In honor of Israel’s 62nd birthday, Yom HaAtzmaut on Tuesday, April 20, I’ll forgo the expected op-ed about Israeli government corruption, the Bibi-Obama drama, or the Israeli Rabbinate’s stranglehold on marriage and divorce.
Instead, I offer this love letter to Israel: “Top 10 tiny details about Israel that make it the most wonderful country on earth.”
10. Egged Bus No. 394: The midnight ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat. The trip begins in the gray-stucco slums of south Tel Aviv. Two hours later, you’re rolling through the desert beneath a blanket of stars. You crack open the window. The desert smells dry and ancient, like an attic. At dawn, you pull into Eilat as the city comes to life.
9. The way Israelis refuse to cross the street on a red light. Drivers blare their horns the instant the light turns green. Yet pedestrians refuse to cross the street until the sign turns green. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon at 3 a.m., the streets bare and not a car in sight.
8. The Jewish soul of even the most secular Israelis. I served in the Israeli army with kibbutz kids who were so anti-religious that they never even had a bar mitzvah. But on Friday nights, as the brigade sung the Sabbath Kiddush en masse, I could see my secular comrades mouthing the words.
7. Flush handles on Israeli toilets. Almost all Israeli toilets, both public and in homes, have two flush handles — one for “light” loads, and one for heavy ones. This saves Israel’s most precious natural resource: water. And it’s genius.
6. Drop-dead gorgeous Israeli soldiers. The men are hunky, the women beautiful. Try not to drool as you watch them strut down Ben Yehudah Street in their olive-green uniforms, M-16s slung across their backs. It’s not so much their physical beauty that charms us as what they embody: Jewish power.
5. Shuk Ha-Carmel on Friday afternoons. So many things about Israel drive me mad. There is a strike of some sort every week. The Knesset is trapped in a state of perpetual gridlock. The bureaucracy is crippling. And yet, when I step into the Carmel Market and hear the shopkeepers barking their wares, smell the mixture of frying lamb, goat cheese and human sweat, and watch the people line up to buy flowers for Shabbat, I remember why I love Israel so much. It’s the excitement of the place, but also the Middle Eastern-ess of it — the barking, the bargaining, the haggling that’s at once friendly and brutal. Friday afternoons at the market, with only a couple of hours until sundown, are the best way to really understand Israel.
4. Chocolate milk in a sack. Half a liter of Kibbutz Yotvata chocolate milk sealed in a palm-sized plastic bag that you rip open with your teeth and then squeeze, causing the milk to shoot into your mouth in a way that makes you feel like you’re drinking straight from the udder of a chocolate cow. Need I say more?
3. The incredible bond among Israelis. Maybe it’s a remnant of shtetl life in Europe, or perhaps it has something to do with living so close to your enemy. Whatever the reason, Israelis act as if everyone is everyone else’s next-door neighbor.
The first time I experienced this unique bond was the week I arrived in Israel to begin my army service. I was driving in a rental car when a guy pulled up next to me at a stoplight and beeped his horn. “Hey, achi!” he called. “My girlfriend’s thirsty. You got water?” Beside me, on the passenger seat, was a bottle of water. But it was half empty.
I held up the bottle. “It’s already open,” I said. “No problem,” he replied, and stuck out his hand.
A week later, I was over for dinner at the apartment of my girlfriend’s family. We had ordered pizza. Finally, after two hours, the pizza guy showed up on his motor scooter. He was disheveled and sopped with sweat. “I got lost,” he whimpered.
“So come inside! Sit!” said my girlfriend’s mother, Tzionah. “Coffee or tea?”
“Coffee,” said the pizza guy. “Milk and two sugars.”
While Tzionah made the coffee, my girlfriend’s father, Menashe, opened the pizza box. “Please take.” He offered a slice. The pizza guy waved him off. “Nu! You’re offending me!” said Menashe. “What’s your name?”
“Oren,” said the delivery guy.
“Oren. I insist. Eat.”
And I’ll be damned if Oren the pizza guy didn’t sit down at the kitchen table and eat the pizza he’d just delivered.
2. Dropping off a passenger at Ben-Gurion Airport. You pull up to the departure door, hug your loved ones goodbye and watch them walk into the terminal. Then you inhale a breath of sweet Israeli air, look up at the cloudless Tel Aviv sky, and think, “They have to leave … but I get to stay in Israel.”
1. I leave this one up to you. What do you love most about Israel? E-mail me at [email protected]. I’ll post your responses on www.joelchasnoff.com.
Joel Chasnoff is a stand-up comedian and the author of “The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah.” He lives in New York and wrote this piece for JTA.