Sign here...twice here...initial here...

Ah, the Israeli bureaucracy has begun.

 We happily started our online application to Nefesh B'Nefesh (a Jewish agency to help immigrants move to Israel) in January. In this day and age, moving to Israel is just a click and send away...right?  Right?!

Ha! Israeli bureaucracy is infamous. I think it can be likened to beating your head against a brick wall, expecting it not to hurt when you hurl your head against it again and then having a brash Israeli tell you that you aren't doing it right anyway.

I have heard the horror stories of waiting in lines for six hours at an Israeli government building only to find out you didn't get the right piece of a paper signed at the other Israeli government building...and you should go back there to wait in line for another 3 hours.

Or that you need one document signed to get the second document signed, but you can only get the first document signed if you already have this third document you didn't even know existed. And this document can only be signed between 9 and 9:15 am every third Wednesday of months beginning in J, not including the month of the summer solstice.  Rinse and repeat.

Yes, it is utterly frustrating and obnoxious. But we haven't even moved to Israel yet and I fully expect it will only get worse. Right now, we're still sitting in our lovely and comfortable Atlanta apartment filling out papers in English, speaking to people on the phone who speak English and who are perfectly helpful and polite.

In Israel I will be filling out papers in a language I do not know, speaking with people who either a) don't know English or b) know English but refuse to speak it with me AND for some reason they will be yelling at me.

Also, each person in this aliyah process requests 2 passport sized photographs (well, Israeli sized passport photos which are of course a different size than American sized passport photos). My Darling Husband (DH)and I have both given out at least 10 passport sized photos of ourselves to different agencies. Hmmm...strange. 

While I cannot be certain, I can only determine Israeli citizenship is based purely on beauty (if this is the case, I can only hope Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli is not the standard in which I will be judged) or they are passing out our pictures to Israelis to let them know exactly what dumb Americans look like so they can begin yelling at us when we get there.

                                 











I want to look like her when I grow up.

Maybe this whole aliyah process is just a test to see if we can really hack it in the holy land.