I am sitting at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Next to me are two couples from Oklahoma an older Israeli woman and a girl wearing jeans and sandals.
My phone rings and I speak in undeniable New Jersey English. That’s when the Oklahomans ambush me with questions in a deep drawl.
“Y’all live here?”
“Jerusalem ” I say. And think Wow. I live in Jerusalem. Sometimes it hits me. I live in the Holy Land as they call it.
“Well this is our first visit ” one man says as everyone next to him nods in agreement. “We never came before because we were too scared.”
“From what you hear in the news ” I say.
“That’s right.” They all answer together.
“Looks pretty scary in some places in New York and Chicago too ” I say.
“Well where do you think it’s safer?” they ask and I say “Here.”
That’s when their red double-decker open-top sightseeing bus pulls up and they all get on.
I the girl with the jeans and the older woman stay behind.
“How do you wear those stockings in this heat?” the jeans girl asks me and then the older woman chimes in “I want to know that too.”
I just went from a nice New Jersey lunch-box-carrying citizen to a stocking-wearing chareidi.
“And long sleeves ” they add.
“I think it actually seals in the coolness ” I say. “Bedouins have been doing it for ages ” I half joke.
The older Israeli woman gives a tsk like one of those hand swats to wave away a fly. “I live in a building where they make little six-year-old girls wear thick black wool stockings in the summer ” she says.
“Wool?” I ask.
“Thick ” she says. “In the summer.” She gives me “that look.”
“Maybe they don’t have money to buy new summer ones ” I suggest seriously.
She thinks about it for a second. “That’s what it is ” she says and I see the disgust change to mercy for a moment.
We leave it at that.
The bus comes. We get on. All the seats are taken except the one next to the older women who has problems with stockings. I sit down next to her. And of course we talk. It takes about half a minute before we get around to chareidim. She’s really angry about a lot of things but more than angry she’s sad.
“I’ve lived in my building for over 48 years and no one’s ever not said good morning to me if they pass me in the stairwell. But now my building’s all chareidi and I said good morning to one of the neighbors’ sons and he didn’t answer. So I asked his mother ‘Isn’t it derech eretz to say hello to a neighbor?’ And the mother says it’s forbidden to talk to women.” She takes a hard breath.
“I’m 73 years old ” she says. “I live alone I don’t even have a television never did I only listen to the radio very low. Am I offending anyone?” And then she says how hurt she was that they put a Shabbos clock in their hallway and no one invited her to the meeting about it. She says how it’s an American lady who just moved in three years ago and she thinks she owns the building.
I try to tell her that each one is different and not to judge by a few.
And I ask her for her address and I keep thinking how not only should they all say hello but each one should have a chair reserved for her at their Shabbos table.
I know a woman who came to Eretz Yisrael over 30 years ago with only a knapsack on her back not at all knowing where she was going. She wandered into an office in Tel Aviv where they signed her up for a kibbutz outside Jerusalem.
She took a bus from the center of town; the bus was crowded. She wasn’t dressed exactly Jerusalem style. Everyone was giving her cold looks except for a young couple in the back. The woman was wearing a shiny flowered head scarf the man a black hat. They gave her the warmest smile she’d ever seen.
She can see the faces of that couple clearly to this day. It’s one of the reasons she later became religious. That’s how strong and lasting is the power
of impression. —