
Sleep deprivation caused by frequent Iranian strikes activated my default mode network, and I decided to support my job search with some ideas that might sound superficial — but need to be voiced to become real. So let's start with this one:

**Software is mostly solved.**

I'm echoing many voices in the industry here: something shifted around December 2025, and AI-assisted coding stopped feeling like a tool and started feeling like a talented colleague sitting next to you, doing stuff *with* you, not *for* you.

It all sounds trivial at this point, but it's hard to discern the voices of those for whom AI has *enabled* coding from those of us who have been coding for a living for many years. Both perspectives are valuable — but the miracles are different. If you just discovered you can build something with AI, that's wonderful. My miracle is different: I've been a professional if-else-typist for twenty years, and I don't need to get my hands dirty anymore.

I can talk with AI about architectural decisions, about the contract points between abstraction layers, about why we made certain choices in the past — but I don't write code myself anymore.

This sounds liberating for some of us and horrifying for others: there's no need not only to write, but also to *see* the code with your own eyes most of the time.

So, what are we to do now, if we're not doing what we were hired to do?

It appears we can start thinking again.

---

I'm not really fond of "writing code" — but I am quite fond of being an engineer: planning, projecting, and building a mechanism that comes to life like a Golem: lifeless matter being animated. (No Talmudic puns intended.)

This is my passion and my joy, the reason I've been staring at this screen since the age of twelve. And I think, as time went by, I was robbed of it.

SaaS and smartphones brought money into our corner — where nerds were enjoying themselves and having much fun in their caves! — and with money came the managers, new paradigms of efficiency, whole new professions that existed just to make us predictable. Shiny glass towers were erected specifically to lure us out into the light.

Not all of it was bad. Many of us learned to build for people, not just for ourselves. (Think about your banking app fifteen years ago: horrible then, so good now.) We learned to speak the language of users and the language of business.

But with the good came the ugly: business perceived software as a bottleneck. Each line of code had a price tag. We were surrounded by managers who handled our efficiency and gradually removed the fun from the work — at least, for me.

Now, don't misunderstand me — I am not proclaiming a "back to the caves" revolution. Not just yet. But as I remember myself a few years ago, it was a sad picture.

---

Now, with a significant portion of my brain free from micro-decision-making, typing, and testing small and medium features, I am naturally getting back to product building: instead of thinking small and focused, I am thinking broad and big!

This sounds like the opposite of what is expected of a cubicle (or open space) dweller: mind your own and deliver your part on time. Collaborate, but not too much. Smile, but do not laugh.

I remember how it was two-three years ago and before: yes, I can think product, I got much of my career being more 'product' than not, but when you have code in front of you, you develop tunnel vision, you deliberately ignore the 'big picture' to get your job done for this day. I remember clearly that I was implementing less-than-optimal product decisions without looking back.

And over the years, when I was deprived of product thinking by product managers and other nice people, I haven't been convinced that you can painfully decouple product as a concept and idea from product as a set of features, and from product as code.

Now, I don't have to pretend that you can.

What if my part is done in an hour and tested and integrated in another hour? What if I have time to look around? What if I know something about the product we're building that no one else knows — because I'm the one building it? What if I see something that a person who never works with code simply cannot see?

I think the answers to these questions are worth exploring.


AI-assisted coding shifted from tool to colleague. Now that the typing is done, engineers can finally start thinking again.

Software Is Mostly Solved


*Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — February 21, 2026*

**Readings:** 1 Corinthians 3:18–23 · Matthew 5:43–48

---

I have many friends and acquaintances who are not believers, and they send me the same video year after year. The day comes when someone new gets exposed to this piece of humour, and if he knows me, he immediately knows what to do about it.

It's the [George Carlin bit about religion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BFIRgn9OLI&t=1s). I doubt there's anyone in this room who hasn't received it at least once — as a lighthearted joke, or a way to provoke, or as a funny way to finish the argument. I'll paraphrase for those who may have forgotten the punch: there's a man in the sky, he is all-knowing and all-powerful, and he has a particular list of ten things he does not want you to do, and if you do any of those things, you are going to be tortured for eternity. And then Carlin stops, and delivers it: _but he loves you._ And then he stops again: _and he needs your money._

From beginning to end, this bit resembles a worldly version of the creed. It touches on all the pain points the world has with God — his power, his judgment, his love, his Church — and presents our relationship with him as a ridiculous, stupid joke.

And no clever argument on our part can fix it.

This is exactly the reaction Paul expects. He writes to the Corinthians:

> _"The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight."_

And this works the other way around, too. What is of God appears as foolishness to the world. When Paul stood before Festus, the Roman governor, and spoke about Christ and the resurrection, Festus interrupted him and said: _"You are out of your mind, Paul! Your great learning is driving you insane."_ This wasn't a polite disagreement. This was a powerful, educated man looking at a believer and concluding that he had lost his mind.

Carlin's audience laughs for the same reason Festus shook his head. From the outside — from the world's perspective — what we believe and how we live makes no sense.

---

And Paul's response to this is remarkable. He does not say: "Let me explain it better so the world will understand." He does not offer a smarter argument. He says: _become fools._

> _"Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become 'fools' so that you may become wise."_

God's wisdom is not a worldly wisdom with a cross on top. It is completely, fundamentally incompatible with it. And this incompatibility is not a problem to be solved. It is a feature of life in Christ.

And it touches everything. It's not only the fact that we come to church each Saturday, or that some of us say grace before a meal. God's wisdom, as it slowly works its way into you, begins to reshape the way you make decisions — all of them. Business decisions. Financial decisions. How you treat people who have wronged you. Whether you respond to an insult with an insult. Whether you do what the world expects from you in pursuit of a benefit.

And when you make those decisions differently — not for show, not to be strange, but because you genuinely cannot do it the other way anymore — people around you will notice. They will think something is wrong with you. They may twist a finger at their temple behind your back and refer to you in their stand-ups. And that, brothers and sisters, is not a bad sign.

But let's be honest with ourselves. We all know the tension. We all recognise in ourselves the pull toward having two modes of operation: the Saturday self who sits in this room, and the Monday self who operates by a different set of rules — the "real", "normal" rules. And that gap — between what we confess on Saturdays and how we live — that gap is precisely where God's foolish wisdom wants to do its work.

---

Let me give you an example of what this looks like. It is something that everyone who has decided to accept God's reality and try to live accordingly has experienced.

You see someone around you who is suffering. Perhaps it's sickness, or loneliness, or poverty — or, as it happens quite often, all of the above. He may not be vocal about it. But you happen to be a witness, and he is your neighbour. And as a reasonable person, you sit down and think: here is what I can do, and here is the limit of my ability. I have a family to care for. I have responsibilities of my own. This is a sober, honest approach — and it is not a wrong one. So you do what you can, approaching the limit you have set for yourself.

But the person and his problems do not go away. He lingers near, and he's one of the people you pray for. And you think again — being a reasonable man — I have done what I could. His problems are not going away. Can I solve them? No, I cannot. Perhaps this is simply how life is.

It is always the same question: me or someone else. My evening or his need. A better cut of meat for my family, or a simpler meal shared with someone who has none. We face it so often we barely notice it anymore.

The sages of the Talmud distilled it in its barest form to construct a reasonable answer: two men are travelling through a desert, and one has a flask of water. If they share, both will die. If only one drinks, he will survive. Rabbi Akiva taught that your own life takes precedence. It is an answer that worldly wisdom may call correct.

But being followers of the Messiah who was hanged on the tree, we see that the reasonable answer is not enough.

And we are not in the desert, but now we can return to the person sitting near you — the one whose problems have not gone away — with some better understanding of the situation. The distilled question and the everyday question are the same question. And I have a strong feeling you already know the answer. You have done what you believed you could. Now it is time to do what you cannot. Because it is not you who will do the work, nor is it you who will measure the results. You have been called; you accepted the call. And this time, you will stand up.

---

Now — here is where I want us to notice something we almost never notice.

When we reach a boundary like this — between what is sensible and what God seems to be asking — we feel it as a crisis of faith. As if we are being asked to leap into the dark. And that is understandable.

But consider: the entire world we live in is built on faith, and we never call it that. Banks, money, contracts — the whole system exists, functions, and holds together because millions of people place their trust in it every day. No one calls this faith. No one says: "You are naive for building your entire life around the assumption that these systems will hold." We call it common sense.

But the moment someone trusts God's promise with the same seriousness — the moment someone takes "give, and it will be given to you" as seriously as they take their savings account — it is foolishness. It is naivete. It is the man in the sky.

And here is what Paul catches: _"He catches the wise in their craftiness."_ The wise are not caught because they lack faith. They are caught because they don't recognise their own faith for what it is. The world runs on enormous trust in its own constructs, and calls that trust reason. And the trust God asks of us — which is, in its nature, no different — the world calls foolishness.

---

Imagine a person who has inherited a great estate. He goes about his daily life with a certain ease. And because he is secure, he can afford to be generous. He can afford to be patient. He can afford to take risks that others cannot.

Now listen to how Paul continues — because this is where the passage takes a surprising turn:

> _"No more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours — whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God."_

All things are yours.

You have inherited the greatest estate that ever was. Not because you built or earned it. But because you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

And from within this inheritance, something strange happens to the word _sacrifice._ That evening you spent with someone in need — the one that seemed, by your calculations, unreasonable — what is it, really, set against the estate you have received? What the world calls sacrifice, the child of God may simply call Tuesday.

---

The heir knows what the Father is like. And the Father's love does not stop at those we find easy to love. His sun rises on all. This is where the foolishness of God reaches its most radical — its most impossible — point.

Jesus says:

> _"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."_

Love your enemies.

In this country, at this moment in history — you don't need me to tell you how that sounds. You know. The world says: pick a side. Protect your own — we talked about it the last time. And here stands Jesus, saying: love them. Pray for them.

This is not a figure of speech and not a metaphor. These words mean exactly what they say. Not love in some abstract, theological sense, but actual love for actual enemies. And throughout the centuries, sincere Christian theologians have dealt with this commandment in exactly the same way as their Jewish sage colleagues: they have struggled with it, spiritualized it, limited the circle of those considered "the enemy," viewed love as an internal state, not as a specific action — honestly and sincerely seeking a way to make God's impossible demand fit within the framework of human wisdom. Which is, of course, precisely what Paul warns against.

We cannot do this. Not by our own strength, willpower or wisdom. To love an enemy requires something that does not come from within us. It requires the Holy Spirit. It requires asking God, again and again, for the capacity to do what is humanly impossible. Not once, but daily. Not as an achievement we complete, but as a gift we keep receiving.

And Jesus himself tells us why: _"that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."_ And then he says: _"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."_ This is, perhaps, the most terrifying sentence in all of Scripture. But listen to what perfection means here: it is the Father's own character — sending sun and rain on everyone, withholding nothing, loving without calculating who deserves it. The perfection Jesus calls us to is not a standard we achieve. It is a character of God we receive. We participate in it not by mastering it, but as heirs — because, as Paul just told us, all things are already ours.

---

And this brings us to the heart of it.

Because Christ was the ultimate fool in the eyes of the world. He loved his enemies — which is to say, he loved us — to the point of death. The cross is the most foolish act in human history: God becoming man, and then allowing himself to be killed by the people he came to save. No worldly wisdom can make sense of that.

And the foolishness we are called into is not a program we execute. It is not a standard we achieve. It is a life we have already been given — in baptism, in the Word, at this table.

Of course this is not something we learn once and hold forever. We stumble through it. We wake up on Monday and slip back into the world's wisdom before we've finished our coffee. And our trust in the one who gave us everything shrinks a little. But each time we act from the "foolish" inheritance rather than from our calculations, it grows a little.

And what does God do with that?

The Psalmist tells us:

> _"He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him."_

The Father Jesus points us to in Matthew — the one who sends sun on the evil and the good, rain on the righteous and the unrighteous — is the same Father the Psalmist sings about. The one whose compassion is not measured by our performance. There is a man in the sky — and he loves you. Not as a punchline. As the most radical truth in the universe. And the cross proves it.

We are fools. We are heirs. We are loved.

And we are sent back into the world — not with a better argument, but with a different life.

Amen.


A sermon on the foolishness of God that confounds the wisdom of the world, and the radical call to love our enemies.

Holy Fools


*Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — February 14, 2026*

**Readings:** Psalm 119:1–16 · Deuteronomy 30:15–20 · 1 Corinthians 2:6–13

---

## I

How free are you? Truly, honestly — how free? You woke up this morning and had breakfast. If you drink coffee, you had coffee. You drove the same roads, walked the same streets, or took the same bus. And in a few hours, you will go home, and you will do what you do on Saturday afternoon, because that is what you do on Saturday afternoon. How much of that did you actually choose?

There is a well-known atheist writer, Sam Harris, who wrote a short book called _Free Will_. His argument is simple: free will is an illusion. We are biological machines. Our choices — big and small — are determined by our genes, our upbringing, and our neural wiring. We are, he says, no more free than a computer running its code.

Long before, Martin Luther wrote a book called _The Bondage of the Will_. And Luther said something that sounds, on the surface, remarkably similar: the human will is not free. It is in bondage. In everyday things, Luther leaves us with that — which coffee to buy, which road to take — yes, you have a kind of freedom. But in the things that matter for eternity — turning toward God, trusting His promise, loving Him with your whole heart — the will that is apart from God cannot do it. Not because it is a machine, as Harris thinks, but because it is captive. Captive to sin, to the old Adam, to a nature that curves inward on itself.

Sam Harris looks at this and concludes: therefore, there is no freedom. Luther looks at the same bondage and says: therefore you need God.

So, again, where is your freedom, your power of will?

## II

Today's reading from Deuteronomy seems to offer the answer. Moses stands before the people and declares:

> "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction... Now choose life."

Life or death. Two options. Not which coffee to buy or which party to support. The one real choice: God, or not God. Life, or death.

This sounds like freedom. Finally! A choice that matters, a choice that is truly ours.

And if it were that simple — if we could just choose life, just like that — then every sermon could be very short, and we would save much time in church. "Love God. Do not sin." Done. Go home.

But here Luther's insight cuts deep. "Choose life" sounds like an invitation. But it is a commandment. It is the law. And what the Law demands, the bound will cannot deliver. You cannot wake up tomorrow and choose life — real life, life as God means it — any more than you can lift yourself off the ground by pulling on your own boots.

Why? Because "life" in God's vocabulary is not what we think it means. When we hear "choose life," we hear: choose _my_ life. My health. My family. My safety. My people. And of course, these matter. But the will that curves inward on itself can only orbit the self. It can choose individual survival. It cannot choose _life_.

And yet God was not cruel to set this choice before His people. Just verses before Moses says, "choose life," God makes a promise that changes the spirit of the commandment itself:

> "The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live."

God commands what He Himself will provide. He does not say "choose life" and then walk away. He promises to perform the heart surgery that makes the choice possible. Already in Deuteronomy, there is a whisper of the Gospel hidden inside the Law: your choosing will be held by something greater than your will.

## III

God promised the heart surgery. But how? When? Paul gives us the answer:

> "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived — the things God has prepared for those who love him — these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit."

Now, it may sound like Paul is simply continuing where Moses left off: choose life, love God, and you will be richly rewarded. It sounds like a condition — the things God has prepared _for those who love him_.

But that is not what Paul is saying. Look at the shape of it. He does not say: go and find these things. He does not say: earn these things by loving harder. He says: no eye has seen them. No ear has heard them. No human mind has conceived them. In other words — you could not have gotten here on your own. Not by effort, not by wisdom, not by willpower. These things were beyond you entirely.

And then: God has _prepared_ them. God has _revealed_ them. The Spirit has _given_ them. Every verb belongs to God. This is not a reward for obedience. This is a gift you receive freely — now. Right here, in the middle of your failure, in the middle of your inability to choose life the way Moses commanded.

The righteousness that surpasses anything we could produce on our own is not a higher human effort. It is a different kind entirely. It is Christ's righteousness, received, not achieved. This is the Gospel. Not "try harder." Not "choose better." But: God has done what you could not conceive, and He gives it freely.

## IV

So what does this look like? What does it look like when the bound will meets the living God?

A senior pastor once shared an observation with me. He said that people come to faith carrying all kinds of identities and convictions. Someone arrives as a committed socialist. Someone else as a fierce nationalist. One person defines herself by her politics, another by his ethnicity, another by the cause she has given her life to. Jew and Arab. Left and right. Religious and secular. Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. These are not small things — they shape how people see the world, whom they trust, and whom they fear.

And then, he said, something strange happens. Over time, in the life of the church, those identities begin to loosen. Not because the church demands it. But because something deeper is quietly replacing what sat at the centre.

Why? What is doing this?

Jesus tells us:

> "Your Father in heaven causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

God does not pick sides. Everyone is loved by God just the same. And when that truth begins to work on you, the old walls start to crack — not because you decided to tear them down, but because they cannot stand in the presence of a God who refuses to recognize them.

But the world demands the opposite. Pick a side. Pick your faction in the conflict. And the moment you do, you belong to that side. You adopt its enemies, its logic, its hatreds. You think you chose freely, but now the side is choosing for you. Sometimes it is not even a choice: you are put in a box with others who share your skin colour or your passport, and the box decides what you are allowed to think, to feel, to pray for.

This is bondage upon bondage. Inside, the will pulls inward. Outside, the world narrows it further. And somewhere in the middle, Moses is still saying: choose life. How?

Not by choosing _your_ life. But by choosing _life_. Life as God sees it. Life that includes everyone, even the ones your nature tells you to exclude. Life that is bigger than survival, bigger than your side, bigger than the lines the world has drawn.

Here in Israel, we feel this more sharply than most. When you hear the siren, when you rush to the shelter — there is nothing more natural than to pray for yourself, for your people. God hears that prayer. He does not scold you for it.

But death is not only the rocket. Death is also the hatred that grows in your heart while you sit in the shelter. Death is when the enemy stops being a human being in your mind. Death is when the prayer on your lips narrows until there is no room left in it for anyone but yourself.

When the siren sounds, what prayer rises to your lips? Let us be honest. It is not hard to find comfort in the prayers of Joshua's time — prayers for victory, prayers for the destruction of enemies, prayers that God would crush those who threaten His people. Those prayers are in the Bible. They are real. And in the moment of terror, they come naturally.

But we are not in Joshua's time. We are on this side of the cross. And Christ calls us somewhere we would not go on our own:

"Lord, grant peace. Lord, remove the hatred from my heart. Lord, remove hatred from _their_ hearts. Give them a good life, let them see their children back, and let me see mine. Give us peace and spare our lives."

Notice how the Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray in exactly this direction. It begins at the top: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The first words out of our mouths are not about us. They are about God's name, God's kingdom, God's will — for the whole earth. Only then does the prayer move closer: give us bread, forgive us, deliver us. The blueprint is universal first, personal second. The prayer trains us to see as God sees: from the whole, down to the one.

That is not how we naturally pray. That is how we ought to pray. And the distance between those two — between the prayer that rises on its own and the prayer Christ sets before us — that distance is the exact measure of our bondage.

But when that second prayer begins to form — even weakly, even reluctantly, even through gritted teeth — know that it did not come from you. That is a product of grace. That is the Spirit doing what you could not do for yourself.

That is the heart surgery God promised in Deuteronomy, performed by the Spirit Paul proclaims. In that moment, you are not choosing your life. You are choosing life. And you are free — truly free — perhaps for the first time.

## V

Brothers and sisters: you are not as free as you think. Most of your choices are made by habit, by nature, by the world's demands. And the one choice that matters — life or death, God or not God — is too great for our bound hearts to make alone. Even our prayers reveal it: we orbit ourselves.

But God has prepared what no eye has seen. The Spirit reveals what no mind could conceive. And in that revelation, you find yourself — miracle — choosing life. Not your life. Life. Not by your strength. By His.

Choose life. But know that even your choosing is held by the One who chose you first.

Amen.


A sermon on the bondage of the will, the one choice that matters, and the God who makes our choosing possible.

The One Free Choice


*Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — November 8, 2025*

**Readings:** Luke 18:1–8a

---

## The Widow Who Cannot Hide

A widow in first-century Judea, standing outside the courthouse. No husband to speak for her. No wealth to hire representation. In both Jewish law and Roman practice, a widow was the definition of vulnerability.

The Torah itself recognised this — again and again, God commands: _care for the widow, defend the widow, do not exploit the widow_. Why? Because she had no protector. No social safety net. She was, in the most literal sense, _defenceless_.

And yet here she is, Scripture tells us, approaching an unjust judge — a man who "neither feared God nor respected people."

Here she's using the only thing she has: her voice. Her persistence. Her ability to keep showing up and being a nuisance. The judge himself says it — "because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming." She has discovered the one power available to the powerless: the power to refuse to go away.

Jesus presents this example stripped of all nuance and loopholes: the widow desperately needs justice, the judge is indifferent, and yet she receives help because she is persistent. And Jesus doesn't leave us to puzzle over the meaning. He explains: if an unjust judge can be moved by persistence, how much more will our Heavenly Father hear us when we cry out to Him?

---

## The Widow's Posture: Helplessness Turned into Faith

Now, let's look at what made this widow's demands effective. Not eloquence. Not moral standing.

She had one man who could grant her justice, one door to knock on. So she knocked.

Her helplessness gave her clarity. Her persistence wasn't born from confidence or willpower. It was born from the desperate mathematics of having nowhere else to go.

This is what Jesus wants us to see: she responded to her situation with clear-eyed realism. She was powerless, yes — but she knew where power resided. And from that conclusion flowed everything else — her persistence, her refusal to give up.

The widow's clarity was unique in a way — Jesus has given us an imaginary, simplified example, drawn in stark lines. But this parable worked immediately for His audience because it was _recognizably_ close to their lives.

Most of Jesus's first hearers survived on things they couldn't control. Rain for crops. Safe roads. Successful fishing trips. Health without modern medicine. Their daily lives weren't quite as desperate as the widow's, but they were on the same spectrum. They understood helplessness not as an abstract theological truth but as a lived experience.

---

## Our Modern Self-Sufficiency: The False Wealth

But step onto a morning train in Tel Aviv. Look around. Everyone has headphones in. Each person is absorbed in their own specialised world.

All of us have built something the widow never had: layers of protection. Our bank accounts. Health insurance. Professional networks. Retirement plans. Emergency funds. Education. We have learned how to make ourselves "un-desperate" and feel secure.

Our world isn't just more secure than theirs — it's vastly more complex. There are thousands of professions now where there were dozens then. Thousands of ways to invest resources and spend your time. We are rich in alternatives and the ability to solve our own problems — or at least to feel like we can.

And here is the spiritual danger: the more layers we build, the less we feel our need for God.

These layers are not evil. A bank account is not sinful. Health insurance is not a lack of faith. The danger comes when the layers become substitutes for God. When we live as if our security comes from our strategies rather than from the One who gives us breath.

No matter how much money we have in our accounts, how indispensable we are at our jobs, we remain creatures, not the Creator. Our days are still numbered. We need food, water, air, sleep — and we cannot add a single hour to our lives. The widow had nothing to hide behind and couldn't avoid this truth. We can avoid it for decades, building such elaborate systems of security that we live as functional atheists — saying we believe in God while our daily lives suggest otherwise.

---

## Faith as Dependence: The Heart of Prayer

Which brings us back to Jesus's parable and the question it forces us to ask: what is faith, really?

We often think of faith as certainty — believing that God exists, that Jesus is Lord, that Scripture is true. And these things matter. But Jesus's parable suggests that faith is something deeper than intellectual agreement with theological propositions.

Faith, in its essence, is recognition and sustained dependence on God.

Look at what the widow does. She has correctly identified where help comes from. She acts on that knowledge. Her dependence is visible in her feet, in her persistence, in her refusal to give up even when the judge keeps refusing her.

**This persistence toward an unjust judge — this is what Jesus says faith toward God should look like.** Not intellectual certainty, but sustained, persistent dependence.

Jesus tells this parable, "to show them that they should always pray and not give up." Prayer, then, is the fruit of faith. We pray because we have concluded that we need God. That we cannot save ourselves. That there is no other help for us.

Listen to Psalm 121, which has been prayed by God's people for millennia: "I lift up my eyes to the mountains — where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth."

From the One who doesn't sleep, the One who watches constantly.

This is what faith looks like in practice: knowing where help comes from and persistently turning there, even through delay.

True prayer isn't about convincing God of anything. God knows what we need before we ask. Prayer is about confessing our dependence. It's about coming back again and again to the One who is our help.

---

## Persistence and God's Timing

If God already knows what we need, and if God is good and loving, why must we be persistent? Why does Jesus tell us we "should always pray and not give up"?

Jesus answers this directly: "And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly."

God will bring justice soon, Jesus promises. But "soon" is measured in God's time, not ours. We are bound to time — we count minutes, we age, we wait. God is eternal. His "soon" is decisive and certain, but the timing is His.

So why persist in prayer if God's timing is His own?

Because persistence in prayer is about remaining in a relationship with God through the waiting. We are refusing to walk away when the answer doesn't come immediately. We are training our hearts to turn to God first, and not as a last resort.

The widow didn't have a backup plan. She didn't diversify her strategy. She kept coming back because there was nowhere else to go.

---

## Conclusion: Will He Find Faith on Earth?

Jesus ends this parable with a haunting question. It's not in today's reading — we stopped at verse 8a — but I cannot help but hear it echoing underneath everything we've said. Jesus asks: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

Think about that question. Not: Will he find churches? Will he find people who believe correct theology? Will he find moral people? But: Will he find faith?

What kind of faith is he looking for? I think he's looking for faith like a widow's conviction. Faith that has concluded its own helplessness. Faith that has nowhere else to go and so keeps knocking on God's door. Faith that persists through silence and delay because it has no backup plan.

And the question presses on us: In lives as distracted and "secure," is there still room for faith?

Or have we made a faith that fits comfortably within our layers — a faith that asks God to bless our plans rather than acknowledging we need Him to live at all?

So how do we, with all our complexity, recover the widow's clarity?

There is only one way: we must see ourselves as we truly are. Strip away the illusions. Whatever our place in society, whether we have many resources or few, we all breathe the same air. We are all mortal.

This is not comfortable. But it is true. And it is, strangely, liberating. Because when we stop pretending to be self-sufficient, when we stop exhausting ourselves building layers to feel safe, when we acknowledge our helplessness — that's when we can finally rest in the arms of the One who has always been holding us up.

You who have come today carrying burdens your layers cannot solve, you who are tired of pretending to be in control, you who are beginning to see your helplessness — there is One who hears, who doesn't sleep, who will bring about justice for you.

Keep knocking. Refuse to go away. Not because God is reluctant, but because that persistent knocking is what faith looks like when it has nowhere else to go.

---

Lord, strip us of our false confidence. Teach us to pray with desperation that trusts Your justice. Give us the clarity when we pray. Make us people who have concluded our helplessness, not as a sad fact but as the beginning of true faith.

Give us faith to keep knocking, not because we are strong, but because we have nowhere else to go. And when Your Son returns, may He find in us that faith — stubborn, persistent, utterly dependent — that refuses to let You go until You bless us.

In Jesus' name, Amen.


A sermon on the persistent widow, the layers we build against helplessness, and what faith looks like when there is no backup plan.

When We Have Nowhere Else to Go


*Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — November 1, 2025*

**Readings:** Luke 17:11–19 · 2 Kings 4:8–37

---

Picture the scene: somewhere along the border between Samaria and Galilee, Jesus encounters ten men with leprosy. Or more accurately, they encounter him from a distance.

"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"

Notice what they don't say. They don't cry out, "Jesus, heal us!" They don't shout, "Jesus, cleanse us!" They use language that reaches higher — divine language. They call him "Master," and they ask not for healing but for _mercy_ — _eleēson_, the same word used in prayers addressed to God himself.

These men already know something about Jesus. Perhaps they've heard the stories filtering through from village to village. Perhaps they've even encountered him before. They know enough to believe that this man can speak into their situation with divine authority.

And they stand at a distance — which is exactly what Torah required. Anyone with such a disease had to live in separation from the community. Whether these ten men followed every detail of this requirement, we don't know. But they maintained their distance. They called out. They lived in the reality of separation that this disease demanded.

## The Torah-Observant Response

Jesus's response might surprise us. He doesn't touch them (as he did with other lepers in the Gospels). He doesn't pronounce them clean. He simply says, "Go, show yourselves to the priests."

They had approached him from within the Law's framework of separation. Now he responds within the Law's framework of restoration. According to Torah, when someone's skin disease healed, a priest had to examine them and officially declare them clean before they could rejoin the community. So Jesus sends them to take that first step — continuing within the same Torah-observant path they'd been walking.

## As They Went, They Were Cleansed

Here's where faith enters the picture.

Jesus didn't say, "You are cleansed — now go show the priests." He said, "Go show yourselves to the priests" — and they went.

And Luke tells us simply: "As they went, they were cleansed."

Look at the faith this required. Jesus gave them a command with no visible change, no immediate proof, no guarantee they could see. And they obeyed. They trusted Jesus's word enough to act on it.

This is the kind of faith Jesus had been calling for all along — the kind his own disciples sometimes struggled to demonstrate. When the storm threatened to sink their boat, he asked, "Where is your faith?" When they couldn't heal the demon-possessed boy, he said, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed..." These ten lepers, standing at a distance, had that faith.

All ten men were healed. All ten received exactly what they asked for — mercy expressed as cleansing. All ten could now complete their journey to the priests and return to normal life.

The story could end here. Ten desperate men cry out to Jesus. Jesus responds. They're all healed. Everyone goes home happy.

## But Only One Came Back

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus's feet and thanked him.

And then Luke adds a detail that would have shocked his first readers: **This man was a Samaritan.**

For Jesus's Jewish audience, this wasn't just about ethnicity. Samaritans weren't simply foreigners — they were people with the _wrong_ theology. Wrong temple (Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem). Wrong scriptures (only the Torah, rejecting the prophets). Wrong understanding of the covenant. They were seen as heretics who had corrupted the true faith.

Jesus notices: "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?"

Think about what Jesus is highlighting here. Nine insiders who knew the scriptures, who grew up in the covenant community, who had correct theology — they kept going. One theological outsider, one who had the "wrong" beliefs about God, turned back.

The man with incorrect theology got the relationship right. So what made the one leper return? What did he understand that the nine missed?

## The Right Posture

To answer this, let's go back in time and look at the story of the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4. This happened in the time of Prophet Elisha, he was travelling through the region on his prophetic work, going from place to place as God directed him. The Shunammite woman and her husband happened to meet him on a few occasions and offered him their hospitality. They weren't seeking him out for help — they recognised a holy man of God passing through their town, fed him and at some point decided to build him a room as an act of reverence and hospitality. Without being asked. Without expecting anything in return.

When Elisha asks what she needs, she essentially says, "Nothing. I'm content." It's Elisha who insists on blessing her, and through God's power, she conceives and bears a son — God's gift, precious beyond measure.

Years later, that boy suddenly dies. She travels to find Elisha. When she reaches him, she falls at his feet and won't let go. She will not settle for less than God's man coming to her house.

This woman's request is bold, and probably very emotional — she wants her dead son, God's promised gift, restored. Elisha comes and shuts the door of his room. He and his servant pray. He stretches himself over the boy. The child's body grows warm. The whole process takes time, and it's not easy for the prophet. Then, the boy sneezes seven times. He opens his eyes.

And then Elisha calls the Shunammite and says to her, "Take your son."

Watch what she does at this moment.

Does she rush to embrace her child? Does she check his breathing, examine him, make sure he's truly alive? Does she immediately begin caring for him?

**No. First, she bows.** She falls at Elisha's feet in worship. Before she even looks at her restored son, before she touches the miracle that has just occurred, she acknowledges the man of God.

This woman isn't a prophet; she has no special spiritual training or religious authority. But she has something more important than credentials: **She has the right posture toward God.**

She understands that there is nothing in all creation — not even the resurrection of her beloved child — that compares with the presence and power of God. The gift must point her to the Giver. The miracle is not the end of the story; it's an occasion for worship.

## The Uncomfortable Mirror

The Shunammite woman shows us what the returning leper understood. But before we see what made him different, let's consider where we actually find ourselves in this story.

I've heard it preached many times with a familiar application: The nine who didn't return represent our neighbours, friends, and family members — the ones who claim to believe in God, who pray when they're desperate, but never show up at church or Bible study. They receive God's blessings and disappear back into their everyday lives. And we, sitting here, are like the one Samaritan who came back to worship and give thanks.

But I wonder if that lets us off too easily.

Most of the time, **we** are the other nine at best!

Think about it: We're trained in obedience. We're well-read in scripture. We have good instincts about daily situations. We have solid worship habits.

And yet — here's the hard truth — we can do all of this while losing focus on the main reason we're here at all.

All ten lepers were doing everything right, according to the Law and Jesus' own instructions.

The nine aren't condemned for disobedience. They got back their religious obligations and normal life. They received the gift and kept walking.

And we do this too — perhaps especially those of us who are serious about our faith. We go to church. We read scripture. We serve. We pray. We're "going to the priests" in a thousand ways, fulfilling religious obligations, doing what seems right.

But are we dwelling in God's presence? Are we bowing before the Giver?

## What Made the One Different

The returning leper understood something the others missed: **He had encountered God himself.**

He saw his healed skin and recognised not just what had happened, but **who had done it.** Like the Shunammite woman, he understood the right posture — bow first, before anything else.

So he turned back. He came to Jesus, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus's feet in complete recognition of who stood before him.

This is what worship is: the proper response to seeing God truly.

And he was told: "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

## Saved, Not Just Healed

Wait — weren't all ten made well? All ten were cleansed. But notice the word Jesus uses when he speaks to the one who returned.

Luke describes all ten being "cleansed." But when Jesus speaks to this one man, he uses a different word — a word that means not just healed, but made **whole**. It's a word that carries both physical and spiritual restoration, the kind of complete healing that touches not just the body but the soul.

This is the same word Jesus uses throughout Luke's gospel when something deeper than physical healing has occurred — when he speaks to the woman caught in adultery, to the woman who touched his cloak, to the paralytic lowered through the roof. Each time, he's pointing to a restoration that goes beyond the visible.

All ten were cleansed. But only the one who returned was made completely whole and received something far greater than he'd imagined when he cried out for mercy: restoration to God himself.

"Your faith has saved you." Not your ethnicity. Not your religious credentials. Not your Torah obedience. Not even your correct theology. Your faith — the faith that saw past the gift to the Giver, that recognized God and responded with worship, that chose to dwell in his presence rather than simply collect his blessings.

## Where We Find Ourselves

So bring everything to God this week. Bring the foolish requests and the profound ones, ask God to send you the bus when you need it, to get your beloved healthy and to keep us in peace and everything else, big and small.

But when your prayers are answered — and they will be, in God's wisdom and time — remember the Shunammite woman. Before you rush to enjoy the gift, bow first. Acknowledge the Giver.

Because the difference between being healed and being saved is this: whether we see the gift or the Giver, whether we get what we came for and leave or discover that dwelling in God's presence is what we needed most all along.

**And our Lord, Jesus Christ, stands waiting patiently for us to turn around, come back, and dwell with him.**

In the name of the Father, who visits us; the Son, who saves us; and the Holy Spirit, who opens our eyes to see. Amen.


A sermon on the ten lepers, the one who returned, and the difference between being healed and being saved.

Lepers in Samaria and Galilee


*Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — August 16, 2025*

**Readings:** Luke 11:1–13 · Genesis 18:20–32 · Colossians 2:6–15

---

## Opening

Brothers and sisters, today's readings invite us to think about how we pray, how we trust, and how we forgive.

Jesus' disciples once asked, "Lord, teach us to pray," and what he gave them was a formula and a way of life: a prayer that touches our deepest needs and transforms our outlook on God and our neighbour.

The words of this prayer are familiar, yet in Luke's Gospel the prayer is shorter. It begins simply with **"Father."** In Matthew, however, we find the longer version beginning with _"Our Father."_ Early Christian writings like the _Didache_ also preserve this prayer, showing how central it was from the very beginning of the church's life. Whether Luke or Matthew, the spirit of the prayer assumes that it is communal. We never pray alone; whenever we call upon God as Father, we are standing alongside countless others who call Him by the same name. From the first pages of the Bible, beginning with the story of creation, we see that humanity is one family — descendants of Adam by flesh and, through faith, children of Abraham.

---

## Boldness in Prayer — Abraham and the Friend at Midnight

In Genesis we hear Abraham's bold intercession for Sodom. Notice how daring he is: he bargains down from fifty righteous to just ten. And he does so not for himself but for strangers. He already knows God, and therefore he dares to ask. Prayer, then, is not timid; it is a wrestling with God's justice and mercy. Abraham calls himself "dust and ashes," yet he still speaks — because God has chosen to listen.

Jesus echoes this boldness right after teaching the prayer. He tells the parable of a neighbour who knocks at midnight until he gets bread. Shameless persistence, Jesus says, is how we should approach the Father. _"Ask, and it will be given; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened."_ This parable becomes even more vivid when we read it alongside how Abraham welcomed the three visitors, going to great lengths to serve them. In both stories, the request is not for personal hunger but for hospitality — for the sake of others. Abraham prepared a feast for strangers; the neighbour in the parable begs for bread to welcome a guest.

We are called to pray with that same audacity: not shy, not selfish, but brave enough to ask for others as well as ourselves. And when we pray for one another, we are no longer just individuals bringing lists before God — we are becoming the church, the family of God, bound together in intercession.

---

## A Childhood Memory — Desire and Blindness

When I was a little boy in Russia in the early nineties, I longed for things we did not have. Advertisements on TV showed a different world: children eating Snickers bars, families enjoying Uncle Ben's pasta. I wanted those things desperately, without noticing the struggle of my parents, who were working hard simply to provide bread on the table.

Just like that, we can be so consumed by our own requests that we do not notice the needs of others. Abraham teaches us a different way: pray not only for yourself but for those you may never meet. Ask for your brother, and your brother will ask for you. In this, our prayers intertwine, and we become a family under God.

---

## The Practice of Interceding for Others

There is a saying I once heard from a Russian monk who practised hesychasm (a repeated prayer). Struggling with pride, he was advised to change his repeated prayer. Instead of always saying, _"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,"_ he began to pray: _"By the prayers of those who love me, have mercy on me."_ It is a strange and humbling shift. Instead of focusing only on his own voice, he learned to lean on the prayers of others.

This practice comes from a different theological framework than ours and is shared here as an illustration, not as something we adopt. But it carries a truth: we should not stop praying ourselves, yet sometimes we must trust others to pray for us. Jesus himself, in the garden of Gethsemane, asked his disciples to keep watch and pray with him. They failed, falling asleep, but their presence shows us something important: if possible, prayer is not meant to be carried alone. Even the Son of God wanted the prayers of his friends. And though those disciples failed that night, perhaps our brothers and sisters will not.

When our own words run dry, when we feel desperate or too weary to pray, we may rest in the assurance that others are carrying us. This is what "Our Father" truly means — we are sustained by the prayers of one another. And when we say _"Our Father"_ together, we may think of the great cloud of prayer that surrounds us: brothers and sisters in every part of the world, some of whom we will never meet.

One of the important missionary efforts of Immanuel Church is very simple: we keep our doors open and we talk to people who enter. Sometimes a visitor comes into Immanuel Church, saying he was here twenty years ago, or served as a volunteer, and that he still prays for us. We are blessed by hundreds, perhaps thousands, who are lifting us before God even now. Think about that when you say _"Our Father."_

---

## Daily Bread — Trust for Today

Having reflected on Abraham's intercession and on how others may carry us in prayer, we now turn to the most basic of petitions in the Lord's Prayer. After speaking boldly for strangers and trusting the prayers of our brothers and sisters, we are reminded that prayer is also simple: asking God for what sustains life today.

Bonhoeffer once warned that hoarding shows a lack of trust. The manna in the wilderness spoiled if people tried to save it overnight. In the same way, our worries about tomorrow rarely help. If we can act, we should act — finish the task, help a neighbour. But when we cannot, anxiety only traps us in a circle of helplessness, as we are trying to control what is not ours to control.

Daily bread prayer brings us back: it is God's world, God's time, and God's provision.

---

## Forgiveness — Receiving and Sharing Mercy

Next, Jesus teaches us to pray, _"Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us."_ This is perhaps the hardest line. Forgiveness is not a simple feeling, but a hard choice and a process. It may begin in our hearts, but it should eventually manifest itself outwardly through actions.

Paul in Colossians reminds us that God _"forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness; he nailed it to the cross."_ This is the source: we forgive because we have been forgiven. We forgive not because others deserve it, but because God's mercy has first reached us.

Forgiveness is a command, not an option. Jesus underlines this again and again: _"If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."_ (Matt. 6:14). To love is to forgive, and love in Scripture is always action, never mere sentiment. Two weeks ago, we reflected that love is not only a feeling but a force that transforms action. Forgiveness works the same way — it moves us from resentment to generosity.

And forgiveness can manifest itself through many actions. My personal touch is this: if you are struggling to forgive someone, ask yourself how you can help that person, how you can ease the burden for him or her. By doing so, you promote love, and forgiveness becomes one of the fruits of love, as Paul wrote.

---

## Core Message

**Because God is our Father, we may pray with bold trust for today's needs, and we are called to extend the forgiveness we have received.**

This is the identity we carry: children of God. It means to pray with boldness like Abraham, to depend daily on God's provision, and to forgive as those whose debts were nailed to the cross.

---

## Conclusion

So let us pray as Jesus taught — not rushing, not hoarding, not clinging to grudges, but living as children of a generous Father. As we go from here, let us carry these images with us: Abraham daring to plead for others, the neighbour knocking until bread was given, the manna reminding us of daily trust, and the cross where our debts were cancelled. When worry rises, recall the prayer for daily bread. When bitterness stirs, remember the forgiveness we have received. When fear holds you back, remember that God welcomes bold prayer, even from dust and ashes.

And remember too: it is **Our Father.** We do not walk this road alone. We carry one another in prayer, and others carry us. That is the mystery of the family of God.

Let us close by saying together the Lord's Prayer, as both our plea and our practice, as it is recorded in the Gospel of Luke:

> Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
> Give us each day our daily bread.
> Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
> And lead us not into temptation.


A sermon on the Lord's Prayer — bold intercession, daily bread, and the forgiveness we receive and share.

Our Father


*Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — April 26, 2025*

**Readings:** John 20:19–31

---

## Peace Be with You!

שלום עליכם!

These are the first words Jesus says to his frightened followers after his resurrection. His disciples, eleven minus Thomas, are hiding away in the upper room, where all twelve were present less than a week ago to hear "This is my body."

A lot has happened since the disciples were in that upper room earlier in the week:

- Jesus was betrayed by one of his disciples, and twelve became eleven.
- Jesus was then put on trial, and Jerusalem, which had welcomed him as a king a few days before, shouted, "Crucify!"
- Jesus was raised on the cross, died and was buried.

Then, some women told them all that they had seen Jesus alive again. Peter saw the empty tomb, and finally, Cleopas and his companion rushed in to say they had met Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

And now, back in this upper room these frightened, confused followers of Christ hear the words שלום עליכם, Peace be with you. It must have felt overwhelming!

These words aren't Jesus just saying "hello"; these words fulfil a promise Jesus had whispered to his disciples only four nights earlier:

> "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you… Do not let your hearts be troubled."

## Peace Forged in an Empty Tomb

The peace Jesus gives to his disciples is not the tranquillity of always having safe circumstances: Jerusalem is still dangerous, and Pilate and the Sanhedrin are still hunting for them.

But instead, it's the peace, the shalom that comes from having already broken the spine of humanity's oldest enemy, Death:

You may know the wonderful quote from one of St John Chrysostom's sermons,

> "Christ is risen, and death is overthrown!
> Christ is risen, and life reigns!"

But if death itself has actually been defeated, what power do lesser threats truly hold for each of us here this morning?

## Peace for Ordinary People

The room where the disciples are sitting could be described as a catalogue of human inadequacy — fishermen, a former tax collector, men who fled at the critical hour, two dusty travellers fresh from Emmaus, and likely some of the women who first saw that the tomb was empty, and all of these people weren't powerful, but they were hiding away in this room scared and frustrated. Weeks later, the Sanhedrin will go on and publicly dismiss this crew as "unschooled, ordinary men," yet even the council had to admit: "they had been with Jesus."

So what makes them special? Their only credential is Jesus himself. Jesus is the One who chose them. This collection of people will later become known as the ἐκκλησία, the Church.

And to that assembly, Jesus gives three things: peace, a commission, and the Holy Spirit.

## Peace Be with You Today

The time has passed, and in our turn, Jesus called us to join his ἐκκλησία.

The Church that Jesus founded is a new kind of community. And it's built on different foundations than any other community in our city. Here in Tel Aviv, this reality stands out quite well. It's not built on human foundations. It's built on Christ. Where else in this city can you walk in, enjoy a coffee or a snack, and feel safe just as you are? It's a space without demands, welcoming everyone coming in good faith.

For many of us who grew up in Christian cultures, we might take this for granted. But in our context, this sacred space becomes something extraordinary — a place where we meet our brothers and sisters in Christ. It's a place where we meet our family. It's a home. Our church is the one room where everyone can breathe the words that Jesus still speaks:

> "Peace be with you."

Even today, Jesus proclaims peace over the fearful, footsore, and the penniless, over men and women alike in his church. Our sole qualification for receiving this peace, like it was for those disciples back then, is that Jesus has called each one of us. This is both our blessing and our responsibility. Jesus has given us his peace to go out into the world and to offer God's peace to everyone we meet, by inviting them to come into his new community of peace, which is his church.

## The Great Commission

This is what Jesus said to his very first disciples:

> "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."

Jesus didn't merely comfort his frightened disciples with peace — he immediately gave them purpose and a commission. They are "to go and tell the people about this new life." They are to proclaim the peace that only a risen Lord can give, and they are not to go alone.

Before his crucifixion, Jesus promised his disciples, "I will not leave you as orphans" and spoke of sending the Comforter. This giving of the Holy Spirit fulfils that promise — Jesus didn't just commission them to go and then leave them to do it all by themselves but instead he equipped them with his very presence.

When we became part of Christ's church, we have inherited both that same mission and that same promise. The words Jesus spoke that evening are for us: "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."

Think about this: the same authority that sent the Son into the world now sends us. The same purpose that guided Jesus — to seek and save the lost, to proclaim good news to the poor, to set the captives free — now guides us.

The same Father who sent his Son now sends us through the Son.

But how can ordinary people like us fulfil such an extraordinary calling? The same way those first disciples did — not through our strength or wisdom, but through the gift that Jesus gave immediately after commissioning them, His holy Spirit.

## The Gift

Have you experienced the presence of God's Holy Spirit in your own life? The Holy Spirit comes as a gift in the purest sense — not as a reward for courage or faithfulness (which had faltered) but as freely given grace. Jesus doesn't list prerequisites or demand qualifications. He simply breathes on them and says, "Receive." This gift requires no conditions, just the willingness to accept it.

In that moment, Jesus reverses the disciples' spiritual poverty. They have nothing to offer except their need, precisely where his gift meets them. The Spirit comes not because they are worthy, but because Jesus is generous.

## What Does Receiving the Spirit Mean?

The disciples were fearful; the Holy Spirit made them courageous. They lacked understanding; the Spirit enlightened them. This pattern continues with us today — the Spirit completes us precisely where we fall short. As Paul discovered, God's power is "made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Our inadequacies become the very spaces where God's Spirit works most visibly.

As many of you know, I'm looking for a new job. I hate this process. I opened LinkedIn and saw that some companies boast of hiring only "the top 1% of engineers" or "the best of the best."

This got me thinking about our human tendency to measure worth by ability. Society tells us that everyone must be "good at something," which simply isn't true. Some people struggle with nearly everything they attempt. Others may excel in areas the world values, but these supposed talents are merely temporary conditions, not intrinsic qualities.

The truth is, none of us created whatever abilities we might temporarily possess. Any skill we have today could be gone tomorrow through injury, illness, or simply the passage of time. As the apostle Paul reminds us: "What do you have that you did not receive?" (1 Corinthians 4:7)

If you've seen my car, you understand that I'm not the best driver, yet I'm the right person to drive my son to school. I require the Holy Spirit even when dealing with a knife at home — I lack precision with my hands.

My prayers are quite primitive. I need the Holy Spirit when cutting vegetables, driving my son, and working with a computer. I must admit I need the Holy Spirit every moment of my life.

I don't trust myself in anything, but I trust the Lord and His promise.

This is the beautiful paradox of Christian life: we're most useful to God when we recognise our complete uselessness apart from Him. Our culture's obsession with excellence and achievement directly contradicts the economy of God's kingdom. The world says, "Discover your talent and leverage it." God says, "Recognise your emptiness and let me fill it."

Our omnipotent God could accomplish anything without us — He spoke the universe into existence without assistance. Yet He chooses to work through our inadequacies and limitations, making us co-workers in His kingdom precisely when we acknowledge that we bring nothing of our own to the table.

## From Receivers to Messengers of Forgiveness

This brings us to perhaps Jesus's most astonishing gift in that upper room — the authority to forgive sins.

> "If you forgive anyone's sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

At first glance, this seems impossible. Who are we to forgive sins? Only God can do that. Yet Jesus entrusts this proclamation to imperfect messengers like us.

The key is recognizing that we don't generate forgiveness; we announce it. The forgiveness itself was accomplished at the cross when Jesus said, "It is finished." What we carry is the responsibility to proclaim this truth that has already been won.

Through the Holy Spirit, we become living temples where God's wisdom about both forgiveness and judgment can be expressed. This is both a profound gift and a sobering responsibility.

For each of us, there will be moments when the Holy Spirit will ask us to speak difficult truths — sometimes to those we love, sometimes to those in positions of power. The hardest application comes when we look in the mirror. Sometimes we must learn to forgive ourselves when shame binds us to failures Christ has already covered. Other times, we must withhold easy self-forgiveness when genuine repentance hasn't taken root. Both require discernment that only the Spirit can provide.

What qualifies us for this ministry? Nothing except that Christ has called us and breathed His Spirit upon us. Our inadequacies don't disqualify us — they create the spaces where His power is perfected.

So today, as we carry Christ's forgiveness into a world desperate for reconciliation, remember that we go with His peace. Not a shallow tranquillity dependent on circumstances, but the deep שלום of knowing that death itself has been defeated. In our weakness, His power. In our inadequacy, His sufficiency. In our fear, His peace.

Peace be with you. !עליכם שלום

Amen.


A sermon on the peace Christ gives to ordinary, inadequate people — and the commission that follows.

Peace Be with You


*Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — March 15, 2025*

**Readings:** Luke 13:31–35 · Philippians 3:17–4:1 · Jeremiah 17:5–10

---

## Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the place like no other: it's the only city that exists simultaneously here, on earth and in Heaven. The city after God's liking. Medieval maps placed Jerusalem at the very center of the world, and in many ways, it remains at the center even today.

Jerusalem remains a beacon of hope, a sacred place of worship, a focus of political struggle, and sadly, often a battleground. The name itself contains עיר (city) and שלום (peace) — the City of Peace. Yet since Jesus walked its streets, Jerusalem has changed hands more than twenty times. What an irony!

## Immanuel Congregation and Jerusalem

It's not easy to speak about Jerusalem from within the Holy Land. Every person here has an intimate relationship with the city. For us, Jerusalem is not a mere idea or a story; it's not stones, hotels, or tour guides.

It's a living testimony of our ultimate foundation: Jesus's Sacrifice, death, and resurrection. On many levels, this is the reason for our presence here today, both in the Church and the Holy Land.

## Jesus's Lamenting Is Alive

In our Gospel reading, we hear Jesus's heartfelt cry:

> **"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing."**

God, a master of past, present and future, laments over Jerusalem not just two thousand years ago, but standing from within his eternal now.

When we look at Jerusalem today, we still see division and tension. Jesus's lament echoes through the centuries and remains as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago. What follows this lament is even more striking — a prophetic declaration about Jerusalem's future that will forever change how we understand our relationship with God.

## Empty City

> **"Look, your house is left to you desolate."**

Yes, the temple is going to be destroyed. Yes, the whole city is going to be in ruins. Yes, the Jews are going to be expelled and permitted in only one day in a year: 9th of Av, to mourn. But Jesus was revealing something even more profound.

Jerusalem had functioned like an embassy of God's Kingdom on earth, but now God has withdrawn his presence. The embassy is left in ruins and only one wall is standing. There is no place to bring a petition or negotiate.

## No Visa Required

The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple was indeed catastrophic. The sacred center, the place where heaven and earth met, was lost. Yet, even in this apparent disaster, God wasn't abandoning his people — he was transforming their relationship with him. The physical center was changing, but God's faithful presence and promises remained.

As Jesus predicted Jerusalem's desolation, he was simultaneously establishing something new. God was extending his kingdom beyond walls and borders, beyond one holy city to encompass the whole world.

This is why Paul could confidently declare in our Philippians reading:

> **"Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ."**

This is the astonishing truth of the gospel: We no longer need special visas or permits to access God's presence, and we don't need to make pilgrimages to a physical embassy. Through Christ, we have been granted full citizenship rights in God's kingdom.

When the temple veil was torn from top to bottom at Jesus' crucifixion, it wasn't just fabric that was split — it was the barrier between humanity and God. The embassy model was replaced with direct citizenship.

## Rights and Duties

Being citizens of God's Kingdom comes with both privileges and responsibilities. The disciples listened as Jesus laid out the constitution of this new Kingdom through his teaching, parables, and healings.

The picture is becoming increasingly grim: Jesus demanded radical transformation. Love your neighbors, yes, but also love your enemies. Forgive not just once but seventy times seven times. No shortcuts, no loopholes, were permitted.

The disciples asked the question we all wonder: "Who then can be saved?" Jesus's answer reveals the very nature of our heavenly citizenship:

> **"With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."** (Matthew 19:25–26)

This was a complete reversal of their expectations. They had lived under Roman rule, awaiting a Messiah to drive out the oppressors and establish a new earthly power. Instead, Jesus taught them about a different kingdom: one that starts in the heart and transforms its citizens from the inside out.

The constitution of this kingdom isn't just a set of rules to follow — it's a new way of being. A way that is only possible through God's power working in us. This was difficult for the disciples to digest, and it remains challenging for us today. Yet this is the reality of our citizenship in God's kingdom.

## Walking as Kingdom Citizens

As citizens of heaven, we face a practical question: What does this citizenship actually look like in our daily lives? Is it about paying spiritual taxes or serving in God's army? Not quite, but close! It's about defending the truths of God's Kingdom, sharing what we have with others, and, as Paul urges in Philippians 4:1, "standing firm in the Lord."

This wonderful Citizenship isn't just a legal status, it's our identity. Think about how we describe ourselves: husband, wife, parent, child, friend. These roles matter, but first and foremost, we are Christ followers. This identity shapes everything else about who we are and how we live.

And here's the encouraging promise Jesus gave us:

> **"I am with you always, to the end of the age."** (Matthew 28:20)

We don't follow a distant ruler. Christ isn't far away in some heavenly throne room, detached from our struggles. No, Christ walks beside us every day.

## Symbols of the Citizenship

We in the Middle East are privileged to live in a society where faith is often openly displayed. Religious symbols and practices are visible everywhere, expressing people's beliefs and values and ensuring that others understand what to expect of them.

For us it might not be traditional to wear our faith in bold symbols — perhaps just a tiny cross tucked under the shirt — but shouldn't we also let our true identity shine? Jesus addressed this directly in the Sermon on the Mount:

> **"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."** (Matthew 5:14–16)

This light shines through a life changed by Christ. It appears when we:

- Choose patience when frustrated
- Stay honest when dishonesty is an easy choice
- Give generously beyond what's comfortable
- Forgive even when the hurt is still fresh
- Do not ask for the debt to be returned

The words we speak about our faith only gain their power from the lives we lead. This everyday testimony, shown through our actions **and words**, is the beginning of "standing firm in the Lord."

## Palm Sunday in Jerusalem

We're approaching Easter, the pinnacle of our Church year. A week before, on Palm Sunday, we remember Jesus entering Jerusalem as crowds shouted, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

Visit Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and you'll witness a powerful contrast. Most of the city continues as normal — trams and cars move through streets, shops open, life goes on. Jerusalem, like in Jesus's time, remains largely unaware.

But something remarkable happens: Christian children gather in scout uniforms on the Mount of Olives. They follow Jesus's ancient path into the city, their drums and voices filling the air with "Hosanna!" Children boldly proclaim the King's arrival in a city that is half ignorant and half hostile.

This living picture connects directly to our Gospel reading: "You will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" And remember Jesus's lament? "How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks." On Palm Sunday, we see this gathering happening — not through political power but through faithful witness.

These young believers demonstrate what true citizenship means: standing firm in both earthly and heavenly identities. Like Jeremiah in today's readings, they speak God's truth despite opposition.

As citizens of heaven in the Holy Land, we share this calling. Whether in Jerusalem or here in Tel Aviv, our lives proclaim that Christ has come, Christ will come again, and through Him, our desolate houses become places where heaven touches earth.

This is what it means to stand firm in the Lord.


A sermon on what it means to be citizens of heaven while living in the land where Jesus walked, died, and rose again.

Standing Firm in Our Heavenly Citizenship While Living in the Holy Land


I was involved in the knock-off shoes and garments e-shop during my early entrepreneurial days. That's how I learned about those bazaars on Moscow's outskirts. It was an interesting marvel of the time, presenting a rich cultural background. I'd like to say that it came and went, and now it's not there any more, but as far as I know, those trade syndicates still exist and thrive.

The source of our website's product portfolio was not just any place, it was something truly remarkable: an iconic landmark in every post-soviet city of the time, a mother and a father of all malls, a place where fortunes were made and deals were done. 

It looked like a flea market or more like a Turkish bazaar in a post-apocalyptic setting, filled with all kinds of textile and leather products you can think of imported from China, Turkey or other countries. Some bazaars were open for retail customers, and others were mostly for wholesale. 

Those bazaars came to life in the late 80s, when the first freedoms were granted and yesterday's felons became the first merchants (all commerce activities were considered a felony in the USSR). There were known 'places' where you could meet those felons: you hang out on the spot, then someone wearing Western outfits would casually pass you by, and you murmur something you would like to get: jeans, watches or a bottle of perfume. Those places where these acts of petty treacherous were committed later became flea markets and, in some years, unregulated trade fortresses as they are today. 

At first, people stood and sat near their goods on the pavement. Later, some makeshift structures arose: shipping containers were placed, and some booths were built. The places were bustling with people, as that was the only chance for anyone in the nineties to get something to cover themselves with. 

Being a kid at the time of the rise of these markets, I remember my experience coming there to get a pair of jeans or a shirt: it's a murky place where you have to shoulder your way following your mother. You go from one shipping container to the other, trying on the jeans or whatever it is. Once you get your size, you are stood on a piece of cardboard, and some lady is holding a curtain so that your miserable, pantless attempts to balance yourself will not be exposed to the crowd. The trick is to stay on the cardboard, as the ground is covered with mushy snow colour of dirt.

The government tried to control the trade, but the best they achieved was to contain the activities, moving it further and further from the centre. 

As the years rolled by and the Moscow public grew more affluent and discerning, the bazaars demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability. Shifting from their traditional offerings, they now specialise in knock-off goods and wholesale trading, catering to merchants from distant cities such as Murmansk and Grozny, becoming regional hubs for international trade. 

These bazaars were a melting pot of cultures, with several primarily Chinese bazaars, at least two Vietnamese and one Azerbaijani. Controlled by prominent Mountain Jewish and Chechen families, each bazaar had its own leadership, security, hierarchy, banks and cultural imprint. They were more than just trade centres. They were vibrant ethnic enclaves, offering authentic cuisine, barbershops and drugstores for the locals. 
### Ethnicities on the market
The biggest market is called 'Moskva'. I just checked, and it still exists and is thriving as of 2024. It is located beside the outmost of Moscow's ring roads, between residential blocks and an industrial zone. It is a massive structure that is hard to circuit: many buildings, a vast parking area, and some heavily guarded storage areas. Armed security patrolling the aisles.  It is a place to trade as much as a place to live, as many do not leave the premises and stay there for the night, sleeping in several hostels in the area. 

The bazaar presents an enclave with checkpoints, 'police', 'banks', and even its own justice system! Black market financial services and things like drugs and prostitution are available to the locals. 

The society of the bazaar features social groups with distinct ethnic characteristics. So, it's an easy guess that someone from China is a trader, while a person from Tajikistan is probably a boxman.

A peculiar fact is that the owners of this trading hub are known to be Mountain Jews, a small and unique community of Jewish people of Persian descent originating from the North Caucasus.

So, the social ladder that you can't climb looks like this: 
- **Traders:** Chinese, Vietnamese, sometimes Russian and Azerbaijani nationals.
- **International shipping**: Exclusively Chinese nationals
- **Security**: Russian nationals (including people from the Northern Caucasus of different ethnicities)
- **Boxmen**: Tadjik and Uzbek nationals
- **Customers**: Russian nationals from all over the country

### Financial and International shipping services
Shipping and 'customs clearance' are among the most important parts of the bazaar's economy. Most of the goods that are sold there bypass customs in this way or another. Every major trade route between Russia, Kazakhstan and China had its own 'perks': somewhere you could squeeze in a full container without the duties paid, and somewhere you could 'import' a crate or even a single box. 

The smuggling is a well-documented and established grey area of Russian-Chinese relations. Smugglers are primarily Chinese nationals. They deal with transporting goods and money so that a bazaar shop owner can bring cash, get it wired to his Chinese bank or WeChat account, and receive the goods, avoiding the hassles of customs clearance. 

I got acquainted with a smuggler in China a few years after my repair shop business got up and running, and it's a whole other story!
### A provincial merchant's morning
Now, back to the market! Buses from around the European part of Russia arrive as early as 4 AM at the large parking lots outside the bazaar. They are met by trade agents and boxmen looking to be hired for the whole morning. The shops are already open and waiting for their wholesale customers. 

Passengers, primarily ladies in their fifties and sixties, are slowly getting dressed and emerge on the parking lot. They journeyed through the night from their hometowns to restock their stores. Most buses feature some kind of makeshift sleeping bunks, running water, and a toilet, giving the impression of a variety of steampunk camper vans. 

Imagine it's a dark winter night, it's -20 c˚ outside, and you are making a routine visit to the capital to restock your shops with cheap boots, parkas, and pantaloons fit for the Russian winter. You don't see much of the city: it's dark now, and by 8 or 9 AM, it will still be dark when you leave.

The plan is the following: you need to hire a boxman with a large cart. He will follow you all morning on your visit with his cart.  Your job is to point your finger at the things you like for your store and order several size runs. The goods are piling on your man's cart, labelled with your name, bus destination, and license plate (Let's say it is Ira - Vologda - A 556 BT). You pay for the goods in cash, forking out the bills from the thick roll, and wind your way to the next shop, some hundred meters away. 

Your boxman has to go back and forth a few times, dropping your goods at the bus. He is an energetic gentleman of the same age as you, coming from Tajikistan and working for you every time you arrive. He must be trusted, so you don't hire younger folks who speak very little Russian. Your helper, whose name is Rustam, has a degree in history and used to be a teacher back in the days of Gorbachev, the same degree and occupation you had! So, you work as a pair for a few hours: he's handling the goods, and you're dealing with the money. 

After the trade is done, you still have an hour or so left. You sit with Rustam in the Uighur joint, consuming the steaming noodles with some unknown meat, casually talking about families and crooked Chinese shopkeepers. You pay for the early lunch, hand Rustam his day wage, about 2000 or 3000 rubles (around 30 or 50 bucks), and part. 

You board the bus, get back to your bunk and try to make up for the lack of sleep this morning. The next day, you will spend looking at the endless white fields, small towns and gas stations, waking up and slipping back into your dreams. With a few stops on the way for a snack and an actual toilet, you're back home at around 7 PM. 

Now, imagine this is your routine for the last 20 years. Sometimes you do it bi-weekly, sometimes every week, and sometimes you ask your husband to go instead of you, but he always brings something you don't like, so you prefer to do it yourself. Your children used to admire your trips when they were smaller, as it was easy to please them with toys and fancy garments, but now they have grown up, and it seems like they are a little ashamed of your routine. 

Do you remember when you used to be a teacher? It was over twenty years ago. You taught children about a country that no longer exists. Some of the stories you told them were true, while others were fake, made up by the communists. Rustam did the same on the other side of the empire, but now no one remembers any of it - not you, your students, or even Rustam.

### Broken Generation
Today's bazaars are filled with a new generation, distinct from the first wave of post-Soviet traders. They're savvy, quick, and understand the unspoken rules of this world. Many from the far reaches of the former Soviet Union see this life as a stepping stone, hoping to establish businesses eventually. 

Characters like The Trade Lady and Rustam are now less common. They represent a generation with unfulfilled dreams, uprooted from planned engineering, teaching, or manufacturing careers. The collapse of the Soviet Union forced an entire generation into an involuntary shift, a sort of emigration, trading their professions for market stalls, meeting harsh realities of wild capitalism in the murky setting of former soviet cities.

I am surviving my own 'real' emigration: a new home and a new language. I am now finishing my first decade outside of the familiar culture. After Russia went to war with Ukraine, I realised that my friends who chose to remain in Russia became non-voluntary immigrants, exactly like their parents. 

Russian society, longing for the certainties of the Soviet Union, embraced the shift to fewer freedoms and opportunities as if the rest of the Soviet 'perks,' like clear career paths and accessible housing, would follow. I see how hard it is for my generation in Russia now, but for our parents' generation, that was ten times harder, and I try to remind myself of that every time I want to whimper. 

---
This is a part of my [Crazy CV](https://www.rodion.io/categories/crazy-cv) series. If you like to read similar stories, please check it out! 

Dive into my journey through the bustling marketplaces on the outskirts of Moscow in 'The Bazaar.' In this narrative, I reveal the vibrant world of post-Soviet trade hubs, where cultural legacy intertwines with the echoes of a bygone era.

The Bazaar


A few years into my freelance career, I helped many of my friends establish their online presence, but I had a dream about having a business of my own. The ideas were popping up daily, but being a one-man-show operation, I could not produce anything beyond a modest website where I offered my services. I desperately needed someone who could take the 'offline' part of the business upon his shoulders and let me deal with the things I knew how to handle.

So, I talked to my friends, primarily classmates, and tried to spark some desire for entrepreneurship in them. One of my close friends appeared to be willing to try something out. He was always an outside-of-the-box thinker and exercised remarkable ethical flexibility combined with the circumspection of a small field animal. We were friends from my early school years: me, a computer nerd with the confidence of a hamster, and he, someone equally certain about himself but more like a rat.

At the time, he was much into partying and getting nice outfits to impress his night-time acquaintances. Getting those outfits was practically impossible with our income, so he discovered places in Moscow where you could get some affordable knock-off variations of what he wanted for a dime a pair.

The place that he discovered was not something secret. It was a variation of a flea market, a phenomenon that deserves its own tale. It appeared that most fancy-looking Moscow dwellers were getting their outfits not on the high streets but on the outskirts, where I discovered a whole new world.

So, his idea was to establish an e-shop where people like him could fulfil their dreams. I had many doubts. On the one hand, I understood that we would sell pirated stuff; on the other, I did not understand how something that ugly and boastful could be sold for money. He convinced me that people who purchase this stuff know it's fake, as he and his night-time friends do, and that plenty of people like them would die for a shirt or jeans with some known label. In the end, he concluded that we were, essentially, providing some kind of delivery service: sourcing items in one of those bazaars and selling them to people around the country.

Reluctantly, I agreed. I understood that it put me in some place I'd never wanted to be, but my part was quite simple, and I knew the craft: making a website and working on the SEO. I remember being perplexed by how practically no one else saw this moral shortcoming of mine!

Something new was that we had to take pictures of the stock. That's how I managed to see how those flea markets operate and to know people there. With my eye getting used to the items we were selling, I started to see them everywhere: in the malls and boutiques of that era. I discovered that most of the expensive brand items sold in Moscow during that period appeared fake and differed only in price, reaching exuberant numbers in the premium malls and high streets.

I think it was around 2006, a year after we established the venture, our website finally picked up, and we started to receive around 5-6 daily orders instead of 1 or 2. Later, we grew a little more, but not a lot. It was something wonderful! People from all around the vast country ordered shoes, trousers and shirts. We appeared to be one of the first e-shops in Russia specialising in something that requires fitting and is not easy to sell as, say, electronics or household items.

Around half of the sales we generated were sent out to some distant places, and another half was delivered locally. The process was like this: my partner went to the bazaar every morning to get the items ordered yesterday. He was coming with our deliveryman, an older acquaintance of ours. They picked up the boxes and worked out the day's itinerary.

That was the time when money was easy, and a bit more persistence on my side could've put us on top of the e-commerce food chain. Just a few years later, our competitors removed the initial portfolio of forged shoes and jeans and became prominent players on the national e-commerce stage.

But this e-shop was bound to die and not thrive, though: being an unwanted child, a project that I felt ashamed for, I never paid much attention to its well-being and management. At some point, we focused too much on one particular supplier: someone reasonable, having many items in stock and not willing to let many other e-shops into his warehouse (at some point, it became a thing, and many youngsters were doing the same: taking pictures and selling it online).

The supplier we focused on was a family business: two Azerbaijani brothers were working together, one in Moscow dealing with sales, and another one spending more time in Turkey looking for new things. We both quickly realised that we could work together and formed an alliance: our deliverymen were trusted to take as much as they needed from their stock and return the items that were not sold routinely. Money changed hands a few times per month, so it was a big step forward compared to how we started: my partner used to spend days on the bazaar dealing with individual sales and returns.

The website we had at the time was generating around 2000 users per day, an impressive number in 2007 or 2008. We should've invested more time into it and extended our portfolio, but we focused on the things generating most of the sales, rarely experimenting with new products. We overlooked the risk of relying on something we don't control: the Azerbaijani brothers.

Around 2011, Moscow looked very different from just five years prior. It overcame the disfigured and wretched signs of the 'damned nineties', the time of poverty and lawlessness, and grew to appreciate both its Soviet and imperial heritage. Disorderly rag fairs, kiosks and chaotically placed ads were all bound to be wiped out from the city streets. Moscow government decided to crack down on visual clutter and our bazaar - being located in one of the central areas was the first to go.

The bazaars always were areas of lawlessness, and by the end of the decade, they became isolated fiefdoms with their own security forces, laws and hierarchy. Each of them had some distinct ethnicity in charge: ours had Azerbaijans, others were run by Vietnamese and Chinese, and Mountain Jews ran the biggest one. Bazaars were not only places of trade but also places to live! Each of them had a different set of customs and cultural imprints. 'Ours' featured many Turkish restaurants, some financial services to aid international trade, and many small shady offices providing local book-cooking. The Chinese bazaar was much bigger and featured a full-blown Chinatown under the roof of their vast market on its last floor, where the ceiling was low and no customers were around.

So, when Moscow finally decided to eliminate this cancer of chaotic trade, they had to deal with very well-established groups with one foot in the city and another in the federal government. Each group fought fiercely for its survival and prosperity, as every player eliminated provided additional growth to the bazaars left.

The Azerbaijani bazaar was in a bad state: being the smallest and close to the central areas provided enough incentive for the government to deal with it swiftly. So, one day, our brothers received a message that they had 12 hours to evacuate their stock and be gone. They were cautious people and followed the instructions: packed as much as they could handle and left.

For several days afterwards, they were not answering the phone, but that was not needed to know what happened: it was in the national news that the bazaar got demolished the next day, and a park promised to be constructed in its place.

We lost our main supplier and tried to figure out what to do, but it was late: the crackdown spread rumours to the other bazaars that promptly closed their doors and made to compromise with the government. For the next three months, very little trade was made, and we lost our customers (we had many regular customers). By then, we had other business running, and we sold the remnants of our online property to someone willing to invest his energy in finding new sources.

Once I got rid of all relations to that e-shop, I felt much better and never regretted the loss. The five years of dealing with the shoes, jeans, belts and shirts left me with a big bag of man's underwear of one particular type and a lesson: never to engage in something you don't feel like doing. The underwear bag diminished slowly but steadily. I think it took me around 5 to 7 years to utilise it according to its intended purpose. That was the first thing I actually wore that was available on our website. I felt kind of obligated to pay my tribute to all the good and bad that happened to us during our bazaar career. When I got rid of the last briefs, I felt a little nostalgic but happy: the quest was over.


Years active: 2005 - 2011. Role description: Co-founder of an innovative e-commerce venture specialising in fashion retail.

Part 2: Knock-off shoe website CTO


He was a prominent 'petty' businessman I met during those years. He operated a retail business selling honey. The natural honey that has to do with bees and flowers. This time, though, not only were the bees at work for this product to come to life. 

He operated around forty compact stalls, each brimming with honey containers in a spectrum of hues. These stalls were located in a vast park area where he had established a strong rapport with the authorities, ensuring his operations went unquestioned. His sales team, primarily composed of women from Ukraine, dealt with a range of 'natural', 'organic' and 'locally sourced' products long before it became a thing.

Always on the hunt for new natural remedies to expand his product range, honey was soon joined by herbal syrups (some containing alcohol were discreetly sold) and an array of unusual items like natural 'male performance enhancers' and immune system support substances. The crowning glory of his product range was 300 ml glass bottles marketed as 'Bear fat' and 'Badger fat', whose origins remain a mystery. I guess that no bears and badgers were harmed during the production of the substance. 

Most of his health-related products exploited the placebo effect, and for him, it was okay to sell the substance with some weird label if it promised swift relief and no side effects. 

Now, back to the honey. Here, I will elaborate on how compromises were made in this early stage of the Russian market-oriented economy. 

His original setup was like this: he met the beekeepers every late summer and acquired the honey. He was looking for some 'speciality' kinds of honey, like the one that happens naturally if the blooming flowers nearby are not mixed much, like in uniform maple or linden forest. Honey collected in places like that is significantly more expensive but could look and smell more or less like any other. There are ways to deal with honey, such as modifying its colour and consistency so that it's not always clear to the buyer if it's special or not. 

His stands in the park were devoid of cash registers. This was his 'territory', and he managed to dodge taxes. His team of ladies selling honey and other remedies had to collect cash and record their sales in thick notebooks while playing fast and loose with the accounting. His audacity might amuse you, but that was more or less how most of the small business operated during those years. 

When the inevitable happened, and the ladies began selling the cheap honey as the expensive variety, pocketing the difference, the honey salesman faced a turning point. Firing them was not an option, as most were guilty. So, he came up with a clever solution - he levelled the price of all types of honey, eliminating the incentive for his employees to manipulate the proceeds. 

His creativity extended to his warehouse operations. When the previously expensive honey became relatively cheaper, demand skyrocketed. However, the profit margin disappeared as it was more expensive to acquire. So, he came up with a 'creative' solution: he mixed the pricier honey with cheaper varieties, along with some sugar or other unknown substances. The result? A unique blend of honey – perfectly coloured, honey-like in taste, encompassing twenty varieties at the same price!

So here's where I came to know this man: even though the anecdote draws a grim ethical picture, he was inclined to philosophise and embraced all the available new stuff. And he wanted to be 'good', acknowledging his shortcomings with mixing and flavouring.  So, at first, he decided to let the customers order some elite kinds of honey delivered home (this honey was not available at his stands), and later, he decided to build an e-shop with my help so that the original, not mixed honey, was sold there. 

This guy became my friend and mentor; at some point, I realised that he despised his grim reality of being a retail trickster as much as I despised mine being a webmaster for people like him. Eventually, he sold his properties and immigrated to Spain. He called me sometimes and bragged about the house he purchased in Tenerife, his decision to open up a carwash on the island and his advancements in Spanish. A few years ago, he died. He was in his fifties, dreaming about having so much good ahead. 

His quest to pursue security, comfort and moral higher ground was over, but he could not reap the fruits. It appeared that it alone could not breathe life into his days. Instead, the pursuit of goals, the thrill of the chase, and the joy of aspiring towards something far away kept his spirit alive.

In his story lies a quiet reminder: true contentment comes not from the comforts we gather but from the dreams we chase and the challenges we meet along the way. It's in our pursuit of something greater, no matter how small, that we truly find life's richness.

---
This is a part of my [Crazy CV](https://www.rodion.io/categories/crazy-cv) series. If you like to read similar stories, please check it out! 

This is a story about one of the business people I interacted with in my early years as an SEO consultant and web developer. This anecdote captures the zeitgeist of the early 2000s in Moscow. 

Honeyman


The person developing the websites was called a webmaster back around Y2K (two fossils).

So, that was around 2002 when I sold my first website. The website, created in a vibrant eggplant colour that seemed cool at the time, was a clunky masterpiece of table-based design. It was really ugly, of course! A person who paid for that high-tech marvel wanted several pages online with some industrial item listings. Also, there was a form to fill in card details directly alongside a message containing the purchase details. The card processing was not implemented.

I received $130 in cash. We met somewhere deep down the Moscow metro and shook hands after I delivered the website on the CD-R (third fossil!)

I had hundreds of similar interactions in the years to come: static HTML was replaced with Mambo, Joomla and then, finally, WordPress CMS. My web development skills were soon combined with PPC (pay-per-click, essentially, Google Ads) and SEO (search engine optimisation) knowledge that I put to work to benefit all kinds of small business owners. I helped sell plastic windows, dog kennels, air conditioners, forge work, and various services.

### No upfront money

Most, if not all, interactions were personal: we met with the business owner in a coffee shop and discussed his needs. Some months later, we had a website running. I remember not taking any upfront payment, as I thought that it was a sign of distrust on my side: as we sat in the coffee shop, I saw the drastic difference between the gentleman sitting opposite and me: usually, he was 'an established' middle-aged man wearing a leather jacket with a car parked just outside, and I was a 19-year-old student with a discounted metro monthly pass.

Most of the time, this approach worked well, but sometimes it didn't. Once, I built a website for an exceptionally 'successful' man: he sold plastic windows, the plague of any modern post-soviet city. When the project was delivered, he paid me a small amount, and we agreed that he would pay the rest in the form of commission when the SEO and PPC were up and running, and he would start to bill customers.

We were partners! So I tried my best to deliver as many clicks to his website as possible, and about a month later, I heard him for the last time: he was happy, and we scheduled to meet in a few weeks. He promised to pay a hefty commission, an amount beyond my comprehension.

Of course, he disappeared. Sometime later, I received a call from Moscow police: they were inquiring about my 'partner' and said that he had never installed a single window but had taken the money upfront and ran. The story ended much better for me than it could have been: the police inspector on the line understood that I was one of the fools he took for a ride, not a mastermind of the operation.

### My business machine

Every week or so, I received a new call from someone who needed a website. That was a self-perpetuating process: my previous clients recommended me to their friends. It appeared that it was as much a blessing as a curse: most of my clients were very much alike, some individuals with a small business looking to build websites cheap and fast.

I have never been able to navigate out of that crowd, and even though it has given me some bread and butter through the next decade, I could not establish any real business out of that.

As I see it now, I should've been much less shy with my rates and conditions, but I am who I am, and at least it was a fun time!

### Moscow in 2000's

To put you into the context, the early two-thousands in Moscow were great years. The economy was booming; Western investors were eager to participate in the miracle yet to happen and streamed into the country. Every day some new international company's branch opened up its doors.

Shabby Soviet-made Ladas gave way to a myriad of cars from abroad. The streets became brighter with the neon of the coffee shops and restaurants popping up here and there.

I felt some pride in witnessing the transformation of the Soviet Capital to a world-class metropolitan city on par with London and New York (that was what we felt. Just a handful of people I knew back then had been there).

### Petty 'businessman'

No, this is not me at the time. That is a generalised character of my story, my client!

First of all, it was 'he'. I had some female clients as well, but those few were outliers. Next came a few distinct features: this man dealt with cash and was always looking for some venture. As I wrote it, it started to sound like me, so be it!

I guess the only distinction between me and the hero of this anecdote is my lack of greed. This is something I am not able to adopt to this day.

Most of this man's deals fell into the grey area, not explicitly illegal but skirting the boundaries of the law. Some taxes were not paid, and some people were hired under the table. Servicing them meant for me to become one of them, a prospect I loathed. Restlessness consumed me, and I yearned to escape this mire.

Much later, I understood that we all were bound to follow customs more than the law, as it being constructed for large businesses had many holes and gaps for us, the smallest fish in the pond. We were left to mingle between ourselves and fight for the remnants of the feast of the bigger animals.

Here's one story from that period that I think is valuable as a picture of how things were done at the time: [Honeyman](https://rodion.io/blog/honeyman)


Years active: 2002 - 2007. Role description: Freelance web development and SEO consulting

Part 1: A 19-year-old webmaster


My new workplace was in between Hod HaSharon and Petach Tikva. I dropped my things at my old-time friend, a resident of Herzliya and started my office life. Nothing to share about my new role: I just commuted daily to the office, typed letters on the screen and commuted back. It's not that I haven't done anything of significance, but I did more or less standard things the standard way.

The office life looked like a sort of adult kindergarten, something that amused me a lot during the first weeks. I and my coworkers enjoyed very little responsibility but had to have lunch at specific times of the day and did some fun stuff the rest of the time. Later, the stuff I did lose the appeal, but the first weeks were nice.

My first goal was to find a new place for us. It was challenging in the Tel Aviv area a few months before Corona: renters were competing for the apartments, and landlords enjoyed the bull market trend by raising the prices frequently and imposing some extra requirements. The fact that I am an employed software developer helped a lot: Many times, people were not happy to deal with someone whose Hebrew exposed his recent immigration, but just mentioning it soothed all the alarms as if it were some magic spell.

Finding a rental apartment is a function of time and money. My time was limited by my desire to leave my friend's couch and see my family. On the other hand, money was scarce and unknown, as I had yet to understand our budget for necessities, so I opted for a minimal sum of money. A month into the search, I could finalise the contract for a small but well-maintained 2-bedroom apartment in a neighbourhood known in the past as quite a dangerous place to live and now was just a little scuffed.

The apartment was in a run-down building with many tubings and wires exposed in an open view. That was one of the reasons my landlord was not very greedy, and I did not have much competition. One compelling thing was the option to purchase the furniture of a previous renter: a pair of students were moving out.

About a month after I moved in, Olga and Mark arrived. I remember the day I was waiting for them at the airport: I was thinking about what would be less intimidating for my wife: the dark and beaten-up neighbourhood after sundown or the ugly sight of our new home in the streams of the setting sun. Our destiny was to arrive late, and I will never know what would've shocked her more, but I recall that the effect was profound and sufficient for her to be a bit down for the first few days.

It was a hectic period: I worked full time, and Olga and Mark tried to adapt to life in our new place. We had to start from scratch: filling our apartment with furniture and smaller items, learning where to get groceries and befriending the neighbours.

This building I described in detail appeared to be a hidden gem for us: Mark just arrived and desperately needed new friends. He had not yet started to speak Hebrew, so he needed some Russian-speaking friends. It appeared that two families with kids his age are also living just next door! It has been more than two years since we left this place, but to this day, those kids frequently see Mark, and we often see their parents. Remember how hard it was to find someone you like in Ashkelon? Here, in Herzliya, it was so different!

We met many people during the first months there who are our friends to this day. Most of our first batch of friends were from Russian-speaking families with kids the same age as Mark, and later, more Hebrew and English-speaking families entered our circle. We were frequently invited to visit them and vice versa, so we were not socially deprived anymore, which helped a lot down the line.

Mark's adaptation was not easy: the kindergarten he was assigned to was run by a sturdy lady with many virtues but little empathy. She ran the house full of screaming Israeli boys and girls with the vigour and confidence of a seasoned sergeant. It was not something Mark expected to see, and there was very little good to recollect during his first year of education. He became detached and did not participate in the educational activities she led. I praise God for giving him relief in a couple of friends he acquired there. Unfortunately, we could not comprehend it on time, so Mark spent an entire year in this institution.

Later, this lady played a positive role: as he did not participate in the classes, she stirred the process of putting our son into the special education system. Despite the harsh sound of it, that was something wonderful! The following year, he spent time with a smaller group of Hebrew-speaking kids surrounded by many professionals who helped him overcome the difficulties of communicating in Hebrew. He quickly opened up and started to talk to everyone around, made new friends and became a happy boy. He entered a school the next year, having sufficient soft and hard skills of a first-grader. Now, as he is attending a third grade (ד), I see this year in special education as a blessing.

That was not so easy with Olga. She was reluctant to enter Israeli society as she longed for her Moscow life. She has many things to lose: her relationship with the Russian language was much more intimate than mine. Her career was connected to it as she was working in the publishing business, her friends were there, and she did not feel the same as I do towards the Russian move to totalitarianism. Even when the full-blown Ukrainian invasion started, she still felt like she would like to go back.

Her life was hardly bearable: she was depressed and went through some dark times during the next couple of years. I was increasingly more anxious, did not know how to help, and probably was not capable of helping her.

My life was not peaches either, as I am very much dependent on the well-being of my family; I was anxious to overcome the difficulties that my wife and son had and probably did more harm than good.

That initial adaptation to the new reality and learning to live together again took us over three years. It was a bumpy ride, to say it mildly. It's a hard part to write: immigration for us, and many families we witnessed, was like a planned car accident: you put all your family members in the car, wish everyone good luck, accelerate and slam into the wall, hoping that everyone will survive and the wall will crack.

If you compare it with the family's internal struggles, overcoming the external stress was peanuts. Fighting for a place under the sun emptied us, and then we were to fill ourselves with something else; we were to meet the new people who emerged from this process and get to know and love them anew.

I started this story by mentioning our dog, Baton. That's my first dog friend! Throughout my life, I never understood the deal with pets and perceived pets as a burden and tool for emotional sublimation. What a snobbish prick I was!

Meeting Baton was a miracle that changed our relationship dynamics. Through his love, we gained new strengths, met new people, and our life got an additional dimension that we have explored together.

Many old friends are surprised to see me, once a self-proclaimed pet-sceptic, happily sharing my home and even my pillow with Baton. That's the crux of our journey – I am not who I was before. We are not who we were before. We've grown, learned, and loved in new ways, and Baton's arrival symbolised the start of this new chapter.

Reflecting on this journey, I realise it's more than a physical move from one country to another. It's a journey of transformation, redefining home and family, and learning to embrace change with open arms. And in this journey, we found not just a new place to live but a new way to live.


In the final chapter, I describe a family's journey that comes full circle as we settle into our new life in Israel.

Part 7: Herzliya


That was the most well-prepared and thought-out attempt that eventually bore fruit. But before that, I had to deal with the fruits of the previous one.

When we moved back to Russia, I didn't have any plan for how I could be back yet, and my days were filled with efforts to catch up with the ongoing business. It was pretty hectic, so I could not reflect on what had happened and what to do next. Some opportunities were lost, some money burned, but most importantly, I burned up myself: I was utterly exhausted, and a few months afterwards, the signs of it started to appear: I lost sleep and felt pain in my stomach. That took me quite a while to understand that it is connected and that it's a result of anxiety and depression that took me by surprise.

At first, I was trying to keep up the pace of life I had for many years, meaning practically no rest. Then, the fact that something was wrong became evident to my family and, finally, to me. Suddenly, I could not produce any value; all I did was worry or be nervous. Jogging helped, as well as some sauna. That was all my remedies at the time.

My journey towards the norm took about a year, and skipping the dull parts, the key was the right medical professional with whom I developed trust. She understood immediately that my pains had nothing to do with organs and everything to do with my state of mind. She put me on a cocktail of antidepressants, tranquillisers and neuroleptics for some months, gradually decreasing the dosage. I dropped around 12 kilos that year; if anything was good back then, it was my weight.

A week or two after I started to take my pills, I entered a different state of mind: that was like being inside a well-oiled off-road vehicle that could ride you towards whatever destination. You don't need to exit the car. You steer it to wherever you want. This feeling gave me confidence and calmness that I haven't had in my life! To this day, this metaphor helps me to overcome the difficult times.

The problem was that I wanted to return to Israel but had no idea how to get there. Any business in Israel was out of the picture. I did not want to be back to the point of devastation that I just escaped. So, I put the plan B into action: get a job like a person without a crazy bug. The problem was that I never had a job (to be clear, I was 20 or 21 when I was hired the last time, and it was already 15 years ago).

### Getting a job

Getting a job that can feed a family of three in Israel is not that easy: historically, Israel is famous for its high cost of living and comparatively low wages. Given that my wife's professional adaptation had not yet even begun (she was working as a managing editor of a prominent Russian publishing house), I had to find a way to get hired and paid way above the average.

Here, I need to put some numbers: in 2019, when we finally made it back, our expenses were about 14000 ₪ monthly in Herzliya. That includes rent, groceries and other necessities, but no fun things. Our son was already at the age when public preschool institutions are available, so there are no nursery expenses (it's usually 2000 - 4000 ₪, depending on the location). Five years later, the minimum for a family with one kid has grown significantly; I estimate it to be 18000 ₪ somewhere around Tel Aviv (excluding expensive areas) or 15000 ₪ in some more distant but still compelling locations.

So, with that in mind, I embarked on my journey to acquire the only profession that paid well and was available to an immigrant without a solid Hebrew: software development.

I remembered people's attitude towards me in the accelerator: I am a Russian programmer, so I decided to make use of this bias to get a stance in Israel.

I used to know many things about software development and had many years of experience in web development, but more as a manager. Working with code took up at most 10% of my days. I always tried to avoid writing code myself, as I thought of it as something that could be easily delegated (true). But hard times lead to hard choices, and sometimes there's no choice, despite what they say.

So, with the help of my friends in the field, I started my journey to the 'exciting' new world of JavaScript and Node. [[My journey to becoming a professional Software developer]] It took me about a year to revamp my business expertise into something digestible for the Israeli Job market.
I gradually removed the exciting parts from my CV, leaving only things that could be understood by someone looking for a full-stack developer.

As I remember it now, I learned around 6-7 months every day for about 5 hours by watching courses on Udemy and consulting my savvy friends when needed, and then I started to prepare my CV and send out the applications.

I haven't had any success during the first five months: I've applied to numerous jobs (my goal was ten applications daily) and received zero interview invites. Every couple of weeks, I rechecked my CV and adjusted it more and more, looking at the examples of successful career shifters on LinkedIn.

After one of those efforts to become someone else on the paper, I finally started receiving interview inquiries. That was sudden, and I am not sure now what has happened. Was it me or the market? One of my apparent gaps was that I was still in Moscow, which was not something HR people wanted to see, but it didn't prevent my phone from ringing. I remember having a couple of short phone interviews and doing some tech assignments, but no solid results. And then, someone called: that was a CTO of a small promising startup in the logistics area. He noticed my entrepreneurial experience and wanted to interview me. I said I was fine coming to their office but needed time to book a ticket and return to Israel. That did not turn him away, so in about ten days, I was already biking through the fields between Herzliya and Hod HaSharon to meet the company and my future boss.

During those ten days, I was able to secure another two interviews, so in total, I had three: one in this logistics company, another one in the ad-tech startup that was in a more advanced stage, and one more in a company that had a real estate business in Israel. Of the three interviews, I was able to get two job offers. That was an impressive result!

Five years later, I should acknowledge that I could never meet the demands of any HR, and all the interviews I passed were directly with a hiring manager. So, as a developer, I was bound to work in relatively small companies where HRs have not yet taken hold.

### Departing Russia

That was sometime in late May of 2019. COVID was ahead; the full-blown war in Ukraine was ahead. Planning the trip, I felt like I was jumping on the last ship coming out for some reason. I don't know why. It may be a coincidence, but I felt it strongly: day by day, I saw propaganda at work and no sign of a thaw coming.

Another few weeks of preparations in Moscow came and went. Olga grew increasingly anxious and felt like she, this time, could not escape Israel easily. Those two previous attempts were brutal on her, and now she enjoys life in the big city where everything is open 24/7 and where she knows every corner. The big deal was our friends: they became resentful towards me as they saw Olga's frustration about the move. Mark was four and a half years old then, and he had started to develop individual relations with each of the grandparents, so there were many things to lose.

As you can imagine, bringing the news that I got accepted was a sour moment: we had to prepare for the move and repeat goodbyes.

With our friends, it was rough: we used to have a tight group of friends who were together from the early twenties. The annexation of Crimea cracked us down: some members favoured this advancement, but we were still together, holding our differences to ourselves most of the time.

People in Moscow had adjusted to the new life: the war was raging on the outskirts of the empire; officially, there were no Russian troops, and it was easy to ignore. The city was thriving and had just welcomed the FIFA World Cup. The colourful event made many believe the future would be bright and stable.

I was surprised then and am surprised now at how easily the mind bends where pressure is applied. And how fast Moscovites were at returning to their pre-Crimea way of life. It was as if they were in a big hurry to return to their important life: paying the mortgage, advancing their careers and getting new cars.

I was considered to be crazy among our friends for many years. Before, it was more like harmless-crazy, but now, as I was determined to take my wife back to Israel, the move she did not want, I started to get many worried looks and understood that my position had changed. In their eyes, I became an abusive husband or a psycho.

So, our departure took the form of a funeral this time, as we were leaving the thriving developed city for some more struggles in the desert. My parents, though, were quite optimistic as, this time, I would have a regular and well-paid job.


In this part of the story, I struggle with the consequences of my previous reckless immigration attempt and finding my first job in Israel.

Part 6: Securing the basics


Some eight months later, I got up on the flight to Israel, this time with a plan to found a startup.

I was accompanied by my Moscow friend, rich in ideas and dreams of leaving Russia like mine. We were travelling to meet the startup accelerator board to present our idea. The accelerator was located in Ashdod, another southern city on the shore of the Mediterranean. We were aiming to get on board the accelerator focusing on helping olim entrepreneurs like me, and I was full of energy and hoped to pull off another sharp turn. This is Aliyah's story, so I will not share many details about the business side here.

The plan was simple: get accepted, become exposed to the Israeli startup scene, and hope the idea and its execution would be good enough to attract funding. My other ventures were looking solid at the time: the web development project went fine and stopped being all-consuming, and the gadget repair business was still a thing and produced some steady income. I wanted to move my family to Israel once more and try to juggle the needs of my family, our startup, and my ongoing business.

Looking back at this decision, I recognise many shortcomings, and I am still unsure if I would like to do something like this had I known the consequences. In short, I burned out, lost much money and had to deal with anxiety and depression for the next two years. If there could be a positive side, it's that I learned a lot about myself, Israel and life in general. But all of it is in the future! Back then, I was optimistic and tried to play my role as close to perfection as possible.

Our presentation went well: we got accepted and started to plan the move. I began to look for a spacious flat to rent. My partner planned to join and live with us for most of the accelerator program. I tried to find something in Ashdod on the budget, but for some reason, I had terrible luck: apartments were available everywhere but not in Ashdod. I found options to live near Tel Aviv in Holon or Rishon LeZion; another option was Ashkelon again.

After several consultations with my wife, we decided to go the easy way and stay close to my wife's family and my new accelerator. I signed a lease in Ashkelon, but this time, it was a much better apartment in a much better neighbourhood.

Again, it was a wrong decision: staying close to Tel Aviv would've helped my networking and provided a sense of the business side of Israel. Staying in Ashkelon or Ashdod without a car made networking practically impossible, given my tight schedule. But most importantly, it prevented Olga or me from knowing the country and having a chance to make new friends, as we found out that even in this new neighbourhood, it proved impossible to meet someone we could befriend. Writing this some years later and being blessed to live among like-minded families, I can't emphasise this more: people matter.

A few weeks after we started the program, my partner's plan to stay in Israel changed, and he had to return to Moscow; the acceleration appeared to be quite demanding and required me to visit the office three times a week for the whole day. Every day there required some preparation, so it was like a full-time job that did not pay any money. The program was meant for the group of cofounders so that one is attending the workshop or a meeting and others are working on the product. For me, it was a nightmare: I struggled to meet the demands of the accelerator and not drop the ball on my other businesses, as well as trying to help out Olga with Mark, as they shortly followed me.

It required around two months to understand that it couldn't continue like this, and without my co-founder's help on the ground, I would not be able to reach the goal: MVP development and some advancements with financing. At this point, I had to readjust the goals and to shift gears. It became apparent to me and the accelerator's management that we were not progressing on the product, and I had to stay for some long meetings explaining myself. I am not sure that I did a good job explaining, as I was angry toward my co-founder, who practically abandoned me and the accelerator management, who appeared to be not very understanding. My dream was falling apart, and I was frustrated and tired. My usual workday was about 12 hours long, the tension in the family grew, and I was desperate.

One goal I set up before signing up for the accelerator I managed to achieve: the program provided me with some valuable knowledge about Israeli business and high-tech culture.

### English is not enough.

Everybody speaks decent English, and most of the documentation is written in English, and you can be employed as a software developer knowing only English. But running a business, especially a startup that requires funding, is different. The primary language of Israeli commerce is still Hebrew. The business is conducted in Hebrew; all the small talk happens in Hebrew. It was not particularly helpful with my Hebrew, which was akin to the level of a 4-year-old. My partner, who spent about two weeks in the accelerator, knew no Hebrew at all, so even though we had a lot of exposure to like-minded people, we were a bit too isolated. It affected our ability to engage in the free flow of idea exchange that happened there.

### We had to prove ourselves from the ground up.

This may seem obvious, but it was not so much to me. One of the essential things I learned on my immigration path is that there's a constant stream of Eastern immigration to the West. It's like that from the Roman times! East and West are not always the same: it could be Chinese immigration to North America, Russian Jewry moving to Israel, or Turkish people moving to Germany. Most of the experience and achievements of the easterner should be revalidated and reapproved by the West. Whenever I talked to someone from the business field, I felt it: why do you think you can make things here? That question was never asked up front, but I felt it constantly.

### Use positive stereotypes, as there may be no other choice.

It was pretty funny: I never meant to present myself as a 'high-tech' person before entering the accelerator. Most of my businesses involved some part where I wrote code, developed websites or dealt with SEO, but I treated it as a tool, like a screwdriver or a flashlight. Having a flashlight in your pocket is good when it's dark, but you can do much more than just lighting the way.

So, talking to the Israeli startup mentors, I found that they were pretty sure that we could build any product that required writing code or overcoming any technical difficulty, as we're Russians, and everybody in Israel knows that an immigrant from Russia could be a great engineer, medical doctor, or musician. But they were less sure about our ability to steer something more complex than a moving services business or a grocery.

There are a lot of stereotypes related to immigration in Israel and to Russian immigration in particular. In general, it does not affect the lives of immigrants, but it's not like that when something is at stake.

## Leaving Israel again

It's not like I decided to leave: the decision was made based on the lack of alternatives: the accelerator demanded either to progress with MVP (while attending all the meetings and workshops) or leave. So, I left and appeared again in Ashkelon with my family. It was summer, and I remember spending many evenings together on the beach and having some enjoyable moments. Our friends and family from Moscow visited us often. Still, there was nothing else to do: I was dealing with the ongoing business and trying to overcome the experience of being rejected. Somewhere early in the autumn, we packed our bags, handed back the apartment and left for Moscow.


In 'Back to Ashkelon,' follow a journey of renewed hope and challenging setbacks, as a family returns to Israel with entrepreneurial aspirations.

Part 5: Back to Ashkelon


As you can guess from the title, it was not a big success. As I later deducted, we fell into all the traps that await any freshly made Ole. We came to Israel bearing a heavy load of preconceptions and false expectations. Now, after eight years and after numerous families of other new immigrants we witnessed and guided here, it's apparent that we were bound to fail:

- No plans of getting a job
- Poor choice of the community
- Poor understanding of Israeli geography and transit.
- No solid plan for the future
- Immigrating with a toddler

Despite everything stated, the sun shone, and the sea welcomed us with its breeze. We had a few weeks before the real winter. We signed a lease on a relatively small but lovely apartment on the shore overlooking fields filled with rubble, a construction site and some parts of the sea line. I signed up for an evening Ulpan (Hebrew language course), and we walked every day around the city enjoying the weather and December sun and thinking about what to do next.

The real problem was that we could not find anyone to befriend despite our efforts. Many Russian or English-speaking families lived there, but the environment around us was not open: looking back at it, it is the main reason we moved back to Moscow. Knowing how open and welcoming the Israeli society is, I am still determining if it was Ashkelon or our initial snobbism to blame.

Despite our miserable social advancements in Ashkelon, we both were able to see the beauty of the Israeli people, its customs and the Israeli way of life. To my regret, our first attempt was not easy for my wife: she was practically locked in the neighbourhood we resided in, and it was not particularly funny despite the presence of the sea and a long sandy beach. I need to mention that none of us bore a driver's license, as we never lived anywhere where a car was a must. Once in a while, I sneaked out to meet new people on business or visit a church in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, so I saw some of the country while her exposure to our new place was minimal.

Most of the people we met in Ashkelon in 2015 belonged to the Russian-speaking immigrant bubble: a hardworking community without much time for reflection and empathy. My Ulpan acquaintances included a few families from Russia and Ukraine in their senior years, a few immigrants from France, one lady from Iraq and some Russian-speaking immigrants of our age.

### Russian-speaking immigrants' integration track

I want to describe their life in particular: coming to Israel from all around the Russian-speaking world without any Hebrew or English, having to reinvent themselves in the new place in the foreign culture is not easy, so most of those who happen to immigrate in their 30s and 40s are bound to stay within a Russian-speaking bubble for their lives. There's not much career choice available. The Four Horsemen of your personal career Apocalypse as a middle-aged Russian-speaking immigrant not blessed with some IT knowledge or command of English bears the following names:

- ניקיון - nikayon: cleaning. It's a hard physical labour reserved mainly for females. The payment is decent and starts at around 8000 shekels monthly. Usually, there's no chance of learning Hebrew and being exposed to some better opportunities in the future. So go clean and earn money until you find something better, and finding it will be more challenging each year you spend with the mop.
- מטפלת - metapelet: caregiver. Another type of (primarily female) physical labour that is less intense, with somewhat lower income. The salary is minimal most of the time, around 6000 shekels. It can provide a chance to acquire the language, as your boss is typically someone with more life stories than a library but not as much time left to share them, so no career ladder is available.
- מוכר - mokher: salesperson (in a 'Russian' grocery store). The best unisex type of labour for a recent immigrant. It includes possible career advancements and other perks like unlimited snacking. Every town has several so-called 'Russian stores' where you can get non-kosher food and familiar cheap booze. Russian stores are popular among Hebrews and all sorts of foreigners, so your language skills will advance.
- Construction or a factory worker. It is hard labour, long hours, money that can feed the family (8000 - 12000 shekels), some stern but steady career ladder, and the chance of learning the language.

It is a simplification, of course. There are other options, like guarding a parking lot or working in some municipal service, but it's a rule of thumb that it would be hard-earned money for not-very-creative and fun labour. There's one good job set that does not share any specific field or profession but is marked in the job description as 'you can study'. That means that while sitting at your guarding booth or a cleaning post in some office, you can squeeze in some time for yourself and advance in another more promising field.

We have met many families with kids our age who could get out of this hamster wheel. Still, I observe that it always requires some external help or particularly fortunate circumstances.

### Decision to leave

Back to my story: Five months later, I secured an ample web development opportunity in Moscow that could be the start of some new business and feed us on the way. At the same time, I got to know a couple of servicemen in Jerusalem who were running a repair store like mine, and I was trying to organise the import of spare parts from China as I did for my business in Moscow. I decided to use my chance and move to Jerusalem to work with them and get out of the town we started to despise.

The plan was to return to Moscow for a few months, secure my project, return to Israel, and settle in Jerusalem.

The first part of the plan went peaches, as the project began on time. I started to be more involved with web development, and my 15 years of freelancing finally led to me starting a small software company with eight employees.

The second part needed to catch up: we could finalise the contract terms with the suppliers only half a year later, with some 5-month delay. It became apparent that I couldn't sacrifice the development project already in production and bore fruit with some prospects with an uncertain payoff, so we decided to prolong our stay in Moscow.

Being back there, my wife was happy, as finally, she was able to rest and meet our friends; our parents were glad to see their grandson, and I was pretty frustrated with all of this: how can I stir my family in a way that it produces so much turmoil and separation?

The political situation in Russia showed no positive progress; I felt more and more that I did not understand and did not feel the rhythm of this new life in my hometown. This pushed me forward: I wanted to be back and focused on building a foundation for our life in Israel.


In 'Our first attempt,' discover the challenges and realizations of a family's initial foray into life in Israel, exploring their encounter with cultural barriers and the complexities of starting anew in Ashkelon

Part 4: Our first attempt


I remember many irrelevant details of that day. Early in the morning, we and our parents went to one of the Moscow airports for final goodbyes and a few uncomfortable parting moments.

We stood in line with many other passengers boarding a flight to Tel Aviv: Israelis, tourists, and some prospective immigrants like us. Families making Aliyah reminded me of the old-time farewell pictures: eyes filled with tears, luggage piled high. It looked and felt surreal for me: how something so mundane as a 5-hour trip could be so dramatic. It felt like we were leaving the country for good, which turned out to be true, as I never felt at home in Moscow again.

Israel met us with the warm, humid weather; the air near the Ben Gurion airport smelled of something sweet, perhaps date palm trees or a nearby citrus orchard. We gathered outside the terminal and were lifted to another building in the airport area, where we spent most of the evening. Tired families from all over the world were gathered in the hall and seated, waiting to meet representatives of some government office. We filled the papers for the Ministry of Interior and sat idle. A senior Russian-speaking gentleman distributed sandwiches with the remark 'the only free thing you will get in this country'. Oh boy, how wrong he was!

Long story short, a man wearing a kippah congratulated us, took our papers, and made a pair of the worst document photos my wife and I ever had. He handed us our freshly printed IDs and a tehudat ole - a document ensuring our rights as new immigrants. This is how you become a citizen of Israel via Aliyah. Finally, we were free to go! Free to go anywhere - the first time a grumpy sandwich-handing man appears to be wrong: after you make Aliyah, you are provided with a free taxi to anywhere in the country.

Our destination was Ashkelon, just some five kilometres off the Gaza border, where my wife's relatives resided. Their family moved to Israel ten years prior and were happy to host us and guide our first steps in the country.


In the third chapter of our story, I describe the day of our immigration - Aliyah

Part 3: Aliyah day


I always kept the idea of a possible move to Israel in my pocket and cherished that someday we could make it. The fact that my family could make Aliyah was evident, and it took the form of my wife's beautiful Jewish face. But I had never been to Israel, and my exposure to the Jewish culture at the time was minimal: I read the translation of the Tanakh and some Jewish newspapers that my wife's parents received every major holiday. I haven't had any feelings for the land in particular, I want to be out of Moscow and Russia ASAP.

It sounds like a very poor background for making Aliyah when you look at it from the Israeli standpoint. But I want to emphasise here that miracles happen. I went from wanting to live anywhere sunny and safe and being indifferent to the place to have a solid connection to the land and its people. Despite the ongoing war and extreme cost of living, there's no other place I want to call home.

It's time to address a couple of elephants here: the two main factors that prevented us from considering moving to Israel were my wife's opposition to the move and my religious beliefs: the first lost its veto power when Russia went to war, but second was not easy to deal with. The known fact is that Aliyah is for Jews and their spouses (alongside some other family members). In the Law of Return, it is stated that it's for the Jews who are not practising any other religion.

Per se, it did not present any problem for me as a Christian, as I have never been Jewish, and since in Russia, all the marriages are civil, no one asks and checks if both spouses believe in the same diety the same way. So, legally, I could do it, and I decided to take my chances!

In 2014, we were not the only ones considering the move: When I called the consular services number and got someone on the line, I heard the queues were nine months long. So, we waited for almost a year to start the process.

Our son Mark was born somewhere between my first call and the first visit to the embassy. We refocused our lives on the family and him, a new person who had yet to form the personality but had already made the demands :).

## Aliyah process

Nine months passed, and we were standing in line with many families like ours on the central Moscow alley with a stroller and some vague hopes to escape the winter for the Mediterranean sun. We had a file containing Soviet-issued papers documenting my wife's family history, the only remaining evidence and distinction between Jews and many other Soviets: for many Jewish families in Russia, being Jewish was not even a cultural matter, as several generations under the communists killed most or all the distinctions between the nations producing a new breed: "Homo Soveticus", the Soviet men.

The process inside the embassy building was kinda simple and required very little input on our side: the lady behind the desk typed something on the computer, looked at our papers, asked a few questions about Olga's family history, why we wanted to live in Israel and what do we plan to do there. I murmured something I thought should be pleasing to her and sat here waiting nervously for the verdict.

The verdict was that despite the many valuable documents we brought, we couldn't be accepted right now, and we needed to get one more: Olga's brother's passport (or something like that).

That sounded a bit funny, as he was not the one making Aliyah, but it appeared that after we brought his passport, she made another request to get something similar. So we figured out that sending us out bore some sense to them: either it was a way to control the flow of the immigrants or test our persistence in a rabbinic way by refusing us three times before finally accepting.

So, three visits came and went: winter turned into summer, and our son gained weight and became a happy and fun toddler. We switched the bassinet on his stroller to the seat and finally got the immigrant visas! A new flow of emotions filled me: dreams of being out of Moscow were replaced by the anxiety of someone who needed to pack his life in a suitcase and say goodbye to the remaining family and friends.


Preparing for Aliyah from Moscow was a complex emotional journey.  I was trying to balance my religious identity, family dynamics, and the desire for a new life in Israel.

Part 2: Thoughts and preparation


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At the time, at the start of 2014, I was doing relatively well business-wise: I had a stable small retail business in Moscow and was transitioning to a more prominent and promising venture. At that point, I was trying to stop travelling to China every other month and decided to settle there for a few years.
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I was not a stranger to China any more: for a few years prior, I made numerous visits to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong. I made friends here and there, and I was very much into that new life of mine, being a laowai (a foreigner, same as gaijin or farang, but in Chinese). I rented a flat in the high-rise condo overlooking the river that divides the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and started my routine: meeting people, visiting various small shops selling electronic parts (that was my primary objective), performing QC in the mornings and doing all Moscow-related tasks in the afternoons.

So, the tower of Babel that I built looked like this: my relocation was dependent on my business's well-being, the business's well-being was dependent on Moscow's prosperity, and its prosperity appeared to be dependent on someone who was my primary driver for getting out of Russia: Putin. At this point, I believed I could perform the stunt. I thought I had years of runtime before I would need to jump off my Russian business and income. Oh, how I was wrong!

I was sitting in a sento (a Japanese and now Asian-wide type of sauna) in Shenzhen with a friend with whom I shared no language but enjoyed the company. He watched TV while I concentrated on moving from one tub of icy water to a tub with hot water on time. He shouted 'K-rim, K-rim, Pu-tin, Pu-tin' and pointed towards the TV. That was not our custom, so I turned my sight and saw Russian marines in the Crimean capital, Simferopol.

That was some weeks after we both witnessed a pyre of tires on the streets of Kyiv on the same screen. However, it still took a while for me to wrap my head around the two: how a revolutionary event in a neighbouring country became the first act of the bloody war between the tightly knit nations.

A month later, on a planned home visit, I witnessed my hometown, Moscow, adopting the ideas of national superiority, unity and immense military strength being put to work, ideas getting vocalised and spreading like a plague.

This was all foreign to me, and I was shocked at how easily the people whom I was part of got infected: occupation and then annexation of Crimea was called reunion, packs of bandits in the Donbas region were called militia and gained the support of the Russian army. National currency lost 50% in value in a couple of months, which was blamed on the evil West. I hadn't seen much of the soviet union before, as I was only 7 when it collapsed, but I saw it being back and gaining strength daily now.

That's when I realised that my Chinese relocation would not happen and that I couldn't rely on any Russian venture: that was not because of some economic crisis or sanctions that were timely imposed by the US allies, but because I got alienated and completely lost sense and the heartbeat of my homeland. After I returned home, I saw a different city with people happy to see their country gain land and waging war on the neighbour.

This was when the idea of moving to Israel came first.
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At the start of 2014, I was doing well with my small retail business in Moscow and was transitioning to a more prominent venture. I had been frequently traveling to China, particularly to the city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong. During this period, I made many friends and became enamored with life there as a foreigner. I rented a flat overlooking a river that separated two distinct regions and began establishing my routine: networking, visiting shops for electronic parts (my primary business interest), and managing my Moscow business in the afternoons.

My life, at that time, was like a complex puzzle: my relocation was dependent on my business's success, and that success was intertwined with broader economic trends. I had thought I had plenty of time to transition away from my Russian business, but unexpected events soon challenged that belief.

While in Shenzhen, in a local sauna, a friend who spoke no common language with me suddenly drew my attention to a news broadcast. It was a moment that made me realize how rapidly world events could unfold and affect lives, even those seemingly distant from the epicenter of these events.

This realization was deepened during a visit back to Moscow. I noticed a shift in the atmosphere – there was a newfound emphasis on national identity and strength. As someone who had spent significant time abroad, these changes felt jarring and foreign to me.

What struck me most was how these events impacted my perspective on my business and my future plans. I began to feel disconnected from the pulse of my homeland, a sensation that wasn't rooted in any immediate economic crisis or external sanctions, but in a profound sense of alienation.

It was during this period of introspection and change that I first considered relocating to Israel. This thought marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life, one that promised a fresh start and new opportunities, far from the upheavals that had begun to reshape my understanding of home.
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In 'Losing the Hope', I start my journey to finding a new home and trying to lay the setting of my pre-Aliyah life

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