It's time for a change...and other ramblings

My apologies for not posting for some time. I was down and out with the flu for most of the week, but am back on my feet.

Israel has been treating me extremely well. I have been learning not only a lot about Torah and Judaism, but a lot about myself. What kind of environments I work best in, what drives me in life, and most importantly, I need to smile more! :)

The past ~2 weeks I have been attending Yeshiva Aish Hatorah. It is a wonderful place, but have found that it does not serve my learning style nor the type of environment I want to be in. Aish does a fantastic job with recent college graduates who are looking at a long term stay (1+ years), but the age difference causes a large maturity gap which I recognized this week. Simply put, I will not be staying there for the rest of my time. I have had the opportunity to attend a small yeshiva named Bircas Hatorah (http://www.bircas.org) for the past few days and think it might be a good fit. The men studying there are fantastic and have already made some great contacts. There passion and love for Torah is amazing and hope this can rub off on me. At Bircas I might be one of the younger/less advanced students, however this will put me in a great place to be surrounded by true talmid torah's.

On to another subject...Yesterday I went for a walk as I have Fridays off. While I was walking I noticed a street blocked off with police cars. As I approached I noticed the "bomb" robot was out dismantling a suspicious package. I took one look, headed to another street to walk around the incident, with some other Israelis, and didn't think twice about what I had just walked into...About 10 minutes later I could not believe how this did not even phase me. If this happened in Boston, everyone and their mother would be running. So what gives? The culture here in Israel is just so desensitized to these events that life just moves on....A bomb threat, no big deal, soldiers walking around with loaded m-16 rifles, no big deal, fighter jets flying over head, no big deal.

I think everyone in the US has allot to learn from the Israeli culture. Every coffee shop I go into I get searched and I do not care because I am safe. Every person I have seen could care less as well about the so called "invasion of privacy" as we put it in the US. In the US we cry over proposals for police on the MBTA searching our belongings. GET OVER IT. Everyone is extremely happy in Israel (including the cafe I am sitting in now where everyone just got strip searched by a security guard) and people are safe. The past ~3 weeks has put a lot in perspective for me about terrorism, invasion of privacy, and simply how much of a bunch of cry babies we are in the United States. I love the US of A, but we all need to take a step out of our silver spoon cocoons and put life and more importantly, our countries security in perspective. Listen, I am not advocating security guards at our stores at home but on transit systems, yes. With all the "restrictions" and invasion of privacy on Israeli citizens, they are as free as we are at home and just as happy or even happier. Ask an Israeli if they would move out of their country, a big NO. The political climate changes in the US and everyone is ready to move to Canada. Again, lets get some perspective folks...We have life SO good in the United States and all we do is cry all day....About gas prices, taxes, etc....Cherish our freedom, cherish our low prices, and simply stop crying.