What I Miss Most in Jerusalem

I used to tell people in Jerusalem that I didn't immigrate to Israel but to Jerusalem. Frankly speaking, I don't miss Israel itself very much, but of course, I do miss Jerusalem!

What I miss most there are probably my favorite two Chassidic bookstores there: Heichal Menachem (in Hebrew and English) and Yachad (in Russian). In the last five years before leaving Jerusalem at the end of September 2023 I bought hundreds of Chassidic books from these two bookstores and built my own private Chassidic library. For the shipment cost and lack of space in the new location I had to leave most of these books at one of the warehouses owned by the owner of Yachad. Of course, I also miss them a lot.

Unfortunately, the situation of general bookstores in Israel in general and in Jerusalem, which has never been a favorable one, has deteriorated in the recent years. This may be part of the worldwide phenomena of reading less books and switching to electronic books. It came as a great shock to me that Academon, the chain of bookstores at Israeli universities, was closed. I still can't imagine universities without bookstores!

I even stopped visiting general bookstores in Jerusalem as they only depressed me for their deteriorating condition in both the quality and quantity of books they kept as well as for my loss of interest in general, non-Jewish books in Hebrew.

I used to "commute" to Heichal Menachem and Yachad weekly and monthly respectively. I always found something new to buy even after building a rather well-selected private Chassidic library. Visiting them was like taking new nourishment for my soul. It was also a constant flow of fresh spiritual energy for me.

Naturally, I haven't found any replacement in this new location. I can't even think of any other city in the world with this "luxury". I know two excellent Chassidic bookstores in New York (Crown Heights) and Moscow (Marina Roshcha and downtown) respectively, but they are only in Hebrew and English and in Russian respectively.

Living outside Israel as an Israeli Citizen

To acquire citizenship is one thing, and to feel you've become a true citizen is another. I felt I had become a full-fledged Israeli citizen paradoxically when I found myself kvetching about Israeli society and culture. Another moment was when someone yelled at me "Chutzpah!" ;-)

Another, rather common, trait of a "good" Israeli citizen may be to live outside Israel. I myself have been feeling this since I left Israel. You may have left Israel physically, but Israel doesn't leave you so easily. One of the ways to maintain this connection is the notorious Israeli bureaucracy.

As I wrote before, I spent my last month in Israel "commuting" to the tax authority to solve some thorny bureaucratic problem. I had an illusion that it had been solved in my last (probably sixth) visit there. In retrospect I was too naive to think that I got rid of Israeli bureaucracy once and for all.

In the meanwhile I've discovered that the problem has not only not been solved but has even become more complicated as I can't "commute" to the tax authority physically. After months of fruitless endeavors I had to give up, leaving the problem unsolved.

Recently I was "blessed" with two additional, no less simple, bureaucratic problems involving the tax authority again and the Israeli bank I've been working with. When I had a telephone conversation with a bank clerk this week, I was astonished to discover how aggressively I started to speak with him as I used to (have to) while I still lived in Israel. In short, my verbal aggressiveness has only remained dormant.

So funnily enough, the less stressful way for an Israeli citizen to cope with Israeli bureaucracy is to live in Israel. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't think this is a sufficient incentive to return to Israel after completing the present mission somewhere in the diaspora, mostly for a financial reason as a prospective pensioner. At least as of now, I'm more inclined to the possibility of living in a third, cheaper, country where I can use a better use of my Israeli private pension.

Declining Relevance of One Subplayer in Geopolitics

One intellectual who predicted the decline of the Soviet Union recently published a book on the decline of one player in geopolitics. This player consists of one supraplayer and a number of subplayers as its vassals.

In the past few weeks we witnessed one tectonic shift in geopolitics - this supraplayer decided to abandon its most important subplayer, which in turn consists of a number of subsubplayers.

The orchestrated reaction of the selected and unselected "leaders" of this declining subplayer was so delusional that I started to feel sorry for the ordinary citizens ruled by such incompetent "elite". Their rule is based on lies and oppression of dissidents who dare to oppose their official narratives.

I can't say yet that this subplayer has completely become irrelevant in geopolitics. But after witnessing this tectonic shift I realized that its relevance has significantly (and probably irreversibly) been diminished. One journalist I admire characterized the present sick state of this subplayer, or to be more precise, its "leaders" as IPS (irrelevance projection syndrome) and PCDS (post colonial delusion syndrome).

One thing I don't understand is how ordinary citizens have allowed these "leaders" to continue ruling them. I don't know if this is thanks to the censorship and resulting collective brainwashing by mainstream media outlets there. I'm even scared to visit many of the subsubplayers that constitute this subplayer.