How to choose a health care provider (kupat cholim) in Israel

Let's assume you'll never get sick in Israel, shall we?

My teacher in ulpan had a cute habit.  When we were learning about ailments, she refused to use the first or second person - "you're sick; I'm sick."  She would only let us talk about ailments in the third person:  "he's sick; she's sick; they're sick."

So in honour of Morah Sarah, let's do that here, too.  Let’s assume you’re going to pick a kupat cholim (health care provider) and never need to use it.

Because, I'll admit, I've been holding back. 

In all these years of blogging, I haven't really said anything about how to choose a kupat cholim, one of the four healthcare provider networks that exist in Israel.  I feel like I don’t know enough, but the truth is, I’ve been navigating this system long enough to know a thing or two.  So I’ll try to help you straighten things out as far as healthcare is concerned.  If you have questions, ask below and I’ll try to answer.  I’ll also give a list of links for good information at the bottom of this post.

What are those words again?  Practice saying them; you’ll be using them a lot here (but hopefully never in the first person):

• קֻפַּת חוֹלִים / kupat choleem = sick fund, usually translated into English as “HMO” for people from the U.S. who don’t understand any other approach to healthcare
• Note, the above is the vowelled spelling.  Without vowels, it’s usually spelled “קופת חולים” for clarity.  Pronunciation is the same:  kupat cholim.
• It’s sometimes abbreviated as קופ"ח / koopach
• קֻפָּה / koopah = “fund,” like a supply of money, but sometimes people use this as shorthand to refer to your particular health plan
• The plural is  קופות חולים/ koopot choleem = sick funds.

How do I choose???

Here are the 4 choices (4 kupot cholim), in English alphabetical order:

• כללית / Clalit
• לאומית / Leumit (not to be confused with BANK Leumi!)
• מכבי / Maccabi (pronounced ma-KAAAAA-bee, not the way English speakers say it in the Chanukah story)
• מאוחדת / Meuhedet (the "h" is actually a "ch" but this is how they spell it)

All of these 4 have offices all over the country, though one may be more prevalent in a given area, which will probably factor into your decision-making.

These days, most new olim are asked to choose their kupat cholim at the airport when they arrive.  If you don't know your choice, however, you can still do it at the post office like in the old days.  There may be other ways to do it as well. 

Don’t let anybody force you to pick at the airport if you aren’t sure yet!

But the question everyone asks is:  how do I choose???

(Assuming, of course, that you and your family will never get sick!)

Israel’s best-kept secret (shhh): Fridays.

One thing we knew for sure before we came to Israel – there’s no weekend here.  When Shabbos ends, you roll over and start the week all over again, fresh and raring to go on Sunday morning.

“Nope, no weekend here,” everybody here told us, and we felt sorry for them.  We gritted our teeth in preparation for this dismal, weekend-less state. 

“Enjoy it now,” we told ourselves every Sunday we were still in Canada… well, except every other week, when Akiva had to work those late Saturday nights and long, long Sundays (because only half the staff was on, there was often more than twice the workload). 

But never mind.  Enjoy it now, we thought, because in Israel, there would be no more weekends!

So here’s the thing no-one tells you (shhh!). 

Trivial pursuit? Humiliating Hebrew fail.

For most people, Shabbos is a time to relax after a crazy week. 

But not for my husband Akiva!  Not since I started challenging myself to read and translate the Hebrew trivia questions at the back of the weekend paper. 

I’m terribly bad at trivia, and Akiva isn’t much better, though he knows almost anything to do with movies.  So naturally, we go at it now every single week. 

I read the questions in Hebrew, translate them the best I can, and he attempts to answer.  Often, the questions are some obscure Israeli thing like “who is Moshav Kipnitzky named after?”  To which he’ll answer “Shmuli Kipnitzky,” which is never the right answer. 

What we like about Kiryat Shmuel (and you might, too!)

So… I’ve already kvetched enough about Haifa, in a weird, loving kind of way.  I’m sure you’re all wondering what we like about Kiryat Shmuel, at least enough that we’d want to spend a chunk of the next few years here.

Here are eight reasons.  Kind of a random number; I just brainstormed until I ran out.

1. It’s a suburb.  I grew up in a suburb of Toronto.  To me, the distance here feels good – about half an hour or so by rapid-transit from the “big city.”  The mix of big streets and cozy enclaves also feels about right.
2. Public transit.  I wanted to get by here without the expense and hassle of a car, and bus service here is generally excellent.  Even in a crisis, the buses are usually reliable, although the Metronit (rapid transit) would be better if it was a little more frequent (they come about every 13 minutes).
3. Well-connected.  With a 5 minute walk to the Kiryat Motzkin train station, we can be almost anywhere in the country about 2 hours.  Bus takes a bit longer, because Haifa’s Merkazit HaMifratz bus station is about twenty minutes away.  From the local mall, you can get to points north including Akko, Nahariya, Karmiel and Tsfat as easily as getting on a local bus.
4. Shopping.  There are plenty of local grocery stores, including a big new one here in KShmu.  If you want lower prices, there are several big chains not far away, including Osher Ad, Shufersal Deal, Rami Levy.  There take-out food places, and even a couple of nice malls a very easy distance away.  The only thing really lacking are decent sit-down restaurants, with actual ambience, but I’m sure we’ll find a couple.  Oh, did I mention that Israel’s third Ikea store, twenty minutes away, opens on March 11th?!  The Krayot are HAPPENING!
5. Religious community.  Maybe this should go higher on the list!  I cannot say enough how wonderful it is to look out the window and see mamas in tichels and skirts and kids with yarmulkes and tzitzis.  To know that all the schools here are some kind of religious and that everything revolves around halacha.  It’s very, very nice, even if it does mean that taxes to the neighbourhood “vaad” (committee) include a small surcharge to run the mikveh and other religious services.
6. Shabbat.  I know, I already raved about life in a religious community, but even so – on Shabbos, it’s different.  The streets are closed and this is when this community really does feel like an enclave, because the rest of the Krayot, indeed, almost the entire city of Haifa, are open to cars on Shabbos.  The kids run and play, the only sound is dogs barking (and barking, and barking) and families walk up and down in the middle of the street.  Bonus:  the local health clinic, on their list of hours, indicates that they have a non-Jewish doctor from 10-2 on Shabbat – how cool is that???  Okay, I have experienced this before, in Baltimore last year, for instance.  And I know also that this is nothing compared to bigger religious neighbourhoods, like the Shabbos we spent in Har Nof, or Elisheva’s experience in Sanhedriya, or the entire religious towns here that close their gates on Shabbos.  But to me, it’s not the size of the neighbourhood so much as the feeling that Shabbos is everywhere – the siren goes off and then… it’s really here, at last.  (It also smells great when everyone’s cooking on Friday!)
7. English speakers.  Why am I putting all the best stuff so low on the list?!  This is great!  There are English speakers here.  Not many – maybe about 10 families of olim, although there are other fluent English speakers lurking here and there.  (Today, one of the gan mothers wished me a good morning in perfect, unaccented English.)  I know 10 families doesn’t sound like much, but what can I say…?  It’s a start, and now that the Krayot are included in Nefesh b’Nefesh’s Go North and Movin’ on Up initiatives, there may be more.  I heard that the February pilot trip group actually came here this year – right here, in “downtown” Kiryat Shmuel!  I hope so.  Because KShmu is a religious area, I think it is far more attractive to English-speaking olim (at least, religious ones) than other areas in the Krayot.  The core group here is small but reasonably active – no, there’s no English library, but there are Oneg Shabboses every other week, and lots of opportunities to socialize.  Everyone seems very friendly, and there are lots of kids of all ages, ranging from newborn to grown-up.
8. A nice mix.  One thing I like about KShmu is the same thing that drew me to our area of Toronto, which was NOT the main frum community (that’s around Bathurst & Lawrence):  it’s not a monolithic community.  There’s a really nice mix of people here.  If you look at the men, you see srugim (knit kippahs), black hats (some), suits on Shabbos, more casual on Shabbos, and some with no kippah at all (they slap it on when they go to shul).  Among the women, there are tichels, sheitels, uncovered hair, skirts, pants, essentially the entire spectrum.  The area was described to me as attracting people who are either shomer Shabbos or “who like living in a place that is.”  Many Israelis are very traditional in their feelings but aren’t technically shomer mitzvos (observant).  There’s a place for them here and, as someone else told me, “our kids play with their kids.”  Everybody – apparently – gets along just fine.  Maybe this appeals to me because I’m not sure who WE are, religiously, especially in the whole mixed-up rainbow that is religious life in Israel.  For now, this seems like a good place to not have to fit in.

It’s weird how these reasons grew, from very short at first to very long at the end.  I guess that makes sense, though, to think of the superficial things first and then get into the nitty-gritty.

If any of these reasons make sense to you, here’s some more information by another local English speaker, plus a video:

Welcome to my neighbourhood!

Ted’s Aliyah, Day 4

Again, this is not MY writing, it is the only-slightly-deranged musings of my very talented husband, Teddy (Akiva) MacLeod.  If you like his writing, check out his art (sort of!).

   Day Four of the Israel Initiative
Okay, there you go! Our first Shabbos in Kiryat Yam, what an… interesting experience! Last night I was sent out to find a shul (synagogue) that someone told Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod was just down the street at number 25. Only problem is that none of the apartments or houses or whatever has an address written on it! It’s like no-one wants anyone to know where they live. So I walked up the street looking for a shul among a group of dingy apartments. (This really isn’t the richest part of town. Compared to Haifa next door, with its amazing architecture and quaint shops, Kiryat Yam is a bit ghetto)
Suddenly, boom! Like somebody plopped this beautiful building down from heaven, there was this grand, menorah topped entranceway to a clean, spacious courtyard leading into a stately entrance of a shul. “This must be the place” I thought, “that, or a great movie set for some probably tragic, Jewish movie.”
I went in with my little English translated siddur (prayer book), sat down and scanned through my book to see if I could find out where the congregation was in the davening (prayer service). And so I’m scanning and scanning, still waiting to see if I can pick up any key Hebrew words that will indicate where they are. And I was scanning for a really long time before I finally heard the beginning of the Shabbot night prayers. There was like 20 minutes of stuff that I’ve never heard before. What kind of a place had I stumbled into???
I went home to tell Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod about how this crazy place added about 30 to 40 minutes of material that was in MY book. “Are they Ashkenazi?” Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod asked. I wasn’t sure, but I said I would go back the next morning and look a little closer to see there were any clues to indicate that the heck was going on.
The next morning I sat there again and yes, right away they were adding more material. One guy came up to me out of the blue with a basket of little velvet pouches and said “take one” in Hebrew. I gave him the international expression of “what-is-this-for”? “Bar mitzvah” he said and walked away. The pouch was filled with candies, so maybe you are supposed to throw them at the bar mitzvah boy, as is traditionally done? But then I saw that all the men were putting the pouches away for later. When things started to get going, the women began to throw more candies, which maybe because there weren’t too many kids around, the men picked them up and also kept them for themselves. Crazy!
So I noticed the following things. Not too many kids around. Weird. The men there all looked like burly construction workers. It actually reminded me of the movie Goodfellas with all those mafia hitmen. Then there were a bunch of guys doing sign-language all over the place. Was it the Deaf Guy Construction Workers Shul? Or something far sinister???
The good thing about it all was the Kiddush (lunch after the services). They had a large table full of all sort of amazing treats and delicacies that I have never seen before. THEE freshest, light rolls and little sweet buns and cakes and small mini-bowls full of some creamy delight and… so MUCH STUFF that you don’t see in Canada!
Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod and the kids came just as the food was being served, “good timing” I thought. Oh yeah, the davening ended at 10:00 AM, so the whole day was still ahead of us!!! The kids split this giant, fluffy cupcake and fought briefly over the cherry on top, but they were quite content. I myself tried about five different pastries and downed it with about a litre of water in one gulp.
Which reminds me… How can I drink two litres of water on average, every day now and never really have to go to the bathroom? It is quite the mystery. I know that I wrote about arriving here and sweating like a stuck pig, but after that first day, I don’t really sweat like that anymore. Sure, I will start perspiring if I put on more than two shirts at a time, but thankfully, I’m pretty dry except for the occasional moist upper lip if I am in a room without a fan.
We spent the rest of the day walking around, locating various playgrounds for the kiddies and just enjoying the cooling, ocean breeze on a hot day. At one park, Naomi was suddenly surrounded by a dozen girls who wanted to play with her. They tried to explain the rules of some complicated game of Tag with her, using Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod as their Hebrew interpreter, but I think that overwhelmed Naomi and she went all shy on them.
After Shabbos, we were completely out of bottled water, (we haven’t worked up the courage to drink the tap water yet. I’m holding out until we can get a Brita water filter deal), so I walked up to the local corner store to pick 3 two litre bottles. On the way back I saw this pizza place buzzing with people so I went in and brought home a large, double cheese pizza for Tzivia and I to share. (Double cheese, kosher and very delicious for only $12, not bad!)
So that’s it. Judge my life as you see fit.