I’m waiting for a bus near the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv to get back home to Jaffa. A woman with a baby in a stroller hails a cab. The cab driver comes out to help her. She has difficulty trying to fold the stroller with one arm, while holding the baby in the other. What does she do? She hands the baby to the cab driver, of course.
Only in Israel, perhaps?
Apparently, by the way, they don’t have laws here requiring use of car seats in taxis. Or if they do, people ignore them. But I digress.
I’m wandering in Neve Tzedek, in the newly revamped and remodeled “Old Train Station” filled with new bars and restaurants. My friends and I were hoping just to walk through on our way to Rothchild Boulevard. We are stuck. We keep making our way from one bar to another, from courtyard to courtyard and can’t seem to find a way out from this labyrinth of gourmandize. “How do you get out of this place?!” I beg of a maitre d’ in despair. He smiles, starts explaining, stops and walks with us to find the one path out of the Old Station. “Have fun,” he says. “Shanah Tovah.”
Only in Israel, perhaps?
Google Maps Street View is finally coming to Israel (after months of delay for security reasons, legal reasons, politics, religious sensitivities, the usual etc. etc.). There is a ceremony with the mayor of Jerusalem and the CEO of Google Israel launching the project. They hope it will be good for tourism. The word on the street is that the Street View people are out and about. Might I be so lucky as to see them? Might I have the great fortune of having my blurred face eternally visible on the world wide web, on a picture on a street in the Holy Land? I’m walking through the Rova, the central square of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, and what do I see? None other than the Google Maps guy on his Google Maps bike! Could it be true? Could my dream become reality? And here in the Holy Land, in the Holy City, no less? Is this bashert? Is there a special brachah one should say when one sees the Google Maps mobile? Talk about a spiritual moment! The Google Maps guy (on his Google Maps bike) is towing his Google Maps contraption, with his Google Maps cameras, and his Google Maps buddy is helping him find his way through the little streets and alleys of the old city, carrying a paper map of course. They look lost, confused. Passers-by stop to help. They give directions.
Only in Israel, perhaps?
P.S. If one day, while looking at Google Maps Street View of Jerusalem, in the Old City, across from the Shawarma stand, you see a young man in an aquamarine t-shirt, standing around quizzically, wondering what brachah to say, you might just be looking at yours truly.
Tel Aviv has a new city-wide municipal bike rental/share system: Tel-O-Fun. (Or in Hebrew Tel-Ofen, as in ofanaim, which means bicycle. Don’t you just love bilingual puns?! Okay, well I do.) It’s quite awesome actually. Every few blocks there is a station with green (of course) Tel-O-Fun bikes. You can get a monthly subscription, weekly, daily or pay by the hour. I am quite tempted to sign up for it, but unfortunately the few stations closest to me in Jaffa are not yet operational. (Am I surprised?) Anyway, people have been very excited for using their new Tel-O-Fun bike rental on Yom Kippur, the unofficial Bike holiday of Israel since Israelis do not drive on Yom Kippur. However, just a few days before Yom Kippur it was announced that the service would not be available for use on the Day of Atonement. The official reason? To keep the system fully operational they would have to employ service technicians, and use cars to move bikes between stations, as they do on normal days. The unofficial reasons? Politics. Religious sensitivities. A request from a religious council member from the Shas Party. Why couldn’t they run the system in a limited form, as many subscribers have requested? Another good question. I wonder if the annual subscribers will get a refund of 1/365 of their subscription fee.
Only in Israel, for better or for worse.
The front page of an Israeli newspaper today: Occupy Wall Street social protests across the U.S. “Oh look, they’re copying us,” a Tel Avivian says.
Perhaps.
Only in Israel.
Elliot Glassenberg is currently participating in Tikkun Olam in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, one of Masa Israel’s 200 programs.
