Shalom everyone,
It’s been a long time since I wrote to you, and to be honest, for about two weeks now, I’ve had it in my head that it’s time to send out a new newsletter. But sometimes life has a different pace than what we want, and between a never-ending job search, job interviews, and a singles tour project that’s been running for a month, I haven’t had a minute to breathe. My friend says I’m the busiest unemployed person he knows, haha.
The main problem right now is that everything is about building a foundation, but there’s no real income yet. The book I wrote is struggling in sales (which makes sense if there’s no real marketing, but marketing requires money that you don’t have if the book isn’t selling, haha). Incoming tourism hasn’t returned at all, which is very sad and difficult. On the one hand, I’m back to guiding, but on the other hand, the war in the north could escalate any day, so there’s no knowing when tourism will return.
You have no idea how frustrating this is. I have to keep quiet because I have food on the table and a place to lay my head at night, and there are people who haven’t had a home for nine months and are refugees in their own country. But the frustration is immense.
And yet, honestly, finding yourself almost 40 and starting to look for a job again, sending resumes, interviewing, getting many rejections – and it’s not always because you’re not suitable. Sometimes it’s because you’re “too old,” sometimes because they’re afraid you’ll leave as soon as tourism returns, sometimes you’re “overqualified,” and sometimes they see everything I’ve done and created in the last nine months, which is very intimidating because in many cases, they see that you’re not a “small thinker.”
In short, looking for a job at an older age isn’t simple, but it will be good, it has to be at some point 😊
My singles tour project has really started to take shape, and in the past month, we’ve gone on four-day trips – once a week. We went to Jerusalem twice – the first time, we toured the city’s borderline that divided it until the Six-Day War (1967), and the second time, we toured the Old City and also the City of David, the ancient Jerusalem. We visited amazing Caesarea, the Knights’ Halls in Acre, and in the coming weeks, we’re going to Zikhron Ya’akov (one of the first aliyah colonies established at the end of the 19th century). We’ll go to the Golan Heights to Umm el-Kanatir (a Jewish settlement from the Byzantine period with a special synagogue), and after that, we’re going on a spring tour in the Jerusalem hills…
At some point, we’ll also do a weekend in the Old City from the perspectives of Judaism and Christianity, and there are so many more ideas and places. Honestly, I missed guiding like crazy, and today, I’m rebuilding all the tours, and I feel they’ve matured with me. The tours have changed and improved, and I understand things today that I didn’t understand in the past, how to tell the story better, and how to present things more correctly.
Since this is just the beginning, and I want to build a local community that travels together, the tours are now based on the hat principle, which basically means that participants can choose how much they want to pay at the end of the tour. If they didn’t enjoy it, they’re not obligated to pay anything. Let’s hope this continues and succeeds. A core group is starting to form, and I hope that one day I’ll turn this into actual journeys and not just day trips.
What’s happening in my country?
Unfortunately, I have nothing new to tell you. Everything feels like a broken record.
Bibi and his gang of criminals continue to prefer political considerations over returning the hostages (there’s talk of a potential deal now – and everyone in Israel hopes for one thing, that Bibi will prioritize the hostages over political considerations for once).
The ultra-Orthodox continue to refuse to enlist in the army and contribute to the state – this doesn’t stop them from continuing to rob the public coffers and take more and more money and budgets. The fact that their representatives sit in the government makes this money-grabbing easier, and Bibi can’t do anything because they hold him by the balls – they can dismantle his government in an instant.
The Minister of Communications continues to try to take over every public part not yet controlled by the government, the tycoons, and various racists who define themselves as “right-wing” but are dripping with racism.
The Minister of Transport – not worth wasting words on – endangers citizens’ safety every day, all for the sake of increasing political power.
The Minister of National Security – the biggest sad joke of all – the most racist of them all (cf. Yitzhak Rabin), continues to turn the police into a violent force serving himself and the dictator wannabe a.k.a BB.
My country is going to hell.
No one in this government cares that the north is burning (and this isn’t a metaphor, it’s reality).
No one in this government cares about 80,000 people who have been displaced from their homes for nine months.
And no one in this government cares about the 120 hostages still held by Hamas…
All this matters to the government and Bibi is keeping their seats and power.
Israel 2024,
An amazing land,
An amazing history,
2000 years after King David and King Solomon we encounter the most corrupt fascist Jewish government that ever existed in Israel, which makes me feel ashamed each and every passing day.
Jewish lives used to have profound meaning. We have a saying: “The one who saves a life is as if they saved the whole world.” However, all this government does is kill—kill more soldiers, kill more civilians who are still captive, and kill more civilians who are constantly under fire from Lebanon. Jewish life is no longer worth saving unless it serves a political agenda.
That’s the bottom line.
Love you all,
Join me in prayer that the next newsletter will bring good news about the return of the hostages and the end of the war.
Shay
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3)If you are looking for book recommendations, I urge you to check out my Born Books page through this link, which features a lot of amazing books that I have read and found enlightening.
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