SIX Months in Israel – June 30
A little more than six months ago (December 30, 2025) I flew from LAX to TLV (that’s Los Angeles International Airport to Ben Gurion International Airport for those of you not familiar with airport lingo) and made Aliyah.
Upon arrival in Israel (and after having completed a pile of paperwork before leaving the US) I was granted citizenship under the Israeli law of return which is one of the basic laws of Israel passed unanimously by the Knesset in 1950.
For the first few months I routinely identified as an Oleh Chadash (new immigrant) to which the almost universal reply was Baruch HaBah (ברוך הבא) that literally translates to “Blessed is the one who comes”.
I felt welcome and a sense of belonging right away.
As I have previously described, it took longer than I anticipated to find permanent housing, but I am now (relatively) settled into my new apartment in the wonderful Neve Remez neighborhood in the beautiful wine country town of Zichron Yaakov.
A short distance from my apartment is a back gate to the Ramat HaNadiv nature reserve and my schedule has pretty much revolved around trying to get onto the trail with Jerry as early in the morning as possible (the gate opens at 6 AM) to walk with him before the heat gets too bad and then out again at just the right time to get another long walk as the sun goes down and it starts to cool down to tolerable. The gate locks 30 minutes after sunset so during the summer my target is getting outside by 6:30 PM and my goal is to get an hour walk with Jerry in the morning and an hour and a half in the evening.
Of course, sometimes I sleep a little late in the morning and then I am walking in desert heat and sometimes Jerry is too impatient to wait until 6:30 for our evening walk.
Seriously, that’s about 2.5 hours every day walking on the trails and then I usually spend at least another 3 hours a day writing and then some time reading news and watching videos and listening to music. I eat three meals a day and go shopping for something almost every day. Somehow time seems to fly.
I had expected that I would be officially retired but surprisingly, potential clients continue to reach out asking me to consult and advise and perhaps come back for one more last trial. In the meanwhile, I schedule time on the telephone which takes coordination because of the various time zone differences.
I had worried that I would be cheating Jerry out of his beloved Oregon lifestyle but he seems to be adapting just as easily as am I.
On the trails we often run into the same people and dogs and almost everyone is now Jerry’s friend. (There is one dog who has taken a strong dislike for Jerry and his owner and I generally leash our dogs and walk past each other as quickly as possible when we see each other coming).
Initially, Jerry was a leash dog on the trail because I worried about him running off and exploring the way he did on the beaches in Oregon but more and more now, we have parts of the trail where I let Jerry off leash and he runs ahead and comes back and when it is time (when I call him) he lays down to let me put the leash back on. It’s a very nice routine.
As a new immigrant I was entitled to a basket of benefits (called Sal Klita) upon arrival and I am of course grateful for them, but what I like best is that once a month I get a call from my “Aliyah advisor” from the government to check how I am doing and sometimes to remind me of things I need to take care of and sometimes just to answer questions that have come up for me. Usually we just chat (once a month) and my advisor expresses her pleasure at how well I am adapting. My next big bureaucratic steps will be getting my Israeli drivers license which has to be completed in the next five months and getting my Israeli passport which can not be completed before I’ve been here a full year.
I’ve got to say. I no longer feel like an Oleh Chadash. I am still an immigrant (I will always be one) but I am now also simply another Israeli.
I am very much looking forward to participating in the upcoming national election. One of the candidates (the one from the party I will most likely be voting for) has in his published platform a pledge to “ensure the existence of the State of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people while preserving its character as a Jewish and democratic state in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.” For those of you not familiar with the Israeli declaration of independence I urge you to look it up. It contains the following paragraph: “The State of Israel will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice, and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed, or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education, and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
One day last month I had a small “fender bender”. I had stopped at a traffic circle because a pedestrian was getting ready to cross in front of me and someone bumped me from behind. I was heading to the Ikea, so it was pretty far from Zichron Yaakov where I am somewhat familiar. I quickly realized that I had no idea what the local law required in such a situation. The bump had put enough of a dent into the back of my nice new/used car that I did not want to just let it go and swallow the damage. The first problem became obvious when I used my by now perfected אני לא מדבר עברית (I don’t speak Hebrew in Hebrew) and it became clear that the person who had hit me spoke even less English than I did Hebrew (as in he spoke no English). He took out his wallet and I assumed he was trying to pay for the damages so he could be on his way, but what he offered was 100 shekels (about 33 dollars) which seemed to be crazy low for any kind of body repair.
Pretty soon thereafter a car with words and an image on the side pulled over and I learned that there is a non-profit volunteer program that comes quickly to scenes of accidents (before ambulances) to provide emergency medical service if needed. 
For those of you interested it is called United Hatzalah. Its those little things that still stun me about Israel. For all of the stupid accusations of apartheid and genocide people forget that Israel really is still a country founded by true Democratic Socialists.
Another amazing all-volunteer program that I have learned about is a phone number that you can call 24-6 (not on Shabbat) and a volunteer will come help with any car problem. They fix flat tires and give battery jumps and do minor repair when possible. They do not take any payment but accept contributions to pay for supplies.
But back to this story. Shortly thereafter a police car arrived, and the officer kindly told me that nothing “needed” to be done or reported but that the other driver (who she assured me was good man) wanted to take care of the damages without having his insurance company involved. With her help translating I agreed to follow the driver to an autobody shop that he knew nearby. The police officer insisted that I take down her name and phone number and let her know that everything was ok when it was taken care of.
I thought we were just going to get a reasonable quote for the amount of damage, but by the time we pulled in the repair guy wanted to do the work right then. I insisted that the man who had caused the accident wait with me so he could pay whatever was required. (All communication was via google translate) Amazingly, two hours later we were out of there. By the way – the auto repair guy did a great job and found two other small spots on the front of the car and fixed them too for free at the same time.
One more short story. I had an appointment a few weeks ago for a follow up cystoscopic examination to make sure that the immunotherapy treatment for my bladder cancer was working. (In journalism this is called “burying the lede”.) I prefer to consider it a reward for those of you who have patiently read this far.
One of the obvious differences in the health care system is that my urologist has a small office with no nurses or physician assistants to do his dirty work and just one receptionist to handle scheduling. In Oregon the urologist had his own cystoscope which lets him profit from owning the equipment. In fact, in Oregon my urologist owned his own surgery center.
Here the urologist scheduled me into a private hospital (all covered by my insurance of course) for a Friday morning appointment. The significance of this to the story was that the hospital was in a different city than his office so the day of the procedure I set out using Waze as my navigation tool. I put in the name of the hospital and started out with plenty of time to spare. Waze unfortunately has a bad habit of correcting me when it thinks I’ve put in the wrong information. I should preface this part of the story by acknowledging that I was pretty anxious that the doctor would find new tumors. I had already done research into next steps if the BCG immunotherapy didn’t work so that I would no what questions to ask and what options existed.
It was more than an hour from Zichron and when I got there, I had to find a private parking lot and ultimately found a parking spot and found the elevator to the street and from there found the hospital …. I made my way to the reception room about ten minutes before my scheduled time feeling pretty proud of myself but when I gave my ID and paperwork to the receptionist I soon learned that there was a problem. The receptionist asked me “why are you here” to which I replied confidently I have an appointment for a cystoscopic examination and soon learned there are multiple hospitals with the same name and I was in the wrong city.
I know it would have gotten very ugly at this point if I was in the United States in a similar situation. The hospital that I needed was in a city another 30 minutes away and it would take me at least 15 minutes to get back to my car in the parking garage. If I was lucky I would be more than an hour late for my appointment.
The receptionist then kindly offered to call my urologist and explain the situation and found out that if I could get there in 90 minutes he would wait and all would be good. I hustled back to my car and started driving. The only parking garage near the second hospital was located in a mall so I had to navigate through that but eventually made it to the right spot. When it was all done the doctor immediately told me that everything was clean/good and I could feel all my pent-up tension dissipate. Next up will be another 3 treatments of the immunotherapy and then another cystoscopic exam in six months.
Shalom from Israel.