Happy Birthday Israel - and 1-year Aliyah to me!

Summer is creeping into Tel Aviv and I'm loving it.
This Monday, April 26 marks the 1-year (Western-calendar) anniversary of my aliyah. On the Jewish calendar it happened on erev Yom Hazikaron last week, but I'm going to celebrate it by the American calendar with a few good friends and drinks. I can't believe it's been one year. So much has happened that it feels like the longest year of my life, and yet I remember everything so vividly, it can hardly seem like a year ago. But it was a wonderful year.
This past week we celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day - the 62nd year of the modern Jewish state. I think Yom haatzmaut is my favorite holiday - it's better even than my own birthday. Everyone's so happy and celebratory and patriotic and united - it really feels like the most holy day of the year in that way. Also I love the fact that basically nothing is illegal on Yom Haatzmaut - you can play music as loud as you want as late as you want and nobody can do anything about it. the parties are crazy. the streets are destroyed with garbage. and it seems every other building's rooftop is flashing with lights and dj's and dancers. There's simply no other night of the year that can compare!
I've learned many things about Israel and Israelis this year - most of them positive. But I do want to take a minute to note something new that I discovered recently about Israelis - to my horror - that I never knew before. Israelis (generally speaking of course) are seriously uneducated about STD's. It's crazy. Israelis just don't know much about them. Many schools (and of course the religious ones) don't teach sex ed. I guess the planners of Israeli education and society think they have bigger priorities than gonorrhea and chlamydia. But, it's really dangerous, because Israelis just don't know about these realities and the dangers of them - they think the only purpose of a condom is to prevent HIV/AIDS and pregnancy. And I've been taking a poll of my Israeli friends, and most of them tell me, most of the time, that they and their friends don't use condoms. Practically everyone's on the Pill and has been tested for AIDS, so what's the point of a condom? it's almost expected not to use one. and Israeli men can be aggressively antagonistic towards using one. But take for example genital herpes - there is no cure for genital herpes, and it can be a serious disease - women with herpes can't have a vaginal birth, for example. It's not a joke. And yet when I've asked my Israeli friends 'aren't you concerned about getting an STD like genital herpes' they say something to the effect of, well a lot of people have herpes, it's not a big deal. IMAGINE saying something like that to an American. It's just a completely different reaction. I was thinking about it and I realize that baby-making is one of the top priorities of Israeli society, so maybe it's not that shocking that condoms aren't as much of a given as they are in America. But as a friend of mine pointed out, if the country were under attack and the men had to go to war and half of them had herpes, we wouldn't be much of a fighting army. So maybe it is time for Israel to catch up with the Western world in this respect - put sex ed in school!!!
Thank you :-) That's enough of my tirade on that subject.
On a side note, hip-hop star Rihanna is coming to perform in Israel in May and the only way to get tickets to the concert is by volunteering 4 hours of community service. It's an awesome project that they set up, and I'd be all for it - except all the community service interferes with my work schedule. I'm hoping they'll set up opportunities in Tel Aviv on a weekend so I'll be able to get tickets... fingers crossed...