11 Incredible Things About Israel
What do we know about Israel except that it is the utmost importance for the three monotheistic religions?
I almost didn't know anything before I moved there. From my point of view of newcomer, French looking Asian and non-Jewish, here are a few things that I find really unique in Israel.
First, I would say that moving to Israel was not an easy task, it was very different than moving to Hong Kong for example. It was also a different motive: I moved to Hong Kong for a job and I moved to Israel for love (here is the post about my full story). It made me feel more vulnerable and dependent, not only on an emotional level but also on an official one, as the visa you need to apply for is called "partner visa". This type of visa only allows you to work in the country, and under harder tax conditions than a regular citizen and solely depends on your relationship with your local partner. It can also be an administrative nightmare that can take months and you need to psychologically prepare yourself to struggle against a brainless administrative machine that shows absolutely no empathy and treats you like you owe them something.
Yet, beside moving there for love, it is true that I was also very curious to discover this mysterious country, to understand more about this small piece of land which is the object of so much passion. I was also in a stage of my life where I had travelled already for one year while teaching yoga, and the idea to settle down with my partner in his country where I could keep teaching yoga was not seen as a sacrifice.
So here are 11 facts about Israel that I find the most surprising, fun or admirable about this fabulous country.
1. To Speak Chinese Worths Gold
If you can speak Chinese in the Holy land, you have the guarantee to find a job pretty easily, as it is a pretty rare skills in Israel. There are an increasing number of Israeli students who are learning Chinese and go to China to deepen their skills but still there are not enough Chinese-speaker in the country compared to the need of the market. China and Israel have now a lot of mutual interests and their economic and diplomatic relationships are getting tighter each year. There are currently many direct flights between China and Israel and many businessmen and delegations travel to and from China every day. The number of groups of Chinese tourists coming to Israel has also been booming in the last couple of years.
I had worked as a translator English to Chinese for those groups of Chinese tourists. It was a rich and challenging experience. I had to study everything about the country, on a historical, political, religious, socio-economical and cultural level. Having myself absolutely no religious education background as I grew up in an atheist family, I learned how to explain to people who doesn't know anything about monotheist religions what make those religions different from each other, explain them that Jesus was Jewish (it sounds weird to me the first time), why Jewish people were disseminated all over the world. But also why there is the West Bank and Gaza, what was ethnically the difference between the Muslims and the Druzes...
One of the things I am so grateful for about this job is how much I learned about religions and the power they have on men and how they have shaped and are still shaping History. I remember how emotional I felt the first time, I was in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, seeing an official mass surrounded by Christians from all over the world, some almost crying to be there in this exceptional moment. I remember how intense it was to walk on the Way of the Cross, the path that Jesus followed according the tradition, before he was crucified.
The irony of all this, is that the more I learned about those questions and tried to explain, the more everything looks absurd to me. It also confused me, and at some point I almost felt uncomfortable living in this country as I was diving deeper into its religious, historical and political dimensions. I realized how living in Israel was so much more than living in any other country in the world and that people could judge you. For example when going back to France, I would carefully choose to say or not that I was living in Israel depending on who I was talking with, as I was always afraid that it could be interpreted and of course if would generate some endless debates or provocations.
2. To Be Chinese/ To Look Chinese can also be A great Advantage
Most of the Chinese living in Israel came to work in the construction field and have a special visa for that. They are famous to be hard workers, fast, disciplined and don't mind working overtime or on weekend (typical of Chinese mentality of hard work), which explains why they became more popular among the construction companies than Turkish or Arabs workers which are geographically closer. This year, China and Israel have signed an agreement that will open the path for thousands of construction workers to start working in Israel, allowing them to come to Israel within 6 months. So as I was working with tourist agencies, I also heard sad stories of Chinese men coming as Chinese tourists to Israel and disappearing in the nature one day after they arrived. They probably believe that they can make more money here and will be able to send money back to their families stayed in China.
I was amused to see that in Chinese or Asian style restaurants, the staff in the kitchen is mostly Chinese looking. And I was always wondering how those people ended up there, if they were chef by profession for example, if they came to Israel specially for this. So one day, as I was having dinner in one of the famous chain of Asian cuisine restaurant in Tel Aviv, I asked the waiter about them. He told me that they were former workers in the construction and they had been "poached" and attracted to work for them in exchange of a very good salary. He said that most of the time they didn't speak Hebrew and didn't know how to cook before joining them. The restaurant had train them to cook and read Hebrew in order to read orders and that's how they become chefs in a few days ! I was really happy to see that to look Chinese can be helpful and advantageous sometimes in some parts of the world.
3. Israel Is The Country With The Most Vegan People Per Capita In The World
Israel is the country with the most vegetarian people in the world after India and the country with the more vegan people in the world. It is estimated that five percent of the population (about 400,000) not longer eat any animal derived product. The good thing is that there are many vegetarian and vegan choices in every restaurants, even in burger and meat places. For example, Domino sells a vegan pizza made with soy cheese exclusively in Israel !
I have tried to understand why Israel has been swept by this vegan revolution and became the most vegan country on Earth and I have heard different answers. Among them was a vegan activist video that went viral in the country ago and because Israel is such a small country, it has spread super fast. Additionally, a lot of the Israeli cuisine is already vegan. Foods like hummus, falafel, aubergine puree (baba ganush), Tahine, fresh vegetables salads are some of the most common dishes in Israel. I also heard that because many Israeli wanted to keep kosher, they were already used to cut certain foods out of their diets, and as nearly all vegan products are already kosher, it make things easier for them.
4. The Strong Sense Of Community of jewish people Is Not a Myth
Israeli and Jewish people are one of the most tigh-knit community I have ever seen. For one of the most important holiday in the Jewish tradition, called Pesach or Passover, there were many posts on Facebook about people offering food at their places for others who would have no place to go on that evening.
In the neighborhood where I live, there is a group in What's App that gathers all the young people living in this neighborhood, around 70 people. Everyone is free to write there to ask or offer something. For example, one night, I needed a ride from Tel Aviv to my place so I asked in the group and several people offered me a ride. Another example, one day someone wrote in the group that he needed a router for his internet. We had a spare one at home, so we told him he could come to pick it. 30 minutes later, someone we didn't know came to pick a router and was very happy, and we were very happy we could help.
I have another example that shows well the extraordinary solidarity in the community while I was traveling in India. An Israeli lady got a car accident with a rickshaw and was admitted in a hospital in New Delhi. She was travelling with a tourist group but her group had to keep moving so she stayed by herself at the hospital. Her daughter was in Israel at that time and posted on Facebook about this, asking other Israelis traveling in Delhi to visit her mother at the hospital to support her. Within a few days, this lady received many visits of random Israeli travelers who didn't even know her but brought flowers, food, took selfies with her and posted them on Facebook to show her daughter that her mom was not alone. This sense of solidarity really touched me and blowed me away.
5. The Week Starts On Sunday And Every Friday People Go To Their Parents For Shabat Dinner
Israel is one of the only countries in the world that starts its calendar week on a Sunday. It took me a while to integrate this concept and I actually did when I started to work in an office, because honestly when you are a yoga teacher or a freelance you don't really care which day of the week it is, you are free to create your weekend every day. So when I started working in an office, I realized that I should start to be happy on Wednesday, the old Thanks God Its Friday become Thanks God Its Thursday !
So Saturday, the day of Shabat, is the equivalent of our Sunday. There is no public transportation, and offices, shops and businesses are closed. In some areas of Jerusalem for example, the city is like a ghost city, there is nobody in the street, no car, as it is not allowed to drive during Shabat. In one of the most orthodox district of the city, the authorities have been until closing the area to cars as there were reports of very religious people throwing stones at any car that would drive during Shabat ! It also shows the power of religious people in this country, instead of condemning those who are throwing stones, the problem is simply "solved" in the opposite way.
So Saturday is the last day of the week in the Jewish calendar and Friday is the equivalent of our Saturday except that instead of going for drink or party with friends in the evening, here you go to Shabat dinner at your partner's family. And it can be a pain for the foreign partners. I found out that to have dinner every Friday at his partner's parents is something really unique to Israel and unknown in the French culture for example. So if you are lucky, the family of your partner speaks good English and you can enjoy good food and nice conversations.
6. Hebrew Is Not So Hard To Learn as a language
The Hebrew language dates back to the Second Millenium BCE and has not been spoken for more than 2000 years. It is actually a revived death language. and was revived as a spoken and literary language in the 19th century by Eliezer Ben Yehuda. So when you learn the language, it is very fun to see that there are a lot of words that doesn't exist in Hebrew and that have been imported and directly converted into Hebrew (like in Japanese) such as "chocolate", "university", "autobus", "sport", “ketchup” and many others.
And as a French-speaker, learning Hebrew was not so hard. I found out that once you learnt the system of alphabet, get used to the fact that it is read and written from right to left, and the fact that there are not really vowels, the most difficult part is done. Hebrew grammar is pretty simple with only three tenses (future, past and present), compared to the six or seven tenses that we have in French. Hebrew does have feminine and masculine but there are tricks that will help a lot to guess the gender of a word. For example 90% of time, a word that finished with ה "he", ת "tav", or ות "ot" will be feminine.
Similarly to Chinese language, I also find Hebrew to be a very logical and direct language, purified of any prepositions or complicated grammatical rules and what we call "exceptions to the rule" in the French language. For example, if I shall translate something like "I am going to the supermarket", in French the "to the" can be many different words according to what comes after. In Hebrew it is pretty simple, we just need to add ל "le" in front of the name and it works (אני הולך למסעדה), and in Chinese it will be even more simple there is no preposition so it would literally be "I go supermarket".
So like Chinese language, Hebrew language has a high "entry cost" for a new learner because the whole system and logic is different than the one we are used to in European languages but once you have passed this entrance barrier, the difficulty curve will flatten and all you have to do is to remember the vocabulary and the verbs forms.
7. Everyone Knows Everyone
Literally speaking, the country is so small and with its 8 million inhabitants, this sentence is not just a simple proverb. There is an idea called the "six degrees of separation" that states that all human being are six or less degrees away from each other, so in Israel, the rule is there is only two degrees of separation between every Israeli.
So the first thing you do when you meet an Israeli abroad is to play "pitzuchim", literally meaning "cracking the nuts", trying to see which connexions you have in common. It is about asking each other where each other are from, served the army service, studied... until the first common connexion appears. Basically, after two or three questions the game is over.
8. Everything Is Happening On Facebook
This is related to the two points above, first small population and second, strong sense of community. For example, the easiest and fastest way to find a new flat, a flatmate or a job is through Facebook groups. Even when Israelis travel abroad they have specific Facebook group by country to share live tips and help each other in case of emergency. They have very specific groups such as "Israeli in South America", "India 2017", "Jobs for Chinese Speakers". When I was traveling in India, those groups were the most reliable and fastest sources of information that I could find, provided that you can read and write Hebrew of course.
I found three of my jobs in Israel through Facebook. I found my last job thanks to a post on Facebook. My partner wrote a post on his Facebook personal page about the fact that I was looking for a job, giving a short description of my profile and a picture. The day after, we received a call from a friend of a friend of him who asked me to send him my resume. And the following day, I had a phone call from a start up company who offered me to do an interview. Two days later, they offered me a position as a sales and marketing executive in their company with a very decent salary and working conditions.
9. A Meal in McDonald Worths More Than One Hour Minimum Salary
The cost of living is expansive and the average salary level is low. People work much more than in Europe, in France and Germany at least. Israelis work on average 45 hours a week (9 hours per day) while French work in general 35 hours, sometimes 39 hours a week but get paid well for this extra time. French have a minimum of five weeks annual leave per year, and many of my friends get even six or seven weeks. I often hear them saying they have too much holiday and don’t find time to take them throughout the year or couldn't find friends to go with them on vacation. Ah France, what a beautiful country that I really miss for those reasons !
The cost of living in Israel is incredibly high. I remember that when I moved there, one of the first things I had to do was to buy a few furnitures or household materials to settle in our new place, so my partner and I went to Ikea. I was shocked by the prices that were higher than in France but also by the lack of choice, there was basically no other provider than IKEA where we could buy affordable house appliances. The first time I went to a supermarket, prices were far from the ones I was used to in France. Basic food products such as bread, yogurts, water costed in general 2 to 3 times more than in France, even if they were locally produced. To have a general idea, a meal in an inexpensive restaurant costs 15 euros in average. A meal at McDonalds in Israel costs in average 11 euros while the minimum salary is only 7 euros per hour and average monthly net salary after tax is 2,230 Euros. More here.
10. People In Their 30's Are Still Students
It is compulsory to serve in the army at 18 year-old for both sexes, three years for men and two years for women. After the army service, a lot of those young people prefer to enjoy life before starting studying. So a lot of them work in temporary jobs to save money and to travel for a more or less long period of time, usually 6 months up to 12 months. Then only when they come back, they will start considering studying. So it is very common to meet people in Israel who are 28 or 29 and are still students.
I was amazed to see how they really take their time to think about what they want to do, what they like, and don't feel in a rush to start studying or working. They also come back from travel with a more mature way of thinking, a more open mind, they also probably know themselves better and are more ready to make important decisions. This is one of the aspects in Israel that I really admire. I was also surprised to meet a number of people who were studying topic such as child psychology, therapy with animals, social work, music production... Nothing about money or "carrier oriented" but what they truely believed was fitting them.
I personally didn't know what I wanted to do after high school, I was 18 and did't know much about the world, about myself. I chose to study business because it looks cool and I had good scores enough. I don't regret because it also allows me to arrive where I am today, but if I had to choose again, I would have surely choose to study something different. In France, we will rush into studies, any studies, just because we have been told that we needed to start working as soon as possible and that working was one of the main goals in life. So many young people end up studying subjects that don't really offer any job perspective after such as psychology or sociology at the university because they are free of any entrance examination and free of charge. They study with no real intention or idea what to do after, because they have to study something, and not surprisingly many will drop the university after the first year.
11. People Dress With Shirt And Jeans For Wedding
It is not a joke, I have been to two weddings so far and this is an usual dress code among the male guests. The wearing style is in general very casual in Israel. It is very rare to see men wearing suits in the street, even in a business area of Tel Aviv. In my office, one of my boss was wearing Crocs and the other one was just walking bare foot all day long. I was myself going to the office with flip flop and was never worried that someone would tell me anything.
I also have noticed that Israeli girls usually don't wear handbags but small and cute backpacks instead. This is far from other cities in the world where I have lived, where women have nice and elegant branded leathered bags. I usually also don't see many women wearing high heels in Israel and I think that most of the people wear flip flops or sandals, which makes sense as Tel Aviv is a city by the beach. When I went back to Paris during summer, I was the only one who was wearing flip flops in the street and my friends would smile at this.
So now you can imagine that in a wedding, men will swap their T shirts, shorts and sandals against shirt, jeans and Converse and I'm not even talking about a white shirt even, checked shirt would usually do the job.
There are many other things that I would like to talk about here but it would be too long, I invite you to discover this country by yourself, and to contact me privately if you need any recommendations!
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