First days In Israel: January 10 - 20

As soon we arrived in Israel, we went to look for our luggage – but one of them did not arrive. We were really too tired to make the claim, so we decided to go to the hotel we reserved from Chicago. The problem was that the reservation was cancelled because we arrived 3 days later than we had expected! Therefore, we needed to find out where we can stay --at least, until we could find our apartment. We called two friends, and they invited us to stay with them until we find something where to live.

The first day we arrived at the Moshav Tirat Yehuda (טִירַת יְהוּדָה‎) [which means “the Castle of Yehuda”, one of the sons of Jacob, from the bible.] Is located very close (5 minutes) from the airport. Since we just wanted to rest a little from our Odyssey, we took a taxi and went straight there.

A moshav is a group of workers who produce goods on their properties and use the profit to provide for themselves. ‎ And this this moshav is very particular, because, unlike others, it has two groups of people. One group is does agricultural work, and the other groups work outside of the moshav in different fields: doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, etc. A moshav is very different from a kibbutz, although both are cooperative agricultural communities. The kibbutz puts more emphasis on community labor, while the moshav focuses more on individual labor.

The second day we move to Elkana (אֶלְקָנָה‎)‎ a city in "Samarian hills", or as other call it the “West Bank”. Is a nice city founded in 1977, inhabited by around 1200 families. The town was named after the father of Samuel, who is believed to have lived in the area. All the people in this town are as religious as are those in moshav Tirat Yehuda.

The third day, we started to look for an apartment where we will live for the next 6 months. When we were in Chicago, we found an apartment in Jerusalem, in a very nice neighborhood, on King David Street. We found this apartment through one of the online links that the people use to post and find apartments. After we sent the money to reserve it, we found out that it was a scam. We thought that it was not for us – this experience taught us neither to be so “naive” nor to believe that everybody in this world is honest. The person who “rented” the apartment to us lives in London. However, he had said that he lived in Jerusalem for a few years, but left because he found a job in London. We believed him. So, as I was telling you, we went to Jerusalem to start looking for apartment. There followed were 5 hard days -- but finally we found a little apartment in Pisgat Zeev, (פסגת זאב‎‎), a neighborhood of Jerusalem, located in the north of the city and close to Mount Scopus, the site of the Hebrew University, and a region named after Zeev Jabotinsky, one of the early leaders of the Zionist movement.