10 Ways Israel is More Awesome than the US

Before anyone gets their panties in a knot, this will be followed by a post on 10 Ways America is Better than Israel.  It's supposed to be a goofy list, so chill.  Now, without further ado.

1. The fast food is better and vaguely more healthy.  Sure, there's McDonald's and everything, but there's also cheap and fast shwarma, kabob and falafel, which always come with salad and pickles.  If you'd prefer something with less fat, the major Israeli coffee chain, Aroma, serves a variety of healthy sandwiches and salads.

2.  It's safe for high school students to go hang out around town at midnight.  There are actually special late-night bus routes on weekends to help them get home.

3.  Israel has a very "tea and cake" mentality.  Children doing fundraising for their activities will sell pieces of cake instead of candy bars.  The @ sign is called "strudel" in Hebrew.  In fact, a recent romantic pop song defines the wilderness as a place without strudel.

4.  People still listen to the radio!  The most popular station seems to be Galgalatz, which is a combination of international (i.e. American) and Israeli pop music.  Also, unlike the US, songs stay on the radio for a few years instead of just disappearing in the wake of the latest hit.

5.  Exercise equipment in the park.  A recent initiative installed a lot of exercise equipment into Israeli parks, disguised as playground equipment for adults.

6.  Non-Ashkenazi Jews.  Israel has them.  It makes things more interesting.

7.  Arab pastries.  Americans are vaguely familiar with baklava, by which I mean they use cheap nuts and serve portions that are 4-5 times too large.  Here you can get a nice little piece of baklawa after a meal, or you can buy an entire tray and hand pieces out to people in honor of your birthday.  Also, there are desserts other than baklawa.  My personal favorite is knafe, which is sweet cheese baked in between two layers of vermicelli noodles and drizzled with rose water.  The best!

8.  Fresh, local fruits and vegetables.  It makes all the difference in the flavor.

9.  People follow the news and know what's going on.  Radio stations play 5 minutes of news every hour.  News shows actually provide analysis, and anchors will argue with the politicians they are interviewing (a thing of beauty).

10.  Streets named after medieval linguists.  Maybe it's just me, but I find that ridiculously exciting.

Fun with Urban Legends (Part 2)

Urban Legend #2: Orthodox Jews have sex through a bed sheet


Like all silly myths, this one has an eensy-weensy kernel of truth to it.  Very religious Jews abstain from all affectionate contact, including hugging and sometimes even handshakes, with members of the opposite sex.  The exclusions to this rule are immediate relatives and spouses.  Additionally, sex and all physical contact that could plausibly lead to it are forbidden to married couples at certain times.  Someone decided to take these restrictions to the logical, albeit insane conclusion that religious couples are not permitted more physical contact than necessary for sex.  Obviously, the only way to prevent unnecessary physical contact is by having sex through a hole in a bed sheet.

Source: http://www.pvponline.com/2008/07/03/its-a-trap/

The truth is that Judaism as a religion is very into meaningful, good quality sex.  Sex is the woman's right, and the man's obligation.  A man cannot change jobs without his wife's permission if it would mean a reduction in the amount of sex to which she is entitled.  Friday night is designated "suggested sexy time."  Refusal to ever get completely naked with one's spouse is grounds for divorce.  Fetishes are permitted so long as they do not inherently require violating Jewish law.  Then there's this recent sociological study that demonstrates that, on average, women who separate from their husband during menstruation as required by Jewish law enjoy sex more.

A more in-depth explanation can be found at Snopes.

Conclusion: This is not the kind of religion that requires sex through a sheet.

If I Were Rothschild

The Jewess is writing today from Israel!  This has the interesting effect of changing all of her blogging buttons to Hebrew, and setting the default text direction from left to right.  Fortunately for us all, I figured out which of those links is supposed to mean "new post."

The big news in Israel these days are the "tent" protests; in all of the major cities, people are camping out to protest the high cost of living here relative to income.  For the sake of international comparison, a typical Israeli spends over a third of their income on housing.  Additionally, prices have risen dramatically for food, electricity, and gas.  The protesters on Rothschild Ave. in Tel Aviv, where the Jewess is primarily hanging out, have been getting the most attention as their encampment was the first and is one of the largest.  At one point, over 300 thousand people were out protesting.  Over the weekend, there were also concerts by prominent Israeli singers all over the country.

A typical protest slogan, which is unfortunate because there have been some pretty funny literary and historical references in other protest slogans.

There are several causes behind the rise in prices.  The first is the international economic crisis.  Although Israel did not face significant unemployment, the relative weakness of the dollar and Euro due to the recession have raised the price of imports for Israelis.  Another reason for the high prices is the cessation of the transfer of gas between Egypt and Israel.  That raises gas and electricity prices, as well as increasing the transportation costs for consumer goods.  The housing issue is much more complicated, and various people will give you various explanations for it.

A definite part of the problem is that most of the employment is found in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but it is not easy to increase the availability of housing there.  As a result, the continually increasing demand for housing pushes up prices.  Another certain reason is that current incentives favor luxury housing rather than affordable housing.  Luxury housing is always more profitable for private developers.  The Israeli government housing authority is also tasked with maximizing profit, thereby exacerbating the problem.  Some additional reasons that I can't verify including speculation in the housing market and the domination of real estate by tycoons.

The protesters have come under a lot of criticism.  It has been alleged that the protests are a fig-leaf for far left activists.  This is completely untrue, although as in all social protests of this sort, the left has been prominently involved.  Another complaint lodged against them is that, at the same time the protesters are complaining about prices, record numbers of Israelis are traveling abroad.  This is unfair, as the people traveling are generally older than the people protesting, and they are mostly traveling for short trips to Europe under special deals.  Some of the more rational critiques include that the protesters do not really have a specific set of demands on how to solve the problem, that they are not making good use of the policy levers available to citizens in a democracy, and that the government does not really have the resources to provide subsidies given how much of the prices are due to circumstances beyond their control.  The Jewess was especially unimpressed when the face of the protests, Dafni Lif, responded to the question of where the organizers are getting their resources from with the answer, "I'm not an Excel person; I'm a Word person."

So those are the protests.  The real question will be if the protesters can keep up the momentum after September 1, when the schools re-open and vacations are over.

Guiltapalooza

Since today is the 9th of the Jewish month of Av (Tisha B'Av), I thought I would dedicate this post to Jewish guilt.  Tisha B'Av is all about guilt.  It is one of only two fast days where the fast lasts 25 hours, and the other one is Yom Kippur, when we ask forgiveness for our sins.  Fasting in Judaism, incidentally, means no eating, drinking, unnecessary washing, sex, or wearing leather shoes.  Additional prohibitions for today include sitting on chairs and greeting people.

Tisha B'Av is not a good day.  The five misfortunes that led to it being declared a day of fasting include: the generation that left Egypt being sentenced by God to die wandering in the wilderness; the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians; the destruction of the second Temple by Rome; the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt by Rome; and the razing of the Temple Mount in revenge for the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

This is what happens when people mess with Rome.  That and nearly 2 million deaths.

However, the calamities didn't end once Tisha B'Av became a fast day.  Also on the 9th of Av: the First Crusade was declared in 1095, leading to the death of 10,000 Jews in the first month; the Jews were expelled from England in 1290; the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492; World War I broke out; and the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka began in 1942.

However, the truly weird thing is this.  We are totally, 100% convinced that this is all our fault.  The reason the Talmud gives for the destruction of the second Temple is not, "Because that's what happens when you get into a fight with the Roman Empire."  The reason is, "Because people didn't like each other, and said mean things about each other."

This is not only a good idea; it's God's law!

On Tisha B'Av we read from the Book of Lamentations, which was written following the destruction of the first Temple.  I will summarize Lamentations for you.
1. God delivered us to our enemies, so now life is filled with humiliation, poverty, starvation, rape and cannibalism.
2. This is our own damn fault for being bad people.
3. Repent.

So that's the holiday in a nutshell.  Also, we sit around singing dirges, such as Eli Tziyon.

Fun with Urban Legends (Part 1)

I was on the subway today when I saw a Jewish guy with a Jewish sleeve tattoo.  There is something ironic about a tattoo that says "[The Torah] is a tree of life to those who hold onto it," when the Torah also prohibits tattooing.  In any event, the sight inspired me to start a series of posts on urban legends.  These will include both false stories Jews believe, as well as false stories gentiles believe about Jews.  So without further ado, I present you with

Urban Legend #1: A person with tattoos may not be buried in a Jewish cemetery

Source: http://www.eviltattoo.com/

The way the story goes, a Jew who has a tattoo cannot be buried in a Jewish graveyard.  An exception is made for Holocaust survivors because they were tattooed against their will.  A grisly variant of the story even says that funeral homes will cut tattoos out of the skin before burial.  The recent trend of young Jews getting tattoos with religious symbolism is bringing this story back to prominence.  It is not at all obvious why anyone believes this.  Sure, tattoos are forbidden, but they are not any more forbidden than eating pork or lying under oath.  Why would violating this one commandment be so egregious that those who do it cannot be buried among their own people?

The answer, of course, is that it is total rubbish.  Interestingly, the only Jews I have heard who believe this are American.  Israelis have never even heard of such a thing, and secular Israelis often get tattoos.  One theory I have heard is that the story was told by nervous parents to stop their children from assimilating completely.  This would explain why the story doesn't exist in Israel, but it does not explain why tattoos.  Another theory is that, following the Holocaust, tattoos developed such a negative association in the older generation that the urban legend developed in order to prevent younger, more removed generations from opening old wounds.  This makes slightly more sense; when writing notes on ourselves in pen, my friends and I were frequently exhorted not to write on our forearms (hands were okay, though).  One might think, if this were the case, that the same story would also have developed in Israel.  However, geographic distance and the fact that Israelis are generally more knowledgeable about Judaism could explain this discrepancy.

For the sake of completeness, here is a summary of the rules on tattoos in Jewish law.

1.  Tattoos are forbidden.  Scarification, henna, and the like are permitted.
2.  If it is necessary to save a life or prevent death, tattoos are permitted.  Example include surgical tattoos.
3.  There is no obligation to get a tattoo removed once it has been applied.
4.  If you have one of the names of God tattooed on you, you can never be naked again.  Really.

Welcome to Ask a Jewess!

Welcome to the first post of my new blog, Ask a Jewess!  I freely admit the entire basis for this blog is Ask a Korean!, written by The Korean, which is itself inspired by the syndicated column, ¡Ask a Mexican!, written by Gustavo Arrellano.

This is the blog where you can ask any and all things Jewish.  Whether it's a question about Jewish culture, religion, current events, history, languages, et cetera, feel free to ask.  Just send an e-mail to AskAJewess@gmail.com, and your question will be answered post haste.

Thanks for visiting and I look forward to hearing your questions!