The past few weeks, the people of Israel have been living with constant tension — but they’re also a nation on vacation

Photo: Flash90

There are many ways to take the pulse of a country, but one of the best might be to spend time on its buses and trains, keeping an eye trained on patterns and an ear cocked to repeating rhythms. The past few weeks, the people of Israel have been living with constant tension — but they’re also a nation on vacation, filling the roads and the skies as they seek a somewhat safe (is anywhere safe?) summertime diversion. If you’ve also been spending time on the country’s buses, trains, and highways, you’ll probably recognize this extremely unscientific list of scenes you are likely to find.

Someone with a guitar. Whether it’s outside Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station or at a windswept bus stop near Meron, sometimes it feels like the entire country is moving to a guitar soundtrack. Travel its breadth and you’ll see Bais Yaakov girls, dati-leumi boys with soup-bowl yarmulkes and long peyos, secular teens in ripped jeans, yeshivah bochurim — all with that telltale case slung over their shoulders. Maybe it’s because guitars are easy to learn, maybe it’s because they’ve been voicing sabra dreams and fears for decades, maybe it’s just because they’re so portable, perfect for that impromptu kumzitz — whatever the reason, if you linger at bus stops or outside train stations, you’ll often find someone crouching over a guitar, strumming soul music as the traffic zooms by.

Someone learning, davening, or saying Tehillim. Buses aren’t quite batei medrash, but there’s always someone sitting with an open sefer, mouthing the words silently. Any time of night or day, there’s someone catching up on davening and any number of passengers listening to shiurim. But these spiritual pursuits aren’t always conducted in silence. If you want to know the weekly parshah, someone will likely be intoning shnayim mikra. Amid the dinging of the electronic doors, there’s often a maggid shiur prepping aloud. One Adar I even got a preview of the upcoming Megillah leining from a baal korei practicing assiduously a few rows ahead. And rare is the bus that isn’t protected on its perilous journey through Mideast traffic by a woman saying Tehillim in a back seat.

Someone conducting an extremely personal conversation in a very loud voice. Israelis aren’t big proponents of boundaries; why save a private conversation for behind closed doors when you can do it in front of a full busload of people? Take, for example, the 30-something woman sitting on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem train, dressed in that demure Bais-Yaakov-teacher style complete with a short, conservative sheitel, very loudly and confidently guiding a distraught woman whose daughter was embroiled in a nasty divorce. Every last passenger heard about this advisor’s recommended negotiating strategy, the benefits and possible disadvantages of involving the police, and the likelihood of Mafia involvement. Luckily there were no children on that train car, but I doubt she would have noticed. This may have been the most egregiously personal conversation I’ve heard conducted in public, but over the years those trains cars have overheard lots of dating dilemmas, surgical sagas, and family feuds — generously aired at full volume.

A Southeast Asian fellow traveler. Living in a frum neighborhood, you don’t always process it, but on public transportation, you can’t help but realize that many non-Jews reside in this country. Some are here to study. Many are here to work — for all that Israelis kvetch about their low pay, these foreign workers consider Israel a goldeneh medinah, and they faithfully send the bulk of their salaries to their families back home in the Philippines or Sri Lanka. We know the Beis Hamikdash was a magnet to foreigners from all nations, with its promise of Divine proximity and swiftly answered prayers. It’s fascinating to note that even without a Beis Hamikdash, this land still exerts a powerful pull across the globe.

Lots of little travelers. If you fly through a European airport with a nice-sized frum family, you’ll likely find yourself the subject of stares and whispers, and not in a good way. Not so in the Promised Land, where children (and strollers) are welcome and present at almost every life cycle event — at vacation venues, concerts, weddings, and even at levayos. And it’s not only the religious population that celebrates children. Travel the country and you’ll inevitably meet decidedly secular-looking parents shepherding a crew of little ones, close in age, onto the train. In this swiftly Westernizing country, “mishpachah bruchah, a blessed family” is still the national nickname for large households. While cat ladies might be an important voting demographic in the US, Israelis know there’s no home as blessed as the one filled with the sounds of lots of little kids.

Someone giving mussar/life advice. Your baby is cold. Your baby is hot. You need to be more patient with your wife. That’s no way to dress in public. Turmeric, it can cure almost anything! The yeshivahs these days are teaching it all wrong. If you keep feeding them those taffies, they’ll have no teeth left soon. The problems all start when you vote for the left. Little boy, you should be helping your ima with those bags. Ima, give your son a bag to carry — they’re too heavy for you and it’s good chinuch for him.

As the wheels of the buses turn round and round, the mussar and life advice keep coming, freely dispensed by fellow citizens who don’t quite understand that no one asked their opinion and no one solicited their guidance. Or maybe it’s we who don’t understand that in this little country, everyone’s family, and wouldn’t a fellow family member want someone to tell them the baby’s too cold?

Then there’s one more sighting, but you’ll only encounter this one if you’re lucky:

Someone who feels it. If you regularly travel the roads, tunnels, highways, and high-tech bridges that overlay the centuries of history, you can forget. What was once thrilling and moving becomes just another traffic jam on the way to work. That’s why it helps, sometimes, to meet the newcomer who’s seeing it all for the first time.

Once, on my way back from Ben-Gurion Airport, I found myself sitting near Kathy, newly arrived and very intimidated by the foreign language and setting. She was so relieved to find a fellow American who could help her. As the train hurtled toward Jerusalem, I learned that she lived on a US Army base in North Carolina and learned Tanach every week a phone chavrusa. We kept chatting until our train car emerged from one of those stone tunnels and she saw the rolling hills of Yerushalayim — and she started to sob. “I learn about this every week, the prophets, the kings, but seeing it… I can’t believe I’m here,” she said, completely overcome.

When you live here, it becomes normal to speed past the desert where Dovid Hamelech hid, to see modern green highway signs directing you to the mountain of Eliyahu Hanavi’s showdown, to pass the mountaintop that evoked Rabi Akiva’s laughter and his friends’ tears. They are just by-the-ways on your daily byways, background details on your way to your vacation destination, or that wedding, or your rendezvous with the waiting washing machine. But sometimes those fellow passengers lend you their glasses, and you see it through their eyes. And then it becomes a whole different journey.

Wishing all our readers safe travels, wherever you live. And may we all make it to our final destination, the one we keep praying for, very soon. 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1026)