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Tag: Tel Aviv

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Well I officially have less than one month until I return home to New York-- I can't believe study abroad is almost over! I'm going to miss Tel Aviv and Israel so much and cannot explain how incredible this experience was. I would do it again in a heartbeat!

However, before I leave I have a ton of final papers and projects to do (about 7) which is becoming difficult to complete because the weather has been absolutely amazing (aka lots of beach days)! I'm really going to have to buckle down and get all of them done before I leave.

Although I love Israel, I'm also really excited to be going home! My mom was able to visit me this week but I haven't seen my dad since I left so I'm mostly excited to see him. Also, I miss Long Island food! Bacon egg & cheese sandwiches, great Italian food, etc-- Israeli food is great but it just doesn't compare.

What I will miss about Israel is something I cannot put into words-- the people, the food, the beach, my friends, everything! I feel so at home in Israel and will definitely be back several times in my life. If you have the chance to study abroad, and you're particularly interested in the Middle East, I highly recommend studying in Israel. Even if you can't study abroad here, please try to come visit this beautiful country and understand its people, culture, politics, and history because it is really worthwhile!

This is my final goodbye! Shalom!

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    There is a common stereotype that all abroad programs and courses are a complete joke— I’m here to dispel that misconception! Depending on the program, your courses could be the easiest you’ll ever take, or potentially even harder than a GW course. I would say that the courses at my school fall somewhere in between. I definitely thought that they would be easier than they actually are. In fact, the courses that seemed the easiest (humanities) turned out to be the most difficult and required extra preparation.
       Not only are the classes more difficult than I assumed, but they are graded very differently than GW courses. At GW, we have portions of our grade that goes towards homework, midterm, final, and attendance. In most of my classes, our final itself is 50-70% of our grade, 15-40% midterm, and 10-15% is attendance. In other words, you have significantly fewer assignments, however you also have only two opportunities to do well in the class which, in my opinion, is a worse than the former.
       Lastly, and most importantly, our finals are for the most part all written take-home papers. This sounds ideal however all of the classes have these papers due within the same week which will be very stressful. To best prepare for these tests or papers, you must be cognizant of their deadlines and start working on them as soon as you’re given a prompt.
       Midterms are over for me and I’m finally on Passover break! I’ll be spending my travels in Europe and will have many more stories for my blog very soon! Ciao for now!

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Shalom again! I’m back with some more updates! It is now the middle of February and we just finished our ulpan for the semester!! Ulpan was such an incredible experience because I went from knowing no Hebrew to being conversationally fluent in Hebrew. Now that our ulpan is over, we have a 10-day break! Many students are headed to Europe and I am too! I will be traveling within Spain and visiting some of my other friends that are abroad. Once we get back from our break, we will finally start classes which is really exciting. 

Now that I have been in Tel Aviv for 5 weeks, here are my top 5 favorite things to do in the city:

  1. The beach: As I mentioned in my last blog, the “winter”
     in TLV has been exceptionally warm! Many days after ulpan we would hop onto the bus and go straight to the beach. There’s nothing better than friends, sun, and good food!
  2. HaCarmel Market: also known as a “shuk”, these open air flea markets are where many Israelis will buy their groceries. It is by far my favorite one— mostly because they have the best Venezuelan arepas in the world! The food that you find in this shuk is unmatched. 
  3. Nightlife: The nightlife in TLV is incredible! TLV is such a young, diverse city and you can meet different people from all walks of life just on Dizengoff Street. 
  4. #FoodieLife: I am a HUGE foodie! I love to eat, cook, look, and talk about food! Many people would think that there’s only Israeli-style food here (falafel, shwarma, hummus) but they would be wrong. TLV has such a diverse cuisine scene with Japanese, Chinese, Iranian, Middle Eastern, Turkish, Mexican, etc. In fact, outside of Tokyo, TLV has the most Japanese restaurants.
  5. Shabbat: My friends and I love to cook a nice Shabbat dinner every other Friday night. We will buy fresh challah and other fruits/veggies from the shuk, hang out, watch a movie and relax like you’re supposed to do on Shabbat!

I hope you all get to experience all of these things in Israel as well! So long for now!

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Shalom! My first few weeks in Israel have been so incredible and I couldn’t wait to share! I landed in Tel Aviv two weeks ago with so many emotions running through me. I was excited to be in one of my favorite cities, anxious about making friends, and naturally slightly concerned about safety. However all of my fears have been settled over the past few weeks. Tel Aviv is such an incredible city with a lively nightlife scene, picturesque beaches, and security measures like I’ve never seen. I am also fortunate to have the greatest roommates. We spend almost every weekend on the beach, eating hummus, and doing ulpan (intensive Hebrew) homework! Although life has been mostly carefree, I have stumbled upon some challenges in these past few weeks. The first challenge is the schedule of our ulpan. Our intensive Hebrew class is 8:30am-1pm from Sunday-Thursday with a test every week for four weeks. The teachers are incredibly talented and I am shocked at how great my Hebrew has gotten since I’ve been here. However, the schedule is very demanding and the amount of material can be overwhelming at times. The second challenge has been budgeting for city life. As we all know, DC is one of the most expensive cities and I assumed that TLV, like some other major Middle Eastern cities, would be relatively inexpensive and affordable. In reality, Tel Aviv is definitely comparable to Washington DC in terms of living expenses, which is something I wish I budgeted more for. Lastly, one of the biggest differences between Israel and America is Shabbat. Shabbat is observed from Friday afternoon-Saturday afternoon. Because of Tel Aviv’s secular society, some stores and restaurants are still open, however most of the city does shut down which makes travel and social gatherings very difficult. Despite the smaller challenges I have faced, I am looking forward to traveling within Israel and to other countries, starting regular classes, and continuing my education on Israel and all it has to offer. Lehitra’ot!

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By reuben31

So, why Israel? In my first blog in this series, written all the way back in the beginning of February, I posed this question to myself. Prior to leaving, many of my friends asked me why I chose to study abroad in Israel. I always felt disingenuous in my answers. I would reply with some cliché about finding my Jewish identity, or experiencing what it really is like to live in Israel, but to be honest, I was not quite sure why exactly I had chosen to study in Israel. At the beginning of the semester, in the first blog I wrote, I hoped that by the end of the semester I might have an answer to this question. So here goes nothing.

As a Jewish person in the US, before my time in Israel, I saw my Jewish identity as a religion. But since being here I figured out that being Jewish is not a religion at all. It’s an identity, it’s a community, it’s an ethnicity, it’s a group of people with common thought and morals and values and language and slang. So, first, I chose Israel because Israel feels like home. As cliché as that may sound, studying here has provided me with a sense of security, even in a place that at times has been insecure. When I have travelled in Europe and felt homesick and alone, I didn’t crave to hear an American accent, I craved to hear Hebrew, or see a yarmulke. My Jewish identity was torn down to its core here in Israel and built up even stronger than it was prior.

Israel is more than what one hears in the news, from either side of the political spectrum. It is more than what lively campus groups from both arenas argue it to be on campus. It is more than the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it is more than just a Jewish homeland. Israel is a diverse, beautiful, vibrant, and unique country. It is a Jewish state, it is a democracy, it is surrounded on all sides by unstable war-torn countries, and yet, through all of this complexity, Israel is thriving. After generations of persecution and massacre, one might expect Israelis to be afraid, but they are simply not. They are strong and they are proud. So second, I chose Israel to sort through these complex issues and find a true understanding of what Israel actually is. I didn’t want to be told by the news or any group what to think of the State, and studying here this semester I have found, for myself, what Israel really is all about. And that connection and understanding that I have created with this place is something that will last with me for a lifetime.

...continue reading "So, why Israel?"

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By reuben31

So, why Israel? In my first blog in this series, written all the way back in the beginning of February, I posed this question to myself. Prior to leaving, many of my friends asked me why I chose to study abroad in Israel. I always felt disingenuous in my answers. I would reply with some cliché about finding my Jewish identity, or experiencing what it really is like to live in Israel, but to be honest, I was not quite sure why exactly I had chosen to study in Israel. At the beginning of the semester, in the first blog I wrote, I hoped that by the end of the semester I might have an answer to this question. So here goes nothing.

As a Jewish person in the US, before my time in Israel, I saw my Jewish identity as a religion. But since being here I figured out that being Jewish is not a religion at all. It’s an identity, it’s a community, it’s an ethnicity, it’s a group of people with common thought and morals and values and language and slang. So, first, I chose Israel because Israel feels like home. As cliché as that may sound, studying here has provided me with a sense of security, even in a place that at times has been insecure. When I have travelled in Europe and felt homesick and alone, I didn’t crave to hear an American accent, I craved to hear Hebrew, or see a yarmulke. My Jewish identity was torn down to its core here in Israel and built up even stronger than it was prior.

Israel is more than what one hears in the news, from either side of the political spectrum. It is more than what lively campus groups from both arenas argue it to be on campus. It is more than the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it is more than just a Jewish homeland. Israel is a diverse, beautiful, vibrant, and unique country. It is a Jewish state, it is a democracy, it is surrounded on all sides by unstable war-torn countries, and yet, through all of this complexity, Israel is thriving. After generations of persecution and massacre, one might expect Israelis to be afraid, but they are simply not. They are strong and they are proud. So second, I chose Israel to sort through these complex issues and find a true understanding of what Israel actually is. I didn’t want to be told by the news or any group what to think of the State, and studying here this semester I have found, for myself, what Israel really is all about. And that connection and understanding that I have created with this place is something that will last with me for a lifetime.

...continue reading "So, why Israel?"

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By reuben31

While there are plenty of political and social issues involving Israel, in the country itself there is hardly any discrimination, racism, or hatred that is directed at any specific group. This results for the most part from the fact that in order to immigrate to Israel, you have to be Jewish. While there are Israeli Arabs who were granted citizenship when Israel declared independence in 1948, the fact that almost all of the country is Jewish creates a fairly level playing field for most. There are Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and Spain, Ethiopian Jews, and Latin American Jews all living together.

Among all of these groups I feel relatively comfortable and at home. As someone of Ashkenazi Jewish descent who grew up around Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews at summer camp, coming to Israel I believed that I wouldn’t experience a culture shock when it came to Israelis. However, through my time here, I have found that there is one particular group of Israelis that I have experienced a certain culture shock around. In the 1990’s, after the fall of the Soviet Union and an agreement between Mikhail Gorbachev and Shimon Peres, almost one million Jews immigrated to Israel from the Former Soviet Union. This changed the state of Israel forever.

Russian-speaking Israelis have been one of the main sources of the success of the country as a “Start Up Nation.” Jews from the Former Soviet Union arrived in Israel with advanced degrees in science and technology and quickly flourished in the new capitalist nation they found themselves in. A large proportion of the highly successful tech companies in Israel are founded and run by Russian-speaking Israelis, and the language most often heard spoken among doctors all across the country is Russian. As a result of the size and success of the immigration of Jews from the Former Soviet Union to Israel, across the country there are whole towns with store signs only in Russian, Russian newspapers, Russian television, and Russian as the primary language.

...continue reading "Russian-Speaking Israel"

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By reuben31

Israeli academics, up to this point in the semester, have not been vastly different from academics at GW. Most, if not all, of my professors received their Masters or Doctorate degrees from American universities, so the structure of class tends to be rather familiar: a reading or two to be completed before class, and a PowerPoint lecture that covers material discussed in those readings. As a result, I’ve slipped into a studying routine that’s about the same as it is at GW, and in a foreign country with many new and different experiences, this has been somewhat of a comfort.

However, as the semester is about halfway over and midterms have begun, I have started to notice the Israeli culture and state of mind creeping into my academics in a way that is patently Israeli. At GW, professors may give a written, in-class midterm, and several weeks before the exam provide a study guide to allow students to focus in on what they need to study. This model provides clarity for the students in order to study as well as they can for the midterm.

Israel, however, likes to live constantly on the edge. Whether it’s the brink of extinction the Jewish people faced less than a century ago, or the almost constant threat of war from surrounding groups and countries, Israeli culture is inherently about risk taking and living in the moment – for each day could be ones last. This mentality has undoubtedly found its way into academic culture as well. Across the board, all of my professors have resisted the attempts of American students to pry study guides or exam descriptions out of them. This is not because they want us to just consistently study and be prepared, as my classmates and I initially believed. Rather, the professors explained that giving us these study guides or exam descriptions would hinder our ability to enjoy the moment. Spring has begun, its warm outside, the beach is a short walk away, why would we want study guides for exams with that right outside?

...continue reading "Midterms in Israel: Just Enjoy"

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By reuben31

As a political science major and news “junkie,” I have been doing as much as I can to stay informed in regards to American news stories during my time in Israel. None of these stories has affected my classmates and I abroad more than the Parkland shooting and the activism that has been sparked in its aftermath. The gun control debate in the US has consistently been a controversial, heated, and emotional issue with many suggestions for change but no clear correct solution. For my classmates and I, being in Israel has added another dimension of complexity to this debate.

In Israel there is mandatory military service, meaning that just about every Israeli, regardless of what their service entailed, has training on how to use a gun. Beyond this, in Israel, soldiers are allowed to go home on weekends, and because of the quick-changing nature of the conflicts the country faces the soldiers bring their assault rifles home with them. As a result, simple train or bus rides can have 10 or more large assault rifles riding along.

As an American who knows many who have been affected by mass shootings that utilize this weapon, these guns on the backs of soldiers initially made me incredibly nervous and scared. For Israelis, however, no one so much as bats an eye. These guns don’t represent mass shootings or heated and emotional debates to them. Rather, they represent safety and security from the conflicts that surround the nation.

...continue reading "Israel and Guns: A Cultural Difference"

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By reuben31

“Why are you studying abroad in Israel?”

This was a question I frequently received prior to departing for my semester at Tel Aviv University, and it was a question that I struggled somewhat to answer. Usually my stock response was, “Because, as a Jew, I feel that it is important to create my own connection with the Jewish State.” While this felt like the right answer to the question, in my first weeks studying in Israel I have found that the answer is far more complex than this.

As almost a month has passed since I landed in Tel Aviv, I am starting to understand how important my immersion into Israeli culture truly is. Starting the first day, I could tell that this experience was going to be different than that of my friends studying abroad in Europe. Aesthetically, politically, geographically, and culturally, Israel is just different. Walking off the plane into Ben-Gurion Airport, beside new friends from across the United States, I could sense in the way people were walking, talking, eating, and interacting that my semester would be eye opening.

My first week in Tel Aviv was a whirlwind of newness and a bit of culture shock. From my 3rd floor apartment in a building with no elevator, to my kitchen with no oven, to the mesh of Hebrew, Arabic, and English being spoken around the complex, to my roommates from Middle Eastern countries I had barely heard of, I knew that my experience would not just be about Jewish identity.

...continue reading "(Welcome to Israel!)!ברוכים הבאים לישראל"

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