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Ask Harel13 Anything

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
Apparently this used to be a thing, moderators nearly-suicidely leaving themselves open to any attack by making a throw-anything-at-me thread. But I do love talking about myself, so here goes:

Username: Harel13

Meaning of username: Harel (my first name) + the number 13. Shocker, I know right? Actually, 13 is a number with some significance in Judaism, so that's why I chose 13 (contrary to common misconceptions, it's not because I have twelve siblings named Harel).

Name: Harel (didn't see that one coming, huh?)

Country: Israel (lived in the USA for 3.5 years as a kid; recently requested to vote for the first time in the USA federal elections but unfortunately received no reply yet...)

A little about me: I'm an Orthodox Jew. In Israeli terms, I'd be described as somewhere between National Religious to Ultra-Orthodox National (those are fancy terms for Orthodox Jews who have Zionistic views but differ on some nuances and in religiosity levels).

I started a couple of months ago my 7th year in my Hesder Yeshiva and will most likely head to university next year.

I served for a year and five months in the IDF, first completing Basic and Advanced Training in the Artillery Corps, then moving to the non-combat position of Mashak Dat (according to an old government document found online, this can be translated as "religious coordinator"), which is like being an assistant to the unit's military rabbi, in the same brigade. I also became the unofficially official graphic designer of my brigade's rabbinate division. About a month before discharge, I moved to the Rabbinate Corps' administrative base, where I spent half of my time chasing high-level military rabbis and the other half of my time lounging about doing nothing.

Political views: I'm a right-wing conservative sort of guy (comes with the kippah) (nah, kidding, there are religious guys on all sides of the political spectrum). Here in Israel I've always voted for the Bayit Yehudi party. During the last two elections I volunteered to help get people out to vote.

Interests: Torah study, in particular Tanach, writing essays on my Torah-based research, drawing, reading, creative writing, graphic design, walking, hiking, listening to music, collecting and discussing weird/interesting IDF facts, in particular artillery facts.

Some random facts about myself: While I like drawing animals, I don't really like them close up; The first time I ever petted a dog was four years ago; I once wrote an op-ed which was published in an Orthodox Israeli niche-news site; I volunteer in a non-profit organization that is working to better the IDF; mentioned above in interests - I write essays for the fun of it. I'd post some here, but they're in Hebrew...

Feel free to ask me stuff, but please keep it clean. :)


As an (ex) industrial graphics artist your graphic design is of interest, is it possible you could post one or two of your works?
 

Quetzal

A little to the left and slightly out of focus.
Premium Member
Apparently this used to be a thing, moderators nearly-suicidely leaving themselves open to any attack by making a throw-anything-at-me thread. But I do love talking about myself, so here goes:

Username: Harel13

Meaning of username: Harel (my first name) + the number 13. Shocker, I know right? Actually, 13 is a number with some significance in Judaism, so that's why I chose 13 (contrary to common misconceptions, it's not because I have twelve siblings named Harel).

Name: Harel (didn't see that one coming, huh?)

Country: Israel (lived in the USA for 3.5 years as a kid; recently requested to vote for the first time in the USA federal elections but unfortunately received no reply yet...)

A little about me: I'm an Orthodox Jew. In Israeli terms, I'd be described as somewhere between National Religious to Ultra-Orthodox National (those are fancy terms for Orthodox Jews who have Zionistic views but differ on some nuances and in religiosity levels).

I started a couple of months ago my 7th year in my Hesder Yeshiva and will most likely head to university next year.

I served for a year and five months in the IDF, first completing Basic and Advanced Training in the Artillery Corps, then moving to the non-combat position of Mashak Dat (according to an old government document found online, this can be translated as "religious coordinator"), which is like being an assistant to the unit's military rabbi, in the same brigade. I also became the unofficially official graphic designer of my brigade's rabbinate division. About a month before discharge, I moved to the Rabbinate Corps' administrative base, where I spent half of my time chasing high-level military rabbis and the other half of my time lounging about doing nothing.

Political views: I'm a right-wing conservative sort of guy (comes with the kippah) (nah, kidding, there are religious guys on all sides of the political spectrum). Here in Israel I've always voted for the Bayit Yehudi party. During the last two elections I volunteered to help get people out to vote.

Interests: Torah study, in particular Tanach, writing essays on my Torah-based research, drawing, reading, creative writing, graphic design, walking, hiking, listening to music, collecting and discussing weird/interesting IDF facts, in particular artillery facts.

Some random facts about myself: While I like drawing animals, I don't really like them close up; The first time I ever petted a dog was four years ago; I once wrote an op-ed which was published in an Orthodox Israeli niche-news site; I volunteer in a non-profit organization that is working to better the IDF; mentioned above in interests - I write essays for the fun of it. I'd post some here, but they're in Hebrew...

Feel free to ask me stuff, but please keep it clean. :)
Is it true that you are dating Usher?
 

Rival

se Dex me saut.
Staff member
Premium Member
I have no idea who this is nor do I think that I want to know.
Since Quetzal disappeared I thought I'd just give you a heads-up. It's an old, perhaps by now stale joke, really, based on an actual situation. I was asked it in my 'Ask Me' thread and so were many others.
 

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
I'm studying archaeology, what interests you about it? Any particular area, or time of interest?
The thing that most interests me is Biblical archeology, but I also like hearing about new discoveries made in Egypt. Egypt has always seemed to me, in archeological terms, a very mysterious country. I'm also interested in Talmudic-era archeology, everything from the building of the Second Temple to around 600 CE.

What interests me about it? Well, it's a fascinating key into the past! The fields I'm interested in are also a fascinating key into Judaism - both its history and understanding various things in the Torah.

A lot of archeology, though, seems to come down to the research of much more technical things, which I find kind of boring, like comparisons of pottery types. :sweatsmile:
 

The Hammer

[REDACTED]
Premium Member
The thing that most interests me is Biblical archeology, but I also like hearing about new discoveries made in Egypt. Egypt has always seemed to me, in archeological terms, a very mysterious country. I'm also interested in Talmudic-era archeology, everything from the building of the Second Temple to around 600 CE.

What interests me about it? Well, it's a fascinating key into the past! The fields I'm interested in are also a fascinating key into Judaism - both its history and understanding various things in the Torah.

A lot of archeology, though, seems to come down to the research of much more technical things, which I find kind of boring, like comparisons of pottery types. :sweatsmile:

Yes, it is not all tomb diving and fancy artifact locating, and more dusty book reading, and broken pieces of pottery collecting. Oh, and digging in garbage and toilets is a wonderful archaeological pass-time.
 

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
and more dusty book reading,
I'm okay with book reading, but I'd probably lose my mind if I had to work with the pottery. In the army one of my duties was to sift through things like rice to make sure they didn't have insects or worms inside them, which is part of the koshering process. I nearly lost my mind because it was so boring and took so long.
 

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
@ChristineM

Last summer I joined a challenge with some other religious Israeli graphic designers. The challenge was to design every day some kind of image with text at the bottom commemorating the s'firah of that day. S'firah, short for s'firat ha'omer is the counting of 49 days from Passover to the holiday of Shavuot. I decided to do every day something related to IDF history, seeing as I'm an IDF history nut. Here I wrote about Battalion 34. The mech symbolizes the many changes the battalion went through over the years: first it was an infantry unit (hence the humanoid form and tactical helmet), then it was a tank unit (hence the armor and the right-hand Merkava cannon) with yeshiva students (hence the tzitzit on the body and tefillin on the helmet), then it was an armored infantry unit, hence the upper torse desgined to look like an armored vehicle's windshield. In the background, an image of a fake village used for training by the IDF.

34 ערוך.png


This is the unofficially official "Valiant Striver" certificate from NaNoWriMo 2019, done as a collab with another member.

nano edited.png


A few years ago I started designing a humorous "Jewified" image in celebration of the US's Independence Day. Here's the last one. It reads on the bottom "I want you to daven for the USA" and features Uncle Sam with a Star of David in his hat and a tallit on his shoulders. "Daven" means "to pray" in Yiddish.

v3.png

Lastly, probably the only time I was paid for my work (other than stuff I did in the army, but that doesn't count because I had no obligation to do that and would get my paycheck either way), I designed the pages of a small booklet of Torah ideas for a military rabbi who wanted to gift copies of this to people in the unit he was leaving. As he had previously sent out these ideas via Whatsapp, he wanted the design to look like that.

דוג3.png
 
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