Dateline Jerusalem – I am home! Okay, it has been a week since my arrival, but I finally am adjusting to being back in Israel. California is 10 hours behind Israel. Although I am not fighting jet lag since I was on Israeli time during my entire trip to the States, I seem to be…

Dateline Jerusalem – While driving through the brownish gray cloud of smog in Southern California, I began to get homesick for the bright blue skies of Israel. I admit Tel Aviv has its share of smog, but…

Dateline Jerusalem – I love making comparisons between Israel and the States, especially when people ask why I would want to live there when I come to the States to buy everything I cannot get there. For Americans used to living relatively easy lives, Israel can be…

Dateline Jerusalem – I had always heard about Israel's famous Scouts, called Tzofim, and I wondered if the organization was connected to the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts of the USA or the international Scouts. I was a Girl Scout, early in elementary school, a Brownie, called Ofer in Israel. My mother was my Brownie troop leader. I was the leader for one of my daughters, and that daughter is the Girl Scout leader for my granddaughter's Brownie troop. While visiting family in the USA this week, I attended my granddaughter's troop meeting. This experience evoked…

Dateline Jerusalem – Instead of sleeping the way normal people do at midnight, I am sitting at my computer trying to think of a topic to write about for this week's article. Writer's block has fogged my brain. I made aliyah almost six years ago. I have been writing weekly emails and articles about my experiences in Israel ever since, as well as observations and sometimes political commentary. I initially wrote to family and close friends. Often they would forward my essays to their family and friends. It has snowballed, and now..

Dateline Jerusalem – Most of the world will be celebrating Mother's Day this weekend. Those of us in Israel will not be doing so. Allegedly 30 years ago, there was a Mother's Day in Israel. It was observed on the 30th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, commemorating the passing of…

Dateline Jerusalem – More than 40 years ago when I was a student at UCLA, I took a folklore class. My term paper was on “old wives' tales. Having become very familiar with Jewish bubbe meises from my grandmother, may she rest in peace, I used her stories as the basis for the paper. I contacted people of other races, religions, ethnicity, and age groups to make…

Dateline Israel – It is Hamsin season in Israel. Also known as Sharav, these are hot and dry desert winds sweeping across Israel. They kind of remind me of the hot desert winds where I used to live in California. And like the California Mojave desert, Joshua trees are also native to Israel, the only two places in the world where they naturally dot the landscape. I much prefer…

Dateline Jerusalem – This week Israelis went from sadness to joy in seconds. First we observed 24 hours of Israel's Remembrance Day, a memorial to its victims of terror and war. Then, at the 25th hour, we celebrated Israel's Independence Day, its 65th birthday. The back-to-back national holidays, which occur one week after Holocaust Memorial Day, make this month a time for tears of sorrow and gladness.

Dateline Jerusalem – It was a “balagan,” Hebrew for chaos, fiasco. A good friend said it was like an adventure. We could not help laughing at the comedy of errors. Although people from all over the world flock to Israel for its outstanding medical care, its advanced, innovative medical technology, we peons are subjected to socialized medicine and over-worked doctors. Only those who can afford to get private medical care, which is available for a fee but definitely not as expensive as that in the States, get the world-renowned Israeli medical care. Some friends disagree, but that has been my experience.