[img]96|left|||no_popup[/img] Dateline Jerusalem — I cannot seem to get adjusted to Israel's time zone, but I am no longer in sync with California, nor am I on Florida/New York time. I tried to figure out where I should live according to my body clock. India!!! No wonder so many young Israelis travel there when they get out of the Israeli Army. Perhaps their body clocks are also on Indian time.

By 3 or 4 a.m. Israeli time, I am awake and ready to start my day, but by midday I barely can keep my eyes open. I was so tired the other day that I nodded off to a much needed nap while sitting on my bed with my laptop computer and pen in my hand. That little bit of dozing meant I fell asleep on top of my pen which had leaked through two layers of clothes, sheets, and onto my mattress. When I showered later that evening, I found blue ink the size of my fist adorning my skin. It was almost as though I had been tattooed by the leaky pen because it took about 30 minutes of scrubbing until the ink would finally disappear.

It is not unusual for me to fall asleep whenever or wherever. When I was a cop working “early morning” shift, which meant I went to work at 10 p.m. and did not get off work until 7 a.m., I had a terrible time adjusting to sleeping during the day. On my days off, I would sleep no matter where I would happen to be, like at a Harlem Globetrotters and Los Angeles Lakers exhibition basketball game, with bright lights in the arena and thousands of people yelling and cheering in the stands.

Let’s Compare Schedules

I do not know if others have trouble adjusting to Israeli time, but it seems quite a coincidence that many Israelis take a siesta for about three hours every afternoon. Although Israel's workweek is 42.5 hours, as compared to the 40-hour U.S work schedule, small businesses, banks and government offices often take a midday break, and on Tuesday afternoons, some businesses close down for the day. Since Israel's workweek begins on Sunday, Tuesday probably was chosen because it is the exact midweek for Israelis. Usually those businesses make up the time by being open on Friday morning. However, many government offices and banks often are not open on Friday, the only day most Israelis have off besides Shabbat (Saturday) when ‘most everything is closed down. I do not know if Israelis actually take the siesta time off to nap, but I understand why the break is needed. Weddings frequently are held during the middle of the week, and they go on until the wee hours of the morning. The attendees then must wake up a couple of hours later to get ready for their jobs. I can just imagine how tired they must feel.

Yet in spite of the strange work hours, the Israeli job market is allegedly thriving while the rest of the world is in a recession or depression. The U.S. unemployment rate is supposedly 9.1 percent (of course, that does not include all the out of work people who have received unemployment benefits in the past and are no longer eligible, nor does it include people over a certain age who need jobs but are considered no longer in the job market). Israel's unemployment rate is at an all-time low of 5.4 percent. Although Israeli salaries have gone up, the average salary of an Israeli is about one quarter that of an American. Unfortunately, the cost of living in Israel is equal to or greater than that of the U.S.

American businesses used to outsource work to Israel and India because of the cheap labor. But the U.S. economy is so bad that Americans are now willing to work for one quarter of what they made in the States. So those of us Americans living in Israel who are not fluent in Hebrew or immersed in the Israeli job market no longer are getting outsourced American jobs. I figure that by the time I learn Hebrew, I will be too old to work. But maybe it won't take me as long to adjust to Israeli time.

L'hitraot. Shachar.