From Nation's Capital to Nation's Capital: The Azza Street Spy

Shameless Self-Promotion
Forgive me for the inappropriate, shameless self-promotion. However, these last two weeks were a little rough. Compliments are always nice, especially when they are publicly advertised.

Nefesh sponsors a listserv where future olim and veteran olim post inquiries and reply to each other... Most of those inquiries deal with lift questions, vonage phones, etc., and a Nefesh singles listserv is usually dominated with questions about apartment searches and ulpan enrollment. There was significantly more chatter in the last weeks on each listserv, in preparation for the upcoming summer flights.

Due to my posts advertising the virtues of Government Housing That Locks You In and Out and Banking with the Post Office, I was getting follow-up inquiries... After composing some lengthy emails explaining some obscure fee structure or migraine inducing process, I got a really sweet, public thank you (from the friend I greeted at the airport).

Subject line: Efrat B [full last name]

Efrat, you are a klita-assistance-MACHINE! On behalf of my fellow olim, I
thank thee. Just wanted to know if there was something (small) I could pick
up for you on this side of the ocean that's not available in the Holy Land.
It's the least I can do.

Shabbat shalom and see you on admat kodesh,
Aviva

After this public thank you, I got two private emails from listserv members that concluded with similar thank yous. I now have a fan club in which I field questions about banking, government housing, and health care. This has to be better than being a rock star. Feels kind of nice, and it's my pleasure to help out the freshest batch of new olim.

Thanks for indulging me. I guess since it's my blog, I can post whatever I want :)

Note: calling recent olim a "fresh batch" is a semi-literal translation of the Hebrew term. New Americans are green and new Israelis are "tri'im", i.e., fresh.

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