I am a SETTLER - ask me anything

chanchy123

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 5:11 am

OK - I'll do transportation first:
We have 5 buses a day to Jerusalem via Efrat, it takes about 55 min by bus to Jerusalem. Most families have cars (I think about 95% of the families, some have two cars) - by car it's only 25 minutes to Jerusalem, people will mainly travel by their own car or take rides with neighbors (we have a message board where you can look for a ride).

We also have school buses coming in and out.

We do not have a makolet (grocery or any other kind of store), post office, etc. The neighboring yishuv (3 minutes by car, 20 minutes by foot) has a small makolet, I've yet to visit it. My DH and I both work in Yerushalayim, and we get almost all services and shopping there, I have never felt the absence of anything but tipat chalav (which have in Efrat 15 minutes away - depends who's driving) we use our car A LOT and will go to Efrat to pick something up if we forgot anything.

We do have a family doctor living in the yishuv (she practices elsewhere), and a couple of nurses so we're covered in case of emergency.

I honestly, feel very suburban.

SCHOOL -
We have a daycare center and a gan (3-6 year olds), kids go to schools in the Gush. They have an organized school bus that takes them to the various schools in the area. My DC's is not far (about 20 minutes by car, with me driving - so not so fast) but the bus will take them about an hour because they pick up and drop off kids in various schools on the way.

chanchy123

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 5:21 am

My home is built out of two caravans that were converted into a house, it's sort of a hybrid. If you're coming from the main road, our home looks like a regular house, with blokim and shlict and everything - on the inside, it's mostly like a house, sometimes I forget it's actually a caravan. We have three bedrooms + a large laundry room, a well-equiped nice sized kitchen, and a smallish living room, we've added an extra room on the house which we're renting out to a neighboring carpenter as a workshop.
We own our piece of land and we plan on building on to the house to form a nice sized actual home. We have a raspberry grove in our backyard planted by our neighbors (they intend to market the raspberries this summer) and our porch overlooks the Dead Sea, Jordan and the Judean Desert.

Oh and Shabbat - your just not as hard core as I am Wink

shabbatiscoming

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 5:24 am

chanchy123 wrote:

Well, in my yishuv, we have a bakery, a printing press, a lovely makolet and a pizza store/catering service (the guy keeps changing what it is)
I love it here Smile

chanchy123

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 5:31 am

StrongIma - I guess everyone in Israel is settling the land, but I do think that being a "settler" is something else. Actually, I did come to my yishuv looking for "the good life". I wanted a small yishuv, where my kids could play outside freely, with a strong community presence. I wanted my kids to have a childhood like I had. I also wanted my kids to have a sense of meaning regarding the place they live, I wanted them to feel like they are doing something important just by living their daily life.
I don't think I'm suffering or sacrificing for living where I do - it's just that wherever you live, you take the good with the bad and the advantages of the yishuv outway the disadvantages.

abound- [q]Do you feel alone in Israeli society becuase of the media or do you recognize that most people are with you in mindset even if we cannot or don't live in a small settlement?[/q]
That's a good qustion. I don't know. I think many Israelis appreciate settlers, but I do think many would prefer there were peace over settelments, especially remote and small onse such as mine. Actually, I would prefer peace as well. Sometimes, you do get the feeling from the media that settler blood is not quite as red as that of a resident of Tel Aviv.
Also, the indifrance towards what happened in Gush Katif.

chanchy123

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 5:32 am

shabbatiscoming wrote:

chanchy123 wrote:

Well, in my yishuv, we have a bakery, a printing press, a lovely makolet and a pizza store/catering service (the guy keeps changing what it is)
I love it here Smile

We buy our chalot at your bakery almost every Friday, my DD has classmates from your yishuv.

shabbatiscoming

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 5:34 am

chanchy123 wrote:

shabbatiscoming wrote:

chanchy123 wrote:

Well, in my yishuv, we have a bakery, a printing press, a lovely makolet and a pizza store/catering service (the guy keeps changing what it is)
I love it here Smile

We by our chalot at your bakery almost every Friday, my DD has classmates from your yishuv.

The bakery is very well known. We know people in beit shemesh who come every friday Smile

DrMom

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 5:52 am

chanchy123 wrote:

abound- [q]Do you feel alone in Israeli society becuase of the media or do you recognize that most people are with you in mindset even if we cannot or don't live in a small settlement?[/q]
That's a good qustion. I don't know. I think many Israelis appreciate settlers, but I do think many would prefer there were peace over settelments, especially remote and small onse such as mine. Actually, I would prefer peace as well. Sometimes, you do get the feeling from the media that settler blood is not quite as red as that of a resident of Tel Aviv.
Also, the indifrance towards what happened in Gush Katif.

I definitely get that feeling from the media.

Karnash

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 6:22 am

When we first moved to our yishuv - 28 years ago - there were more amenities than you have now, chanchy123 - and it's amazing how the yishuv has developed. B'ezrat Hashem, in the future, you'll be able to look back and see how you contributed to yishuv eretz yisrael.

When my son wanted to bring his future wife to meet us, he said -"Her family is very different from ours". I asked in what way they were different, and he said they were mitnachalim. I said, - "but so are we" and he said "Yes, but we're bourgeois mitnachalim, they're the real thing!"

chanchy123

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 6:33 am

Karnash wrote:

Well, when my family moved to Ginot 27 years ago, we had no sidewalks (just a lot of mud it was a very cold and rainy year), no phones, no electricity (we all mooched off one family) one store, and the bus was a nice walk on the main road outside the yishuv.

DrMom

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 7:32 am

abound wrote:

To be honest, I also get the feeling from the media that "who cares abou the mitnachlim" But I realized that most people are not "The Media" and most people do not look at it or feel that way.

Many of my coworkers are very left-leaning, and in 2005 I definitely got the feeling they had no sympathy for those who were displaced. Maybe now that the stupidity of that event is more widely understood, there is more sympathy.

shabbatiscoming

Thu, Apr 18 2013, 7:41 am

Karnash wrote:

I dont "like" this sentence, I LOVE it Smile