Today, Shabbat morning in Jerusalem, terror struck deep into this Canadian’s heart, and into my wife’s, as well. I know exactly when it happened. At 8 in the morning I drew some drinking water from the tap, finished it off, and headed to the washroom for my daily ablutions.
At 5 minutes after 8, I turned on the water, listened for its gushing sound, but heard nothing. Nevertheless, I, pulled the button forward on the valve that redirects the water flow to the shower head. Sure enough, there was nothing. Not a drop. I tried the sink. A few drops flowed from the faucet, then gave out. In the kitchen, same story. No water.
Don’t panic, I told myself. There must be a reason. The city of Jerusalem must have had a water emergency and turned off the flow to the neighbourhood. But wouldn’t they have warned us? Not necessarily. It’s Shabbat. They would only do emergency work. They’re not going to run around the German Colony warning each occupant that there’s no water.
Perhaps it’s a national emergency, an emergency so dire that it requires rationing to begin, even on Shabbat? My brother-in-law told me that with only 33% of the rainy season remaining, Israel hasn’t had 50% of the normal rainfall. Was our water shut-down a brave last-ditch attempt to ration water? Couldn’t be. This is Israel, so people and the newspapers would have discussed it endlessly for a month in advance. I call my brother-in-law for advice. He is not awake. With tremulous voice, I leave a message begging for his wisdom.
Loren is practical. She goes to the internet, seeking the number for the waterworks, City of Jerusalem. Quickly she googles it, clicks on the URL, and zip-zap, there it is, everything you wanted to know about water in Yerushalayim since 1000 BCE. Everything, including the clearly stated emergency number, with a single disclaimer: the emergency telephone is closed on Shabbat. That’s right, even if you had an emergency, on Shabbat, no help for you! There's always the general emergency number, 103. Of course, only Arabs will come to your aid on Shabbat.
Ah, it occurs to me, the owner of the apartment didn’t pay the water bill, so they cut off the H2O. But no, that makes no sense. If the waterworks doesn’t labour on Shabbat, why would they cancel our water on God’s holy Sabbath day? Scratch that idea.
Wait! Recently a Lubavitcher rabbi in Tel Aviv’s black hat neighbourhood, B’nei B’rak, ruled that people living in units of a multiple dwelling are not, according to halacha, Jewish law, permitted to use the water tap on Shabbat. Why? Because the many apartments using water cause the pumping station’s electrically operated machinery to go to work, and that violates the Sabbath. Jerusalemites pay more attention to halacha than any other Israeli citizens. Have they made it impossible for us to use our tap water on the Sabbath, starting today? Seemed far-fetched, but no more far-fetched than that rabbi’s decision. At least my upset turned to laughter as I thought of it.
But now we are desperate, in fact, terrified to the core. We come from a city, Montreal, where more water passes by our island ville every single day than Israel receives in an entire year. We have so much water, we don’t even meter it. For a Montrealer, having no water is an unimaginable emergency. You’ll forgive my recounting the consequences, but first and foremost, the WC’s won’t flush, the showers won’t function, we’ll have only milk and Arak to drink – we finished off the Shabbat wine on Friday night, and we cannot even wash our hands before eating. Panic..
What to do? Contact the landlady. She’s not in her apartment, so I can’t go knock on her door. She’s at the home of some family. I have to call, but it’s Shabbat. She’s Shomer Shabbat and won’t answer the phone until 3 stars are visible. I decide to call anyway and leave a message. Maybe she’ll hear the desperation in my voice, take pity, and answer the phone. It rings and rings some more. I’m told to leave a message, through which I explain our difficulty.
Loren comes up with a brilliant plan. Let’s get dressed and go to the YMCA, that magnificently towered building directly across the street from the King David Hotel and only steps away from Hebrew Union College, my rabbinical school. It’s a 15 minute walk; it’s open; we’re members; they have showers. They have coffee. Maybe we’ll be done in time for services, after which we’ll spend the day in the lounge at the Y reading, or walk to the Wall, then wander rootlessly about until nightfall, when we can reach our landlady. It will be taxing, but we’re from Great White North, and Québec sait faire.
The telephone rings just as we begin to pack our necessities for the trip to the “Yimkeh.” A stranger’s voice speaks, “Did you call your landlady?” she asks. “Yes, YES!” I say. The voice wants to know what the problem is. I reiterate: no water. The voice is a Shabbas Goy, a non-Jew doing this “work” of phoning me on the landlady’s behalf so she does not have to desecrate the Sabbath.
Voice to landlady, “No water.” Landlady to Voice, yelling from across her room, not speaking into the phone, “Tell him to check the water inlet valve. It’s on the street to the right of the entry gate, behind a metal door. If that doesn’t work, go the neighbour around the corner, and she’ll help.” Voice:: “Did you hear that?” To the unknown holder of the telephone, I say thank you and hang up.
Outside, exactly where it is supposed to be, I find a large metal door that has been left open. Behind it, the water valve to our apartment is marked and clearly facing the wrong direction. Someone tampered with it by turning it off at 8:05 AM. A prankster? A “pushtak” (punk)? A hater of Canadians, an anti-Semite, a self-hating Jew? There are 4 units in the building. Why was ours selected? Why us? Ah, that great theological question, in our case, writ very small.
Life returns to normal. Water flows, showers spray, we are ready for services. On the way, we notice one weakness of Jerusalem. Nearly everyone’s water meter is out on the street, connected to a valve that anyone can turn at will, an invitation to trouble that would take millions of shekels to set aright. I guess when you live in a country that requires every home to have a bomb shelter capable of shutting out toxic gases, the temporary loss of water supply at the hands of a pushtak hardly matters.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Israel: Checking It Out
There’s a restaurant chain in the U.S. that declares, when you’re with us, you’re family. That’s the way it is throughout Israel, and I can prove it. How? By taking you to any cash register check-out counter.
How do we check-out in Canada? Take Walmart for example: You stand in line with a huge shopping cart that separates you from anyone else, except maybe the person who’s at your side as the line doubles back on itself, and you hear a machine voice say, “Veuillez passer à la caisse trois.” You greet caissier #3, who snaps your goods through the laser light, you pay your bill, and you’re on your way. It’s fast; it’s efficient; it’s impersonal.
Not so in Israel. In Israel, standing at the cash is part of your human experience.
Buying wine for Shabbat at the corner grocery, the cashier corrects the Hebrew of the customer. Basic message: here we speak Hebrew. I should help you speak it correctly.
Checking out at a major grocery chain, Supersol, the line crawls forward. What’s happening? An elderly man is bobbling the coins from the change purse that took him a good minute to open in the first place. He has paid all but 32 cents of his bill. The last 32 cents is taking 5 minutes. The woman at the register waits patiently, chatting him up in kindly fashion until all the coins are assembled.
The next customer is living on coupons similar to food stamps. Customer and cashier converse while the special currency is counted out. There must be requirements about how the coupons are used. Paying with them takes more time than with cash or credit, and management approval is required for something. The cashier steps away from her slot and scurries to the office. Another 3 minutes are lost. We wait.
Arrayed next to the cashier are bargain items, 3 different products in multiples. In Israel, you don’t just operate a cash. You sell. “Only 20 shekels this week” she says to each client of the store, lifting up some avocado oil. “Or maybe you’d prefer a deal on napkins?” “How do you use the avocado oil,” asks one, and the employee is happy to suggest several ways. A few more minutes lost. All this waiting, I think, for my chocolate bar and milk. But it’s entertaining, and it’s human, and more often than not, the cashier is demonstrating a magnificent Jewish value, total respect for the elderly.
Loren went shopping at Mega with our sister-in-law, Dorit Biran Deckelbaum. The store is as large and well-stocked as any grocery in Montreal, but believe me, the check-out experience is different. Both women chose magnificent strawberries featured upon entry, but notably, with no price attached. At check-out, the woman at Loren's register commented, "The price of these strawberries is too high. Do you really want to buy them?" When my wife heard how much they were, she demurred. Dorit, in her line, did not receive the same friendly advice and paid the high price. She felt her clerk should have been as forthcoming as Loren's and was disappointed, not only because she actually knew her, but because she expects clerks to offer advice when price or quality should be questioned.
One time there was a young visitor from North America in front of us. She didn’t know anything about Israeli currency. The cashier stopped the line and took the time to show her, coin by coin, how to identify the value of each part of a shekel, in itself worth about 30 Canadian cents.
At Office Depot, we thought we could check out quickly, but we had to wait until the cashier put down her cell phone – family emergency, I’m sure, to help another customer whose teen-aged daughter was crying, weeping, sobbing bitterly that whatever her mother was buying her, it wasn’t what she wanted. This time the cashier held her tongue, but neither did she say a word about others waiting to be served. After a five minute temper tantrum, it was our turn.
Try getting on the bus in Montreal without correct change. You might as well get off at the next stop, or be thrown off. Not in Israel. The driver makes change, answers questions about local directions, helps people get transfer receipts into their hands, converses with them as they get on, all part of the reason why a 12 minute car ride to Hebrew University became a 40 minute bus ride through the very same streets.
Once I was paying for several people to ride the bus. I didn’t have perfect change, but close, and more than enough. I didn’t wait for change. So the driver patiently made the 1 shekel and twenty grush change and gave it to another member of our party to give to me.
I don’t wait in lines very patiently, but I’ve taken to observing the human theatre unfolding before me at Israel’s check-out counters, as well as seeing derekh eretz, Jewishly well-mannered behaviour, in action before my eyes. The Israeli check-out counter comes from another world, one where everyone knows each other, even if they don’t. In Israel, with us, you’re family.
Rabbi Leigh Lerner
How do we check-out in Canada? Take Walmart for example: You stand in line with a huge shopping cart that separates you from anyone else, except maybe the person who’s at your side as the line doubles back on itself, and you hear a machine voice say, “Veuillez passer à la caisse trois.” You greet caissier #3, who snaps your goods through the laser light, you pay your bill, and you’re on your way. It’s fast; it’s efficient; it’s impersonal.
Not so in Israel. In Israel, standing at the cash is part of your human experience.
Buying wine for Shabbat at the corner grocery, the cashier corrects the Hebrew of the customer. Basic message: here we speak Hebrew. I should help you speak it correctly.
Checking out at a major grocery chain, Supersol, the line crawls forward. What’s happening? An elderly man is bobbling the coins from the change purse that took him a good minute to open in the first place. He has paid all but 32 cents of his bill. The last 32 cents is taking 5 minutes. The woman at the register waits patiently, chatting him up in kindly fashion until all the coins are assembled.
The next customer is living on coupons similar to food stamps. Customer and cashier converse while the special currency is counted out. There must be requirements about how the coupons are used. Paying with them takes more time than with cash or credit, and management approval is required for something. The cashier steps away from her slot and scurries to the office. Another 3 minutes are lost. We wait.
Arrayed next to the cashier are bargain items, 3 different products in multiples. In Israel, you don’t just operate a cash. You sell. “Only 20 shekels this week” she says to each client of the store, lifting up some avocado oil. “Or maybe you’d prefer a deal on napkins?” “How do you use the avocado oil,” asks one, and the employee is happy to suggest several ways. A few more minutes lost. All this waiting, I think, for my chocolate bar and milk. But it’s entertaining, and it’s human, and more often than not, the cashier is demonstrating a magnificent Jewish value, total respect for the elderly.
Loren went shopping at Mega with our sister-in-law, Dorit Biran Deckelbaum. The store is as large and well-stocked as any grocery in Montreal, but believe me, the check-out experience is different. Both women chose magnificent strawberries featured upon entry, but notably, with no price attached. At check-out, the woman at Loren's register commented, "The price of these strawberries is too high. Do you really want to buy them?" When my wife heard how much they were, she demurred. Dorit, in her line, did not receive the same friendly advice and paid the high price. She felt her clerk should have been as forthcoming as Loren's and was disappointed, not only because she actually knew her, but because she expects clerks to offer advice when price or quality should be questioned.
One time there was a young visitor from North America in front of us. She didn’t know anything about Israeli currency. The cashier stopped the line and took the time to show her, coin by coin, how to identify the value of each part of a shekel, in itself worth about 30 Canadian cents.
At Office Depot, we thought we could check out quickly, but we had to wait until the cashier put down her cell phone – family emergency, I’m sure, to help another customer whose teen-aged daughter was crying, weeping, sobbing bitterly that whatever her mother was buying her, it wasn’t what she wanted. This time the cashier held her tongue, but neither did she say a word about others waiting to be served. After a five minute temper tantrum, it was our turn.
Try getting on the bus in Montreal without correct change. You might as well get off at the next stop, or be thrown off. Not in Israel. The driver makes change, answers questions about local directions, helps people get transfer receipts into their hands, converses with them as they get on, all part of the reason why a 12 minute car ride to Hebrew University became a 40 minute bus ride through the very same streets.
Once I was paying for several people to ride the bus. I didn’t have perfect change, but close, and more than enough. I didn’t wait for change. So the driver patiently made the 1 shekel and twenty grush change and gave it to another member of our party to give to me.
I don’t wait in lines very patiently, but I’ve taken to observing the human theatre unfolding before me at Israel’s check-out counters, as well as seeing derekh eretz, Jewishly well-mannered behaviour, in action before my eyes. The Israeli check-out counter comes from another world, one where everyone knows each other, even if they don’t. In Israel, with us, you’re family.
Rabbi Leigh Lerner
Saturday, January 14, 2012
My Second Freedom Ride
“Git to the front of the bus, bwah, or else!” That was the end of my first freedom ride, but I was only 13, just a kid boarding the bus from downtown Atlanta to Buckhead. Segregation reigned in 1958 Atlanta, and having arrived from the integrated north, I just knew it was wrong and wanted to make a statement, so I sat in the “colored” section on that Peachtree St. trolley. The driver would have none of it and threatened to throw me bodily off the vehicle.
Now flash to Jerusalem, 2012 – 5772, and a different kind of freedom ride. Come aboard an Egged bus in Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox section dotted with yeshivot and a perfect copy of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe’s home in Brooklyn. Buses in this area of Jerusalem and in many other areas of Israel had, over the last 12 years, become segregated: women in the back and bidden to enter by the back door, and men in the front. “Mehadrin” bus lines grew to 50 in number, despite the ill-feeling they engendered.
Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center, brought the law suit that re-integrated Israel’s buses, but on January 12, Anat, James Cherney, a URJ board member from
Chicago, and I took a short ride to make sure the law was being obeyed and to open the front of the bus to Haredi women.
Anat sat in one of 4 seats facing each other in the front of the bus. Except for three women, every female either boarded from the back and remained there, or boarded from the front and went to the back. Both ends of the bus became quite full, but not a single Haredi man would occupy any of the 3 seats in the vicinity of Anat Hoffman.
One woman boarded the bus and sat by Anat, who exchanged a hello with her. She stayed in that seat for one precious minute, then went to the back. Why? Did she sit there to make a statement momentarily? Or did she lose courage and resign herself to the back, as all the men around her expected her to do?
Another woman rode but three stops. She stayed near the back door, which is just before the women’s section, then left with her heavy case. A third woman boarded with a stroller and stood in a space at the back of the “men’s” section, where Egged provides extra space. It was a double stroller, and she needed the room.
When Anat, Jim Cherney and I left the bus, the area where Anat had been seated filled quickly with black hatted men.
Segregation exists in Jerusalem. Until IRAC won its case, it existed with the assent of the government, the very government that subsidizes the bus companies. Now it is sustained by social pressure. Still, many Haredi women bless IRAC for opening the front of the bus to them again. Only by sitting where we please will Jerusalemites and other Israelis keep their buses integrated. Separate can never be equal.
Be a freedom rider yourself. When you visit Jerusalem, take 2 hours of a morning to hear IRAC’s story and ride a Jerusalem bus as an observer. Your eyes will open not only to parts of Jerusalem the tour buses never go, but to people, issues, and struggles that too often remain hidden from our view of the Jewish State of Israel. If you’re traveling with ARZA, it’s doubly easy to arrange.
Rabbi Leigh Lerner
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Now flash to Jerusalem, 2012 – 5772, and a different kind of freedom ride. Come aboard an Egged bus in Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox section dotted with yeshivot and a perfect copy of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe’s home in Brooklyn. Buses in this area of Jerusalem and in many other areas of Israel had, over the last 12 years, become segregated: women in the back and bidden to enter by the back door, and men in the front. “Mehadrin” bus lines grew to 50 in number, despite the ill-feeling they engendered.
Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center, brought the law suit that re-integrated Israel’s buses, but on January 12, Anat, James Cherney, a URJ board member from
Chicago, and I took a short ride to make sure the law was being obeyed and to open the front of the bus to Haredi women.
Anat sat in one of 4 seats facing each other in the front of the bus. Except for three women, every female either boarded from the back and remained there, or boarded from the front and went to the back. Both ends of the bus became quite full, but not a single Haredi man would occupy any of the 3 seats in the vicinity of Anat Hoffman.
One woman boarded the bus and sat by Anat, who exchanged a hello with her. She stayed in that seat for one precious minute, then went to the back. Why? Did she sit there to make a statement momentarily? Or did she lose courage and resign herself to the back, as all the men around her expected her to do?
Another woman rode but three stops. She stayed near the back door, which is just before the women’s section, then left with her heavy case. A third woman boarded with a stroller and stood in a space at the back of the “men’s” section, where Egged provides extra space. It was a double stroller, and she needed the room.
When Anat, Jim Cherney and I left the bus, the area where Anat had been seated filled quickly with black hatted men.
Segregation exists in Jerusalem. Until IRAC won its case, it existed with the assent of the government, the very government that subsidizes the bus companies. Now it is sustained by social pressure. Still, many Haredi women bless IRAC for opening the front of the bus to them again. Only by sitting where we please will Jerusalemites and other Israelis keep their buses integrated. Separate can never be equal.
Be a freedom rider yourself. When you visit Jerusalem, take 2 hours of a morning to hear IRAC’s story and ride a Jerusalem bus as an observer. Your eyes will open not only to parts of Jerusalem the tour buses never go, but to people, issues, and struggles that too often remain hidden from our view of the Jewish State of Israel. If you’re traveling with ARZA, it’s doubly easy to arrange.
Rabbi Leigh Lerner
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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