"I haven't blogged in a while, not because I have nothing to say, but perhaps because I have too much to say and don't know how much of it I should share."- Good. i would tell you not to share to much with us, share a little secret stuff for yourself...

Exactly which part on NY do you find organized?

I wanted to ask which part of Ashdod is like New York..?

Perhaps when you live in NY you do not get the impression that it is organized or has any sort of order to it, but when you spend a couple of weeks in Maalot Dafna and Jerusalem, NY becomes organized by comparison.

Shlomo -- Um.. I am not exactly sure in which part of Ashdod I am now. I am told by my cousin and her daughter that there are a lot of Moroccans everywhere though.

Almost all of Ashdod is Moroccan, and the city is split up by "rovaim" (e.g רובע ד, רובע ה, etc). I've once been in ה..(to visit "Baba" Yekutiel Abuhassera). It's better you have a basic idea of where you are..

I'm leaving Ashdod in a couple of hours anyway and leaving Israel in 6 hours, so it won't really matter where exactly I am now.

But for everyone saying there are Moroccans everywhere, I don't think I've seen that many.... I guess they just blend in with the Israelis?

This is still me, inkstainedhands. My dad was just logged into Google and had signed me out, which I only realized just now, so I can't comment through my account. Got to log in first....

"I'm leaving Ashdod in a couple of hours anyway and leaving Israel in 6 hours, so it won't really matter where exactly I am now."- You're probably in NY by the time I'm writing this. ..still, I just wanted to know what reminded you of NY...grid-streets perhaps?

"I don't think I've seen that many.... I guess they just blend in with the Israelis?"- I'm not sure what you mean, Moroccans are just as Israeli as Germans in Wisconsin or Swedish in Montana or Irish in northern New York are American. Let's put it this way: (before the Russians and Ethiopians) half of Israel was Sefaradi, and more than half of them were Moroccan, so..

"grid-streets perhaps?" -- In some parts of the city, perhaps... but not where my cousin lived. I just got that feeling as I looked out of the window of my cousin's apartment and saw all the buildings, neatly laid out, the parking lots, the streets. It just seemed organized.

"I'm not sure what you mean," -- Well, there are Russain-speaking people who were born in Israel, and yet I would not normally call them Israelis. So while they ARE technically Israeli, it's not what I would use to identify them.

"So while they ARE technically Israeli, it's not what I would use to identify them"- Nah man, like I said, Moroccans are as Israeli as apple pie is American. Most Moroccan Israelis are pretty distant from "what it means to be (culturally) Morocan", though they're not totally like the 9earlier, secular) Ashkenazi Israelis (in the same way, I guess, that while Black Americans are not White, they're also not African)...

I see....

I remember some of my relatives talking about Moroccans in Ashdod.