AI (Artificial Intelligence) in everyday life in Israel didn’t arrive for me as a shiny “future” thing. It arrived as a way to stop losing whole afternoons to forms, phone menus, and the particular kind of bureaucratic friction that makes you feel like you’re failing a test you didn’t know you were taking.

I moved to Israel at the end of 1999. I didn’t come with a special talent for paperwork or a love of process. I came with mother-tongue English, decent patience, and the stubborn belief that if you just keep showing up, eventually someone will authorize the thing and make it happen. For years, that worked. Sort of. I got by the same way a lot of people get by here. Asking one friend who knows someone, keeping a folder of mystery documents “just in case,” and learning which offices are allergic to email and which ones are allergic to phone calls. And trying to avoid the ones who only answer to fax.

Bank then, I’d leave the house with a list and come back with three new problems I didn’t have in the morning. I’d stand at a counter while someone flipped through my documents like they were shuffling cards, and I’d try to read their face to see whether I was about to be told “missing one thing” or “wrong form” or the worst one: “Who told you to come here today? We only process these forms tomorrow and you need a pre-booked appointment.”

The first years, I didn’t even have the vocabulary to be angry. I had embarrassment. I had that tight smile you do when you don’t want to show you’re lost. I learned quickly that in Israel, bureaucracy doesn’t always care that you’re polite. It cares that you’re correct. Correct office, correct day, correct hours, correct attachments,........

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