 Hi guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel, Daniel Rossell here bringing you this video today from Jerusalem. Why do I sometimes start my videos by mentioning Jerusalem? I don't know, I do it subconsciously, but I realized recently, I think it's because I'm actually very proud to be living in Jerusalem. And you know, sometimes it's nice to give a bit of a geographical situation to this otherwise pretty generic YouTube background with my on-air sign and my Ikea cabinet and my otherwise empty walls. So just to tell you guys where I'm doing these videos from, Jerusalem. And so I had an interesting chat today with a friend of mine who is an expat living in Bonn in Germany. And we got to talking about our sort of, you know, different living situations. He's originally from New Zealand. I'm originally from Ireland. I live in Israel. He lives in Germany. And I always find it interesting that when two expats meet for a Zoom chat, we often find unexpected points of similarity and contrast between our two living situations. And such was the case today. And some things that German culture sound very familiar to me. My friend was saying Germans don't really have a very strong concept of personal privacy, which is certainly something I can attest to in Israel. A friend who lived in Hong Kong said that Hong Kongers were extremely direct, which certainly sounds like Israel. And people always also beeped like crazy there, which is classic Jerusalem. So what I thought I'd do today was a video about living specifically in Jerusalem. Now, I have done an article before pros and cons of living in Israel, reflecting my feelings about what's good and less good about living here as an immigrant from Ireland. I moved from Cork, Ireland to Jerusalem, Israel in 2015, which means that I will actually very soon be finishing up my eighth year of living here. I frequently tell people I've been here for six years because I kind of stopped counting about two years ago. And the truth is it makes me feel less bad about the fact that my Hebrew isn't perfect yet. But it's actually been eight years, as I discovered before when I counted up the years before hitting the record button. This is some co-brew coffee. So rather than rehash the pros and cons of Israel, which I've written about before and I see a lot of other people have done on YouTube, I thought I'd do one specifically about Jerusalem. If you're thinking about living in Jerusalem, whether you're doing so because you're making Aliyah, you're Jewish, you're doing what I did, you believe in Zionism and you see your return to Israel as part of that process. Or whether you're... I've met over the course of my eight years in the city plenty of non-Jewish people, whether UN people, journalists, diplomats who happen to be living in Jerusalem for a period of time and they want some sort of info on what's it's actually like to live here in the city. So I prepared a pros and cons list. I'm going to talk about these today to maybe give a flavor for what it's actually like to live in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world and part of what excites me about living here is the historical context. The fact that the city is so ancient, so old, so steeped in history and what drew me to Israel in 2015 was my Zionism, my connection with the Jewish people, my belief that the re-establishment or the establishment of the state of Israel, the re-establishment of a Jewish state in this part of the world and I ended up in Jerusalem unexpectedly and that's kind of where it all began as such and one of the most ancient cities in the world and one enormously steeped in a connection to the Jewish people essentially. So I mentioned that I ended up in Jerusalem by accident almost. So when I was looking and moving here to Israel in the year preceding 2015, I moved here in January of 2015. So in 2014 I was kind of getting all my admin stuff ready and living in a place without a Jewish community really, Cork and Ireland. I didn't really have friends. I didn't have Jewish friends growing up there. I didn't have people in the community. The few people we'd have a sort of synagogue service once a month. I didn't know people that had moved to Israel or that had relatives who moved to Israel. So to a very large extent, I was kind of flying blind with the whole application process. Now the way moving to Israel works is the Jewish agency, which is the state body of Israel, has offices around the globe to facilitate Jewish immigration to Israel under the law of return. There's another organization called Nefesh Benefesh, but they really exist mostly in established Jewish communities like London and New York where there is a good sort of throughput of applicants making alia. So I didn't really have any of that. There wasn't a Jewish agency or Nefesh Benefesh in Ireland. So I was basically assigned to the London office and trying to figure out on Google where it would be good to move in Israel. When I went to the Jewish agency, they kind of took the lead in a way that now makes sense to me. But at the time, it was perhaps a little bit too kind of meek and said, okay, whatever you say, I'll go. And they kind of did an intake session with me. And they put you in a classification according to if you hold a college degree or classified as an academic, which is a strange Israeliism in English. Doesn't mean you're actually an academic. It just means that you have a college degree. So I was classified as an academic. And they gave me a choice between Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Jerusalem Ramallah. And there was one other one, Haifa, I think. And I looked up Ramallah. It didn't seem that appealing to me. Haifa also seemed less appealing. And I was actually worried about the air quality I have asthma. So I was like, well, Jerusalem seems fine. I've been there before. It's an interesting city. And I didn't really think I was committing to live here. I just thought that was like, well, I go to language school in Jerusalem for a couple of months. And then I'll probably go to Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv wasn't even presented as an option. So I, in my naivety thought, well, these are like the three options. There's no other Alpans Hebrew teaching things that I'm eligible for. So I chose Jerusalem. And like I think a lot of people, there's you almost feel sometimes Jerusalem chose me. This is almost like reciprocal reciprocal process of you moving towards Jerusalem and Jerusalem becoming part of you. And that's kind of how it went for me. I met my now wife fairly early in my Aliyah process. I started a job not really because I was desperate to start working, but because I needed a job to pay my living expenses. So I started working three months after coming here firstly on a part-time basis. And I got my first full-time job in my first summer in Israel. And that's kind of how it's rolled. One thing leads to another. And suddenly you find yourself married with friends in Jerusalem, working Jerusalem. You've been here for eight years and you haven't really thought about leaving. So that's kind of how it happened with me. Now, obviously over the course of eight years living in the city, I've amassed some sort of thoughts about it. And that's what I came here to do today. I've got a list in front of me on my screen. And I'm going to talk about it. Firstly, the main pro as I see it of living in Jerusalem is this Jewish connection I've talked about. Right? This being living in the place where the Jewish temples once stood that has hundreds of years of Jewish history is a special feeling. And this is really an ideological point. Right? This isn't something that sort of tangibly affects your daily life. But you do sometimes wake up in bed saying this is pretty amazing. If Herzl could be reincarnated and see in 2022 that Jewish people from all over the world are moving to establish new lives for themselves in Israel, I think he'd be like, that's amazing. Right? Not just Herzl, but Jewish sages in the middle age who could only dream of stepping foot in the land of Israel. They would be just amazed to see that this was the thing and that Jerusalem is becoming not just a city of the Western Wall and the historical parts of the city, but also a new city. The Jerusalem outside of the old city with its downtown, they're building a whole new development complex at the entrance to the city where the train stop is for the new light rail to Tel Aviv. That whole area is called in Hebrew, and in broad terms, there's a huge, my wife's an architect, so she sort of sees a little bit of the urban planning going on up close. There is a huge plan to build up high rises on Yaffo Street, a big, big sort of campus of industry leisure there with the idea that, well, the Tel Aviv is going to be right 30 minutes away by train. That train is ultimately going to start running about eight times an hour, I believe, by 2040 because it is very ambitious plans for the Tel Aviv Jerusalem transport link to become almost continuous. To see all this stuff, I think that the Jewish sages of the middle ages would be amazing. I think it's also sort of a testament to modern Jerusalem that you can't have a city whose industry or whose economy is solely dependent on tourism to the old city, so that it's becoming a real modern city, I think, is amazing. Living here, you feel part of that process. Living here, it also feels like, in a sense, Jerusalem needs young people to stay here, especially young people who were founding companies, creating jobs, spending money in the local economy. Unfortunately, there has been sort of Jerusalem's reputation in Israel has been kind of a poor backwater to be unkind. Until the advent of this is arguable, people will debate me on this until a certain forward-thinking mayor called Nair Barqas came along or Teddy Collick, but the city had historically a few mayors that were less ambitious in terms of bringing the city forward and Jerusalem had a reputation for being very religious and very poor and those two things often go hand in hand because the economic participation rate among the most religious sectors of Israeli society often isn't all that high. So that was its reputation and the city's changing, but unfortunately change doesn't happen overnight and all these great projects to build new industrial complexes at the end to Jerusalem take years and the quality of life in the city becomes worse during those years. Right now, people are getting very frustrated that they feel like Jerusalem's turned into one big construction site. They're putting down new light rails. Can he sat to ear project, which is gigantic? Intalpios, where you currently have sort of a southern urban center, but one that's pretty grimy, very industrial, not very glamorous and the city has impressive plans to make that not just a place where you've got glass factories and stuff like that, but actually kind of a joint residential commercial space. So all these great things are happening, but all us, all the residents currently see is a lot of construction sites, a lot of jackhammering noise and stuff like that. So Jerusalem has traditionally, for the last few decades, unfortunately, played second string to Tel Aviv. You take the train or the bus from Jerusalem from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and it feels like an upgrade in terms of the, the, the, how urban the place is, right? You go to Tel Aviv and it's glass skyscrapers and cranes and you feel that's the capital. Jerusalem, by comparison, feels a little bit pokey. So that's, that's, I think a lot of what I get out of living in Jerusalem is I feel like, well, the city north, this city needs me more than Tel Aviv needs me. Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel have startups and young people. And in Jerusalem, we kind of almost have a feel like we're the underdog city, that this is the city was the real connection to, or the strongest connection to the previous Jewish state in Israel. And we are part of the, the sort of diehard staying here to make the city happen. So the other thing, I mean, so moving from idea, ideology to speaking practically on the matter, if you are religiously observant, Jewish, you keep kosher, you keep Shabbat, Jerusalem's like your nirvana. Now, I am not as religious as that. I do actually try to keep Shabbat. I aspire to keep Shabbat 100% because I think it's an amazing institution. But, and, and I do eat kosher. So I'm more religious than probably many Israelis and many Jews. But I'm not ultra orthodox. But if you are immersed in learning Torah and keeping a high level of kosher, Jerusalem is a city that where the majority of the population, the Jewish population is religiously observant. And it's much easier than Tel Aviv and Haifa. Now there's sort of a lot of people would think, well, you know, Israel is one, if you're Jewish, it must be like one big Jewish. It's gonna use nirvana again or Mecca, probably, probably not the most apt comparison. But you know, everything is kosher and there's synagogues everywhere. And it's not the case at all. Cities do vary quite considerably in terms of their religious orientation with, for example, Haifa being less religious and Jerusalem being more religious and Bnei Brak being almost kind of ultra religious. So practically speaking, something I like about Jerusalem is as a kosher keeper, the city is geared towards my need, right? I can mostly walk into a restaurant, whether it's a street food place like Schwarma or a more sophisticated restaurant and assume it's kosher of some degree or another. Not saying there are non kosher restaurants in Jerusalem, there are, but you can't say the same thing about Tel Aviv. To an extent, you kind of have to seek out places that are kosher in Tel Aviv. Excuse me. So that's one. In terms of employment, excuse me. This is my main negative about Jerusalem. I don't actually really work in Jerusalem, that's the thing. I currently have a remote job. My boss lives in Tel Aviv. And I think there's a lot of people in this category in Jerusalem. So in terms of employment, I mean, the pro I have here, just to kind of balance it out a little bit, is work at government institutions. Jerusalem is the seat of government in Israel. So although the economic capital is very much Tel Aviv and the surrounding part of the country called in Hebrew the Merkaz, Merkaz mean center. Jerusalem is Israel's capital. So that means that the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, the National Library, the Supreme Court, and those are just kind of the A-listers, if you will. There's a lot of other government ministries and sort of, you know, semi-public bodies, let's say, think tanks as well tend to be drawn to Jerusalem for that reason. This doesn't constitute a massive pool of employment, but it does mean that if you're working or you aspire to work in the civil service, there are jobs in Jerusalem, especially Jewish organizations as well. Tel Aviv, by contrast, has a much more vibrant economy, lots and lots of startups. Now, it's not that there aren't startups in Jerusalem. There are what are called in Israel, high-tech parks. In Ireland, they call them industrial parks, basically, you know, centers where there's a lot of businesses kind of clustered in a village of sorts. There are startups in Jerusalem. There's an organization called Made in JLM that advocates and tries to create community among the startups here, but relative to the strength of the startup nation and its beating heart in Tel Aviv and to a lesser extent in places like Herzliya, it's a lot weaker. If I go looking for a job in Israel tomorrow, 80 to 90% of the opportunity I'm going to see will be in Tel Aviv and the surrounding area, maybe, you know, 10% Jerusalem, 10% Bersheva. So let's put Tel Aviv down to 70 so the numbers add up correctly, but you get the idea. The majority is in Tel Aviv. So that's a pro that's kind of a quite a narrow pro, I would say. Finally, and this is just kind of almost a flippant one relative to the big reasons of ideology and whatnot, is that I think the climate in Jerusalem is more livable than Tel Aviv. There is, you can look up the climate graphs on Wikipedia and there are almost like microclimates in Israel, whereas the coast in the summer is very, very humid and hot. Jerusalem is hot, but dry in the summer. That's the big difference. So you don't have that kind of very, very sticky humidity that just you go out of the, of your home and you start pouring sweat out of every pore. When I go to Tel Aviv for meetings in August, it is hot. I do not know how people manage to keep cool. I think the answer is they stay inside in the air conditioning, but it's very, very, it's a kind of almost oppressive climate for one or two months a year. Now, in terms of the cons of living in Jerusalem, so let's start with what I personally would regard as the most significant con and that's lack of employment opportunities comparatively. Again, not that there aren't jobs, just that the employment ecosystem is a lot less vibrant than it is in Tel Aviv and other places in, in Israel. And that's problematic. And that's why there has been this exodus of young people. I don't have the latest figures. I'd be very interested to see them, but up until recently, it was a yearly exodus of young people. You know, people would kind of stay in Jerusalem until they were 18, did their army service, and then that was their time to spread their wings and move to Tel Aviv or the Tel Aviv conurbation, which includes places like Ramat Gan and Ramat Aviv and these Israeli cities that are technically separate cities, according to how they're defined, but effectively function as sort of almost like suburbs or joint cities around Tel Aviv. So lack of employment opportunities. Now, I would say one thing and I see a big change in the last few years, because of the pandemic, remote work has taken off and I can work really from any, from any, any country in the world from this little office in Jerusalem. Thank God, I finally got decent internet connectivity last week. And the employment link, sorry, the transport link, as I mentioned to Tel Aviv is now very strong. There is a fast rail link. That's the main link I would say now. There's still the two buses that have always been running the 405 and the 480. And they added a new bus recently called the 490 from south Jerusalem. So the Israeli government is, you know, recognizing wisely that there's just way too many cars on the road, private cars. The traffic is a disaster. This is totally unsustainable. And we're going to shore up the public transport links between the two cities. And as I said, if you look at the plans they've released for 2040, they're very ambitious lots and lots of trains running every 10 minutes, even back and forth during peak areas between the two cities. So what I would say is that you know, it's becoming increasingly the case that you don't need to work in Jerusalem. You can live in Jerusalem and work for an American company remotely. Or you can work for an Italian company or a German company or even a company in Herzliu or Tel Aviv. That kind of hybrid work arrangement of visiting a company once a week is also becoming a big thing. So people will take the train to Tel Aviv once a week. That's what I do. And that's becoming increasingly commonplace. So I think the employment picture is maybe the answer is not going to be big job creation in Jerusalem and more big public transport creation and connectivity between Jerusalem and companies all over Israel with maybe Jerusalem or Tel Aviv just being meeting points for a distributed team in Israel. And there's a we work in Jerusalem and there's a couple of other smaller co-working spaces. So again, I think all these are super positive dynamics because I'm a huge believer in remote work. I think it's the future. I think the future is going to be people doing two or three two day a week jobs to you know, working for two contracts for two companies or per DMs for different companies or everything nontraditional the days of working for one company and retiring with your gold Rolex or whatever the equivalent was in Israel, probably also a Rolex or I think over okay. Now here's one con I've listed and that's Shabbat. Now this might be offensive to religious Jews who would say how could Shabbat be a con if you're not Jewish, you need to know a few things about living in Jerusalem. You're one you're going to learn if you don't know what Shabbat is now you're going to be forced to learn very quickly because Jerusalem effectively shuts down for Shabbat. Now I mentioned earlier that cities in Israel vary quite significantly in terms of their level of religiosity and I mentioned also that Jerusalem is kind of on the far end of the scale. Now, when I say the city shuts down for Shabbat, Shabbat starts on Friday after Sunday and continues till Sunday after Sunday. That means that the stores need to close early enough so that their workers can work on a Friday and then stop working a few hours before Shabbat. Now in the winter when Shabbat comes in at like four o'clock that can mean that at one p.m. on a Friday which is technically the weekend Israeli working week Sunday through Thursday Friday Saturday weekend on a Friday you try to do your groceries at two p.m. There's no supermarket's open the only thing you might have are these kind of overpriced quickie marts so that can be very frustrating the shit the really the shutters come down on Friday in Tel Aviv much less so there's there's grocery stores that stay open there's a lot more open public transport also stops all right you're trying to get around the city on Shabbat and if you don't have a car you basically can walk that's your that's your only option so for non-Jews and for Jews who are not religiously observant or Shabbat observant Shabbat can be a massive inconvenience and something that's very difficult to live around I would say eight years living in the city it's it's it's an ongoing it's difficult for me there are Fridays where for whatever reason I was out late on a Thursday I slept in a bit I didn't get going for one o'clock you know properly up and going and it's already too late to buy food and you're like it's ridiculous how can you have a city like this if you ask really just Jews how they manage they'll tell you they do their shopping on a Thursday night but that's usually the kind of night I want to go to a bar so there's different lifestyles and it's kind of can be tricky to not feel like you're being penned in to being leading a religious Jewish lifestyle if that's not what you aspire to lead and I think that's what ultimately drives a lot of people away from Jerusalem as they get tired of feeling like they have to sort of organize their lives around Shabbat if they don't want to keep Shabbat so the cost of living in Jerusalem I mentioned on my little note sheet I'm looking at here it's not Jerusalem specific it's Israel unfortunately Jerusalem's a bit cheaper than Tel Aviv but I'm not sure how substantive that difference actually is Jerusalem's expensive and Israel's expensive what can I say it's too expensive to live in Israel we have one of the highest cost of living in the world prescription of medications and falafel are relatively cheap but last night I was watching the World Cup and paying 32 shekels for a cider and that comes out to nine dollars and forty cents that's very pricey so yeah it's just expensive here unfortunately really expensive and what's the answer I'm not sure there is one I don't I my disposable income goes on camera gear and I don't really save month to month which is far from ideal but that's a lot of people in Israel unfortunately um so I oh and final point I have here conflict and turmoil epicenter of conflict so it's true Israel is Israel is not that it's an unsafe country to live in somewhat paradoxically crime rates here are comparatively low but there is a there is a conflict and that conflict epicenter really is Jerusalem right East Jerusalem is Palestinian mostly almost entirely West Jerusalem is Israeli Jerusalem tends to attract hotheads and extremists from both the Jewish and the Arab sites um fundamentalist right so there'll there'll be the flash points in Jerusalem like the Damascus gate when there are lone wolf stabbings don't really make the news much internationally uh you know a Palestinian stab someone they tend to be in Israel and I'm not just saying it's all one-sided there have been instances of the Jewish Israelis you know basically beating up random Palestinians horrible stuff whatever site it comes from um but you're going to see that more in Jerusalem than Tel Aviv which has a much more left wing tolerant pro coexistence outlook on the main street in Jerusalem which is called Ben Yehuda Street it's common to see a far right wing organization called La Hava very openly uh signing up members and rabble rising on a Thursday night which is the main night of the weekend um and you know you can read about that organization so there is there is ugly extremism in Jerusalem more so than Tel Aviv I would say um and when the conflict breaks out whether that's a space of lone wolf stabbing attacks or something more God forbid it tends to hit Jerusalem before other places the exception is rockets um is Jerusalem generally isn't threatened by rocket fire some would say it's probably because it's buffered by Ramallah and Bethlehem and given the relatively crude nature of Palestinian missiles it would be very difficult to target Jerusalem and not risk targeting the dome of the rock which would ignite world war three so it's rare that Palestinian militants in Gaza will fire on Jerusalem it has happened but it's rare and it usually marks a very significant it's it's kind of a red line under a red line that when Jerusalem is targeted I try not to use bad language on this youtube channel so I will not but stuff's about to go down um so that's it so I hope this overview and I know this has become a 30 minute video I wanted to give sort of like you know real live detail uh about Jerusalem I do think by the way Jerusalem is a really nice city to live in um you might say after all those cons it's a nice city I'd say those are the drawbacks if you can work around them or they're not drawbacks like Shabbat um I think it's a quality city I personally think Jerusalem is a nicer city than Tel Aviv not no ideology no Jewish stuff I just think it's a nice um it's a nice city with nice neighborhoods our hobby is lovely Baka is very nice the center of it it's effectively three cities west Jerusalem ultra orthodox Jerusalem and east Jerusalem that's the way I look at Jerusalem it's three cities one area of one million people and Jerusalem also feels a lot smaller than a city one million people I think for that reason um because you're you're never really simultaneously moving in one city you're more staying in your third of Jerusalem your ultra orthodox west Jerusalem or east Jerusalem you're usually most people stick to their third let's say um so it ends up feeling like what you know 330,000 a million over three feels much more like how Jerusalem feels to live in it feels like a smaller place than a you know big city of one million people let's say anyway I'll uh desist from talking here I hope that was interesting to someone even if it was no one it was good to just kind of chat to myself in my room for 30 minutes if you do have thoughts to share do please consider leaving them in the comment section I'll be always uh really interested to talk about the city and specifically the future of the city is a topic that really animates me thanks for watching if you want to get more videos from me of course do consider clicking on that subscribe button and uh telling your friends that there is this random guy from cork sitting in Jerusalem with some neon lighting in his room and making ranting onto a webcam tell your friends that's out there on youtube and they might also want in on the action thanks for watching guys until the next video have a good one