I'm not usually a big fan of making personal annoucnements on a public message board, but since I've met a number of the people who post here personally and also due to some differences in the nature of this group as opposed to some other boards (I won't name them), I am making an exception to my personal policy and sharing some personal news with the entire board.
There seems to be a trend of long time members of our community leaving the DC, and I'm joining the pack. As you all are probably aware, I was in mostly in Ithaca, NY from fall 2005 through spring 2009 except for 5 months that I spent in Rome, Italy. After finishing my studies at Cornell, I came to Israel for a year to study religious texts, and I also did some work at the Jerusalem Municipality in their planning policy unit. I said that I'd look into job opportunities in both Israel and the US on account of the economic situation, over my time here, it became clear that I was unlikely to find anything in Israel for a variety of reasons. However, just before I returned to the US, I got an RFP to work with the Jerusalem Transportation Management Team on a bus stop project, essentially as a contracted GIS analyst. I submitted a bid for the project thinking there was no way I would win, but while I was traveling through Brazil in July, I got an email saying I was the top candidate for the project. Meanwhile, while my US job search had been disrupted by my vacation to visit my family in Brazil, it hadn't turned up much, and didn't turn up much once I got back to the US either. A month later, I was on a plane to Tel Aviv to try seeing if I could seal the deal on the Jerusalem job. I managed to secure a work visa about 2 weeks after getting here (which is pretty good, it can take much longer), and then had to wait out internal bureaucracy on the end of the transportation management team, that finally got completed earlier this week. Meanwhile, there were the challenges of trying to reestablish myself in Jerusalem (i.e. finding an apartment, buying a cellphone, opening a bank account) without really knowing if I had a job or not. However, I finally got a contract to sign this week, submitted it today, and start work on Sunday (the weekend here is Friday-Saturday, the workweek is Sunday-Thursday), and have a job for at least the next 18 months.
Since I usually get these questions, I'll try to answer them here:
Q: What language do you work in/how much Hebrew do you really know?
A: Hebrew is the language of day to day life in Israel, offices included. My supervisor speaks English, as do many other Israelis, though I am expecting to work as much as I can in Hebrew, attend meetings in Hebrew, etc. To build further upon my 4 years of learning modern Hebrew in elementary school, 3 years in college, 6 weeks of intensive Hebrew classes in the summer of 2009, and twice a week evening classes last spring, I'm continuing to take a class twice a week for a total of 5 hours a week. Additionally, my mother is practically fluent or highly conversational depending upon who you ask, and we often speak Hebrew around the house and on the phone.
Q: Are you/are you becoming an Israeli citizen?
A: I am not an Israeli citizen, though I am allowed to claim Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return (which allows anyone with one Jewish grandparent to do so). Claiming Israeli citizenship at this moment was not practical because it takes longer to get citizenship than it does to get a work visa, complicates my tax situation (I owe taxes to both the Israeli and US governments, but my Israeli income is not likely to be high enough to require me to pay US income tax anytime soon), and I run the risk of being drafted into the army, which wouldn't be convenient for my employer who would be required to pay me and keep me on even if I'm not actually in the office. However, there is a package of benefits provided by the Israeli government that I will not be able to claim if I don't become an Israeli citizen by a certain date. There aren't really any penalties associated with leaving the country after becoming a citizen and receiving this incentive package, so I might end up doing it at some point, but it probably won't happen soon unless I can get a huge tax break by doing so (which is also unlikely, since I'd have to start paying for Israeli health insurance and all sorts of other things I don't have to pay for right now, Israel is a socialist country and taxes are very high in general).
Q: Are you staying in Israel forever?
A: I thought I was, more likely than not, spending a year in Israel and then returning to the United States. Now I'm spending 3 years here total, at a minimum. If you can predict the future and answer this question, be my guest, but life is unpredictable, we'll see where I wind up in due course. But you can always go home again, as another long-time member of our DC transit community recently proved.
If anyone else has other questions about my work, my decision process, life here in Israel, when the Jerusalem Light Rail might open, when the coming of the Messiah will occur (many Israelis expect those events to happen simultaneously), or anything else, feel free to ask.
WOW! Congratulations on your success! I was wondering why we were seeing up-to-date pictures of Jerusalem from you again. :) I wish you the best out there!
Thanks Brandon for the good wishes, and it is good to know people are looking at those photos. I figured I'd withhold the news until I was certain things would work out here.
Well done Oren !!!!
Do the best job that you can so you can create future opportunities for yourself.
Congrats on your job!! And yes I do appreciate your photos too!!
Chris and John, thanks for the good wishes!
Congrats on your success and thanks for the glimpse into another country. We're all friends here so keep it coming!
Congrats Oren. Good luck over there and stay safe! Hopefully things are settling down in the mideast. Look forward to hearing of your adventures.
Congratulations. Send us your local contact information so we can contact you when we visit Israel sometime during the next three years.
Perhaps I should add this to my personal FAQ:
Despite what you read in the media or hear on the news, Israel isn't all that dangerous of a place. Crime in Jerusalem (and the rest of the country) is low, I can't think of any "unsafe" areas akin to what we have in the US (aside from certain Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and certain places over the Green Line, or places like Gaza which I have no plans to visit). I don't live my life here in fear of rockets being fired from Tehran, Gaza, or Ramallah (though the existential threats that Israel faces are real, and I don't believe a return to the 1967 borders is truly feasible. I don't know when the last suicide bombing was, but it has been years since one occurred (probably in large part due to the security fence that Israel constructed against the wishes of the international community, I'd say the international community ought to rethink its stance on that one, though I also don't approve of the routing Israel used for the fence in some places). Am I going to have to pass through a metal detector, empty my pockets (cell phone, keys, wallet), and have my bag inspected every time I walk into the office building? Yes. But as someone else over on Subchat who also lives here posted, "I live in Israel, not on CNN." The Israel I live in is not what you read about or see in the media.
Now that being said, I did go to Istanbul and Cairo last year, and felt that in both places, I had to constantly watch my back and never told anyone who asked where I was really coming from (I always said the US, not Israel). I had plans to spend a weekend in Sinai but a very strongly worded terror alert was issued advising all Israelis to leave the Sinai Peninsula immediately on the afternoon I was going to book accommodations in Dahab, effectively canceling the trip. When I visited Sderot, the city next to the Gaza Strip that is often the target of kassam rockets from Gaza, I was instructed to wear sneakers and if the siren went off (it didn't), we would be given instructions on where to go and that we should calmly run there and then follow instructions that would follow. About two weeks ago, I was taking the bus from my apartment to my evening Hebrew class, and the bus was rerouted due to street closures as a result of a suspicious package. The closure had some major downtown streets totally closed to pedestrians and vehicular traffic, and once pedestrians were allowed to move into the closed area (before motorized traffic), I saw a line of between 20-30 buses stretching a half-kilometer or so, back to back, stuck as a result of the closure. Stuff happens, you have to be on alert, you can't enter a shopping mall, supermarket, or restaurant without a bag inspection, but it isn't as bad as you CNN and the Washington Post might make you think.
WMATAVeteran: If you are passing through the region, PM me or send an email to me via my website.
Tristan: Thanks. I'll do my best to keep you all abreast on the transportation situation here in Jerusalem and Israel specifically. It is an exciting time to be working in the field here, with the Jerusalem Light Rail coming online next year (hopefully), BRT in Haifa (Israel's largest city) nearing completion (I think), and ongoing planning/construction (and those processes are running concurrently, I have to add, since this is Israel, don't ask me how anything actually gets done in this country because I wonder myself sometimes) of the high speed rail line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv that will take 35 minutes to connect the cities (buses take 60 in good traffic, the current train line built by the Ottomans takes about an hour and 40 minutes) that should open in 2016 or 2017 assuming it isn't delayed any more (it is already about 6 years behind schedule, a year ago the completion date was going to be 2014).