Ahavas Israel: Fill & Download for Free

I want to make it very short,Love is a simple expression, it doesn’t take long, it’s either you do or you don’t love.To have Ahavas Israel towards an unknown person seems to be completely impossible and out of the way.I have a solution which I found by just “watching” the Lubavitcher Rebbe, wondering how he could stand for hours having just anonymous people passing by, I would get away after 30 minutes.He once said that “Before wondering how to pray, how to address god in the morning, how to put on Tfilin with all the concentration or how to meditate to unify yourself with God, there is a simple thing to do, when you walk out in the streets and meet another Jew, have a smile and open face and ask “how are you”.I think that it’s all here, when you just cross someone and your face is “open”, bright, and eventually smiling, not only that this is an “attitude” of love but if you analyse it it’s just a body language technic, the body tells so much and this is maybe the simplest way in the world to love each other.

I'm perhaps not qualified to answer this because it's been a decade since I last lived in Israel. But here is how my life was in Tel Aviv 2004-5.First impressionsThe first time I reached Israel, we drove from Ben Gurion Airport to Tel Aviv 6 am in the morning. We were groggy and tired, and we looked out trying to catch the sight of a ruin from all the past wars and skirmishes. We summarily failed at that; instead it felt like we were in Europe. In the breaking light of the morning, we saw broad, swanky freeways, manicured gardens, avenues lined with decorative palms, glassy skyscrapers - there was an order to everything. Yet the place exuded an unmistakable old world charm.When we reached the hotel, one of my colleagues meekly asked the manager Alfonso, who was an Italian (Jew?) with ostensibly some links to Milan, how safe Tel Aviv was. "It is the safest place in the world! I feel safer here than in Milan", he thundered. I didn't need that reassurance though, after a first glimpse of Tel Aviv.Getting out of bedIsrael is the natural timezone for me, because I always run about two-and-a-half hours late in India. Waking up early was therefore a tad easier, although I still felt drowsy at times.A quick shower would be followed by Israeli breakfast buffets - breads, bagels, blintzes, other egg preparations, salads and sprouts, and fruit juices were the mainstay. And ten years ago I didn't keep a count of the number of mini pastries I stuffed my mouth with. The Jews know their way with breads and pastries alright.WorkWe would work Sundays through Thursdays and the weekend would be Friday and Saturday. I worked in the software / high-tech industry - work started at 9 am and usually everyone was there well before that. Most people left by 6.30 pm. It was normal for strangers at workplace to greet, especially in the mornings (Boker tov!), in the lift and corridors. I loved the grapefruit juices which seemed to be pretty popular in Israel and frequently found in the fridge at the workplace. Mornings would be spent writing code, working on some design document - getting your stuff done. A hearty lunch would be followed by afternoon meetings - mostly brainstorming sessions, and sometimes updates from the manager or other seniors. I slept through some of them but still enjoyed the discussions. Not everyone would be equally conversant in English, but everyone made the effort. Some would break into Hebrew intermittently. The Israeli accent is good fun. I remember having a particularly hard time initially when somebody dictated a server name to me (cermf3v) - I had no clue what letter is errrkkhh (r) so the guy wrote it and it looked like a v. But workplace was fun, informal, and engrossing. People played songs on the radio through the morning, and that included a lot of familiar Western pop music as well as some nice Israeli songs - one of which I'm still trying to identify and look up by singing into SoundCloud with little success. People were helpful, but they expect you to speak for yourself and have a perspective. The folks who were more fluent in English were extremely forthcoming and helped us with tips and hacks, and suggestions for trips.Thursday afternoons, we'd have Kabalat Shabat - welcoming the Shabat. People brought the awesomest food from home and we had a mini potluck in the afternoon. No one expected us to do it - so we were the biggest beneficiaries. Some of them would get something they called "dairy cakes" whitish, creamy, crumbly pastries - haven't tasted anything quite as sinful. I was trying to talk about workplace but mainly spoke about food. But to summarise: utterly sharp people who sometimes assumed that things were obvious to everyone because they were obvious to them.I used the workstation of a colleague who was on maternity leave. Two more went on maternity leaves during the next two months. A friend quipped that at this rate, Israel would need more skyscrapers. One day, post-luch I saw a guy in army fatigues checking emails at my workstation. I think he was on IDF duty and was there checking emails. He was back after one more week. His name was Ari, a name that my Israeli colleagues also used for me because it was shorter.EveningsEvenings are a great time in Tel Aviv. We roamed around, sampled food from taverns, pizzerias, gelaterias and shawarma outlets. Rarely when we reached early, by 5 pm maybe, we'd head to the beach and walk to the end of the piers, soak up the sun, look around. Young IDF trainees (what's the correct term), dapper in their khakee fatigues, making their way back like they had not a care in the world - some of them couples, lip-locked on the Dizengoff square. I often walked solo because I liked to hear the street musicians play - and there were plenty of them, almost all above average. You'd see stunt bikers at the beach, you'd see joggers of all ages - even fifty somethings, often in just shorts, jogging down to the beach and back. We made it to one pub once, they played good music and but it was expensive fare. Dinner for me would be the yummy street-food. For the rest of the Indian gang - it would be the more expensive Indian food, usually vegetarian. Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Friday till early afternoon, the food festivals in Dizengoff Malls used to be a big attraction. Cheap, yummy food from all across Israel. I particularly remember the mascarpone cheese cakes by a Palestinian Christian woman, and the meatballs with couscous. There I met an Indian couple - a Bengali woman and a Gujarati or Malayalam man who sold Indian food! They could be Jews, I never asked. My Dad's maternal grandmother most likely was - the woman could well be from the same community I figured.WeekendsIf we weren't heading to one place or another the first thing on Friday (we usually were), we'd head to the flea markets and pick up cheap keepsakes, old books, DVDs, yarmulkes and small menorahs. Usually though, we headed straight out of Tel Aviv - Eilat, Dead Sea, Haifa, Tiberias, sea caves up north, even Golan, Masada, and countless trips to Jerusalem and its neighbourhood. We traveled into West Bank (June 2005, during the time of Disengagement), ate cactus fruits on the road to Jerusalem, and I briefly lost balance while climbing the stairs in the Tomb of Prophet Samuel, not too far from Jerusalem.We had a trusted cabbie, Bachar Hizikiyahu, the owner of a large fleet of taxis and a colorful personality. We saw most of Israel thanks to him.ShabatShabat is the weekly religious holiday and a period of passiveness. Between Friday sunset and Saturday sunset - the period of Shabat, there was little public transport available and lots of shops, but not all, would be shut. During Shabat, or if you were meeting someone for the last time before Shabat, you'd great with Shabat Shalom. During Shabat, there would be no El Al flights either. In buildings with elevators, at least one would be Shabat Lift - which stopped at every floor and shuttled up and down without the need for a button to be pressed. In observant households, lights would be dimmed and brightened automatically according to the time of the day. I think you could even passively cook and heat - stuff I've never seen having lived in a hotel room.The cabs were our lifelines especially during Shabat. In northern Israel (Nazareth and Galilee), we had a Christian Arab who drove a mini bus and took us around Galilee and Golan. But it was less fun without Bachar around.Me at a Golani ranch.ShoppingIsrael is more expensive than the US - and as trainee engineers, we didn't have a whole lot to spend. 1 USD was roughly 4 NIS, and 1 NIS was roughly 10 INR then. Our shopping was limited to fresh fruits, snacks, toileteries and some local Israeli wine. And yes, a set of Ahava toileteries with Dead Sea salts, and a diamond ring I never managed to buy for my girlfriend (we married a year later). The nectarines were just so tasty - and I remember the Ethiopian girl at the counter would often give the nectarines for free if I had taken other stuff and not too many nectarines. The Carmel port wine suited my palate too, and I'd pick up a bottle now and then. I could only stare in awe and agony at the windows of the music shops with their red Strats, cellos (hard to come by in India), double basses!Sight seeingIsrael is just so steeped in beauty and historical sites, from Yad Vashem, the old city of Jerusalem with its quarters, souks, Roman walkways, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the twin mosques, to the country side, the kibbutzim (went to a huge one near Galilee), to Beersheba in the Negev (we were on a train and back a week before a deadly crash in June 2005), Eilat, the Dead Sea - you experience first hand the sights described in so many historical accounts including religious texts.ClimateIt's mild and warm in Tel Aviv, which is on the beach. It gets both warmer and much colder in Jerusalem depending on the season. In Israel you get winter rains and while we missed the snow in Jerusalem, it's not that uncommon I hear! For an Indian, there is not much acclimatization to do otherwise.PeopleCheerful young and old people at the beaches, great and pragmatic engineers, engaging conversationalists and raconteurs, quite a few well-built, lean, muscular, sporty, outdoorsy people. A disproportionate number of female smokers - perhaps there are stresses they deal with that we'd not understand. Humorous people - the humour could be a tad dry, and loaded with cultural references and self-deprecation. I have always felt very close to the Israeli culture - it never felt alien.I had this silly fantasy, of camping under the stars on a summer night, somewhere along the way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, near the hills where it gets quietest. Never managed to. I miss Israel.You can get more perspectives here: Arindam Mukherjee's answer to What do Israelis think of India?

SabraWissotzky TeaAhavaEl AlOne day soon: Better PlaceMost of Israel's big league multinationals aren't really consumer brands.Teva Pharmaceuticals makes generic drugs, so they inherently aren't an internationally recognized brand.Security companies like Check Point and Nice Systems are pretty behind-the-scenes from a consumer's eye.Same goes with Amdocs (billing), Ormat (geothermal energy), and Israel Chemicals.