Tag: Olim

Aliyah, Start Up Nation

Israel admits that “Va’ad Bayit” is just a Prank Tax on Olim
Cleaned as recently as 1986!

(Based on a True Story! We changed the name of the Olim! And the dog!)

By Aaron Pomerantz

Last Updated 9/3/2022 at 5:30 PM

Tel Aviv: The nation was rocked yesterday by shocking news that threatens the Zionist ethos of Aliyah to its very core. Responding to an angry email from Liami published reports, Israel’s Misrad Klita (Ministry of Absorption) admitted that the “Va’ad Bayit” does not actually exist. That’s right, the additional maintenance fees that Olim have dutifully paid each month to their Building’s “Superintendent” was just a giant prank/scam that Israelis have been playing on Olim since the 1970’s. The Daily Freier set out to get to the bottom of this disturbing story.

The Daily Freier met with recent British Oleh David S., the heroic Whistleblower who first uncovered this deception. “A woman in my Building yelled at me about all of the hair that my dog Fred was leaving in the stairwell.” David explained. “I told her that I pay 100 Shekels monthly Va’ad Bayit to my Landlord and that it’s not my problem. She stared at me for ten seconds and then told me that there is no Va’ad Bayit in the Building.” (Real World Editor’s Note: This. Really. Happened.)

In our Quest for the Truth, the Daily Freier then met with American Oleh Danny C. “Each month I get a note on my door explaining who owes Va’ad Bayit, what the money goes toward, and when the next Building meeting will take place. So on the day of the Building Meeting, I knocked on my neighbor’s door and asked where everyone else was. He looked at me like I was on drugs. I told him that according to the memo, this was where the Building Meeting was taking place. He told me that they don’t actually have meetings.” Danny stared into space for a minute and then continued. “I heard that he got in a lot of trouble for telling me the truth.” (Real World Editor’s Note: This. Also. Really. Happened.)

Finally, the Daily Freier spoke with one of the many perpetrators of the scam, Tel Aviv resident Irit M. “Every year we take the Va’ad Bayit money and have a party in HaYarkon Park with balloons and a Bouncy Castle for the kids.” Irit explained. “We wait for a day that none of the Olim in our building will be around. Sometimes we contact Misrad Klita and ask them to call the Olim in for fake ridiculous appointments about their education benefits or something.“

As the Daily Freier got up to leave, we asked Irit just how this scheme was able to go on for so long. “Because you Olim are SO Gullible!” Irit chuckled.  “I bet you still think that the Hebrew language has vowels!”

Aliyah, Terrorism

“Lo Hevanti.” Iranian kidnappers release Anglo Oleh who can’t speak Hebrew
“Afshar Mayim?”

(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

By Yuval Weiss

Last Updated 6/18/2022 at 1:00 PM

Istanbul: The nation breathed a sigh of relief this morning after news that Iranian agents in Istanbul had released an Israeli tourist unharmed. Jeff Schwartz, an Oleh Not-So-Hadash from Long Island, was freed after his poor grasp of the Hebrew language convinced his captors that he couldn’t possibly be Israeli. The Daily Freier spoke with Jeff as officials from the Israeli Consulate escorted him to Istanbul Airport.

“Everything happened so fast.” explained Jeff as he stared nervously out the window. “One moment I was wandering around the Grand Bazaar, the next moment I was blindfolded in a van.“

The Daily Freier asked Jeff exactly how he was able to pull off his amazing escape. “I really don’t know.” he confessed. “This angry guy in a ski mask kept screaming at me in Hebrew. I knew he was using future tense verbs, but I had no idea what he was saying. I kept explaining to him that I still hadn’t completed Kita Bet and that he should stick to present tense. Then he hit me with a wooden mallet and I passed out. When I woke up, I asked him for ‘afshar mayim’, but I think that only made him angrier. After a while they just dropped me off on the side of the road. A nice Turkish family took me home and gave me tea and let me use their Wi-Fi to make a phone call.”

While his captors are still at large, Jeff convinced them that he ‘just really really need to post my Wordle score before my family on the East Coast goes to sleep“, and thus was able to secretly record a blurry video of his interrogation. While much of the recording is completely unintelligible, the Iranians appeared to make some progress after they switched to using flashcards.

Soon Jeff arrived at Istanbul Airport and his waiting flight back to Tel Aviv. Jeff profusely thanked the Israeli Consular officials and they promised to read the whole story of his 12-hour ordeal by checking out Jeff’s Aliyah Blog. But they were lying.

Start Up Nation, U.S. Embassy in Israel

Help us nudnik the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for appointments!

(Based on a True Story!)

By Chava Ewa

Last Updated 5/20/2021 at 3:40 PM

Jerusalem:  Are you unemployed with time on your hands? We are seeking folks with excellent Attention to Detail (mild OCD is a plus!) and a good internet connection for an exciting new business in Jerusalem!

Our Start-Up Nation ingenuity has found a way to solve the most pressing problem facing Olim in Israel (no, not the shortage of Skippy peanut butter or Kirkland toilet paper at Osher Ad)…. the lack of available appointments at the US Embassy.

You see, some people saw Corona as a challenge to overcome, whereas the U.S Embassy saw it as an opportunity to DO NOTHING. For a year. Seriously, they’re handing out appointments like Willie Wonka handed out Golden Tickets to his factory (But without the winsome charm of the late Gene Wilder, ז’ל.)

For a modest fee, one of our customer service specialists (OK, they’re all Kollel wives) will sit on the computer all day periodically refreshing the embassy website until an appointment opens up for you.

Listen to what this satisfied customer had to say: “So….umm….. does that mean your next venture is to pay people to sit at Osher Ad waiting for the delivery of Kirkland toilet paper? I would totally pay for that. Amazon has been so slow these days with my toilet paper orders.“

We are looking to fill positions immediately. No need for a TZ number…let’s not get those snoops at Maas Hachnasah involved. (“Strictly a fanciful jest!” -The Daily Freier Legal Department). Forward all inquiries to our HR Department at dassithegiantyenta@hotmail.com.

Aliyah, Start Up Nation

“It’s a Hate Crime against Anglo Olim!” Tel Aviv woman reacts calmly to cost of spices
“Does Nefesh B’ Nefesh know about this?”

By Chava Ewa

Last Updated 12/3/2020 at 12:30 PM

Tel Aviv: “It’s a hate crime! Ethnic discrimination! Racism!” cried Mindy R. “These stores and their discriminatory practices that make the food I like more expensive. It’s just because I’m Ashkenazi, isn’t it?“

Mindy, a Passaic native who now lives in Tel Aviv, tearfully described her experiences shopping for food at her local AM:PM supermarket. “These cultural micro-aggressions have got to stop!”

“They’re charging 21 Shekels for a tiny bottle of McCormick’s seasoning, and like 10 Shekels for a kilo of some random yellow spices I’ve never heard of.” Mindy complained. “Their motives are pretty obvious; they think they’re better than me and are trying to force me to be like them…. maybe I don’t want to serve yellow chicken and yellow rice and yellow vegetables for Shabbos like every Israeli I know? That’s why they made the jars of duck sauce so expensive, because they don’t want me to buy them! And yeah, I tried Amazon and Target but they don’t ship here.”

We headed to Mindy’s corner supermarket with her typical shopping list: jarred gefilte fish, duck sauce, and cream of mushroom soup (You know, the essentials!) in order to get the whole story from Rami the manager. “Am I racist against her? No way! That girl is one of my best customers; she easily spends 4000 Shekels every month!”

We asked Mindy why, if she felt uncomfortable at her local grocery store, couldn’t she just go to another store like Osher Ad? “I would need a car to get to a supermarket like that.” she said. “I would totally buy one, but groceries are sooo expensive.”

UPDATE: Stay tuned for tomorrow when this crisis migrates to Facebook and morphs into an angry rant on the popular page “Living Financially Smarter in Israel”!

Aliyah

Aliyah mania now affecting Liberals and Conservatives alike!

By Chava Ewa

Last Updated 9/7/2020 at 11:30 AM

Jerusalem, Rasko: “After years of complaining about America, my cousins made Aliyah…. both the far-right and the far-left one!” gushed Jerusalem resident Chana N. “It all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to ask them to bring me a suitcase full of Q-Tips, Montreal Spice, and Ziplocs. They arrived yesterday and immediately started their Aliyah blogs!”

Chana scrolled through her Facebook feed looking for each cousins’ posts. “Every time President Trump did something she didn’t like, my cousin Leora would write ‘That’s it! I can’t stay in America, I’m making Aliyah!‘ ….So far so good, right?”

“But with my other cousin, Miri, it was the exact same thing except it was Obama and Pelosi…. They’ve been saying it for years.”

Of course, when pressed about actually making Aliyah, each cited some vague excuses about ‘Parnasa’ and asked when Target and Amazon were going to start shipping to Israel. But after spending years as “Almost Olim“, America’s current Bi-Partisan Balagan helped make up their minds!

The Daily Freier reached both Leora and Miri on a Zoom call at their Quarantine Hotels. After politely listening to their gripes about the hotel food, we asked each woman why she made Aliyah: was it because of their Zionist ideals, a sense of religious duty, or were they escaping antisemitism? Miri chimed in. “First week of September my cousin in Israel is sending her kids to school and our old school district is closed! I’ll do anything to escape from a year of distance learning… Anything!”

In a show of solidarity and unity, both Leora and Miri vowed to wear their Nefesh B’ Nefesh hats until Moschiach arrives.

Aliyah, Corona Virus

“Nobody’s Leaving!” Keep Olim in Israel declares Victory
“Now youse can’t leave.”

By Mark Levy

Last Updated 4/25/2020 at 12:30 PM

Tel Aviv: The Israeli NGO “Keep Olim in Israel” celebrated tonight as the number of Olim (recent immigrants) leaving Israel has statistically reached Zero for the month of April. The Organization was founded several years ago in an attempt to help Olim acclimate to Israel. They even helped streamline Israel’s law for converting your foreign Drivers License. The Daily Freier spoke with Keep Olim founder Liami Lawrence via Zoom about this success.

“Nobody’s leaving!” enthused Liami. “It’s all because of our advocacy and the counseling services we provide!“

The Daily Freier asked Liami if maybe there was some other factor out there that was limiting the ability of Olim to make Yerida, but he refused the premise. “What are you talking about? This is all goes back to the line of candidates we ran in last year’s municipal elections!“

The Daily Freier pressed the point, that maybe there was perhaps another reason that people were no longer flying from Israel for the past few weeks. “No, No, No.” he replied. “Olim aren’t leaving because we have created an online community that supports one another!“

We asked Liami one more time if just maybe there might be something else telling Olim “Now youse can’t leave“, but he said he was right in the middle of an episode of Shtisel and ended the interview.

Amazon, Start Up Nation

Amazon shocked to discover Israeli delivery drivers act like Israeli drivers

By Chava Ewa

Last Updated 12/29/2019 at 11:00 AM

Tel Tzion: As more and more olim are realizing that they really don’t want to walk to the Makolet and speak Hebrew, the Israeli postal system has become desperately overwhelmed. “I walked out of my building and a guy in a van yelled at me: ‘Are you Leora Cohen?’ Umm…what?” said Tel Tzion resident Hadassah C.  After Hadassah explained that she wasn’t Leora but that she was Leora’s upstairs neighbor, the guy threw a parcel at her and sped off shouting “So, you give this to her when you see her.”

Strangely enough, many Amazon shoppers in Israel are finding that just because something comes from an American company doesn’t mean that their Israeli counterparts are remotely sorta halfway holding to the same level of American service. “My parcel was late. And the box looked like it had been taped together. .. and the sweatshirt I had ordered for my husband smelled a bit like arak and nargileh smoke.” complained Chani D., another disappointed shopper. “I’m not going to stop buying from Amazon (chas v’shalom!) but I complained on about 22 Facebook groups, including the one where the guy said he just ordered 16 boxes of Kleenex because and I quote, ‘I’m kind of a tissue snob.‘ Yeah, that one too.”

The Daily Freier tried to reach Amazon customer service staff in Americaland to provide some constructive feedback. A customer service representative in Omaha replied “Yeah, yeah, we heard this already. Honestly, we didn’t expect Israeli delivery drivers to be so…Israeli.  Wait, you mean, they’re still doing that after we told them not to? But…but… we told them not to!“

Aliyah, Amazon, Start Up Nation

“We just ordered toilet paper!” Anglo Olim react calmly to Amazon’s free shipping

By Chava Ewa

Last Updated 11/24/2019 at 3:00 PM

Ramat Beit Shemesh-Mem Sofit: “Is it a fast day? Some kind of holiday? There is some religious reason why people aren’t shopping now, right?” asked Israeli-born makolet owner Rami K. as he stood outside his mini-market in Ramat Beit Shemesh-Alef. Rami dragged on a cigarette and wondered out loud exactly why his business has come to a dramatic slowdown this past week. “I sell everyday things that people need: toilet paper, trash bags, tissues, laundry soap. These Americans living here still use the toilet, right? So, if they aren’t buying toilet paper in my store, where are they getting it from…. America?… hahahahaha. I make joke, yes?“

The Daily Freier had to gently inform Rami that the downward turn of his business was in fact due to Amazon.com and their recent free shipping offer (stop us if you’ve heard this one before). After a few glasses of Arak and an hour on Facebook, we managed to convince our Israeli friend that Americans were indeed buying their trash bags, toilet paper, and laundry soap from the United States. “You Americans are crazy.” said Rami as we showed him that in the great tradition of Jews building community, there are now multiple Facebook groups dedicated to shipping Amazon to Israel… and they can’t stand each other.

The Daily Freier then set out to ask RBS-Alef residents exactly why they were shopping online for their basic necessities. “It’s just easier to buy on Amazon and wait a week for delivery” explained local homemaker Esty C. “If I need to buy from Israeli stores, I actually have to… you know…. speak Hebrew. I thought I was done with all of that… are we still in Hebrew Day School or something?”

As we left RBS-Alef, we asked Rami if he had ever considered taking his makolet business online and creating a user-friendly website for Americans to buy his products online. “Yeah, My daughter said I should make a nice website, but then I woud actually have to… you know… speak English.”

 

Aliyah, Start Up Nation

“He was never even banned from Keep Olim!” Israel’s fake Aliyah stories debunked

By Mark Levy

Last Updated 11/8//2019 at 2:00 PM

Jerusalem: This week The Times of Israel reported a mini-scandal rocking the nation: the Ministry of Absorption created make-believe Olim for their Social Media Campaigns. That’s right, the Ministry in charge of immigration had a hard time finding actual….. immigrants. Which is weird, because we’re not shy about sharing things. Such as how much better the Banking was in our country, how the country isn’t doing enough for us, and how we’d already be multi-trillionaires if we hadn’t made Aliyah. So it’s not like it would be hard to find us, seeing how Extra we can be when it comes to complaining. But apparently the Absorption Ministry wanted Olim who wouldn’t spend the whole article whining about the lack of Ziploc bags and a real Apple Store, and instead wanted something more positive. C’mon that’s nuts, right? Yet it was just these incredibly suspicious positive attitudes that first alerted the Olim Community to this shady enterprise. The Daily Freier set out to ask our fellow immigrants of the exact moment that they detected the Government’s Fake Online Olim.

“So I was reading this one profile about a guy, and it said he had a real job.” explained an Olah Hadasha named Jess. “Major Red Flag, right? So I tried to CyberStalk him and I couldn’t find any history of him getting banned from Keep Olim. That’s when I called BS. Also, none of them had ever begged me to bring a bag of their winter clothes back on my next flight from New York.”

“When the Olah from Britain said she had more than two Israeli friends? Oh Please.” scoffed a recent immigrant named Tali. “It’s just so obvious. I mean, she never even mentioned the time she tried to sell a futon on Secret Tel Aviv and got a bunch of really sketchy DM’s from Israeli guys. Plus, her name wasn’t Rachel or Sarah.”

“There was just so much lying.” complained David from Boston. “The Lone Soldier who talked about buying furniture at IKEA? They should have started small, maybe with a Lone Soldier who doesn’t mooch your groceries.”

UPDATE: The Daily Freier wants the Big Money Machers at Misrad HaKlita to know that for the right price, we will create convincingly fake Aliyah Blogs that will fool the most cynical Olim. We know how to do this. Trust us.

Aliyah, Amazon, Start Up Nation

Only in Israel: an Amazon Store that sucks!

(Photo Credit: Globes Israel)

By Chava Ewa

Last Updated 10/3/2019 at 10:30 AM

Bet Shemesh: The Anglo Israeli Community was paralyzed with fear today over rumors that Amazon Israel had been hacked… and turned into a website selling a poor selection of overpriced Israeli products. The eagerly anticipated launch of the online retail giant in Israel only fueled confusion and disappointment among Olim.

“I put off my yerida for this!” explained Ramat Bet Shemesh resident Dassie S. “I stopped myself from publishing an angry rant on Keep Olim In Israel announcing my departure. I let my brother come and visit from America without bringing me a suitcase of Ziploc bags! They told us Amazon was opening up here, so I decided that I could tough it out. But when I opened my computer and typed in Amazon.co.il and just saw stam overpriced Israeli products, I was sure they had been hacked or something. Why does HaShem hate us?”

The Daily Freier then went to Amazon Israel’s Headquarters in Haifa to demand answers. “No, we haven’t been hacked.” replied an exasperated Customer Service rep named Yuval. “It’s not a prank. Yes, it’s supposed to be like that. And no, I haven’t heard about your special steak spice. Can’t you just buy your spices at the Shuk? I’ve had this conversation a million times today.”

Sadly, this was indeed not an elaborate prank. After several email exchanges with Amazon Israel customer service, the Daily Freier confirmed that they do not intend to stock Montreal Steak Spice, Neosporin, or the snack-size Ziplocs that you can’t even find at Osher Ad. They do, however have t-shirts from Adika (um… whoever they are) and dishes from Naaman. We caught up with our friend Dassie to get her opinion on this business model.

“So, like instead of going to literally any Israeli mall to buy Naaman dishes, I can pay extra on Amazon and still have to wait for the Doar? Yeah….no.”

“These spoiled Americans, they expect too much.” laughed Yuval. “They want cheap prices, they want fast delivery, they want cheerful customer service reps. Who do they think we are? Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting their parcels delivered by flying robots. Hahahahaha.”

“If you don’t think I’m going to complain about this in my Aliyah Blog, you’re in for a big surprise.” warned Dassie. The Daily Freier admonished Dassie that as we approach Yom Kippur, it’s imperative not to spread malicious gossip. Yet she was adamant. “It’s not Lashon Hara if it’s true.”