 Hey guys, good morning. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here, bringing you today's video from my home office here in the lovely city of Jerusalem. And this video is going to be a little bit different than my usual videos that I've been posting here up on YouTube for, you know, a couple of years, and I talk at my office into the microphone. I'm going to be posting this on my podcast as well. So after I finish this video, I will be extracting the audio and putting it up on the podcast. What is this podcast you speak of? I hear you ask, I have a podcast and it's called the Daniel Rosal podcast. The weird thing is, for the last couple of years, whenever I've been talking to clients or going into job interviews and people put your name into Google, everyone finds the podcast and I don't know why because it's been like three years since I uploaded anything to the podcast and my YouTube channel is much more active. But for whatever reason, people seem to occasionally stumble across my podcast. So it's been on my to-do list for a while to actually renew the podcast, especially because I'm currently going through a podcast watching phase. So this is going to be an experiment. Instead of recording a podcast with just voice, I'm putting up a YouTube vlog or video blog or video podcast or whatever you're going to call this. And then I'll be taking the audio out, which is really, really simple to do. I'm putting that up and making it available as a podcast. So because this is going to be a long form video, I'm going to give myself liberty to go on weird tangents because that's how I naturally speak. My brain is a little bit scattered. I think I've talked about before how I believe that in the future, I call it the coming age of format agnostic content, which sounds a bit like kind of religion I'm trying to evangelize people to. But I believe that content, right now we're living in the era of a content surface. There's way, way, way too much content out there on the internet for most people to even be able to curate or make sense of. But it's all kind of scattered. It's very hard. Some people, there's content available as audio podcast. There's YouTubers, there's Udemy courses, there's books, there's eBooks. And people tend to stick to their lane. So YouTubers will do their YouTube videos and podcasters will do their audio podcast and bloggers will do their blogs. And actually doesn't really make sense because most people who are interested in a topic or interested in a topic or someone's thoughts, they get interested in David McWilliams, who's an Irish economist who I listened to on his podcast. So they're not really interested in the medium video audio writing, they're interested in the topic and the person. And right now the way we normatively deliver content doesn't reflect that people are in channels, right? And if you want to like listen to your favorite YouTuber in audio, you have to do weird things like extract the audio or pay for YouTube premium, by the way, which I've been doing for four months and I think it's one of the last bargains on the internet. It's really, really worth it. If you're an avid YouTube consumer and I definitely consider myself an avid YouTube watcher, I'm going to just have a sip of water. So yeah, the way content is delivered doesn't really make a ton of sense, but that's the way it is right now. But in any event, the thought I wanted to conclude is that I believe very soon in the future we will be arriving at a point in time in which because these technologies for creating video from text and going from video to audio to text, which is automatic transcription are very mature. Soon everyone will be creating videos, but it'll be simplistic to push out that video as a podcast or automatically generated as a blog. So that's my prediction. And so that's it. So the long neglected Daniel Rossell podcast will be getting a new lease of life by me automatically converting these YouTube videos into a podcast format so that if people prefer to catch me there, they will be at liberty to do so. Now onto the actual topic of the video. So I woke up this morning, you know, when you wake up with those feelings that there's something on your chest that you need to get off your chest before you kind of proceed with your day as usual. So I had that kind of feeling when I woke up about 10 minutes ago. I'm recording this at about 7 30 in the morning here in Israel. And I went to Tel Aviv on business a couple of days ago. And this isn't something very exciting or out of the ordinary for me. I live in Jerusalem. But I've been working in what Israelis call the high tech world for the past number of years. Now I do my high tech in quotation marks, because I don't think it's a good description. It's what Israelis call the technology sector, right? Or the what what in Ireland, we call it information technology. But Israelis love the word high tech. So it's kind of caught on. So I've been working in high tech for the past few years, whether in house and companies or right now, my major client, which is actually kind of like a full time job. But that's that's a story for another day. It's based in Tel Aviv. I rarely worked with people in Jerusalem. So I'm usually in Tel Aviv. If not once per week for business, once every second week for business. And I meet people I go I meetings with clients, I talk to them whatever. And maybe it's because I was out of Israel for a few weeks this summer. And I've kind of come either you always come back with a slightly different perspective on things. But I saw I was having coffee with someone. And they said, you know, we're getting to know each other on a more personal level. And they said, Oh, why, why do you live in Jerusalem? Why don't you live in Tel Aviv or having this conversation in a coffee shop in Tel Aviv? And I did my usual thing, which is like when someone asks when someone phrases a question like that, you auto your automatic reaction is to kind of retreat a bit, right? And you kind of puts you on the defensive. It's like someone saying, you have a meeting in New York City, you're from Iowa. And I say, why do you live in Iowa? Like, why won't you live in New York City? So it's kind of that dynamic. Or in the Irish context, why do you live in the middle of the countryside? Why don't you live in Cork or Dublin? So after that meeting, it kind of left me feeling a little bit, you know, I need to start defending if I want to live in Jerusalem. And I've been doing that for the past eight years since I moved here from Ireland. I should own that decision. I don't need to feel defensive or apologetic about it when I'm meeting with people. Now the type of it's usually a quite homogenous type of people that asks these questions. It's people who live in Tel Aviv. And they tend to live and breathe the kind of Tel Aviv ecosystem of startups and that. And I always say, yeah, you know, I like living in Jerusalem, but maybe Tel Aviv would probably be better for my professional life. And we might move there in a few years and we're thinking about it. And you know what I mean? All these kind of like excuses a little bit. And so anyway, I thought this morning I had my coffee and I realized what was on my mind. And that was what was on my mind. So I posted in a Facebook group called secret Jerusalem. And I said, folks, what, what, how do you handle that question? And people ask, it's always Tel Aviv people asking people in Jerusalem. And they always ask it in a certain way as well. It's always, it's never like, oh, I'm interested to hear what, why are you living in Jerusalem? It's more like, why do you live in Jerusalem? You know what I mean? The difference is in the body language or the tone of voice. So as we speak, as I speak, answers are flowing into that Facebook threat. But as that's happening, I thought I would give my own heartfelt reasons about why I'm not. See, the thing is what I take issue with when people in Tel Aviv say, why do you live in Jerusalem is I don't care where anyone lives. I don't care that people in Tel Aviv live in Tel Aviv or people in a lot live in a ladder or people in Taiwan live in Taiwan, wherever people live, it's fine. People in Tel Aviv have this weird being their bonnet that if you live in Israel, you must live in Tel Aviv. And I think it's stupid. So instead of going anti Tel Aviv, because there are ways we can attack Tel Aviv, I want to be pro Jerusalem and explain what's good about the city that it's worth living here. And by the way, final point before I do that, it's not, it's actually not only people in Tel Aviv or in Israel asking, why don't you live in Tel Aviv? When I do zoom, I also do zoom calls as well as business in person business meetings, very, very diverse life I'm living here. And, you know, it's not always transparent that I live in Israel from my business website, my professional materials. So, you know, people, you open up the conversation and people say, oh, and where are you based Daniel? And you say, oh, I live in Israel. And there's always that kind of moment where you're waiting for people to go, oh, or say something or you can sometimes if it's video, you can see their eyes darting left and right as they're like waiting for a waiting to think of some kind of suitable reaction. And sometimes people do, but they always go, oh, yeah, it was in Tel Aviv. It was really cool. You live in Tel Aviv, right? And you're like, no, I live in Jerusalem. And then you can kind of almost like picture going through their minds like you in the like old city of Jerusalem and like carrying a tourist scroll or like something from the biblical era, you can almost picture that. So it's not only people from Israel. It's also people from outside of Israel who assume for whatever reason if you live in Israel, you must live in Tel Aviv. And I think this actually speaks to a marketing problem that we have in Jerusalem. I'm talking honestly here. People don't think you can live in Jerusalem. Jerusalem's association in international eyes is with the old city of Jerusalem. Now here's an interesting fact about living in Jerusalem that people may not know. My contention would be and I think 99% sure I'm right about this. Most people who live in Jerusalem do not visit the old city of Jerusalem that regularly. I think there's both a symbolic reason for that. We realize it's a special place. And there's also just a pragmatic reason for that. And that's that like your day to day life in Jerusalem, you're working a job, you're doing your shopping, you're going to the post office. You don't really have reason to go into the old city. There's just some historical tourist sites. And I would imagine if you asked most people living in Manhattan, how often do you visit the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, you'd probably get a similar answer. And they'd say that's a tourist site. We don't been there, sure, go there now and again sure, but I don't really go there day to day. So there's this kind of, I guess, impression on the part of the world that Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv is so glitzy and glamorous. And Jerusalem is unfortunately, and this is actually true, economically speaking, Jerusalem is way behind Tel Aviv. Israel is Jerusalem's capital city. Or not recognized internationally as such, I hasten to add, hence most embassies are not in Jerusalem with a few examples. Hence why locating embassies in Jerusalem is such a big deal, which tells you a lot because usually putting, if you're a foreign country, putting your embassy in the capital of the host country, that's where you put your embassy. Yet we know there's an American embassy in Jerusalem and Honduras and makes the news and there's opening ceremonies. Why? Because it's politically contentious. So Israel, Jerusalem is Israel's capital where the, where its government is, whatever, but it's not, it's not really as capital. Now I know there's a word for this, it's not coming to me. Tel Aviv is really functions like the capital in terms of being the socioeconomic hub of the country. Tel Aviv is the cultural heart is probably fair to say of Israel, debatable that point people might debate me if anyone actually watches this video. But when, if you spend half a day in Jerusalem and half a day in Tel Aviv, when you come from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, if it's your first time visiting Israel, you'll get to, you'll get from Jerusalem, you'll say, oh, I don't think Jerusalem was like this. It's kind of a small, pretty low level town, four stories, one little kind of high, high street called Ben Yehuda Street. I mean, the old city is amazing, but the rest of Jerusalem, you kind of say, didn't really feel like capital city of a million people. Then you get to Tel Aviv and that, and the skyscrapers and you'd say, wow, no, no, no, Tel Aviv is, is really where Israel's at, right? So that's the impression most people would form justifiably. Now they're, from an employment standpoint, they're correct. There just aren't that many jobs in Jerusalem. There are government jobs. Like if you work for the state, there's more jobs in Jerusalem than Tel Aviv, but if you work in the private sector and most, you know, people working in technology, perhaps because I work in the tech field, and I'm young-ish sort of 33, and people assume if you're young, you're working in tech, you want to, you don't want to work in the second rate today, you want to work in the economic hub, so therefore you must be in Tel Aviv because that's where the startups are. Now I have a couple of thoughts about why Jerusalem still is a good place to live. First thing to say is that Jerusalem is a livable city. When people think of Jerusalem, the old city, that is a part of Jerusalem. It's not the whole city. There are jobs in Jerusalem. There are a couple of high-tech parks, which is again using that weird high-tech word. There's one in Malta, one in Harchotsvim, a couple more, and it's true that we're far behind Tel Aviv, but it's catching up, I would like to think, or at least there are jobs in Tel Aviv are in Jerusalem. Now the second thing about this, and the main reason I live in Jerusalem, and it's going to come back to, it's going to come very quickly to religious reasoning, and that's why by the way, I'm wearing this goofy baseball cap because it's a period in Judaism called the Nine Days before Tishabi Av, and during this day, during this nine-day period, you're not supposed to cut your hair. Now, I came back from the U.S. two or three weeks ago, and my dear wife says, it's Tish above in a few days, so I said, oh, Tish above, it's a few days, so I can't get a haircut, I can't eat meat. Turns out it wasn't Tish above for another 10 days, so I've been actually observing the pre-Tish above period for a fortnight now, and hence my hair has grown from, it's grown a bit out of control. But that's speaking to religious observance, and it provides a nice segue to that, so my Zionism personally, my philosophical belief about why the Jews coming back to Israel, reinvigorating their homeland, to me it's based upon them being Jews and keeping Judaism, and that means some level of religious observance, and in Jerusalem, it inspires me much more to see people living holy, I don't mean holy H-O-L-Y, I mean W-H-O-L-E-Y, as in fully integrated Jewish lives, and they're able to do that in Jerusalem without there being any sort of middle ground or conflict between what they do for a living and their life as a observant Jew, in other words, they're a bus driver for, and they're a Jewish, and in Tel Aviv, so that's what I see in Jerusalem, I see guys dressed in the full Hasidic or Herady garb, and they're driving taxis, or they're working as programmers, or they're working as yoga instructors, and they're like, oh that's really cool. That excites me much more than Tel Aviv, which is by contrast to Jerusalem a secular city, and I kind of think well, it's just that you've got all the problems of Israel, the crazy cost of living, the chaos, but if you're taking the religious aspect out of it, what's even the point? It's like, if you want to have a secular life, a secular city, you could live in London or Berlin, so I'm not saying I dislike Tel Aviv at all, which is because I don't, I actually think it's a really cool city, just crazy expensive and crazy hot in the summer, and there's a lot of cockroaches, but besides that, it's super cool, it's very vibrant, so it's not for me that I don't want to live in Tel Aviv, it's more that Jerusalem speaks much more to my concept of what a city in the state of Israel should look like. Now, it's not always wonderful, that religiosity I must say, and it can be really challenging. I moved from living in a place called Cork in Ireland as pretty much one of the only Jewish families, like maybe one of two, no Jews at all, no kosher foods, not even a functioning synagogue for the last few years, it's closed since, but whatever, and I moved to the Jewish capital of the world that was like a zero to 100 acceleration, and given that fact, it's actually been pretty seamless. Being in a religious Jewish city doesn't really, even though I'm not fully 100% the most religious person you'll meet, it can be difficult in the winter when Shabbat comes in on Friday and starts stuff closing at one or two or three o'clock, and that can be a little bit tedious, but you figure out after a number of years living in Jerusalem, you figure out workarounds, you know that you have to do your groceries early on a Friday, you know it's always a good idea to have the pantry stocked up because maybe you're sick and you didn't get out in time, whatever, so you figure it out, and there is a certain rhythm, the rhythm to the week here is a bit, it centers around Shabbat, the Sabbath, the Shabbat people start preparing for it during the week, Thursday is the big night out, Friday is a leisure day, but it's also preparing for Shabbat, Saturday night is Motsah Shabbat when Shabbat goes out, and it kind of becomes a second social night, and then the week starts again. Other reasons I like living in Jerusalem, so besides what we have so far is the fact that it's a religious city, and for me as someone who does actually keep kosher, even though you might think how can you keep kosher not be religious, standards in Israel for religiosity or what's considered religious, which in Hebrew is dati, are very high, so by that standard the fact that I don't wear a head covering besides this periodist my goofy baseball cap already kind of puts me out of the religious bracket and the minds of a lot of people unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I think judging people's level of religiosity by outward signs is stupid, but anyway, so there's the fact that Jerusalem is religious and it's accommodating to religious people, so if I want to keep kosher food, which I do, in Jerusalem it's easy, in Tel Aviv it's like when you're in New York or Ireland and you have a list of kosher restaurants or a list of kosher things you can buy in the supermarket, this is how it works in Ireland, the chief rabbinate publishes a kosher list and you say oh I want this, oh I want the honor, it's not kosher, I can't have that, so it's kind of like the diaspora experience of Judaism, which is eat at one of these few restaurants, live in one of these few establishments and Judaism is something that you need, it's like a narrow box that you need to go into kind of away from society and what I like about Jerusalem is that the, as I said before, sort of a slightly different point when I was talking about people's jobs, the religiousness is integrated into the life of the city if you live in West Jerusalem, it's normal to be religious, the city accommodates you, etc. So let's move on from the religion point, I think Jerusalem's a nice city, that's point number two, I'm not saying Tel Aviv, this isn't about bashing Tel Aviv, even though people in Tel Aviv tend to bash Jerusalem, I'm not trying to return fire here, I'm trying to be positive and say what's good about Jerusalem, I'm just going to pause this video for a second or stop speaking while I have half a caffeine pill because I'm currently waking up, okay I need to do, okay, where are we, Jerusalem? Ah yes, so I think Jerusalem's a nice city, it's a nice, Jerusalem traditionally has sort of this reputation in Israel of being a poor city, of being a very religious city and those kind of, the people assume they go hand in hand because a lot of the ultra-religious sector in Israel, the Haredi sector doesn't participate in the labor market voluntarily, I would like to say that's changing, the demographics of Jerusalem are very interesting, it's about split between East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, I've talked about this in blogs before, kind of function as separate cities, de facto if you want to use that word, different bus networks, different hospital networks, very little real integration in my opinion, so I like to think of Jerusalem not as one city but as three cities, West Jerusalem, East Jerusalem and Haredi Jerusalem, ultra-orthodox Jerusalem and they've even got three downtimes, West Jerusalem centers on Ben Yehuda Street, that area, Haredi Jerusalem centers on, there's a street running through Meachah Harim and all those neighborhoods around it are also very religious and East Jerusalem centers on Damascus Gate and that commercial area called Babel Zahra in that little area of Jerusalem there, so Jerusalem is really three cities conjoined but even so, I think West Jerusalem, when I talk about Jerusalem as a normative Jewish immigrant to Israel, I hasten to add that I'm talking about West Jerusalem, that's the one of three Jerusalem cities that I live in, so West Jerusalem is a nice city in my opinion, you've got variety, you've got some kind of classical neighborhoods like Rechaviah, the German colony over there, there is land owned by the Russian church, there is land owned by the Greek patriarch, so grand kind of church buildings and church owned property, there is downtown which is kind of understated for a downtown area, what I like about Jerusalem is that IS has one of everything, so by that I mean, you know as a guy into video there's a couple of camera stores, there's a DJ store which has pretty decent audio equipment, there aren't tons of bars or a raring nightlife scene and people will tell you the Shuk is a big nightlife venue, this is one thing I don't like about what's the changes in Jerusalem I've witnessed and that's that the Shuk which is Shuk Mahanehudah which is a big vegetable market, amazing place and it has opened a nightlife front for the past like 10 years, it became a nightlife venue, I think that's great, amazing idea to you know to convert a vegetable market into a bar district at night time, the problem I see is that it's become, the venues that have opened are really kind of places where 18 year olds have taken over for drinking and every bar blasts really loud music and there's no coordination, it's kind of people seem to like that but I think it's I think it could be done much more tactfully, much more nicely, perhaps a few more adult oriented bars here by which I mean places for folks in their 30s or 20s, a couple of those teenage places where people just want to blast trashy music but keep them a little bit separated but anyway I digress, so there isn't a wild nightlife scene in Jerusalem but there's a couple of good bars and something I've learned about living in Jerusalem over the years or learned about myself is that I only need a couple of good bars and 33 I'm not 18 I'm not looking for kind of wild to go on wild benders so I like a couple of decent craft beer bars where I can sit down and talk to friends, I only need a couple of friends another thing I'm learning about myself as I progress through my 30s is it's friendships are a quality over quantity thing and there's everything in Jerusalem I need there's minus Indian food, minus Indian meat food there is an Indian place in Jerusalem but I don't I don't I don't I don't want to be naive it's not really my scene so an Indian restaurant would be great but there's a Persian restaurant there's one there's greatly Ethiopian restaurants so there's one of everything anyway I feel like I'm going into the kind of rambling territory here I've gone from sharing actual insights about Jerusalem to just talking and boring people and I see that the timer is clocking up on 30 minutes here so let me wrap things up really I think Jerusalem's a really nice city it's a viable city to live in and here's one more point I do want I do want to attack into this video blog slash podcast and that's that Tel Aviv is so close we can accept that Tel Aviv is a great city and it's literally in the grand scheme of things that high speed train connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is amazing it's such a good piece of infrastructure it takes about 30 minutes and it's it's 30 minutes to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem now and it's a game changer so um people from Tel Aviv look at you like you've got two heads and say why why do you live in Jerusalem they're the ones who have two heads because the new era is remote work it's amazing I love remote working and you can work with the company in Tel Aviv and visit their office once a week or work with clients in Tel Aviv or work with clients not in Israel and get into Tel Aviv so it's actually have to have that mind frame that you need to live right in the center of the crazy crazy unaffordable housing and the crazy cost of living is actually a backward way of thinking it's like saying just like people saying you know you have to live in Manhattan I'm like yeah maybe before the pandemic when the only way to access that labor market was by actually working on site not anymore so I would say that living in Jerusalem and working in Tel Aviv or with Tel Aviv companies and getting your exposure to the international labor market and the better conditions and the better pay and um sort of circuit working around the fact that there isn't so many companies in Jerusalem is a more forward approach than feeling you have to live in the center of Tel Aviv and paying your 8,000 shackles a month to live in a shoebox so yeah I actually believe in this is okay final thought I want to get in Jerusalem is Jerusalem's best days are ahead of it the city is currently working hard it's a bit of a mess here right now they're digging up an every street corner and it's very frustrating and there's traffic jams and people are getting annoyed about living in Jerusalem and justifiably I think the municipality has not struck a good balance between the needs of local residents and the needs of future residents and the needs of foreigners by which I mean they're building a lot of luxury housing for people who only visit the city one or two weeks a year they're building Jerusalem it's this grand vision of we're building Jerusalem and it's going to be the capital and people are going to be able to live in Jerusalem which is great what about people living in Jerusalem right now who have to put up with the traffic jams and noise pollution required by that grand aspiration seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit um so right now Jerusalem's in a bit of a mess and there's been articles about it in the Jerusalem Post and also in Hebrew it's been noticed let's say and I think the current administration and the Jerusalem municipality has not struck the right balance between those two dynamics the need to build Jerusalem and the need to make it a livable good city for people who are living there right now and paying taxes to it I think it's fallen down in that respect but nevertheless that work they're putting into Jerusalem will come to fruition they are expanding the light rail network they're putting in a couple more light rails and that's really the way forward it's in Jerusalem if I can say one criticism of the city it's been too slow to embrace stuff like micro mobility to put down proper bike lanes televieve and all things sustainable and future oriented it's doing a better job than Jerusalem and Jerusalem needs to catch up badly it needs to increase buses it needs to put down more bike lanes it needs to move away from private car ownership because it's completely unsustainable in a city like Jerusalem and the city is built around cars so there's work to be done but when all these magnificent changes come to their fruition which will happen Talpiot which is a kind of rundown neighborhood in south Jerusalem it's really industrial place and there's grand visions to turn Talpiot into a southern center of Jerusalem which would be quite exciting it'll be the southern you'll have the southern core of Jerusalem the center core of Jerusalem and the old city it'll be make it more vibrant and with all those train links you'll be able to just hop between trains and get all the way around the city so I truly believe Jerusalem's best days are ahead of it if I could say what if I were mayor of Jerusalem by the way this isn't a attempt to get into politics I have no aspiration to be in politics I'm like Hebrew is frankly not good enough but if I were to be the mayor of Jerusalem or a politician in Jerusalem tomorrow I'd say the number one priority for Jerusalem right now besides has to be two things one quality of life and reducing the construction chaos and two jobs the city just needs jobs jobs jobs jobs will bring prosperity people to the city increase people's disposable income and that'll kind of take Jerusalem out of its I don't think Jerusalem has to choose between being a religious center with a religious religiously observing population and socioeconomic development it can be well developed with a good local economy and religious I don't think it needs to choose between those two ways of life for that's my contention anyway we got past the 30 minute time and I'm running out of steam so I'm going to wrap up this first vlog here I will put a link to my podcast in the video description as I mentioned it's going to be going up there to reinvigorate the Daniel Rossell podcast this has been me Daniel Rossell speaking into my microphone for the past 30 minutes at about 8 30 in the morning on a Thursday here in Jerusalem for anyone who's made it all the way through this 30 minute rant no cheating I'm not thanking you if you skipped ahead but if you really stuck stuck with me all the way for the past half hour thank you very much for watching listening feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts if you have any in response to these thoughts and until the next video if you want to get more videos from this YouTube channel about living in Israel Jerusalem uh technology and other subjects please consider subscribing thank you for watching and have a very good day