Year: 2019

Live the Life You Always Wanted In IMMANUEL!

Jumping Right In — To Live the Life We Wanted

Avraham Pollack, Immanuel

Ten years ago, when I was forty-five years old, we decided we’re just going to jump in and make the move. For many years, we knew that we were headed to live in Eretz Yisroel, but for practical reasons it just hadn’t happened. If we would have continued taking into consideration every one of the practicalities, we might have ended up staying in the US indefinitely. So, with just six thousand dollars in cash and without any work planned, we packed up our house and got ready to go. We received funding to transport a container of our goods and joined a Nefesh B’Nefesh charter flight.

I was already learning half-days with chavrusos, but in the small community of Charleston, South Carolina, which we lived in at the time, there was no kollel setup for those like me who would be interested in learning with a group. We looked into other communities that had such options, but we instead decided that if we were already going to move, what we really wanted was to be in Eretz Yisroel. My wife constantly said, “For two thousand years we have davened and cried for the ability to live in Eretz Yisroel, and now we can just get on a plane, and in a few hours’ time, we’ll be there — and even the ticket is paid for….” Though our two older children were teenagers already, they had grown up with the idea that Eretz Yisroel is the place for us to be.

As part of our preparations, I did my research and found a kollel in Yerushalayim that would be suitable for me. For the first seven years in Eretz Yisroel, I was learning in kollel full-time. Half of the funds we needed for our eight-thousand-shekel monthly budget (to cover all expenses including rent for our family of five), came in the form of financial support from abroad. During this time, people were coming to me in order to help sort out their conflicts, which I would do on a volunteer basis. I had experience in the field, as I was doing negotiations for my business when we had lived in the US. My wife suggested I study to become certified and turn this hobby into a parnassah. I am now practicing as a certified mediator, mostly working in the evenings.

We first lived in Cheftsiba, a neighborhood of Modi’in Illit near Kiryat Sefer, for about nine years. Though my wife is an engineer by training, she hadn’t worked in the field for many years. Originally from Switzerland but having lived in the US, she spoke both German and English. One day she saw an advertisement in one of the local bulletins looking for a German or English speaker for a kitchen-design company. She said, if they are looking for an English or German speaker, they really want a German speaker but will take someone who speaks English. That turned out to be the case. Now, for almost eight years B”H, my wife has been running a successful kitchen design business.

About two years ago we moved to the rapidly growing community of Immanuel. Today there are over a thousand families spanning all age groups, though most of the newcomers are young couples. They include Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Teimanim — both those who identify as mainstream Chareidi as well as some Charda”l. The Ashkenazim in Immanuel are predominantly Chassidish, but there is a small and growing Litvish kehilla as well. A sizable percentage of the residents are English speakers. There is an acceptance committee under the auspices of the community rabbonim to assure that newcomers are suitable for the community and that the community is fitting for them.

Residents place tremendous emphasis on educating their children, and there are a number of different schools. Lately, there has been talk about opening a Litvish yeshiva ketana (high school), which would take advantage of the quieter small-town setting more conducive to learning. People here are constantly working on enhancing their spiritual growth, and they value a pure and idealistic life. The community is known for its warmth, for excelling in chessed, and for emunah.

City Hall works together with rabbonim from all the kehillos. There are special activities and chugim for the benefit of the children and all residents, as well as a community library and swimming pool. There is a small shopping center and many small home-run businesses.

Housing is affordable with prices starting at about 600,000 shekels for a 2-bedroom apartment and there are many other options available including private villas. There is considerable construction underway.

A little more than an hour drive to Yerushalayim and under an hour from Bnei Brak, we have here in Immanuel a city full of fresh air and breathtaking views. There is also a walkway surrounding the entire city with a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains and the neighboring communities nestled within them, the streams, waterfalls and the wildlife.

The future is here! Come join us!

Affordable Housing—with Yerushalayim Still Within Reach

There was no way you could have convinced me that we weren’t going to live in Yerushalayim, but after we went every day for the first two weeks there to look for apartments within our budget, we realized that it would be just impossible for us.

We had heard from an acquaintance that their daughter was living in Modi’in Illit and paying only 1400 shekels a month for rent. (Now ten years later, as Modi’in Illit has developed to a full-fledged and bustling city, rent has gone up almost threefold!) We figured we could do the same, and with the money saved on rent, we could buy a car, which would get me to kollel in Yerushalayim, about a half-hour commute. Now, from Immanuel, it’s just a bit over an hour drive (if I don’t want to stay and learn in Immanuel).

P.S. More information about Immanuel is available on the website I have put together at http://emanuelcity.home.blog.

Reprinted with permission from Avira D’Eretz Yisroel.

או בטולך או בטולא דבר עשו

ספורנו עה”ת בראשית כ”ז כ”ט:
הוה גביר לאחיך. כי חשב שיהיה טוב ליעקב שתספיק לו נחלת א”י ושיחיה בה עם איזה שעבוד כדי שלא יטרוד נפשו מאוד בענייני גשמיי’ והבלי הנפסדים כמו שקרה לזרעו אחר כך כאמרו מתאב אני את גאון יעקב ושיהיה טוב לו שיהיה משועבד תחת אחיו כאמרם ז”ל אי בטולך אי בטולא דבר עשו מפני שידע שא”י היתה ראויה ליעקב בלבד לכן בזאת הברכה שחשב לברך את עשו לא הזכיר ברכת אברהם ולא ארץ ישראל כמו שהזכיר ליעקב כשהכירו וברכו.

DON’T LAUGH: Will Kollel Lead to Polygyny?

A bitter joke from Holyland Insights and Inspiration:

Yankel approached his Rosh Kollel and asked him if the 1000 year prohibition and ban of Rabbeinu Gershom for an Orthodox Man to take a second wife is already over. The Rebbe noted that is was still in effect but asked the young man why he was interested in taking another wife?

Yankel answered, “It’s hard to make it on one income these days…”

Unnatural ‘Elites’ Are Not Disinterested, nor Are They Experts. Not Even Close…

Is Elitophobia a Hate Crime?

By 

November 27, 2019

“The reason power corrupts,” said Kyle Rothweiller in an otherwise forgettable essay, “is that sooner or later its possessor comes to believe he deserves it.”

It’s always risky to climb above your station and look down on the swells. Daniel Defoe found that out the hard way. After publishing The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, in 1703, he went to the pillory followed by Newgate prison. He had made fools of the high-church men by suggesting intolerant, violent extremes against religious non-conformists of his day. The holy men publicly agreed. Sharper readers of the era recognized that the tract was a satire lampooning the whole idea. Clerics who got laughed at set their hounds on the anonymous author. Once outed they made sure he paid.

Some 200 years later William Somerset Maugham’s play, “Our Betters”, was stifled by his betters in the British government for nearly a decade. They were worried that well-heeled American damsels would be riled by the way they were portrayed in the comic drama…as rich schemers foraging English gentry for titles. The first war was on at the time. East coast US ports were providing every material thing, along with a line of credit to buy the stuff, Crown forces desired. Hale and hardy Midwestern farm boys for the trenches were next on the shopping list. 10 Downing Street wasn’t about to let the London stage queer the deal.

Maugham was being wryly ironic with his use of the word “betters” in the play. The idea of who is, and isn’t, supposedly “better” than others has been flipped around with rhetorical judo since the time snootiness became human nature. The denizens of American high-society were warming to the mores of British hierarchy at the time of The Great War. Our ruling circles included no shortage of A-listers who knew their way around English drawing rooms. Upon US entry into the conflict, they wasted no time getting as heavy-handed with publicly aired ideas as The Office of the Lord Chamberlain in England. The Committee on Public Information began its war on unwelcome opinion 6 months before the first doughboys landed at Saint-Nazaire.

In May 1917 producer Robert Goldstein’s film “Spirit of ‘76” opened in a Chicago theater. Less than one year later Goldstein was sentenced to ten years in federal prison. The movie was made before the US joined the Allies. It wasn’t a crime then to make redcoats look bad in their fight against Americans. Troops from the sceptered isle were doing a lot of bossing people around on continental soil in the 18th century. That’s what started the Boston Massacre. Brits thought they were better than the “crude colonials”.

Ruling in the aptly named case, United States v. “Spirit of ‘76”, sentencing Judge Benjamin F. Bledsoe said: “Count yourself lucky that you didn’t commit treason in a country lacking America’s right to a trial by jury.  You’d already be dead.” John Bull, invented in the Arbuthnot screed Law is a Bottomless Pit, couldn’t have said it better. Goldstein, who was Jewish, likely suffered from the prejudice against Germanic surnames common at the time. Whatever finally became of him is unknown.

George Will’s November 21 column concerns Joel Stein’s book: “In Defense of Elitism: Why I’m Better Than You and You’re Better than Someone Who Didn’t Buy This Book.” That title might be a lot funnier if there weren’t quite so many colleagues of Will and Stein, who think they are better than dissenters, presently advocating for censorship of one kind or another. Some of them don’t even seem to realize that their published words are doing it.

“Populist,” like “elitist” or “troll,” has a definition that shifts according to the needs of the user. This is one of many reasons the 4th estate can never be a truly qualified professional class like physicians, airline pilots or bricklayers. The art of describing reality cannot be severed from any individual’s place in it. Limiting who is allowed into the realm of offering perspective efficiently limits the realm of perspective. Why else would those anti-elitist Nazis have been so keen on keeping published viewpoints within bounds they defined?

In a specific example defending “elites” Will tells us:

“Granted, expert economists did not anticipate the 2008-2009 financial crisis, but some of them prevented it from becoming Great Depression 2.0. Today’s anti-elitism wields what Stein calls the Meteorologist Fallacy — because forecasts are sometimes wrong, meteorology is worthless…”

He fails to qualify that “some of them prevented it from becoming the Great Depression 2.O”. Instead, relying on a quote from Stein:

“Populists argue that banks can’t be trusted because their mortgage derivatives collapsed in 2008. It’s an argument that is tricky to refute unless you’ve ever dealt with a child. Their first method of challenging adults is to say that you were wrong this one time about that one obscure fact, so you’re probably wrong about humans needing to go to sleep at night.”

So, who are these “Populists” Stein refers to? And what assumptions were these derivatives based upon? Googling “mortgage to income ratio” this citation is at the high end of what’s on the first page of hits:

“Mortgage lenders say that a mortgage payment should not exceed 31percent of an applicant’s gross monthly income. To figure your mortgage front-end ratio, multiply your annual salary by 0.31 and divide it by 12 months. Dec 15, 2018.”

How many people found qualified for mortgages by 2008 failed to meet this criteria? And how were such details figured into the calculations used in formulating the derivatives in question? Is this what Stein is calling an “obscure fact”? If it is the writer has effectively disqualified himself from any discussion of finance. What if Maserati came to Wall Street with a plan to sell one million units in the United States? Would the income of potential buyers be scrutinized? This whole treatment, by both Stein and Will, is dilettantish, superficial and…childish.

In many ways, some of the worst features of 2008 crisis are still in play. Much of the country, anywhere within the range of abundant decent paying jobs, continues to struggle with oppressive rents and mortgages. In Alexandria, Va., where I live, more than one million square feet of commercial real estate has been vacant for a decade in the one mile between the Potomac River and the Masonic Temple on King Street. That’s some of the most coveted space in northern Virginia. Still, lease rates per square foot never abate. Let the “experts” explain that. The ever present presence of street people along that route keep many noses distractedly close to the grindstone.

Meanwhile, the uppermost crust of the banking elite have their mouthpieces advocate for elimination of hard currency several times each year in major publications. They openly declare a right to electronically control every transaction on the planet. In any case, there have been enough relevant banking scandals in recent decades to go on at book length covering. We’ll suffice it here with this small observation: Most banks today charge a fee to cash a check at the very bank it is drawn on. They will shake down the poor and desperate squeezing dollars any way they can.

“Elites are necessarily small groups that exercise disproportionate influence. In any modern, complex democracy, the question is not whether elites shall rule, but which elites shall, so the perennial political problem is to get popular consent to worthy elites.”

The redundancy of the word “elite” in this passage could help clue Mr. Will in to why all those grubby populists are guilty of so much lese majeste. Inside the beltway, you can barely go from one conversation to the next and avoid butting heads with someone who finds himself worthy of bossing Joe Six-pack around. What the lobster-backs did on Boston streets in 1770 was generally mild in comparison to modern “elitist” proposals. The British class system of rule by “elites” arrived here on the same vessel that brought war censorship.

Will’s bizarre satisfaction with the present caste system leaves readers wondering what the man reads. Does he really imagine our foreign service has been achieving diplomatic coups of late? Is North Africa’s present state what we were shooting for? Was the plan for Syria pre-Trump improving prospects there? Was there ever a comprehensive understanding of Turkey’s popular struggles with that country’s notorious deep state? Was George keen on the second Gulf War? How about Viet Nam? A delve into American foreign policy blundering wouldn’t fit in a single book but many volumes. It’s “elites” are indefensible.

Mr. Will has written himself about the confiscatory outrages of asset forfeiture. Is he under the delusion this was accomplished through grassroots efforts? It was law enforcement and political elites that imposed this mass rip-off upon Americans. Has the man heard about the carnage and destruction wreaked by the proliferation of SWAT raids? Once again, it would take more than one tome to do this subject any justice. Does he think there was a referendum that served up the 1033 program? LEO elites with the discretion of Barney Fife, Eric Holder among them, decided that the local sheriff in Podunk needed a tank.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.