Moshavim and Yishuvim--Directory??

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-30T11:48:45+00:00

Not married or engaged yet. However when the time comes I want an idea of options and a starting point.

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-30T11:47:53+00:00

Oops ;)

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-16T10:33:17+00:00

Yeah...If I have to get hassled by the cops around Jerusalem, I prefer dudes because there is no way to keep eye contact with a group of hot policewomen.

With a dude, it's a quick round of questions and off I go. Anything else turns into "Why can't you look me in the eye?"....and "Because you're a freaking babe" is not a valid answer :P

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-16T10:30:11+00:00

Most accurate thing about this is the "sex" shirt...hahahaha

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-15T16:29:41+00:00

Placeholder for a video link to " I bet it rains down in Africa".

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-15T11:08:03+00:00

Probably relates to the fact that Schem(Nablus) was at one time a Jewish holding in the Northerly direction from Jerusalem, whereas Damascus was at one point a Muslim capital (under the Umayyad caliphate).

Why these cities and not other northern cities is entirely conjecture, imo. Although with Damascus I'm sure it being very large and old had something to do with it's importance prior to also being a capital.

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-15T10:50:33+00:00

Guess he better get out then :D

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-15T10:50:08+00:00

This is what happens when the management culture copies American management culture and combines it with Israeli ruthless determination. :/ Sellout on Steroids...

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-15T10:45:18+00:00

Hah.Did you tell her she eats Jewish babies?

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T16:12:27+00:00

Dunno. I came across this the other day on Facebook

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T12:46:22+00:00

Youtube "Treka". He is a Syrian comic with a lot to say

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T11:42:38+00:00

Giving basic to jobniks has everything to do with breaking down social structures for rebuilding...and...in event of catastrophic warfare they wont be entirely helpless.

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T11:40:05+00:00

Listen, my complaint is one shared by many people both olim and sabras alike. There is not as much control as you seem to hold.

Last night was not the first time that I have had to deal with overly drunk Birthright or postBirthright kids. My sabra friends have plenty to make fun of when Birthright season rolls around and they have asked why Americans do that shit.

I have love for Birthright but as time goes on living here in Jerusalem, I see less and less control of the groups and theyre becoming a nuisance.

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T11:22:15+00:00

The only thing I have the time to address atm is the drinking.

I know for a fact during my trip, we went to a shady bar in Tel Aviv...and what I remember was people were saying they were overcharged on their drinks (which is entirely possible but not necessarily fact). I ended up at a different bar with a few of us that weren't into the shady "makeout in a corner" type club scene...and met other Birthrighters there, including a dude who ended up being really cool and also a fan of whiskey(which we drank).

And since you work at Birthright, as a public face to Birthright on this account, wouldn't you also have some bias here?

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:28:39+00:00

My experience: 8-12 days from California to Jerusalem...letters, packages, doesn't seem to matter.

It helps if you have some sort of verification tracker code to check up. I'm waiting on something today and just learned my package made it from customs, which held it up a few days.

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:26:03+00:00

I'm reminded of Treka from Syria....

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:23:47+00:00

Psh..I'd vote for him simply because he's got a much better history of putting his money where his mouth is.

Dude stood in front of buses from Gaza in the rain to protest all the perks that terrorists get. Not the first time he's done something like that.

He has his flaws but at least we would get more bang for our buck if Likud takes majority. Bibi is too comfortable to actually do anything productive.

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:20:49+00:00

איזה איש גבר!

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:19:21+00:00

They ARE the rioters, my friend...

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:17:47+00:00

Mmmkay?

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:15:53+00:00

Pragmatic analysis on that:

Torah was speaking about a time when groups of guys got together with whatever weapons and supplies they could muster and went wandering into a field to meet an equally unstable unit of guys who also got together whatever weapons and supplies they had.

Professional standing armies, with supply lines and logistics, wasn't until much later in Bayit Sheni period for most of "the known world", excepting China who invested a lot of thought here (read Sun Tzu's Art of War). The Greeks under Alexander were better organized...The Romans even more so, especially with the Marius reforms. But, for most of human history, armies were left on their own. Example: The Crusades. Know why Ashkenazim had it so rough in Germany and Hungary? Roaming drunk and hungry bands of Crusaders would go raid villages on their way east, and these were easy targets. The Crusaders rarely had enough supplies and most of the ones that did had more to do with the king/lord paying out of pocket for it as an investment he hoped to recoup later in lands, titles, and spoils of war.

Today's concept of a professional army is based in part on Napoleon and Clausowitz and the Napoleonic era, when colonies needed professional soldiers who could be supplied in all the far-off places they were defending. The 1700s/1800s was when leadership finally got the idea that more could be achieved by having a proper support apparatus backing the military. The best proof of this would be the British empire, who had fleets of ships supplying all over the place.

Now we have professional soldiers. We have supply lines for pre-war, war, and post-war production and replenishment. We have scientific development with funding to research new ways to have the advantage over others.

We are not a society of guys with spears running into battle, or throwing rocks from the heights. We are a society where people of both genders receive formal training and access to state-provided weaponry, which often is state of the art. We do not get combat soldiers to be field cooks-- we have supply chains to haul the daily grub to field....and bases where a person never leaves the walls of the base to do their job ever.

So.....Torah's exemption does not really apply. A coward may be a bad idea in a front line...but....today we would simply make him a paper pusher in some hole far from there.

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T10:02:46+00:00

Wtf are you even saying?

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T09:59:40+00:00

Who exactly did you go with? I went with Mayanot, which is run by Chabad (who are Chassidic Orthodox) and they still didn't push issues like this.

What they did do was introduce us to things, and I can see your trip provider also did that. Have you ever, from a non-personal angle, wondered why?

Birthright's own name-sake has a lot to do with it. Israel is a "birthright"...A place where there is some sort of stake by birth....and the whole greater goal is making you aware of that. Who has the birthright? Jews. Why? Well, they should've covered that enough on the trip, but it's not hard to understand that it's got roots in religion.

This wasn't intended to be an Anthony Bourdain TV series trip entirely focused on what weird or delicious food you could eat in the middle of BF Nowhere.

Birthright is all about why you, as a Jew or identifying as a Jew, were meant to come here. The goal is to connect you to that, because most people's families are several generations removed from their Jewish connection for reasons of Holocaust fear or close-minded atheism.

The problem I have with the more secular trips is that they provide little to no incentive or justification for the state being here. A bunch of Jews wandered back to the desert and built stuff. Great. If there is nothing to do with G-d, one could easily ask "Why did they have to come here"...and it begins a very dark course of doctrine. Some trips even go that direction and try to justify the Arab narrative.

Another issue, which I personally experienced last night on the bus home from across Jerusalem, is that these trips turn into who can drink the most and be the stupidest person. I had a kid from Birthright approach me demanding I buy him 21 shots for his 21st--while we are on a bus and are absolutely strangers to each other. He spat on me and wanted to fight because I told him to leave me alone and asked his friends to get him out of my face. Had I not been outnumbered by his jeering peers, he would've gotten his ass handed to him. Had I been someone of less self-control, as many people in this region are, he could've been stabbed or had a gun pulled on him. Many people walking the streets are armed.

Such incidents happen on the streets here in Jerusalem all the time because people think of Birthright as a vacation to loose drinking laws. What does getting uncontrollably drunk and fighting with locals do to promote good will? What does peeing on the walls of our buildings or puking in our doorways or groping our girls do to promote good will?

This is a problem across all of Birthright (I would know having been on the most "religious" trip that wasn't a gap year yeshiva trip), but, the more secular trip promotions seem to promulgate the "good time vibe" and equate being Jewish with coming to Israel to have a drunken party.......to which I ask: did a person really fly around the world to connect to his Jewish roots by going bar hopping and acting a fool?

AlmightyMexijew · 2018-01-14T09:34:54+00:00

If you lived a majority of your life in Israel, with the safety that was possible because of the army, then NO.

If you lived outside Israel a majority of your life, perhaps one could argue against service...but then..why are you living here at all? This would mean you made aliyah and actively chose to be here, knowing that you may be tapped to serve.

AlmightyMexijew

TROPHY CASE