By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS

Walk through the streets of Israel’s major cities and the impression is unmistakable: prosperity. Cafés are full at all hours. Designer handbags hang from strollers. Restaurants charge prices comparable to Paris or New York. The visual language of affluence is everywhere, projected confidently onto sidewalks, shop windows, and social media feeds.

Yet alongside this public display exists a different daily reality, one that is less visible, less discussed, and rarely photographed. It is the reality of those who rent without leverage, who work full time in socially “essential” professions that do not pay a living wage, who navigate two legal systems without capital, and who live one unexpected expense away from collapse. These lives do not exist on the margins of Israeli society; however, they are often treated as though they do. In practice, they exist within it, frequently hidden in plain sight.

The divide between these two realities is not simply economic. It is interpretive. Those who move comfortably through Israel’s high-cost landscape are generally presumed competent, stable, and deserving. Those who struggle in the same environment, however, are more likely to be read as disorganized, unstable, or personally at fault. Depending on who experiences them, and what resources they have access to, the same conditions—financial stress, housing insecurity, legal exposure—are interpreted differently.

Double standards take root in this interpretive gap. Survival tactics are recast as instability or failure, while similar behaviors, under different circumstances, are framed as adaptability or resilience. Financial precarity is mistaken for poor judgment. Stress becomes evidence of pathology. Structural pressure disappears behind moral judgment, and once it does, responsibility quietly shifts from institutions to individuals.

These assumptions do not arise accidentally. They are reinforced through cultural narratives, political ideologies, and deeply gendered expectations about how competence, responsibility, and belonging are supposed to look. Over time, they harden into stereotypes that perform subtle but effective work. They justify inequality while placing those most affected by it under unusually close examination.

It is within this landscape that the experiences of olim, women, and the working poor must be understood. Not as isolated stories of individual difficulty, but as reflections of how power, money, and legitimacy are unevenly distributed—and unevenly interpreted—in Israeli life.

When a man navigates instability, he is often described as ambitious or principled. When a woman does the same, the language shifts. She is more likely to be labeled difficult, emotional, or unstable.

When someone with wealth lives across two countries, the arrangement is praised as cosmopolitan flexibility. When someone without financial backing does so out of necessity, it becomes evidence of being unsettled or irresponsible. The behavior itself has not changed; however, the assumptions attached to it have.

Popular culture sometimes captures this truth more clearly than policy debates. In The Man, Taylor Swift articulates the gendered double standard with blunt precision: “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man” (2019). The lyric resonates not because it is poetic, but because it is accurate. Identical effort, filtered through gender and class, produces opposite judgments.

Living between Israel and the Diaspora is often romanticized, but only when it is optional.

For olim with assets, stable........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)