I spent Yom Kippur in Raanana with my parents and attended services at a local synagogue. A small group of Jews, mostly elderly, who often struggle to gather ten men for prayer.

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And during Neilah, the final prayer of the holy day, my legs gave out and my head began spinning. It was difficult to pray without having eaten or drunk water.

Then suddenly, the synagogue was filled with masses of worshippers. Masses. From all walks of life. Everyone stood together, without a separation. What united us was that we all just wanted a happy and sweet new year. And all of a sudden I felt much better.

And if we boil it down, we all just want to get along and live in a peaceful place.

I can't deny, the past year has been challenging. When harsh slogans are used against various sectors of our nation, the rift deepens. And that is exactly what I encountered after checking the news after Yom Kippur and seeing the headlines about the commotion during the Dizengoff Square service in Tel Aviv.

I read the words of the minister who just added fuel to the fire instead of calming the winds and about the protesters who threw around baseless accusations.

Is there no middle way?

When it comes to the Dizengoff service, each side was preoccupied with its own truth, and each side provoked the other. The request to remove the separation between male and female worshippers that has always been there, and the fact that organizers created a makeshift barrier anyway, in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling. A protest in the middle of prayer.

So much noise, it is too much to bear. And it is only a minority that fuels hatred instead of engaging in healthy and good debate that would advance us as a society.

I do believe that it's a minority that is ready to set everything on fire. I believe that the sane majority gets on well with each other. I believe that most of us can look at the inflammatory headlines and understand that they are just that – inflammatory, meant to evoke a reaction.

May the voice of sanity get louder in the new year and drown out the noise.

There are disputes, and there always will be, but there is also healthy and respectful discourse that will surely make Israel a peaceful place to live.

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Humans have a short memory and that is the reason that the Tel Aviv-Dubai line has become a matter of routine. This is a place that until three years ago – when the diplomatic agreement with the United Arab Emirates was signed – we could not visit, and certainly not fly over Saudi Arabia on the way there. Today, flying to Dubai feels, for a few moments, like a king who has reached his kingdom.

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While sitting on the plane, between the heavens and the earth, on my way to Dubai, my eyes shifted between the plane window, through which I could see the desert soil, and the map on the plane screen, with names of cities and countries that are not accessible to Israelis, but which feel within touching distance: Shiraz or Kuwait, for example.

You can fly with Flydubai to the United Arab Emirates. The flight attendants are courteous, the company is punctual, and everything is very neat and clean – this is a recurring theme that characterizes Dubai throughout the trip. Even the public toilets located around the country are a model of cleanliness, and as soon as you leave the toilet, a cleaner comes and polishes the cubicle. You won't catch dysentery there.

Another recurring theme is wealth and innovation. You can already feel these at the airport, where you are greeted with shining marble floors and intimidating silver pillars, but the skyscrapers dotted around the city also seem to have been taken from New York, alongside innovative and first-of-a-kind museums.

The Emiratis have a high sense of customer service and think of everything. The airport has places to rent a "travel" stroller for a child who gets tired from the long walk around the enormous airport. In restaurants, the waiter refills your glass as soon as you start drinking from it, and everyone in the hotel smiles at you politely and wishes you "good morning" when you leave the room.

Good restaurants – and they are kosher

Good news for the Israeli public, many of whom keep kosher: throughout your stay in Dubai, you will find many options for delicious, varied, upscale – and kosher – food. My favorite restaurant in Dubai is Elli's Café – a gem of beauty and taste, with green plants hanging loosely from the wooden fences outside; a colorful wooden board that shows what is being served today, a stand to browse posters, as well as showcases with tempting pastries. The design is happy and chic, and so is the food.

We arrive there in the morning and within a flash, our table is filled with salads and fruit, omelets, pastries, croissants, Belgian waffles with strawberries, berries, and powdered sugar. Beyond the kosher food, the restaurant has taken the religious diner into consideration. You can find a "natla" (cup for ritual washing of the hands) and benchers, and even Koren "Tanachs," in a light green color that blends with the general design of the restaurant.

We enjoyed another wonderful meal at "The Kosher Place", which also featured a unique design, a sort of modern Arab décor, with a wooden floor and white, rounded windows with decorations. The meat was tender, and the seasoning had a "kick" as the flavor slowly opened in your mouth. As in all places, here too we were welcomed with open arms. The restaurant's chef is Shimon Ben Shetrit, an Israeli who arrived during the Covid pandemic, at a time when many restaurants around the world suffered financially.

"I worked in the culinary field in Germany for four years," he says. "At Chabad, they knew me and my food and realized that I understood the different kashrut requirements. When Dubai opened up, they contacted me. I didn't think twice and came to check the area. The culinary situation was lousy, and my adrenaline started to flow. I didn't sleep at night. I took charge of the catering, comprised a menu for deliveries, handpicked my staff, and scoured the city for a place for the restaurant."

Ben Shetrit has been on the Tel Aviv-Dubai line ever since. "We live on this line. My wife is in Israel, and every six weeks I go to Israel for a few days. During the [Jewish] holidays the whole family comes here. Over Passover, they were here for almost a month. My next dream is to open a hamburger joint and a dairy restaurant here."

While visiting the Armani Kaf kosher restaurant, located in Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower in the world, we met Rabbi Levi Duchman, the rabbi of the United Arab Emirates. "The Jewish community in Dubai has existed for ten years and there are Jews from all over the world, including Israel, living here," the rabbi, who within two years established the kashrut system in the region, says. "Hospitality is very important to the local residents," he adds, explaining that the kosher restaurants were established on their own initiative, "out of a desire for every Jew to have somewhere to eat."

The food at the Kaf is very luxurious – and is served in abundance. The place boasts quality meat, but what really caught our attention were actually the bread, which felt like a cloud in our mouth, and were served alongside a plethora of spreads and salads. The restaurant overlooks beautiful fountains, and every half hour there is a colorful and impressive fountain show, set to a classical French song.

Other kosher restaurants that should not be missed include Habibi Kosher Café, breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel and at the V Hotel, located inside the Hilton Al Habtoor, as well as Rimon, a kosher supermarket where you can find any food your heart desires, and even order Shabbat catering there.

A super-sensory experience

Dubai has many attractions and the most desired of them all is the view from the roofs of the high towers of Dubai. It is recommended to go up to the Burj Khalifa and view the palm island (View at The Palm) – the view is breathtaking.

Another particularly unique attraction is a visit to the Aya complex – a huge area (3,700 square meters) divided into corners and rooms, each one activating the senses and telling visitors a different story. There is a room with mirrors where you can dance, a room where you can watch the stars, another room enabling a visit under the sea, and in another room, you can just lie on sofas next to colorful displays and listen to soothing music. Here you can wander between the rooms and meet yourself.

One of the most prominent sites in the city

The Museum of the Future is one of the most prominent sites in the city. The museum is located in a very unique and attractive building, due to its silver elliptical shape, with windows in the form of ornate Arabic script. A poem, about the future of humanity and the Emirates, is displayed on top of the building in a beautiful cursive script that is prominent both day and night.

A visit to the museum simulates a flight into space and displays how the world will look in a few decades; how we can easily reach space and take materials from it that will help all of humanity on Earth.

Let's go shopping

One of the issues that stresses Israelis most before traveling to Dubai are the high prices there, but it must be noted that in most places they are not much higher than in Israel, and you can also find bargains there.

For example, at the 1 to 10 Dirham Shops we found many deals – from clothing to jewelry, makeup, food, toys, and household items. I called it the "Max Stock of Dubai," because it carries the same concept. The store is close to the Dubai Frame – a huge golden frame from which you can see the entire city, also allowing visitors to take beautiful photos at the site. It is also worth visiting The Dubai Mall, one of the largest malls in the world, home to 1,200 stores.

Dreamy amenities

Regarding accommodation, Dubai has many hotels to offer to its guests. I stayed at the prestigious W Hotel Dubai, which includes beautiful and spacious rooms overlooking a magical view. The hotel is proud of its unique design elements and dreamy comfort facilities. It has a spa, a bar, and two Michelin-level Italian and Korean-Japanese (not kosher) restaurants. You walk around the hotel, the restaurants, and the various attractions and feel the wealth, wealth, and more wealth.

The author was a guest of Dubai's tourism board.

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The post A kosher paradise: Traveling as an observant Jew in Dubai appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

In the tenth week of my pregnancy, I went to get an ultrasound. The doctor moved the probe on my stomach, looking visibly nervous. What was a routine test quickly turned into shock: the fetus had no pulse and I needed to terminate the pregnancy.

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That moment felt like hell, but little did I know what was in store for me down the line terminating my pregnancy in Israel's understaffed and under-budgeted public healthcare system.

The mental pain of having an abortion, especially when it's a long-awaited pregnancy, is unbearable. Society has learned to understand more about this pain as a growing number of women open up about their experiences. However, when it comes to the physical aspect that we have to go through when it comes to abortion, there is still a hush-hush.

The hospital presented me with two options on how I could terminate my pregnancy. The first was taking a pill that would induce the abortion and eject the fetus. If a part of the fetus remains in the uterus, a surgical procedure is performed under anesthesia (called hysteroscopy) during which the doctor inserts a narrow telescope with a light and camera at the end into the uterus, locates the remnants of the fetus, and removes them.

The second option was curettage, a surgical procedure under full anesthesia during which the cervix is expanded and the fetus is removed in its entirety.

The hospital told me that if I chose the second option, I would need to wait a month for an appointment, and instead recommended opting for the pill, also because that is the non-invasive option. They also stressed that waiting for a month for the curettage would put me at risk of uterine infections. As a conformist, I decided to take their advice and chose the pill.

The emergency room nurse told me to go to the women's ward at 07:30 a.m. the next morning. She said if I arrived early enough, I would most likely be able to get the procedure done quickly and go home.

That is not what happened.

I sat in the hall and waited for five hours. When I asked whether I could be seen by a doctor, I was told that there were more urgent cases than mine, that it was a stressful holiday period, and that there was a shortage of medical staff. The woman sitting next to me, who came to get the same procedure done, even got screamed at by a nurse as apparently her case "was not urgent."

True, our lives were not in danger, but we had both learned only 24 hours earlier that the life we carried inside us ended. It was a long, mentally difficult wait, during which we had to let go of the dreams we had begun building and come to terms with the loss. We talked, we laughed, we cried, and above all, we supported each other, in a system that did not seem to care about our mental state.

And perhaps we could have forgiven the disgraceful treatment had the medical procedure that we had to undergo – for which we waited for hours – not amount to swallowing a pill as the nurse looked on. It took no more than a couple of minutes.

But, unfortunately, my story does not end there.

Upon swallowing the pill, the nurse told me that I would feel menstruation-like pains. About an hour later, when they saw that I was responding well to the pill, they let me go home.

But the pain I went through at home was not like a period. It felt more like an hour of labor without any breaks. I felt that I could not take it. I felt I was going to die. I was not ready for such pain, it was not described to me this way, and I was not prepared.

A week later, when I arrived at the hospital again, I met other women who were waiting to get the pill. They too were not warned properly. I tried to gently explain to them what awaited them, stressing that this was my personal experience. They contacted me a few days later and thanked me again and again, saying that I helped them feel more equipped.

But for me, the abortion did not end there. The first pill did not do the job, and parts of the fetus remained in the uterus, and so I was given a second one. That did not work either and I was told I had to have a hysteroscopy.

Due to the waiting times, I only got an appointment a month later, which I spent terrified of getting a uterine infection. Throughout this time, I suffered from bleeding, pain, dizziness, and even fainted and had to be taken to the hospital again. My life before all these medical procedures seemed like a distant dream.

In hindsight, I understand that what I should have done is call all the hospitals across the country and go to any place that had an appointment available, even if I had to travel far. Another option would have been to scrape up the required money and go to a private clinic. But at the time, in the whirlpool of pain, I did not realize this.

I found out that the fetus had no pulse in the tenth week of my pregnancy, but only got to say goodbye in the sixteenth. Six whole weeks, that's how long this whole process took. I bid farewell to the fetus with great pain, not just because of the loss, but the difficult medical procedures.

And yes, there were also wonderful nurses and doctors along the way. I will never forget Avital who advised me to listen to a certain singer, saying she might give me strength in the process. I will never forget the surgeon either for distracting me with small talk while the anesthetic was being administered.

But as a rule, the medical staff did not give me the full picture: the chances of success, the risks, the fear of infections, and the physical pain that I would have to go through no matter which way I chose to terminate the pregnancy.

They did not see me, my case, and my specific conditions, but just focused on the size of the fetus and removing it, having given me a general statement that would suit any woman who needs to terminate her pregnancy in the 10th week.

I am not the only one who has gone through this, and there are many others. One can blame the unstable budget for nurses, the difficult medical shifts, and the fact that the medical system has not recovered from the coronavirus pandemic. That is all true. But there is still a serious problem here. My experience shows that public healthcare is on the verge of collapse, but will anyone pay attention?

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The post I lost the baby; the state wanted me to lose my mind appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.