Can you bring your old US appliances?
American electric current is 110 volts; Israel and Europe are on a 220-volt system. If you plug a 110-volt machine into an Israeli socket, it will burn out. A step-down transformer converts 220 volts to 115 and is appropriate for use with certain appliances—choose one 20% above the maximum wattage of your machine.
Motors in American appliances operate at 60 hertz (cycles per second), and in Israeli appliances at 50. Even with a transformer, without an adjustment for 50 hertz, large American domestic appliances and clocks will work 18% slower, will heat up more and will have a shorter than normal life span. A transformer supplying 100 volts instead of the usual 115 or 120 is recommended in Israel when using an American appliance on Israeli 50 cycle current. Don’t worry about bringing a transformer for the following items, since you can buy the transformers cheaply and easily in Israel: Telephones, answering machines, calculators, and anything else that has a little black box that plugs into the wall instead of a plug.
