Dateline Jerusalem — Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics recently published information about the average urban Israeli household based on surveys of the 14 largest cities in Israel, those with populations over 100,000. Although I always thought I was working for slave wages since I moved here, compared to the rest of the country, I guess I was doing okay.
Minimum wage is approximately $5/hour, about $860/month gross. Yet, the average urban Israeli household spends over $900/month per person, and in Tel Aviv, it is over $4000/month per person! No wonder almost half the people living in Tel Aviv rent. They cannot afford to do otherwise. Also, considering the average urban household consists of 3.3 persons, I understand why it has been said that much of the country lives below the poverty line.
I have not figured out how Israeli families survive, let alone own their own home or apartment.
Yet, 70 percent of the people surveyed owned their home/apartment even though the average cost is almost $250,000 for a 2 1/2 bedroom apartment, and the down payment is approximately 50 percent of the cost of the dwelling. I did not make minimum wage, but I rent because I could not afford to buy in my city at my former salary.
Entertainment Without Leaving Home
Speaking of my city, it leads Israel in personal Internet use (hooked up to an Internet provider) and has twice the number of personal computers per household as the rest of the country. Considering my entire social life consists of eating at friends' homes for Shabbat lunches and dinners and sitting in front of my computer for approximately 20 hours/day, I can understand why the computer is so popular here It is the cheapest form of entertainment!
The survey also helped me understand why checkers at the market are surprised when I write a check for my groceries and tell them that the check could be deposited that very day. The average household cannot afford to pay for groceries. The checkers ask customers how many payments they need to cover the bill (up to one payment per month per bill over a 3-month period of time per bill) and what day the customer would like his checks deposited by the market. Therefore, a family could go to the market on a daily basis and each day have the bill paid in 3 monthly payments! Unfortunately, those payments eventually catch up with the check writer.
Depending on the makeup of the neighborhood, priorities differ as to expenditures. Relatively secular Ramat Gan leads the nation in the number of televisions and cell phones per person while the religious Bnei Brak, adjacent to Ramat Gan, has more deep freezers and stoves per household than anywhere else. I can understand that, too. It takes a lot of cooking to feed a large family, and the stoves in Israel are not much larger than my toaster oven.
In spite of it all, most Israelis would rather live in Israel than anywhere else in the world. I can understand that too. There is something about Israel that calms me. Currently I have no job and no job prospects, but I am at peace living in Israel. I feel G-d's presence at all times. No wonder the greeting for “hello” and “goodbye” is “shalom.” It means “peace.”
L'hitraot. Shachar.
Shachar is the Hebrew name of a California-based attorney and former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff who moved to Israel two years ago.
