 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell here. I am, as you can see, enjoying a lovely day here in April on the rooftop, on a rooftop in Jerusalem. And I've actually always wanted to record one of my YouTube vlogs, because I always do these vlogs in the same place, my home office, and it's, you know, the same thing every time. It's kind of a small room. And it's also for me, not the most relaxing environment, because it's where I work and spend long hours working, and it's kind of a small room, it's probably is very clear. So I've always wanted to do two things. Firstly, to do more vlogs from outdoors. And secondly, to do a vlog when I'm not in work mode, when I'm actually enjoying a beer. So this is going to be my first beer vlog. I'm drinking a German vice beer. And what I wanted to talk about today was a sort of, I mean, this is a random topic. It just kind of came to me. This whole idea to do a video blog on this roof just came to me now and I set up a tripod and I've got my new microphone and my new camera, so I'm nicely set up for this. But the topic I want to talk about is something that's been on my mind today. And that's my feelings about what I think makes for successful experience doing Aliyah. Immigrating to Israel. So I'll probably title this video My Thoughts on Successful Aliyah, or I don't go in for clickbait stuff as anyone who actually follows this YouTube channel knows, not my style at all. If I did, I'd do something like, you know, The Secret to Aliyah Reveal or something rubbish like that, but it's not who I am. So I'm going to just, you know, call it like My Thoughts on Aliyah or something more, a little bit more low key. But I do have a few. So I've been here in Israel for going on seven years, so that's quite a long time. And I did a video blog a few days ago, more long form than this will be probably about the pros and cons of living in Israel. I wrote an article a couple of years ago and it ended up becoming a really big, relatively speaking, a big traffic article for me. 43,000 people read the article to date. So that's a lot. And I was kind of a very cut and dry. Here's what I think is good about Israel, life in Israel. Here's what I think is bad or less desirable. And, you know, as I said a few days ago on this YouTube channel, really my thinking hasn't changed. I think the pros are, the standard pro for me is always going to be the Jewish stuff, the fact that this is the only Jewish country out there in the whole world. And that's where I derive meaning. That's what gives my Aliyah void strength. The big negative is a price of living. It's way too expensive here. And it's difficult to go one day in Israel without feeling stressed about that. So that was kind of very cut and dried. Here's what's good. Here's what I think is bad. But what I wanted to talk about today, a little bit different than that, was taking that formula as it is, the pluses and the minuses. What do I think is the success or what do I think can make the difference between success and failure? Because we don't have reliable statistics on Yerida. By the way, this video is actually, it just occurred to me that it's a good day to be doing this because tomorrow is, I believe, Aliyah Day. So this is one day before Aliyah Day. So maybe I'll post this tomorrow. Maybe I'll post this on the eve of Aliyah Day, whatever. So my viewpoints on what makes the Aliyah process successful. I really think it's about recalibrating, being satisfied with less. That's the conclusion I've come to. I think there's two different approaches you can take towards Aliyah or moving to Israel. So firstly, I'm 33, so I'm not some kind of old age oracle who's been here for 30 years, but seven years into my Aliyah journey, I don't know if I can even call myself any more Oli Chadash, or not sure I'm even considered an Oli Chadash. I'm kind of a little bit on from that. Not fatigued. I don't know, there's no hard and fast rules, but I'm a little bit more senior in the Aliyah journey. Could you say senior? And I've already seen people who I made Aliyah with who've left Israel. I've already made friends with people who are younger in their Aliyah journey than I am. More newcomers. And I think there's two main directions you can go when you're looking at Aliyah. The first direction is you can try to get yourself back to your previous living situation. So whether you come from the U.S. or from Canada or from France or from Argentina, for most people that's what's really unique about Aliyah is that for I think for most, as a sort of demographic or you know population movement phenomenon is that for most people it's a very voluntary migration pattern. So people from a migration standpoint it's not a push factor, it's a pull factor. People are drawn to Israel. When Israel was founded Aliyah was kind of conceived and I think this is actually negative messaging as a push factor. Israel is the last refuge for Jews. Jews who are persecuted anywhere in the world can find a home in Israel. And I never really connected with that messaging. That messaging has been so entrenched that Israel's law of return, the yardstick upon which it bases citizenship or denies it, eligibility for Aliyah is actually predicated deliberately on the way the Nazis defined who was a Jew. And I've actually always thought that was an enormous mistake because to predicate the renewal of the Jewish homeland upon the logic of somebody whose goal was extermination of the Jewish people to me always seemed very very perverse. So anyway that's my thoughts on that topic but the goal regarding Aliyah is people come here and they generally, most people these days and I'm going to go out and live here because they don't have the numbers but without signing, wishing to sign sort of discriminatory, someone who's making Aliyah from Ethiopia or from perhaps even the Russia or somewhere like that they might enjoy an increase in their standard living but a lot of only, I'm not going to say a number because they don't have the number, substantial proportion will experience a decrease in their standard of living. Irrespective of whether they're a tradesperson or a medical professional or anything like that. So there's two different paths when one is presented with that reality. The first path is you can rebel against that, you can fight against that and this is something I've been doing for a lot of my journey in Israel. I opened a freelance file six years ago, more or less when I moved here. Before I got my first job I kind of saw freelancing as an attractive, that was my first way, I made money basically here and I just kind of kept it open and I put myself under a lot of pressure because even when I had, when I got my first office job, my second office job and even up to my current job, which I started only about two months ago, I've always kind of felt it is my responsibility. While I have that file open, I may as well work extra to try to make more money, to try to make Israel more manageable and I guess a lot of that is me trying to sort of keep up with standard living that maybe isn't realistic or whatever and I think a lot of people fall into this trap. You kind of try to think how can I maintain my old world salary or whatever in the old world made you happy and I do think that that's kind of a worthwhile criterion to have in mind for your aliyah journey. There's a point where if I look at my own aliyah experience it's been a series of reaching that old point. In other words there's all these milestones where before you made aliyah you had a car and then you come to Israel and then it takes a while but finally you get a car so now you're back on the car front you're equal you're where you left off and eventually you if it all goes well you hit enough of those little milestones that you get back to where you came from and from that point on is it's progress and there's a tendency I guess to try to expedite that process as quickly as possible because we don't want to fall behind it's our human nature and my thinking currently or where my head is at regarding this this journey is that I don't think it's right I'm at the point now where I'm sort of not looking to do that anymore I've done that for so long I've worked two jobs for such a long time I've done freelancing around the on my weekends for many years and I'm kind of tired of it and I'm kind of taking the easier course through life the course of sitting on a rooftop on a sunday drinking a beer and trying to relax well I am relaxing I'm not just trying to relax I'm relaxing up here um so it's kind of a deliberate change of tempo but it feels quite wrong initially you have to give yourself permission to to step back a little bit um so I think that for people who are successful they kind of just roll with this difference two small anecdotes to relate regarding this um this thought the first one is as follows I had a family member who was looking at moving here um and I was scouting a property on behalf of this person in Tel Aviv so I was going around you know responding to realtors and doing viewings of apartments and progressively looking at a bigger budget and a bigger budget and a bigger budget to try to find better and no matter how far the budget went nothing was good enough and that to me is a mentality I share unfortunately and I think a lot of olim share and struggle with it's this one of well if it's not exactly what I consider a great apartment I it's not good enough for me I'm not going to do it and I think the people who end up being successful here and happy here and fulfilled here the olim in that category are people who manage to just accept that whatever the new place is the new neighborhood the new apartment the new job whatever the new conditions are they they say they're okay with it um so that's the first thing the second thing is I recently had occasion to visit um the the home the apartment of someone in Israel who's very very wealthy in in Tel Aviv we're talking very very wealthy and I went to I went to the guy's toilet and I went to the toilet and I reached out for some toilet paper you can fill in the blanks here in the story and the whole fixture fell off the wall which for anyone who spent time living in Israeli apartments you know the plugs pull out of the wall you know just the standards are not are just not that good like there's just so it's just not a good standard of building here I don't I don't think it even comes down to money or labor I don't know exactly what the reason is but it's the thing you see here across the board especially if you're renting and it just kind of struck me that you know this is one of the most illustrious residences in Tel Aviv I'm sure it costs X many million shackles this is kind of what people would be killing themselves to be able to afford and you still have the toilet fixture that falls off the wall in other words in Israel at the moment you can you can you can kill yourself trying to make more money to afford more to afford better and at the end of the day is it really worth it and that was kind of a moment where I said why well I'm probably never going to be able to afford to rent or own never mind never mind owning renting a place of this of this opulence and even here even in a place like this the toilet roll doesn't stay on you're gonna have to get some guy out to screw it in and you can even I could even see it was like not put on correctly so that kind of made an impression on me one of the little everyday moments here that kind of stick with you so I think that kind of concludes what I was what I wanted to say here which to summarize is really that aliyah days tomorrow I've been here for seven years I'm by no means an expert on aliyah by any any strategic imagination I'm not I'm not recording this video blog to preach I'm just saying that if that's one observation I've made about aliyah days a lot of effort goes into you know sharing aliyah tips and there's lots of little tips about you know call your bank to get your credit card fee waived and it's all about protectia and you need to network instead of apply for jobs there's lots of little things that people share but I think that the major thing the bigger picture thing I would say is that if there's one thing I've been able to observe between happy olim and unhappy olim and I put myself by the way mostly in the second category someone who's definitely struggled here and I think it's a matter of adaptation and people who and I think a lot of it by the way is expectations I suspect the difference in my case might be that I moved to Israel without any prior connection to Israel which in the Jewish world a lot of my friends here who live in Israel I've had kind of these lifelong relationships with Israel they came here for family vacations or dad was Israeli their mom was Israeli etc and I didn't have that my family didn't we never went to vacation in Israel we didn't know connection to Israel I went on a birthright trip and that was kind of um how it all started but a lot of people who have that family connection know all the stuff about Israel when you know when they discovered that customer service is lousy here or it's crazy expensive they know all this it's not news to them uh whereas for me I don't need to you know come on a seven-day birthright trip and all this came as an unpleasant surprise so I suspect in my case and maybe if you also are watching this from think about making aliyah you don't come from a you know established Jewish community this might also be the case so I think there's various ways around that you can either spend a longer period of time here what the Jewish agency calls a pilot trip or you can um this is why I think it's good that people share openly about their experience with aliyah because if we all feel compelled to only share positive things about Israel we perpetuate this myth of a country that doesn't really exist and that in my opinion only leads to a disappointment uh inevitable disappointment when people come here and they discover that hey this isn't a land of uh of the bible it's a real country and I think that's I've always thought that that's actually a positive positive thing that Israel is not this mythological place that it's portrayed as rather it's a country like any other with strong points less strong points opportunities challenges etc so yeah I think that's enough this is as much as I can say before I start burping from this delightful German beer hope this first video blog recorded not in my home office uh was of was of interest to somebody I want to do more of these from more interesting locations and if you have any thoughts about about this you know drop me a drop me a comment I'm always also always available by email I have my email address listed up on the uh a base tab there you can click contact and you'll get it and thank you very much for watching