Even My Fridge Knows It’s Shabbat

Twenty years in, I still find myself appreciating benefits I never imagined before making Aliyah.

When people discuss Aliyah, they rightly focus on the big issues. Security. Schools. Employment. Antisemitism. Cost of living. The US dollar exchange rate. Family. The religious significance of living in Israel.

People also talk about what they’ll miss. Sundays. Familiar routines. Family. The little things that become surprisingly important when they’re gone.

Those are the big questions.

But after almost twenty years here, I’ve come to appreciate some smaller benefits that rarely make it into the Aliyah presentations. None of them would determine whether you move, yet all of them make my life a little better.

This is a list written by someone unapologetically religious. Yours may look different, but you probably have one too.

One Day Yom Tov

Let’s start with the slam dunk. One day, not two. That’s it. That’s the item.

To anyone who spent years explaining two Seders or so many days off work, this probably needs no further elaboration.

The Jewish Calendar Actually Matters

Outside Israel, the big festivals matter. In Israel, everything matters.

Purim is not a day. It is a week, and a completely different beast from the Purim I remember in England. Tu B’Shvat arrives and people start handing out fruit in the office, and Lag B’Omer is a real event, when all wood not guarded 24/7 is a target.

During the Omer or the Three Weeks, you don’t worry about whether you’ve shaved.

Chol HaMoed are days you can actually celebrate, although it usually means heavily negotiated family trips, overcrowded parks and traffic jams that suggest the entire Jewish people have decided to visit the same place at exactly the same time.

Yom HaZikaron hits differently when your children serve in the army, and Yom Ha’atzmaut feels more real.

The stock market closes on Tisha B’Av. To me, that says it all.

Appliances Understand Shabbat

This sounds ridiculous until you’ve lived here. Refrigerators have Shabbat modes. Water machines have Shabbat modes. Ovens have Shabbat modes.

Manufacturers assume that a significant proportion of their customers are Shomer Shabbat.

You are not an exception that needs accommodating in one specialist shop somewhere. You are part of the target market.

The Shabbat Shower

I appreciate that this may be the most niche and least discussed item on the list. But it matters, especially to teenagers.

Many religious Israelis rely on the dud shemesh and, according to many opinions, can shower on Shabbat provided certain conditions are met.

After years of living in England, where this discussion was largely theoretical because there was no dud shemesh, discovering this felt like a genuine quality-of-life upgrade.

I am not a halachic authority. Just a parent.

Hospitals Understand Religious Life

Nobody wants to spend time in hospitals or similar venues. Unfortunately, many of us do. Sadly, I have spent far too much time in them.

One thing I have appreciated is that issues such as kashrut, modesty and religious observance are generally understood without lengthy explanations. Even small efforts to preserve dignity and privacy are often taken seriously and assumed to be the norm rather than treated as unusual requests.

Saturday Night Sport

This one genuinely surprised me. I sit here now writing this as Germany beat the Ivory Coast in the final minute.

In London and many of the places we hail from, Shabbat can finish incredibly late during the summer. In Israel, it finishes much earlier. Right now, it is still Shabbat in many places.

That means Champions League finals, World Cup matches, Eurovision (not a sport, I know) and other major events are often still going on when Shabbat ends.

It’s hardly the fulfilment of the Zionist dream.

But it is nice.

Final Thought

Would any of these persuade someone to make Aliyah?

Almost certainly not.

The big questions are still the big questions, and so are the sacrifices. But additional benefits are important and others will have their lists too.

But life is made up of thousands of small details. For me, these are some of the unexpected quality-of-life benefits that came with living in a Jewish state.

They’re not life-changing.

But twenty years later, they’re still things I would miss if I left.

And that probably means they’re worth mentioning.