the definition of capitulate

Boneh, the portion of Habonim Dror's gap year program I was coordinating this fall, is over. Last week I led a seminar for the same chanichim about the history of Habonim, in which we visited kibbutzim founded by movement graduates, examined the widespread privatization of kibbutzim, and looked at some of the urban kvutzot that have sprung up in the past decade or so.

From now through January, I'll be preparing for the next machzor of Boneh, which begins in February and will include around 20 Australians and possibly New Zealanders. I might go to Europe in January, but my plans aren't finalized yet.

I wrote on this blog about the role that people who place halakha above Israeli law played in Rabin's assassination, and I wrote about the settlement freeze. It turns out there are two explicit connections in the news.

Last week Rabbi Eliezer Melamed called for soldiers to refuse orders to enforce a construction freeze in West Bank settlements on the grounds that it would violate halakha. Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded by revoking the status granted to Melamed's yeshiva, which has been a hesder yeshiva. Other rabbis at hesder yeshivas responded to Barak by sending letters to students saying essentially the same thing as Melamed. Today Melamed agreed to "denounce political demonstrations by Israeli soldiers in uniform". Haaretz characterized Melamed's statement as a capitulation. Because he had initially refused to sign any statement at all, his agreement to sign a letter could be interpreted as a capitulation. However, I doubt that he has budged in his principles. Last week he compared Barak's treatment of his yeshiva to the propagation of a blood libel.

A few weeks ago, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman said that "step by step, Torah law will become the binding law in the State of Israel." Here's an article which quotes him explaining himself, and here's a really interesting article which criticizes him and then sort of supports the idea as a means of recognizing the value of Jewish legal precedent.

irreverent continuity programming

For hilarious satire on what occupies Jewish leaders today, check out Eli Valley's new cartoon, Metamorphosis, which made me spit milk on my laptop.

news analysis

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu announced a settlement freeze this week. Obama has been asking for this for at least six months. What prompted Netanyahu to make this announcement? Why now?

At first I thought maybe Netanyahu's announcement had something to do with the White House's appointment of an envoy on antisemitism. But this was an implausibly small concession for Obama to make in exchange for a settlement freeze.

On Friday the answer revealed itself:

The International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors voted 25-3 to censure Iran for developing a uranium enrichment site in secret in a motion that gained rare backing from Russia and China, which have in the past blocked attempts to isolate Iran, a trade partner for both. (Haaretz)

Why did Russia and China give this "rare backing"? Obama visited Russia and China about a week ago.

It seems likely to me that Obama and Netanyahu made a deal in May. Obama said he'd push Russia and China to support an IAEA censure of Iran over its uranium enrichment. Netanyahu said that if the IAEA censures Iran with support from Russia and China, he'd announce a settlement freeze.

A censure is just a censure and this settlement freeze is only partial (construction in progress will continue, and the freeze excludes East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed). Will the Palestinians see Netanyahu's announcement as a legitimate concession or as an empty gesture? I expect that Obama recognizes that it is a significant step for Netanyahu to take, and that his foreign policy energy will soon be focused on prodding the Palestinians to make a reciprocal concession.

I hope reports of Gilad Shalit's imminent return are true, but we've heard this tune before. Even if he does return, I am not sure that could be considered a Palestinian concession, given that Israel will probably be releasing hundreds of prisoners in exchange for Shalit.

Maybe Hamas's announcement of a deal with Gaza factions regarding rocket fire could be considered the reciprocal concession:

According to the announced deal, rocket fire will only be allowed in retaliation for Israeli military offences within the Strip. (ynet)

Will Israelis see this as a legitimate concession or as a self-interested pause allowing Hamas to prepare for the next barrage? Probably the latter.

jordan and new apartment

I moved into an apartment in Ramat Gan. I love the new place. It has plenty of space, decent furniture and lots of light. As of yet, it does not have internet, which is partially why its taken me so long to post these pictures from my trip to Jordan with my family earlier in November. The highlights were Petra and Wadi Rum. The people in the pictures are my parents, my aunt and uncle, my dad's cousin and her husband, and two Brits (Steve and Emma) who were on the tour with us.

rabin rally

Last night I went to the rally marking the 14th year since the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. It was well attended by the blue shirt movements. The rally was demoralizing. What has changed in fourteen years? Rabin was a "soldier in the army of peace" who was murdered before he could complete his mission. Weren't there any other soldiers? Why didn't they complete his mission?

The youth movement hanoar haoved v'halomed distributed signs at the rally that said "lo nishkach v'lo nislach" -- we will not forget and we will not forgive. That's a rather uncompromising stance, especially for a leftist group. It would be natural to think that it refers to the assassin, Yigal Amir, but it actually refers to the atmosphere created by right wing groups leading up to the assassination. A few weeks before the assassination, Rabin was called a traitor, depicted in a Nazi SS uniform and burned in effigy at a rally attended by Ariel Sharon and Bibi Netanyahu. Rabbis like Avigdor Neventzal compared Rabin to a rodef, suggesting that it would be halachically permissible (or obligatory?) to kill him. The atmosphere that existed before Rabin's assassination was swept under the rug by public demonstrations of unity, but it would be easy to recreate because the underlying cause still exists: a significant number of Israelis think that civil laws are subordinate to halacha and that halacha permits political violence.

So Rabin's mission is unfinished and the societal factors that contributed to his death still exist. Will it help to listen to the sticker song and sing shir lashalom?

siyur

Today I helped lead a trip to the First Aliyah Museum in Zichron Ya'akov and the Pioneer Settlement Museum at Kibbutz Yifat. In the early 1800s a large number of Jews spoke yiddish and lived in eastern Europe -- mostly Poland and Russia. Many Jews left beginning in the 1880s because of anti-Semitic laws and pogroms (riots targeting Jews). Between 1880 and 1910, three million Jews immigrated from that region to the United States. Tens of thousands immigrated from that region to Palestine.

From about 1880 to 1903, the immigrants were mostly religiously motivated. This is labeled the first wave, or the First Aliyah. The second wave was from about 1904 to 1914, these immigrants were mostly motivated by ideology. The third wave was also ideologically motivated, from 1919 to 1923. As far as I can tell the main difference between the so called second and third waves is that one was before World War I and the other was after. In most meaningful respects they were part of the same phenomenon.

That's what I did today. Back to the grindstone.

breathalyzer and more misrad hapnim

On Friday night I had dinner with a bunch of friends in Hadera. As I was driving back to Ramat Gan, I got flagged down by another police officer for no reason. He made me take a breathalyzer test, my first ever, which I of course passed. The police officer told me that a foreign drivers license is only good for a month and a half, and that I was therefore driving illegally, despite a clear statement to the contrary on this government website.

In Israel, it is a custom to argue with police officers. I let the other people in the car with me fulfill this obligation, and we went on our way.

I went back to the Interior Ministry this week to change my visa type. I now have a multiple entry worker visa good through July. Cost: 160 NIS. New rule: any day that you get what you want from misrad hapnim in less than 2 hours is a good day. (Tip: always bring extra passport sized photos with you.)

When I boarded a sherut from Herzliya to Afula this week, there was only one empty seat, next to a young religious woman who refused to allow me to sit, presumably because it is her custom not to touch men. It was an awkward situation until another woman switched seats with her so I could sit.

yair dalal

Today Yair Dalal, an Israeli musician of Iraqi Jewish descent, played at Kibbutz Ein Dor for the workshoppers/shnatties as a part of Boneh. It is pretty amazing that he came to play just for us. He plays traditional Iraqi music on an ancient instrument called an "oud," which he described as the grandmother of the guitar.

One thing he said that stood out to me is that western singers like to be backed up by chords when they sing, whereas middle eastern singers like to be backed up by an instrument playing the melody. He attributed this to the absence of harmony in traditional middle eastern music and the fact that the scale used is something between the classically defined major scale and minor scale.

driving

An American license is good for driving in Israel for a certain amount of time, so I've been driving a car rented by Habonim Dror occasionally. This morning I was driving from Kibbutz Ein Dor to Hadera and got flagged down by a police officer. He asked for my license, wrote down the number and sent me on my way. Apparently it is not terribly unusual to be pulled over for no reason at all.

kibbutz dog

Tonight I ran on kibbutz with Jacki, who is on the staff of Boneh with me. Early in our run we attracted the attention of a largish white dog. The dog not only kept pace with us for the next 25 minutes, but actually sprinted ahead and to the side so he ended up running much farther and faster.

"The kibbutz dog" is a well known concept in Israel, I think. A kibbutz dog is allowed free reign over a much greater area than dogs in suburbs or cities. Kibbutz dogs are similar to country dogs in that respect, but they are more socialized than country dogs because they interact with many more dogs and people. The dog we met was friendly but more interested in running with us than getting scratched behind the ears.

Some lawns we passed were being watered by the kind of sprinklers that sting a little bit because of the thin stream and the water pressure. Our friend plopped himself down on the stingy nozzles to cool himself down and drink.

rikuz - coordination

For the next three months I'll be coordinating "boneh," which is a part of Habonim Dror's gap year program for English speakers from the northern hemisphere (American, British, Canadian and Dutch) between high school and college. Boneh this fall is on Kibbutz Ein Dor, which is in northern Israel near the city of Afula.

As a rakaz (coordinator), I run the technical side of things, like organizing hikes and guest speakers, and I also implement some of the educational programming, including courses in Jewish history and leadership training. There are five people who have the same role as I do for approximately 80 program participants.

Today I drove to Afula three times to pick up several carloads of supplies. It turns out American drivers licenses are good in Israel for up to a year.

torah she'ba'al peh - the oral law

In Jewish history, "the oral law" refers to tradition that was passed orally from one generation to the next until it was codified in the Talmud. The meaning of "the oral law" in the modern state of Israel became clear to me today: All knowledge of transportation must be transmitted orally. It is apparently forbidden to make anything intuitive or explained clearly in written form.

Dear Israeli bus system, please create maps of all your routes and post them online, maybe on a website modeled after WMATA's. Warm regards, Ben.

israeli english

I finished ulpan on August 20, almost two weeks ago. Since then I have been staying with Keren and Arnon in Herzliya, reading about Jewish history, reading a children's book in Hebrew about a monkey named Kofiko and planning busily with Ruth, Nadav and Jacki in Ramat Gan. I'm now well acquainted with the 531, 524 and 525 Egged lines.

Israelis speaking in Hebrew occasionally use English phrases, even when they are speaking to other Israelis. I started keeping track about a week ago and these are some of the phrases I have overheard:

• "Not that it's such a big deal"
• "No offense...[Hebrew]"; Response: "None taken...[Hebrew]"
• "Next door house"
• "Full volume"
• "Take one for the team"
• "So smart"
• "On their way to heaven"
• "Once in a lifetime"

Some of them make more sense than others. "Take one for the team," for instance, is a concise cliche that conveys a lot of meaning. But I can't explain why others are used, like "next door house," which isn't even good English.

havka

On Monday I went to Akko to listen to Havka Folman. To the extent that there is a stereotype about the demeanor of Holocaust survivors, Havka defied them. Although her experiences were frightening and depressing, she was energetic, expressive and funny.

Havka acted to warn the Jewish communities in Poland in 1939 as a part of the Dror youth movement. The concept of "youth movement" is not familiar to most people in the United States. I went to a summer camp for many years run by the Habonim Dror youth movement (the result of a merger between Havka's Dror and Habonim), and now I'm working on an Israel program run by Habonim Dror, so listening to Havka was especially meaningful to me.

Havka wrote a book, and this article includes a lot of what she said in Akko.

and that problem is transport

I have been living in Tel Aviv and attending class in Netanya. As the crow flies it is 15 miles from the apartment in Florentin to the ulpan in Poleg. The commute has given me an opportunity to explore public transportation. I took trains and buses, transferring at numerous locations. The best option by a fair margin of both time and comfort is to take a sherut, which I think is translated as a shared cab, from the central bus station in Tel Aviv to the Udim bus station on Route 2 (with a 10-15 minute walk on either end).

A sherut is generally a 10-passenger van, and there is probably a sherut that goes where you're going for a reasonable price. I don't know if it is possible to make a more precise statement than that.

Sometimes a sherut follows a bus route, sometimes not. Sometimes a sherut has its own numbered route, sometimes not. Sometimes a sherut will come along in a minute or two, sometimes not. Sometimes the driver will allow you to board for a few stops, and sometimes he will refuse unless you are going all the way to his destination.

The sherut driver knows his route, but there are no route maps. The sherut driver knows the price of a journey from one stop on his route to another, but there are no fare schedules. (As far as I know.)

A sherut is more comfortable than a bus but less comfortable than a train.

One time a sherut driver kicked me out of his van before I had reached the destination I paid for. Another sherut picked me up and took me the rest of the way (at no additional charge).

And for all that, the sherut fleet seems to be a pretty decent system. Because the vehicles are smaller, they come more frequently than buses and add to the variety of routes it is possible to travel.

The only problem is finding the right sherut. I've gotten comfortable asking strangers if they know which bus goes where I'm going. About 40% of the people I ask offer a plausible answer, and about 50% of the answers are both helpful and correct.

street philosopher

I enjoy exploring Tel Aviv, but lately I've been getting distracted. The street names raise serious philosophical questions. When does Menachem Begin become Jabotinsky? In what ways is Pinsker parallel to Bar Kochba? How large is the intersection of Ahad Ha'am and Borochov, and how far is it from A.D. Gordon?

homo'im ba'aretz u'bakitah

Last week two teenagers were murdered at a gay center in Tel Aviv. (In some places the Hebrew word "moadon" has been translated as "club," but this is misleading. It was more like a community center than a place for dancing and listening to loud music.)

I attended a rally in Kikar Rabin last night with 70,000 others in solidarity with the gay community. (Kikar Rabin is a plaza named for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered there in 1995 following a peace rally.) President Shimon Peres spoke, as well as the mayor of Tel Aviv and several government ministers and members of Israeli parliament. An adult staffer at the gay center who was apparently injured in the attack spoke on the podium from a wheelchair. Even though I could not understand all his words, he was quite moving.

Or commented to me that none of the speakers made the "obvious" connection between hatred of homosexuals and hatred of Arabs. I asked whether that would have been a divisive connection to make, and he said that for the crowd in attendance it would not have been divisive.

The labels for queers in Hebrew are awkward cognates. Lesbians are lezbiot, homosexuals are homo'im, etc.

On Thursday I moved from kitah bet to kitah bet plus. Think grade 2 to grade 2.5 (out of 9), without the graduation ceremony. Today, one of my classmates from kitah bet joined me in kitah bet plus. Let's call him Robert. Today Robert and I were sitting on opposite sides of the classroom. During a break, he asked to switch seats with me. I agreed and asked why. Robert said that there was a French Christian family on his side of the classroom that was intolerant of his sexuality. I spent a week and a half in kitah bet with him and didn't realize he was gay, but he seemed pretty sure that this family was hostile to him because he was gay. I did not sense their hostility or question his perception. We switched seats.

news items

There's a story that has gotten a lot of press coverage in Israel about a woman in Jerusalem who starved her son. She was videotaped removing his feeding tube after he had already been hospitalized. Here's a Haaretz article about it: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1105049.html

To me, the strange thing about this story is that the Haredi (ultra-orthodox) community has interpreted this news story as a plot by the hospital to defame Haredim (because the woman is Haredi) and has therefore responded with rioting.

I have not been following the story too closely, but today I struggled through an article (from a few days ago) in Hebrew that announced that the district attorney in Jerusalem will indict the woman. The second headline said that people close to the mother are expected to make the following offer: in return for the state dropping the indictment, the family will leave Israel. Or confirmed that I translated the headline correctly.

How would that help anything? Why would that be an offer worth considering?

Reading Israeli newspapers is pretty challenging for me, so I'd like to request that in the future, articles I read make more sense. Thanks in advance.

News item number two was brought to my attention by my mom, and is also a bit surprising: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/world/middleeast/06kenan.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

Amos Kenan, an Israeli writer, died on Tuesday. He was, at various times, a member of Hashomer Hatzair (progressive Zionist), Lechi (revisionist Zionist), the anti-Zionist Canaanite movement, and Ariel Sharon's Shlomtzion Party. How does that work?

karmiel

Ulpan Akiva organized a trip to the dance festival in Karmiel yesterday. An impressive crowd was in attendance for the final performance, maybe upwards of 10,000 people. The Egyptian Ambassador spoke briefly in English before the performance began about how hard he was working towards peace. He may have been referring to the peace process in general, but I think he might be particularly involved with negotiations over Gilad Shalit.

Even though I did rikudei am (Israeli folk dancing) at Moshava for many years, I was surprised at how familiar the performance was. The performance I saw in Karmiel was the premier performance of the biggest rikudei am event. The costumes were more elaborate and the dancers were older, but it was basically the same as the performances put on by campers every week.

I went to a grocery store (Hetzi Hinam) today with Or. The busiest time of the week at the Giant in Columbia Heights is on Friday around 6 pm, and the most crowded area is in the front at the registers. The entire store today was as crowded as that, and Israelis drive grocery carts the same way they drive their cars.

running in tel aviv

I just returned from a run along the Tel Aviv beach boardwalk. This is the first time I have exercised per se in Israel, but it seems like being hot and sweating all day should count for something. It is humid here but I think DC is much more humid. The heat in DC is oppressive. The heat in Tel Aviv is scorching. On the whole I think scorching is not as unpleasant as oppressive, but in Tel Aviv I spend much more time outside (or in poorly air conditioned buildings).

Running through the Florentin neighborhood in Tel Aviv is different than running through Columbia Heights in DC. In Florentin, I jump over cats and piles of empty boxes. In Columbia Heights, I weave around garbage cans and parking meters. In Florentin, I dodge water dripping from air conditioners.

Speaking of which, I've heard that potable water is scarce in Israel, but I've never heard about a problem with electricity. Maybe air conditioners can be cranked up to harvest more of the humidity, and the resulting water can be collected and used (which would also eliminate one of my street obstacles).

Anyways, yesterday I visited Yonah on Moshav Nordiya near Netanya. Yonah is on the staff of MBI, Habonim Dror's five-week summer program for 16 year olds.

In ulpan today I learned the future tense. In English, there is no future tense. One just says "will" to indicate the future, as in "I will eat." In Hebrew just one word, conjugated appropriately, means "I will eat" (future - atid) or "I ate" (past - avar) or "I am eating" (present - hoveh). I will post again soon.

chaverim l'kitah - classmates

In my hebrew textbook at the University of Maryland, the dialogues had ridiculous names and personas--ridiculous but, it seems, realistic. I'd like to introduce my ulpan classmates.

I'm only introducing a select few today. Names have been changed to protect ... me (if any of them ever read the blog). Except one name, which is too good to be true. A girl named Armina joined our class today. She's from Armenia. Armina from Armenia! (In hebrew, Armina is an anagram for Armenia.)

Yael - 14 year old American girl. She speaks hebrew rapidly and confidently with an Israeli accent. Her Israeli parents spoke hebrew to her as a child. By comparison, all the others in the class sound like stuttering fools. And yet she complains during breaks that the class is too hard. What could explain this? She can't read hebrew.

Irina - 20-something Russian woman. She speaks at least as well as I do, but with a thick Russian accent, which grates on my ears. I think she and I have diametrically opposed senses of humor.

Andrew - 40-something American man. He seems like a nice guy, but I feel bad for him. He habitually transposes vowel sounds, struggles mightily with any sort of reading aloud or verb conjugation, and generally looks like he doesn't understand what the teacher is saying. I think he's taken an Ulpan Akiva course before, so he might have been socially promoted to our class, so to speak.

Ariella and Natan - 12 year old french girl and her father. The French accent in hebrew is, I think, the most pleasant of the foreign accents I have heard. Natan and I sat next to each other one day and I defined a bunch of words for him in Hebrew. I bring a dictionary to class.

Rachel - 24 year old American woman. Her vocabulary and grammar are pretty good but she speaks with an unapologetic American accent. Most of the time when she speaks, her inflection implies the question, "Am I saying this right?" I respect the humility but think it is a bad habit.

shabbat shalom

I started ulpan (hebrew language classes) this week at Ulpan Akiva in Netanya. Monday was full of horribly inefficient testing. Tuesday and Wednesday were real classes, from 8:00 to 13:00 with an hour break. I feel comfortable in my class level, kitah bet (the second level), but I know I'll still be challenged because I have trouble conjugating verbs and we will learn past and future tenses.

I've been staying with my friend Gabe in Herzliya this week. Gabe made aliya (immigrated to Israel) and works as a security guard. He and I went to hebrew school together when we were growing up.

"Hebrew school" is a misnomer. You don't learn hebrew. You might learn the alef-bet (hebrew alphabet) and some prayers.

The teachers at ulpan told the students to watch TV, in hebrew, obviously. I have been watching the news in hebrew a little. I am skeptical that it will actually teach me anything. If I can only recognize one in ten words, am I just going to magically figure out the other nine? I've been studying vocabulary on my own. Hopefully I can get up to three out of ten words by the end of the month.

guatemala pics

Gordon observed that people reading blogs like to see pictures. I haven't taken any pictures of Israel yet, but I think it couldn't hurt to post the pictures I took in Guatemala for those readers who haven't seen them yet:

http://picasaweb.google.com/benmeiselman/OzielMeiselmanGuatemalanOMGTiyul?authkey=Gv1sRgCJPi-qabmK-pqQE&feat=directlink

misrad hapanim

Skyscrapers in Tel Aviv confuse me a little. There are a few along the coast, which makes sense because they're trying to take advantage of the view of the sea. But there are other skyscrapers scattered around the city, which makes less sense to me. Aren't skyscrapers supposed to be clustered together because of high real estate values? From the window of my friend's apartment on Zvulun Street, I see a single building that appears to have more than thirty stories, and no others that appear to have more than eight.

The visa department of the interior ministry is on the third floor of a skyscraper at 125 Derech Menachem Begin, which is across a busy intersection from the Azrieli Center, a distinctive group of three skyscrapers. I arrived around 8:30 a.m. and took number 635. The big board was on 592. While I was waiting, I read Amos Oz, filled out my visa type change form (i.e. from tourist to work visa) and bought passport-size photographs at a store on the second floor. I also filled out an entry form for a Bulgarian woman. When she asked for my help, she motioned to her eyes, so I assume either that her eyesight was too poor to read the form or that she could not read Hebrew even though she spoke it. Her English was worse than my Hebrew, but we succeeded in filling out the form.

The waiting room included a surprisingly diverse group. Russians, southeast Asians, and Africans were abundant. I only saw two kipot (yarmulkes), and I would guess that around 200 people rotated through that room while I was there. Some had appointments and bypassed the number system. It is possible I was the only American Jew in the room, but I'm not sure. The people who had appointments were instructed (by signs in Hebrew and English) to talk to the guard rather than take a number. I thought the guard looked a little like Bibi Netanyahu. He barked instructions in Russian, Hebrew and English as was appropriate for the visa applicant.

My turn at the misleadingly labeled "information desk" (it was actually where all the processing occured) came around 10:30 a.m. A woman behind me was holding number 697. She thought it could not possibly be the same sequence, but of course it was. I had all my application materials (form I filled out in the waiting room, form from the Jewish Agency, letter from rabbi, letter from employer, birth certificate, passport, photos), so I had my work visa 5 minutes later.

If instructions for obtaining a work visa are in English online, I could not find them. I am extremely grateful to advice from Sager, Ruth, Sammo, and Smikes, without whom I would surely have a more convoluted story to tell about getting a work visa.

getting settled

I am typing on my laptop in my friend's apartment on Zvulun Street in Florentin, which is near Tel Aviv's central bus station. I arrived on Tuesday (July 21) and I will begin taking Hebrew classes at Ulpan Akiva in Netanya on Monday.

On Wednesday I bought a cell phone for 300 NIS and a sim card with 200 pay-as-you-go minutes for 200 NIS. The number is 054-901-0850 (dial +011-972-54-901-0850 from the US), and I'm on the Orange network. Even though I was only without a cell phone for one day, I felt like getting one was an emergency. I think the fact that I was moving around so much -- from the airport to a friend in Ramat Gan to a friend in Florentin -- made my inability to communicate more frustrating.

On Thursday the Jewish Agency officially recognized that I am Jewish. I went to the office (at 99 Hachashmonaim) and presented my passport, a letter from my rabbi and a letter from my employer. The Jewish Agency's recognition is important for facilitating my acquisition of a work visa. I entered the country on a tourist visa, which is good for three months. Tomorrow I'll go to the misrad hapanim (Interior Ministry) and hopefully get the actual work visa.

As long as I am taking classes in Netanya, I need to be in the Tel Aviv area. The lodging offered by Ulpan Akiva is grossly overpriced, so I'm planning to crash with friends in Tel Aviv and Herzliya for at least the next four weeks.