What if some prominent individual or group started holding press conferences to declare that the Earth is flat, or that it is stationary while the sun revolves around it?

Would scientists rush to debunk this theory, publishing papers and holding conferences, or just shake their heads in disbelief and return to their work?

I’m not suggesting the odious, politically charged hate crime of denying the Holocaust is as benign as making spurious scientific claims. But I do think the response to it ought to be along the same lines as the scientists who shake their heads.

On Thursday Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Neytanyahu, came to the United Nations General Assembly bearing detailed plans of Auschwitz, and cited President Barack Obama’s recent visit the Buchenwald. “Was President Obama paying tribute to a lie?” asked the prime minister. And, he added, are the thousands of Jews who still bear the tatoos of concentration camp numbers perpetrating a lie?

He asked these questions because on the previous day the thug who leads Iran offered up some of his usual tripe about the Holocaust being a hoax. The comments are worthy of condemnation, but the detailed response of Netanyahu and others come too close to creating a debate on the subject, something the small legion of crackpot deniers worldwide desperately wants.

Whether in academia, political discourse or popular culture, there is no serious discourse about whether the  Nazi war against the Jews took place. The detailed accounts of eyewitnesses, photographic and scientific evidence and, most significant, the records of the Nazis themselves, who never sought to cover up their crimes are readily available to any inquiring minds.

While Ahmadinejad may have convinced himself there are some questions about about the scope and scale of the atrocities, it’s hard to imagine even he seriously believes the Nazis did not perpetrate genocide 60 years ago. Rather, he knows it’s a sure-fire way to push buttons in the West, and to expose pro-Jewish sentiment among western leaders that he can use to muster allies who hate America and Israel.

Engaging this blowhard in any kind of serious debate only plays right into his hands.

Lashon Hara is one of the occupational hazards of this job.

It is not only religiously observant reporters who have to worry about being guilty of gossip but anyone with a  conscience. Responsible journalism is about balancing the public’s need to know with the privacy of individuals, their right to make mistakes and above all, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

But what do you do with someone who says the most damaging things — about himself?

While researching a story about the Crazy Eddie scandal I came across Sam Antar, who was the brains behind one of the biggest frauds in Wall Street and retail history. Sam could easily argue that he was an innocent kid who, at all of 14, got sucked into a life of crime by a family that exploited his naivete and talents, sending him  to college and setting him up at an accounting firm to learn about the audit process so he could find ways to cheat.

Instead, Sam, as you will see in this weeks cover story, rakes himself over the coals worse than anyone else has, or could. In my interviews with him, he would often express his extreme remorse for what he did and, in the same breath, question his own sincerity because, as he points out, he only stopped cheating and stealing because he was caught.

At times I felt uncomfortable being Sam’s accomplice in publicly flagellating himself. But in the end, I felt it was an informative, and in many ways uplifting story about one man’s quest for redemption. Sam says he has spent up to half a million dollars of his own money, made from real estate investments, flying around the country lecturing about white-collar crime to law enforcement officers and non-profit groups.

It occurred to me at one point that Sam’s public remorse may be a tool to promote his lecturing, for which he is now charging private for-profit groups. Even if that’s true, he deserves to make a living, and what he has to say has value not only to watchdogs and CEOs, but to would-be thieves.

There has been an observable shift in our national culture these days from the mealy-mouthed “it’s someone else’s fault” reaction to getting caught to standing up tall and taking your lumps. Sam Antar is a fine example of that shift, and his public acts of teshuvah are an inspiration at the appropriate time of the year.

During my week in Israel, Alexandra Polsky had a bit of a more hectic schedule than the other olim I was covering as she settled into a yeshiva program in Tel Aviv, a temporary apartment in Jerusalem and searched for a job. So it was hard to keep in touch.

That’s why God created e-mail.

I received a lovely update from her this morning. And since I’m a little blogged out from 10 days of frantic posting, I thought it would be nice to let you hear from her in her own words:

I hope your trip back went well. Sorry I’ve been hard to get a hold of–I didn’t quite anticipate how busy I would be.

My first week in Israel has been smooth more or less. In terms of the paperwork and bureaucracy, I actually pretty much experienced zero of both, and I find myself very grateful to Nefesh B’Nefesh for completely changing the process of aliyah by speeding up the process of receiving a teudat zehut and organizing aliyah fairs to coincide with picking up one’s teudat zehut. This past Sunday, I picked up my teudat zehut, opened a bank account, got health insurance, and made an appointment at Misrad HaKlitah (Ministry of Absorption) all within two hours, all in one room. In the past, getting all of that done would have taken probably months, and would have involved lots of office-hopping across the city, waiting in long lines, and probably dealing with lots of people who aren’t familiar with North American olim, what they’re used to, and what they are looking for here (all of the vendors I dealt with at the aliyah fair were and this was extremely helpful).

Today I went to that meeting at Misrad HaKlitah, whose purpose was to register my bank account with the Ministry so that my sal klitah (oleh benefits) will be deposited straight into my account. There was no waiting, I was invited into the office on time, and the woman with whom I had the appointment was very helpful, polite and sweet, and she even offered me a free calendar for the new year from Misrad HaKlitah! How’s that for bureaucracy?

For now, I’m not really interested in doing ulpan, and I’m not going to school at this point so I don’t need to get my BA recognized, and so, at least for the time being, I seem to be done with the process of becoming a citizen, a process that was really quite straightforward and painless. Perhaps the irony is that I’m having much more trouble finding a long-term apartment, and I’ve already spent more time on that than I did on becoming a citizen and claiming my rights!

In terms of jobs, I went to a number of interviews and informational meetings this week, and so far nothing has exactly panned out, although I’m still waiting to hear back from a few people. Just today I met with a woman about some unpaid work that would give me excellent experience in some areas I’m looking to learn more about, and I’m very excited about the prospect of working with her even though it’s unpaid (something I can afford to do because of the sal klitah). I also have a few freelance writing jobs hanging in the air and I’m hoping that they will pan out. Other than that, I’m probably going to put the job search on hold for now while I enjoy the chagim as much as I can while intensifying the apartment search (which is really turning out to be quite difficult simply because of lack of availability).

Socially, everything is great, and I’ve been having so much fun catching up with friends and having people over to my apartment, something I really love doing, and I absolutely love being in a neighborhood that feels so “neighborhood-y” meaning that people just stop by for a cup of tea because they were walking through. My current roommate for the month is a close friend from last year, and it’s been great to spend so much time with her in the apartment. I’ve also been spending a lot of time with my roommate-to-be as we’ve been searching for apartments together, and I’m enjoying getting to know her even better and speaking tons of Hebrew with her.

I think that’s about it in terms of the questions you asked. Please let me know if I can be of more help or if you have further questions.

Your blogger has had a wonderful, spiritually uplifting visit to Israel, but you know what they say about all good things.

During a break in the International Jewish Bloggers’ Conference Sunday night, I checked in with our olim one last time to see how they had spent their first weekend and how things looked on the road ahead.

The Bergers were on their way back to Kfar Shmaryahu from an Aliyah Fair at Nefesh B’Nefesh headquarters in Jerusalem. There they had met with representatives of the four health insurance providers and signed up for ulpan classes with officials of the Ministry of Absorption.
“Mainly you learn about how to navigate the system to get your benefits in place,” says Pamela Berger. “It was a very useful day.” They also received informaton from the Association for Americas and Canadians in Israel.

With a daughter who preceded them in Israel, the Bergers had the benefit of her experience in navigating the bureaucracy, which helped make expectations realistic. “It’s not like one-stop shopping,” said Pamela. “If you want to sign up for different things for every thing you have to do at least four visits. ” While they believe the Israeli insurance will cover them retroactively from the day they arrived in Israel, they are continuing American coverage briefly until the dust settles.

They are continuing to explore an apartment in Jerusalem for use on weekends or when they attend cultural events in the capital, but haven’t decided. “We may even decide to use it for two weeks at a time, when we’re taking ulpan, but these things are very open-ended right now,” says Pamela.
Beyn-time, as they say in Israel, the family spent the weekend enjoying the best of both religious and secular life, with Shabbat services in Jerusalem followed by the beach in Tel Aviv. On Motzei Shabbat, they babysit the grandsons, Yonatan and Nadav, so their parents could go to the movies for the first time in over a year, enjoying the security of having loved ones as guardians. “They saw ‘Falling in Love Again,” says Pamela. “This is the main reason we did this.”
Adi Cydulkin still doesn’t have her teudah oleh, or immigrant papers, but she does have an assurance that it’s in the mail.
On Sunday night, after seeing her visiting mom off to the airport for the trip back to New York, she was picking up a new closet to store her American wardrobe. “I have to put it together tonight,” she says. She’s been working as a translator for a company that does film subtitling.
Adi will spend the high holidays In Haifa, where she has lots of relatives, including her grandmother, cousins, aunts and uncles. Looking ahead, she may choose to go back to school to explore working a creative field. She majored in theater at Binghamton University.
“I miss my family, but nothing in particular. I’m not really a person who misses too much when I travel.”

On a personal note, after more than two decades in journalism, there isn’t much that hits me where I live, but the arrival ceremony of those olim, detailed below, came about as close as anything has to giving me goosebumps. The sheer joy of those people starting new lives in Israel and the spectacle of their Israeli friends and relatives, and the government itself, rolling out the red carpet goes to the core of why we are Jews today and why we have Israel, and why we need Jewish newspapers and blogs to tell the story for history.

For a lifelong middle-class guy, I’ve been fortunate to have the kind of relationship I’ve enjoyed with Israel, visiting 10 times and living there for two years as a student. The last four of my trips have been for work, but this was by far the most fulfilling of those trips.

After some R&R time on the beach, your wayfaring blogger got down to business and the reason he had come to Tel Aviv.

David Cohen, a fellow Brooklyn native, was hosting an End of Summer event for recent Nefesh B’Nefesh olim like himself on Gordon Beach, just a short walk from my hotel.

When I arrived, I found him tapping one of eight kegs of beer and fussing over a machine that was supposed to chill the beer and dispense it. In a little while, hundreds of thirsty young olim and their friends were going to show up for the promised free beer, snacks volleyball and mingling.

Cohen is the owner and founder of Dancing Camel Brewery, his own little hobs paradise in the holy land.

“I started out home-brewing in my apartment in Park Slope,” he told me as he fussed with the underperforming generator, and I wondered if home-brewing was legal. “Then when I moved to [Teaneck] New Jersey I had more space and a house and set up more sophisticated equipment and it kind of snowballed. When I came on aliya six years ago, I originally went to Tzfat but for family reasonsmoved to Modiin and started looking for a place to set up and settled on Tel Aviv. We set up the brewery a litle less than three years ago.”

The stocky Cohen, 46, who looks like an ex-Navy Seal, now sells his beer to seven or eight bars in Israel. When I asked about his plans to begin exporting, Cohen wanted to know how I knew this, and I pretended to have used my extensive network of sources to run a check on him, when in truth someone on the beach had told me that five minutes earlier.

“I’m talking to a couple of importers now and trying to work out the logistics,” he said. “I think it would be fantastic.”

Although beer doesn’t require kosher certification, Cohen has one anyway, perhaps to give him a leg up on the competition. “Unless you know it was brewed in Germany according to ancient historic rules and laws, yeah, you really do want a hashgacha, because here in Israel there are more issues like shemita, terumah, orla. If the beer is brewed here with local ingredients there is a plethora of more issues than if it’s outside Israel.”

As we were talking, and I was mentally noting the irony of “plethora” coming up in a conversation about beer, Gordon Beach had been transofmed to the Upper West Side on Simchat Torah, minus Yom Tov attire and plus sand and surf and free brewskis. The crowd was getting thirsty and lining up at the kegs.

Since I couldn’t in good conscience blog about a beer without tasting it, I filled a few cups from the four taps, demonstrating my lousy bartending skill and propensity to create cups of foam. There were four varieties: Pale Ale, India Pale Ale, Midnight Stout and Hefe-Wit. Each had a unique taste that can’t be compared to other beers, and only now do I suspect that what I was tasting was kashrus.

Still, none of the beers disappointed. They were full-bodied and non-filling. And they must be low in alcohol because I made it easily back to my hotel room, and didn’t even fall asleep quickly. One of the young olim I met was less impressed. When I invited him to get a refill with me, he said he was still tasting the last one.

I met a variety of people with various ties to NBN, such as David Jaffee, 46, from LA. He came to Israel 10 years ago but became a citizen four years ago through NBN, without leaving the country. He has three jobs fixing computers, running a cleaning company and doing “Internet stuff.”

“You have to use your brain here,” he said. He came to Israel because “I was in the computer industry, I was losing my marbles, took a vacation for six months, met my wife. She likes it here. She’s from South Africa.”

So things have worked out well?

“I’m glad I’m not in the states,” Jaffee said. “People are in deep s–t. They’re in massive debt, over their heads. Here they don’t let you.”

Israel, said Jaffee as he sipped a Dancing Camel, is not “a summer vacation. You come here you better be prepared to deal with the ups and downs.”

Mingling strictly for professional purposes, I soon learned that I was not the only non-single person on the beach (although I was probably the oldest.) Michal Slawny, formerly of Virginia, and Carrie Rudder, formerly of Florida, came with their Israeli fiances.

Both came to Israel via Nefesh B’Nefesh, Michal three years ago and Carrie on last week’s flight.

“They helped me find a job two months after I made aliya,” said Michal, 26, who works for the financial site Seeking Alpha and lives in a place called Kiryat Ono, perhaps named for John Lennon’s widow. Her mother is Israeli, and Michal spent enough time here as a kid to want to come back on her own. “My mother never wanted to leave. But my parents are going to come back when they retire.” The chuppah is set for June 21st.

Rudder, 38, said she had visited Israel often over the past four years and when she met her now-fiance, that was the clincher. “He noodged me to come here,” she says. The wedding date is pending. Having done volunteer work with Jewish organizations over the last few years, she expects to “start out in some volunteer capacity” in her new life before settling into a career.

As time passed, and I learned just how to tip the beer cup to minimize foam, the olim broke up into conversation clusters and volleyball games. I would soon learn that four summers of volleyball on bungalow colony asphalt doesn’t well prepare a player for the same game on sand. And that Israelis like to combine the game with soccer by kicking on the serve.

It was one of those events where the “until” time on the invite was a question mark, and so around the stroke of midnight I came to terms with the fact that old married bloggers hanging around a singles party until ??was just sad. I said my goodbyes, went back to the hotel and called my wife and kids in New York, who were just getting home, to tell them about my arduous work as a foreign correspondent.

They came from every domain; the dot-coms, the dot-nets, the dot-co-dot-ils. They came from Wordpress and Blogspot and Tumblr.

With names like names like Muqata, Fun Joel, Rafi G, Kvetcher and West Bank Mama, those who tweet and poke and tag joined with those who consult and analyze and advocate in a conference center in the Jewish capital of the world for the International Jewish Bloggers Conference.

The 2nd annual gathering, sponsored by Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Israel-based firm WebAds, drew 300 participants, nearly all of them recent olim, for whom the social media are a valuable new bridge to ideological connections, and potential livelihood, around the world.

Workshops discussed making money from your blog (upshot: you can’t), crash courses in Twitter and Facebook, defending Israel online as well as panel discussions. The lecture topics ranged from the impact of social media on the Jewish community, using it to network among olim and, again, how to defend Israel online (this time with pointers from a close aide to Bibi Netanyahu, Ron Dermer.)

There was also plenty of time for networking the old-fashioned way, without servers and cables, of which most bloggers seemed capable, although there was a fair amount of keyboard tapping during the sessions, and some used only screennames on their ID badges.

I knew I was in an interesting crowd when a guy who looked like he was trying out for the cover of Mercenary magazine sat down next to me, armed with both an AR-15 rifle and a pistol and dressed like a soldier of fortune. When I jokingly said I hoped he wouldn’t shoot me if my cell phone rang during the lecture, he replied, dryly, that he wouldn’t.

I later learned that I had been sitting next to Double Tapper Israel, a blogger who seems to have a dual obsession with guns and women of the Israel Defense Forces (”So sexy, so deadly.”) No explanation of his nom de guerre/plume, but it’s a safe bet it has nothing to do with dancing.

We listened as NBN spokesman Benzi Kluwgant discussed the organization’s hope to harness the “emerging media to facilitate aliyah.”

Then the editor of The Jerusalem Post, David Horowitz, discussed how blogs and free Web content were posing major challenges to his 50-year-old paper.

That was followed by a panel with David Kelsey (Jewcy), Jonathan Rosenblum (The Jerusalem Post), Orit Arfa (LA Jewish Journal) and Tova Serkin (JGooders) on how blogs and social media are changing our lives.

As I pondered how many possible media names can come from some permutation of Jew or J (Jewcy, Jewlicious, Jewschool, Jewsweek, Jewmanji,  Jewkbox, Jew Made Me Love Jew, JBlog, JDate, JWalk, JBird …) Kelsey spoke about the changing face of the blogosphere. Once dominated by an anonymous and combative fringe, he said, it has now given way to more responsible set that does research and breaks news. “They are actually being cited and not just mined for information,” he said.

Rosenblum, who covers the Orthodox point of view online but insists he is not a blogger, said said he welcomed blogs that are critical of Torah life because “every society needs feedback mechanisms. The two best are democracy and a free market of ideas.”

Arfa discussed the social implications of Facebook, suggesting that it could cut into synagogue attendance by young Jewish singles. “It really accelerated my re-entry to the Jewish community in LA,” said Arfa, who lived in Israel for nine years but returned to the West Coast last year. “I wouldn’t choose to go to synagogue to meet more Jews. But having having contacts and old friends [on social media] is one way to re-enter the community.”

Asked by a flirty male audience member what it would take to get her to stay in Israel, Arfa said perhaps the right guy, or a constitution that is more like the US Constitution. Moderator Danielle Sheldon reminded her that Israel has no constitution at all, and Arfa did not elaborate on how her civil liberties had been infringed upon in Israel. She did, however, advocate for “some rules to be set in place” about Googling and Facebooking potential dates.

Serkin discussed how the Internet has changed the world of philanthropy. ”You can see the direct impact of your money carefully,” but also cautioned that social media are “not a magic bullet” and has to be used as part of a larger campaign.

The majority of participants were Orthodox men and women, on average between 30 and 50. Despite the term international, they appeared to be all North American. But their reasons for attending were diverse.

“Maybe I needed to be convinced why I should be using Twitter,” said Lurker, a 43-year-old oleh from Teaneck who posts on the Muqata blog and wouldn’t give up his real name. “I’m not a technophobe, quite the opposite, but until now I haven’t seen what the point is.” Is he convinced? “I’m going to try it out.”

Muqata, the name of Arafat’s resting place, was appropriated by pro-Israel bloggers to surprise those who Google the term. “It’s a blog about life in Israel,” says Lurker, who not surprisingly works in computer programming. “Not everybody who searches for [Muqata] may get what they are looking for.” Lurker’s favorite topics are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Israeli politics.

Fun Joel, aka Joel Haber, sees blogging not as a way to vent but to promote himself as a screenwriter.

“The amount of blogging or other social media I’ve done that I’ve tried to make a living from is not directly monetizing but more developing me as a brand, selling my services,” sad Haber 38, who graduated YU and took media studies classes the  New School. He moved from New York to LA before making aliyah in March via NBN, and recently completed a screenplay on commission for which he was sent to Africa for research.

“I used to blog about film and screenwriting and made a tremendous number of contacts and tremendous number of friends via blogging. Now that I’m starting on Twitter, I’ll be developing that network as well.”

Margot Stern posts on the blog of the non-profit Leadel.net, which describes itself as “a media hub showcasing the rich variety of contemporary Jewish voices and expressions.”

“I’m not blogging as a career,” said Stern, 26, who made aliyah two years ago from Ft. Lauderdale. “We use blogging as an attribute in order to promote what we do. We spotlight Jewish initiatives and want to be the leading Jewish inspiration on the Web.”

The conference, she said, “brings a lot of people together in a niche market which you don’t usually have the chance to do.”

Danielle Sheldon, 20, who came to Israel last year from Los Angeles, blogs on Jewlicious about security issues while working toward a masters in Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and interning at the Institute for Counterterrorism. “I mostly blog about war-related things and every now and then something else that makes me angry,” she said.

Most of the bloggers didn’t seem to know each other — at least in person — but you got the feeling that for many, the event was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“The thing I like most about a conference like this,” said Lurker, “is attaching a face to all the names that I meet in a virtual way throughout the year.”

It has already become known in the Israeli media as “the Singles Flight.”

Eighty-one single olim got off the Nefesh B’Nefesh flight from JFK on Tuesday. Within an hour, there was one less as Nechama Dina Simon became engaged to her waiting boyfriend.

As one of the remaining 80, Alexandra Polsky started getting phone calls from Israeli reporters on Tuesday, with the help of Nefesh B’Nefesh.

“They basically went crazy with the slant of the ‘love flight,’ ” Alexandra told me by phone as she rode a sherut commuter van from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem Thursday. She said he had heard that late summer aliyah flights usually have more singles because families prefer earlier flights in order to be established in Israel by the start of the new school year.

Unlike your sensitive and more reserved blogger, who tries not to get too personal, Army Radio wanted to know, in a live interview, what kind of Israeli man she was looking for.

“I was embarassed . I didn’t really know what to say, so I said what I can say in Hebrew: tall and tanned with a  nice smile, someone who is kind. Very general things. It was fun, but I was extremely tired, and especially when you are being thrown back into speaking Hebrew again, it was a little bit awkward to be talking about that.”

Alexandra has been shuttling between Jerusalem, where she has an apartment with a friend, and Tel Aviv, where she is studying part-time at Binah yeshiva. On Sunday she will get her teudah zehut, or identity card.

Her top priority now is to find part-time work, perhaps doing grant writing for an non-governmental organization. She may also consider work more related to her degree in biology from Columbia, such as public health.

Alexandra is looking forward to Rosh HaShanah in Jerusalem and perhaps a hiking excursion during Sukkot. In between is a new experience: “I’ve never been in Tel Aviv for Yom Kippur before. I’m excited about that.”

On her second day in Israel, Adi Cydulkin was spending quality time with family and friends in Haifa. But unlike her fellow Nefesh B’Nefesh olim, Adi still had the Israeli bureaucracy to contend with.

“I actually still have a lot to do,” she said on Wednesday, recalling the long wait at Ben Gurion for her identity papers, health insurance plan and aliyah stipend from the Absorption Ministry that proved in vain. “I sat around waiting after the ceremony at the Absorption office, but when they called me they told me I didn’t get anything and I would have to go do it on my own. I walked out of there empty-handed.”
What set her apart from 203 others is her status as a toshav chozer (she lived in Israel and returned to America as a child). A Nefesh B’Nefesh spokeswoman said she was looking into Adi’s case to see what was holding up the process.

Adi is exploring whether she can take care of the remaining paperwork in Tel Aviv, or whether to schedule a trip to Jerusalem this week . Despite it all, she was upbeat. “I’m not looking forward to it, but it’s just another thing I have to do. It would be nice if everything was smoother , but the past is the past.”
Her advice to other olim who face a similar predicament: “Try and be as patient as possible and get as much information as possible ahead of time.”

Your faithful blogger has taken it upon himself to investigate the beaches of Tel Aviv while here on dutiful work assignment. He is happy to report to you that the waves are awesome, the water as blue as the stripes on Israel’s flag and so warm it’s like a hot tub with surf. And of course the food in the area is as kosherly delicious as ever.

 
So in case you were considering a trip down this way this week, the Continuum strongly encourages it. No thanks are necessary.

 
Just another selfless public service for the loyal readers.

For Berle and Pamela Berger their first 48 hours as Israelis seemed much like any of their other visits. There was a day at the beach, dinner with friends, and plenty of quality time with their daughter’s family.

But there’s also the tedium of settling in to a new life. They still need to work out Macabi, the national health insurance program, and pick up their official teudah zehut, identity papers, in Jerusalem. They opened a bank account. Berle inquired about an ulpan in Ranana but was told he had to visit the Absorption Ministry first.

“My husband did projects around the apartment, fixing stuff around the house, but I didn’t want to do any organizing,” says Pamela. “I feel like I did all the organizing in Great Neck before we left.”

Yesterday she was back at the Israeli folk dance class in Raanana she had frequented during past stays. Today, Thursday, the couple were hunting for a possible second apartment in Jerusalem.
It all seemed fairly routine.

“We’ve ben here so many times, I don’t feel like I’ve been planted into foreign territory,” said Pamela, who is semi-retired as an occupational therapist. “The comfort level is very high.”

“We also have a sense of the system: we know that things don’t work out always the way you want them, because of silly logistical problems. But we have time. It’s not like we have to be at work tomorrow and only have today to deal with the frustrations of the system.”

While she is finding the driving challenging — “they signal and cut, rather than signal and wait and cut” — Pamela for the most part finds Israeli life endearing. “The stereotype of Israelis is that they’re abrasive. I just never find that. Everybody is nice.

“I feel like I have a life here.”