Get Along (But I’m Not Sure Either is Necessarily Better!)


Israelis (Jews?) prioritize advancement and learning through heated argument and rapid conflict resolution (open a page of the Talmud if you don’t know what I’m talking about!).

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, visit this link. This is obviously an extreme example of abuse rather than argument.

In Israel, where this dynamic is more concentrated than anywhere else on the planet, this creates an environment of constant balagan — which roughly translates as “chaos” in English.

The Irish, by contrast, are fond of “getting along” in a spirit of easy congeniality. Of course, this is all crude racial stereotyping and needless to say there are plenty of exceptions from both cultures.

As time goes by, I understand that this has a downside to it in itself — such that I would no longer automatically say that one way of living is preferable to the other — although one is certainly easier on one’s hearing.

In Ireland, I believe that genuine disagreements are far more likely to go unresolved and there’s less of a tendency to do something different, to mark oneself out, which is partially why I think Israel’s startup ecosystem is so much more vibrant than Ireland’s (although there are certainly similarities, and enormous potential for synergy, between the two, and Ireland is home to a significant number of innovative startups.)

As somebody that has had to learn (the hard way) to become a lot more assertive since moving here — an ongoing process — I believe that this is just as often a criticism to be leveled against individual people rather than society as a whole.

The Irish are far less aggressive than the Israelis but also probably a good deal more judgmental. Failure, in Israel, is not such a badge of shame, whereas in Ireland those that have experienced life’s travails a little more harshly than others might be looked down upon as ‘failures’ or not given a second chance.

The Irish are known for their friendliness, which goes well with the country’s fondness for pub culture and drinking, and this is something that I think a lot of Israelis could learn from — or at least copy the good aspects.


Israelis Are Obsessed With Aping America. The Irish, Justifiably, Are Not


Enough said. Details here.

Finally, unlike in Israel, the Irish seem to have no particular obsession with the US — although I would disagree with those claiming that the Irish are inherently anti-American too.

Perhaps the result of decades-long government propaganda about the “special relationship” and its more modern soundbite the “unbreakable alliance”, I think that Israelis have developed a slavish cultural fetish for America which, to me, feels obsequious.

Besides Bibi and now his son harping on continuously that Israel has “no better friend” than the US (give me a break!), Israelis tend to talk in English with a phoney American accent — the result of both America’s hegemony over international English-language media and a desire to unquestioningly ape everything that comes from across the Atlantic.

Israel is kind of like a country-sized Gaeltacht for Hebrew-speakers —but one in which Hebrew is actually spoken and with plenty of monoglots. I dislike Modern Hebrew’s butchering of words “borrowed” from other languages and the Ashkenazi-dominated pronunciation with its heavy gutturals, but it’s undeniably an impressive and unprecedented feat of linguistic revival.

I like the fact that Ireland is, by and large, confident in itself, its people, and its culture, and doesn’t need to seek external validation from Uncle Sam (although, of course, the US remains a major benefactor and political dynamics have a lot to do with that).

Although efforts to revive the Irish language have not enjoyed the same measure of outstanding success that Ben Gurion’s revival of Hebrew had (sorry to be cantankerous again, but given the state of Modern Hebrew I sometimes take issue with calling it a “revival” at all), both cultures take a large measure of pride in their tradition and in a slight sense of separateness from surrounding societies.

Finally — and in stark contrast to their adulation of the US — I believe that many Israelis have an unfortunate “us against the world” mentality that sees themselves and President Tramp (‘Trump’ pronounced with in Israeli English) as lone global allies pitted in an intractable war against tracts of anti-Semites. Ireland — or make that the whole of Europe — are by default ‘hostile’ territories that (justifiably or not) are viewed as having an inherent antipathy to the Jewish State’s mere existence.

The reality, as I have experienced it, is that while many are indeed belligerently opposed to Israel’s existence, a larger percentage of the population don’t really care, and a larger one again take issue with many policies of the Israeli government without subscribing to anti-Semitic tropes or denying the country’s very right to exist.

This dynamic is reflected in the mainstream Israeli news coverage which is replete with tales of anti-Semitism; news concerning Jews abroad that would be considered wholly irrelevant if not for their religion; news about the security situation; and not a whole lot of anything else.

While the Irish are justifiably widely believed to be ‘anti-Israel’, the comments section on any coverage documenting Ireland’s political moves against the State of Israel often descend into unfortunate racial slurring. This is something I find greatly disappointing.


However — They’re Not Entirely Different


Israelis are often called sabras — hard on the outside and soft on the inside, like the eponymous fruit from which the term was coined.

Like a surprising amount of stereotypes, I have found this to be largely true.

Despite their obvious differences, I actually believe that there are quite a few similarities between the Irish and Israelis once you scratch the surface.

Israelis love to complain about Israel (ahem) while talking about the greater opportunity that their well-off relatives in America supposedly enjoy.

The Irish, for their part, often have a “the grass is greener” attitude about relatives in the very same places. (Bear in mind that Brian Friel’s Philadelphia Here I Come was mandatory reading in my secondary school.)

Speaking of the countless meaningless platitudes that exist in both English and Hebrew, there are even some phrases “hakol yiyeh b’seder” (everything will be okay) and “it will be grand” that are virtually analogous.


Shitat HaTazliach — Screwing the Freier!


This has no relevance to the text, but an Irish flag on display at HaTaklit (“The Record”) — my favorite bar in Jerusalem. Murphy’s and Magner’s (AKA Bulmers) on tap!

Finally, there’s one cultural dynamic in Israel that is difficult to explain but which I am not fond of — and which I should mention for the sake of giving a thorough cultural evaluation.

It’s called (in Hebrew) shitat tazliach which literally means “the path of success”. I prefer to known it as “screwing the freier”!

It’s rarely been written about (at least in English) but is closely tied in to the concept of freierism, its more famous linguistic cousin, which has been discussed.

Being a freier (pronunciation: fr-EYE-er) means — roughly — being a sucker or a pushover.

In other countries — such as when you let somebody at the supermarket go ahead of you because you’re doing your weekly shopping and he’s buying a six-pack of tuna — this is know as “just trying to be nice“.

Israelis go to enormous lengths to avoid accruing that label such that “not being a freier” has become an all-pervading national paranoia and otherwise decent people may act callously simply because they are petrified that by doing so they may be embarking on a slippery behavioral slope which will end with them being the human equivalent of a doormat.

Because Israelis are permanently, for some reason, on their guard about being a sucker, a sort of societal defensive posturing is adopted to avoid it in which people are doubly suspicious of anybody’s motives because … they don’t want to be the next freier.

Sadly, observance of the law often falls into this category. Israelis have grown accustomed to living in a country that often feels and functions like something of a banana republic. Strict adherence to the letter of the law is another typically “Western” frier behavior that Israelis are not fond of emulating.

What the fraier-avoiders are trying so assiduously to avoid is falling victim to shitat tazliach which roughly translates to “chancing one’s arm” but more elaborately means: “asking somebody to do something entirely unreasonable, and hoping they say yes” (because they are a frier).

If they say yes, you win! If not, nothing lost save a minor dent on your self-respect.

(There’s a translation for this tactic that I prefer: taking advantage of people!)

Salary negotiations are another thorny cultural issue for immigrants to contend with. In Israel, it’s expected for the candidate to demand a slightly to substantially unrealistic stretch salary which the Israeli employer will by default then haggle down until you reach the actual salary the company is prepared to offer. Personally, I find this process obnoxious and would much rather state a salary expectation and then stick to my guns, neither expecting more nor prepared to settle for less. But I have been told by recruiters that this would be highly inadvisable.

Some further manifestations of this attitude — at both the governmental and individual level include:

  • Israelis rarely apologize
  • Israelis, and Israel, are always right. This is kind of obnoxious.

(As an addendum to all this: I recently visited the North for a few days — a part of the country that in Hebrew is called the ‘periferia’, meaning the periphery, to contrast with Tel Aviv / Gush Dan / the merkaz, — which means the “center”. These terms are descriptive rather than geometrical! If the North had better job opportunities (it doesn’t), a lot of my criticisms here would be entirely negated. Compared to central Jerusalem, where I lived for four and a half years, people are far more relaxed. The pace of life is noticeably slower and the cost of living is reduced too. I think this New York Times piece captured what I’m talking about very well)


2: For Most Workers, a Higher Real Income


Ireland is not cheap but, by comparison to Israel, it offers better value for money.

And (for most workers not in the IT space) I would argue a higher real income.

To truly understand why, you need to look at the big picture and understand a few concurrent factors at play in modern Israel:

  • Israel has developed one of the highest costs of living in the developed world — probably a result of the unfettered capitalism brought in by successive Netanyahu governments and in stark contrast to the country’s socialist beginnings.
  • According to the Taub Center’s State of the Nation Report Israel’s price index is 23% higher than the OECD average, an index commonly used as a yardstick for judging economics in the developed world.
  • To compound that national trend, the Economist Intelligence Unit recently named Tel Aviv the world’s 10th most expensive city, sharing that dubious “honor” with Los Angeles and coming in three places behind New York. Jerusalem is a little further down the league table, but not by all that much.

However:

  • Salaries in Israel are typically low — a common figure cited is “25% less than the West”, although I’ve never been able to corroborate that with an actual statistic. To anyone that lives here, or comes from a Jewish community with ties to Israel, this is simply a known fact, roughly akin, in controversialality, to affirming that the sky is blue.
For all the hype about living in Israel, discussions such as these go on every day in online fora and in real life.
  • Ireland’s “average salary” stands at €37,646 at the time of writing (CSO) vs. 11,004 NIS for Israel (as salaries are quoted monthly in Israel, this first has to be annualized to give 137,568 NIS = €34,991 at the time of writing.)
  • However, although the gap may seem small, the Israeli figure is grossly inflated by salaries in “high tech”, which is a rather narrow definition of jobs directly involved in producing software and related products and which has a pay scale that differs wildly from the natural average.
  • Those that track such statistics have computed a separate median and average for high tech, which stands at 23,375 NIS (/month) which is obviously more than double the national average.
  • However (and here, again, is the kicker), only 8.7% of Israelis work in high-tech — which means, of course, that 91% of the economy does not.

OECD indices aside, we all know that there is really only one way to compare the cost of living in two countries: looking at the cost of own-brand supermarket pizzas!

Thankfully, the prevalence of online grocery shopping — and that wonderful thing called the internet — means that I can do this without having to travel to a branch of Tesco, a supermarket which I dearly loved.

In Tesco, I can nourish myself with a “hearty food cheese and tomato pizza” for the princely sum of just €0.47 (at today’s rate: 1.82 NIS):

Tesco’s finest cheese and tomato pizza. Outrageously cheap but not kosher.

The very cheapest thing I can nourish myself on in Israel, according to Shufersal Online, costs 11.90 NIS (€3.07).

That means that according to the generic supermarket pizza price index (GSPPI), Israel is 6.5 times more expensive than Ireland, not factoring in salary-related discrepancies in purchasing power.


Extra Charges Compound the Burn


As if being unable to gorge on cheap supermarket pizzas wasn’t enough punishment, there are many charges that exist in Israel which do not in other countries and which put a further dent in one’s disposable income.

Consider that:

  • Renters, rather than the owner, pay both an agent’s fee for finding a property (even though the fee has technically been illegalized!) as well as a monthly municipality tax, called arnona.
  • Although the personal income taxation burden (according to my calculations) is currently less than it is in Ireland, the tax on some items, such as new cars (83% plus VAT) is punitively highly.

As a result. articles such as the Times of Israel’s “Sure you can make it in Israel — if your parents help, say economists” do not surprise me in the slightest.

Generally speaking, living in Israel costs mucho shekels. So here’s a stock image to reflect that.

Nor do the remarks of Eitan Regev, an economist at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, which authored a series of policy papers on Israel’s widening income gap, which (as measured by the Geni co-efficient) remain high:

“Basically the story nowadays in Israel is that wealth and assets have become more important than hard work,”

“Unless you and your spouse both work in professions that put you in the top fifth of income earners (e.g. high-tech engineer, doctor, money manager), or you have pre-existing assets, then it’s not only hard to make ends meet, there’s also the desperation of not being able to see yourself on a probable path of getting ahead in life and saving money.”

There are some other shocking nuggets which I have unearthed over the years.

From the TOI piece linked above:

“Gilad Brand looked at consumer prices in Israel and found that relative to incomes, prices are higher here than in every OECD country except Japan.

From a Media Line piece syndicated on Ynet, “Israeli parents forced to support adult kids”:

“A new study by the Taub Center for Social Policy finds that 87% of all Israeli parents help their adult children with finances.

Another piece (which I have lost the link to) clarified the statistic a little further: the “subsidy” effectively constitutes a routine second income and the definition of “grownup children” extends to those in middle age!

The article continues:

Dan Ben David, director of the Taub Center, says that in the United States, it takes 2.9 years of salary to buy the average apartment. In Israel, it takes 7.7.

‘That’s if you don’t eat and don’t pay any taxes,’ he told The Media Line. “In Israel, we have higher taxes and lower salaries.”

Mortgage down-payments, for Israel’s very expensive property stock, are also typically in the region of 30-40%, including for first-time buyers — unless they are lucky enough to win a government lottery.

This, of course, compares unfavorably with Ireland’s average first-time buyer mortgage rate, which can be as low as 10%.

To add to all this:

And finally, a completely shocking statistic from The Calcalist published recently and which (judging by the lack of reaction) apparently has not raised many eyebrows. (This is what Israelis colloquially call “living in meenoos“; ‘meen-ooss’ is how ‘minus’, one of many loan-words in the lexicon, is pronounced in Hebrew):

“A recent survey by Dun & Bradstreet Corp. revealed that Israelis have on average a negative checking account balance of NIS 25,000 (approximately $7,090), and 5% are paying off at least five loans concurrently.”

I think enough said!

Although things will hopefully slowly get better as international competition continues to disrupt Israel’s countless monopolies and oligopolies, for the moment Israel remains a very expensive country in which to live and work. Israeli workers, relative to Irish ones, are often under-remunerated and over-worked.


2: Better Bars!


On the plus side, Israel has a better selection of dilapidated lotto stands blasting loud Mizrahi (Eastern pop) music which you can also drink at. Here’s my favorite: Etsel Shabi in Nahlaot, Jerusalem.

I enjoy pub culture and this is another aspect in which I think Ireland definitely outpaces Israel.

However you cut it (pour it?) alcohol in Israel remains extremely expensive.

Prices of 30-35 NIS (€7.63 – €8.91) for a “chetzi” (500ml measure, the Israeli equivalent of a pint, which of course is shorter than a pint by 68ml) are routine.

(And don’t forget that, as the bold lettering on the receipt will certainly remind you, “Service is Not Included.” I have never been a to a bar in Israel where one could simply ask the barman for a pint. Thus, one is forced into dealing with waiter or waitress service who will often have no qualms about making their displeasure evident if the tip proferred does not meet their expectations.)

I’m not grumbling about the fact that Israelis drink less alcohol (which, unsurprisingly, they certainly do: Israel’s per-capita alcohol consumption stands at 2.3L/ethanol/person/year versus Ireland’s 11.9L, a more than five-fold difference. ). Rather, my complaint is that pub culture seems to be limited almost entirely to city centers.

Suburbs, even inner ones, are virtually bereft of watering holes – which I find both bizarre and depressing as I’ve recently moved to one.

The attitude of a recent taxi driver who I will paraphrase here, might explain a lot (we got onto this subject after he asked what we were doing heading in to town on the weekend and we explained that we were taking a taxi to the city center so that we could celebrate a birthday with a beer and brunch):

“Drink? No, I don’t drink, you fool! I go to the spa every day to relax. It’s healthier, didn’t you know? There are no bars in the suburbs? Yes, you’re right about that, young man. That’s because drinking here is mostly for teenagers. Once people get married, they don’t go to bars anymore. How old are you? Get out of my taxi!”

(Artistic license was used in trying to reconstruct this quote from memory).

To add to this:

  • From a personal finance perspective, there aren’t many advantages to living in Israel. Israeli banks are notorious for charging high fees — and credit card companies offer extremely modest benefits relative to other international franchisees. The New Israeli Shekel (NIS) is of course a minor world currency — and for Israelis purchasing online this can lead to them constantly buying at unfavorable exchange rates.
  • Israeli consumer protection law — like tenant protection law — is underdeveloped and its consumer protection body, The Israel Consumer Council, is a toothless beast.
  • Israel being neither in the European Economic Area (EEA), the European Union (EU), nor the United States, there are a lot of great FinTech products that Israelis also don’t have access to. I listed them in a separate post here.

3: Better Manners!


This stock image was not taken in Israel, I can assure you. Source: Wikipedia.

Things in this respect are getting a lot better quickly, in my opinion, but add this to the list of stereotypes that have quite a ring of truth to them.

Again, this could be a Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv thing (the denizens of Tel Aviv, being a more international city, are more “evolved” as a former Israeli co-worker used to put it).

I don’t want to dwell on this too much, but this article captures the dynamic well!


4: Better Customer Service


Don’t be deceived by the large amount of familiar international names operating in Israel. They are typically operating in Israel through local franchisees. As someone else put it, these companies are the same thing as their parent brand “in name only”

The other obvious deficiency of life in Israel is the often appalling rude, demeaning “customer service” one eventually comes to regard as somewhat normal.

Consider the fact that, as mentioned, said goods are often unconscionably expensive (and of inferior quality; Israel, from my observations, seems to get many of its imports from the same distribution chains that serve India and Turkey, which would make sense).

This slowly gnaws at you but becomes particularly infuriating after a while once you own an apartment-full of low-quality overpriced locally sourced appliances that have all broken down and none of which can be repaired as their customer service lines will either hang up the phone on you in protest or simply give you an earful.

Generally, if anything goes wrong with a product here, and it’s not of sufficient value to make a fuss about it, I don’t even bother complaining or asking for a warranty repair.

My former approach (I will post about this separately) is trying to speak to the “international” (or more often EMEA) layer of the organization that, at least in paper, monitors the standards of their Israeli distributor.

Doing so, in my experience, has a 50/50 chance of success.

As I am good at sourcing emails from LinkedIn, I can typically find the right point of contact at a company to point out why their Israeli “distributor” or franchisee is conducting business to a completely different standard than would be considered acceptable in almost any other developed country.

This often puts the Israeli franchisee into a frantic tailspin and accelerates things rapidly along as their greatest fear is often having their exclusive distributor status challenged by a customer conveying, in English, to the parent company, what’s actually happening ‘in market’.

If the contact deals with the matter themselves, there is a good chance of success and a couple of EMEA managers have expressed their shock to me to learn of the behavior of those representing their companies in Israel (for more detail, see the stolen keyboard incident).

If the case or support ticket is passed back to the Israeli operator, unfortunately all hope is usually lost.

I will have to think of alternative means of destroying secrets

This week, for instance, while I was trying to destroy some papertrails, my Fellowes paper shredder jammed on some paper — a number of sheets within its limit.

Although it was slightly more than a year after purchase, this was only the second time I had used the machine and I was hopeful for a warranty repair (particularly as this was the second time this had happened and the receipt indicated that a “limited warranty” applied between the first and second years after purchase).

When my previous Fellowes shredder broke down (within a year), the store I bought it from, Ivory Computers, advised that to receive a warranty repair I would have to drive to a site in the North of the country, almost 3 hours away. The petrol alone would end up costing more than the shredder.

This time, I decided to contact Fellowes directly, who promptly passed the case back to “Getter Group”, their Israeli representative.

In the typically rude and demeaning style that typifies a lot of Israeli customer service — and without once apologizing — the agent told me off for having the temerity to even ask for a repair before promptly hanging up the phone.

This is not an experience I can imagine having in Ireland!


5: Better Professional Opportunities (For Many)


Tel Aviv is a world epicenter for startups, but many are early-stage and use the local market as a sort of real-world incubator before planning State-wards expansions or moves into Europe, often leaving only a residual presence in Israel (Ireland can be similar in this regard). International companies’ R&D centers, and domestic giants such as Teva, tend to be based in slightly less glamorous locations, such as Hertzlia and Beer Sheva, but have much more staying power.

When it comes to Israel and jobs, most assume that working in the ‘Startup Nation’ would be a dream come true for a young professional.

Without wishing to sound overly pessimistic, I have mixed feelings about this, which I am jotting down only because I know countless other young immigrant professionals — from doctors and lawyers to fitness instructors — that feel exactly the same way.

In the third most educated country in the world, Israel places very high value on certain specific and hard skill-sets, such as Java programming and even operating cranes in a port. (Click the link to the left for some very anomalous fields that break the general low-pay paradigm for this very reason, in my opinion. It includes the employees of the national electricity company and crane operators at ports, organizations which perpetuate the country’s many monopolies by enforcing Israel’s many protectionist customs restrictions).

In the army (remember, Israel remains a country of conscripts), everybody has a specific tafkeed (role).

The job market, as I perceive it, provides a pretty accurate civilian reflection of that.

Unfortunately, I love communications and writing — neither of which quite fit into the narrow box of being hard and decisively important skills and both of which, unfortunately, cannot be easily quantified for cash-tied startups keeping a hawkishly close eye over ROI.

And in a non-English-speaking country (again, my opinion), employers and companies tend to perceive the provision of English “content” as akin to nothing more than a translation service from Hebrew.

In other words, the vast majority of marketing, communications and content roles I have seen tend to be very entry-level and junior, written by those who need a “native English speaker” to string some brochures together in the hope that they will catch the eye of an American investor and the whole operation can move Stateside. It’s not a framework in which I can see myself excelling and growing.

Although not chief among them, this is one of the reasons why I am currently self-employed.

Working as a contractor with a mixture of international and Israeli clients, on the other hand, can be be quite rewarding and offers exposure to a lot of different industries at once — experiencing both the out-of-the-box thinking which Israelis startups are world famous for and a professional culture which is often superior at international companies.

Additionally, it’s a good ‘in’ for working with Israeli companies abroad that have often raised funding and are more open to putting serious effort into their marketing and communications campaigns.


A Different Professional Environment


Professionally, the Israeli work environment is also very different to that which exists in Ireland.

This has both positive and negative aspects.

The informality of the Israeli workplace makes it a very flat and Agile-friendly environment in which to launch and build early-stage tech startups.

But on the flipside, a culture of professionalism is often sorely lacking (Western immigrants often forcefully position themselves as torchbearers for the cause of improving this — often to the chagrin of their Israeli co-workers who have heard it all before).

This has been both my experience and that of some international contacts I once knew who were seconded, from a multinational engineering firm, to work on a major infrastructural project here.

They both favored the work environment of their home country for its culture of professionalism and were somewhat aghast at the remuneration of their Israeli colleagues doing comparable jobs. (Those thinking of working as foreign workers in construction rather than project management should be aware that safety standards have frequently been called into question.)

Considering what’s emerged from whistleblowers about the disastrous Jerusalem-Tel Aviv high speed train — which, at the time of writing, still does not run to Tel Aviv, over a decade past its scheduled target — I have no reason to doubt their veracity.

Besides salary, working conditions in Israel often compare unfavorably.

Normal office hours in Israel are long (45 hours per week vs. Ireland’s 39).

More grievously, from my perspective, the county has a miserly legal minimum vacation day standard of just 12 days per year (aping the US — without the salaries!) — which compares very unfavorably with Ireland’s 28.

Did you know that the EU has a minimum holiday allowance for member states of 4 weeks? We could use that here!

To add to the grumbling just a little more, Bank Holidays do not exist in Israel (which is particularly difficult as Shabbat greatly curtails the weekend because shops and services close half-way through Friday, its first day). National holidays which fall out on a weekend also do not roll over.

If you understand Hebrew, you can understand why many English writers do not conceive of the Hebrew-speaking market as a particularly worthwhile one. Question: what is the market rate for a 1,000 word content article? First answer: the minimum, for 400-500 words, is 80 NIS ($22.90)

As a result of all the above, although I neither downplay the success of Israel’s high-tech sector nor deny the fact that many succeed in making very high salaries in it, as a professional writer working in English I tend to think that, if I were interested in resuming employment in companies rather than for myself, my career opportunities could only improve by moving somewhere where English is the vernacular.

A friend likes to say that (economically) Israel has taken the worst aspects of socialism and the worst aspects of capitalism and put them together!

I’ll conclude this point with a piece of advice I’ve heard countless times ‘on the DL’ by those far more experienced and knowledgeable than I:

The best way to work in Israel is to work for a foreign company!


6: Better Rental Apartments


Image may contain: indoor
One of the classics from the Facebook page mentioned.

Seriously!

Given that I can’t envision owning property here in the near future, this is one that hits close to home, excuse the pun.

Israeli rental apartments — at least those that are not furnished — tend to come with nothing more than an air conditioner on the wall (if that).

Catering a Shabbat meal I was invited to as guest — as only happens in Nachlaot.
I will get to my love of gastronorm pans and professional restaurant cookware at some point on this blog. Below is the miserable excuse for a stove that I cooked on for four years.

For four years, I didn’t have a stove in my kitchen save for those plug-in electric things.

For four years I also barely cooked and subsisted on a diet of mostly falafel and burekas resulting in the premature development of gallbladder disease for which I received a virtually cost-free Israeli operation (demonstrating perfectly how a country’s pros and cons can balance one another out!).

(And for two years I voluntarily didn’t operate a refrigerator; another day’s story).

My current apartment, although of a relatively decent standard and commanding a respectable rent, does not have a fitting for a dishwasher because no one envisioned it would be needed and is so thoroughly saturated with defects that I feel like I’ve spent the majority of the last month talking to electricians and handy-men.

Clothes dryers are considered luxuries and the overall standard of both construction and repair work is atrocious and coupled with a unique “the customer is wrong and needs to be argued with to prove that to him/her” attitude.

There is actually a reason for all this deprivation that I only recently discovered.

As the Taub Center researchers pointed out, capital assets are now more valuable than work in Israel. Before the tech explosion, property in Israel used to be cheap, and many native-born Israelis comes from families that own multiple properties throughout the country— a few of which can be rented as investment properties to freiers like I to develop a nice source of passive income.

In short: Israel does not have a strong traditional culture of renting and those that own rentals tend to see them as “turn a quick buck” assets.

Like all landlords, Israelis do not invest in them as they might in their own homes, which I discovered as soon as I began being entertained in real Israeli homes and standing aghast as I watched homeowners loading dishes into dishwashers those cool machines they had back in Ireland that automatically do the dishes.

Another plug socket bites the dust!

Quite amusingly, plugs routinely simply pull out of the walls because — for many years — loose vacuum fittings were the preferred means of wall mounting them. I gather this happens whatever the relation to your dwelling might be.

The spartan standard of rental apartments here is excellently appreciated by visiting a very funny Facebook page called (in English) “Apartments in Israel That Depress Me” which documents both the apartments themselves and the equally ridiculous behavior of slumlords, which I am well-acquainted with.

Increasingly, the sorry state of the housing market is an issue that helps straddle the sabra – oleh gap and there is a real societal push for cheaper housing (and cottage cheese!)

(Speaking of sorry rental apartments — I was once forced out of an apartment as the landlord destroyed my toilet in order to try repair a leak and then failed to offer me an alternative – screenshot below).

I was actually living in this squalid city center dwelling when the landlord decided to pull out the bathroom while I was at work to remedy a leak — without providing me with a replacement toilet or floor. The incident was apparently featured in a blog.

If I can find my favorite of the lot (the toilet positioned on a loft directly above the cooking area, but uncovered), I will add it!


7: Miscellaneous Other Things

Better in Israel ??

Better in Ireland ??

Less second hand smoke: Ireland is actually a world leader when it comes to banning secondhand smoke. It was the first country in the world to completely ban smoking in indoor workplaces. Additionally, the volume of smokers in Ireland is lower than it is in Israel. As an asthmatic, secondhand smoke is one of my arch nemeses. Besides there being a lot more smokers in Israel, the ban on secondhand smoking is routinely openly flouted (see above remark in the freier section about strict observance of laws being a typical freier move).


A Couple More Good Things About Israel


As I cut this section of the blog short in order to not run into Shabbat and jumped straight to writing the conclusion, let me add in a few things that I missed and which I will develop upon at a later time. In my opinion:

  • Israel has better fruit!
  • Israel has tastier food

In Conclusion

Shabbat is about to start so I need to get ready to go to a Shabbat meal, which is a cultural aspect that I greatly enjoy!

This has been my rough comparison between Israel and Ireland which I will try to update a little over the coming weeks.

My chief complaint about Israel remains the cost of living followed by some “cultural” aspects, to use a polite euphemism.

On the other hand, there are many aspects that I greatly enjoy.

If, in the course of engaging in some grumbling and satire I gave the impression that I hate living here despite my Zionism I have failed in offering a fair evaluation.

But when it comes to those genuine downsides which I have tried to elucidate: I know that countless immigrants share the exact same grievances and think that the culture of silence that surrounds this whole issue is detrimental to achieving necessary change.

Put as succinctly as possible, living as an immigrant in Israel is very challenging. Compared to the Irish emigrant communities I knew while living, briefly, in London and New York, the few Irish ex-pats I have met here (most not Jewish) tend to be a lot less gung-ho about it than those who call more conventional emigrant destinations — like London, New York, or even Australia — their adopted home. This is stuff from off the record conversations that wouldn’t be found in a Nefesh b’Nefesh brochure.

The most entertaining piece of advice for transversing those rough patches was unsurprisingly given to me by an Irish guy living in the south of the country, who said something like this:

“Yeah, it can be tough at times alright. When it’s tough, I drink a bit more. When it’s grand, I drink a bit less”

Like many emigrants, I still feel very connected to Ireland and greatly and chiefly miss being close to family, friends and craic —that unique breed of fun and humor that I have scarcely encountered here, at least as the Irish do it.

It’s also challenging at times living in one of the few countries in the world that has a vanishingly small Irish community (the few that are here tend to live around Tel Aviv and have wound up for romantic, rather than idealistic, reasons).

Although on the plus side that forces me to tolerate the company of Americans and excludes the possibility of ever being drawn into an Irish bubble.

Customer service, better manners, and an Amazon website that was actually useful would be good too.

As well as the countless other things I have glossed over or omitted entirely (over-regulation of small business, and the often stifling bureaucracy in general, is a big gripe).

On the flip side, I enjoy a vibrant Jewish life here, have circuited the traditional employment paradigm by (at least for the past year) managing to work for myself while keeping an eye out for better conventional opportunities, and — most importantly — can enjoy a bottle of wine on my roof in sunshine for most of the year.

Until next time!