Cultural Quirks | Modest Meanings

Breathe and reboot (SJP)

Well, I’m sorry for the interminable hiatus, my life for the past few months has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride and despite the previous months that were no less filled, it felt as if over a year’s worth of change had finally come collapsing down around me. There is no question that making [...]

Setting personal boundaries when living abroad

Being a child is the only time in our lives when we are truly open to the world around us, in the most innocent, non-judgmental way possible. We believe in and are willing to try almost anything, without any sense of possible or impossible. As we get older, experience teaches us that there are boundaries [...]

How to stay sane when the changes are just too great

When you take a big step in your life, such as a new career, a move to new country or just about anything that rocks the foundation of your day-to-day truths, there is an inevitable point where all this change peaks and you feel completely overwhelmed. This feeling can crop up often, once in a [...]

The Faceless Bureaucratic Organism

Bureaucracy has personality. Like one of those odd co-workers whose mood swings fly from one end of the spectrum to the other, you have no choice but to work with them but you never know whether you’ll come out beaten or triumphant. In Israel, bureaucracy comes across as an aggressive struggle for power, where the [...]

Life Abroad – The Challenge of Personal Change

Since i’ve moved abroad, i’ve found myself experiencing a whole panoply of emotions, ranging all over and making me feel like i’m some kind of schizophrenic lost on an island of her own making. As previously mentioned, through the glory of the internet I quickly realized that I was not alone and that all the [...]

Why combine mourning with celebrations?

Once a year, there is a week long period during which Israelis take the time to remember events from the past. It begins with the Holocaust Memorial Day and ends with Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers. Both days are characterized by their profound moments of silence that are accompanied by the sound of a country-wide [...]

Everything has changed, but relationships are universal

One of the wonderful things about living in a more international context is meeting all kinds of people from various walks of life and, I sincerely believe that if you allow them to, these relationships can open you up in ways that nothing else can. Of course, with the good stuff comes that other side, [...]

What Israelis do after the Army

As the army service is truly a pivotal point in the life of almost every Israeli, it is not surprising that when many of them complete their service they tend to have the same reaction, aka flight. Or, if we want to be a little more politically correct about the matter, we can say that [...]

One of the cultural side-effects of army service in Israel

There is a phenomenon here in Israel that is definitely out of the ordinary, and that is the constant movement of soldiers from one end of the country to the other. If you are a tourist or a new immigrant, this reality is especially evident as they represent a large portion of the population that [...]

Modest Meanings