Israel: 'Can You Do This Where You Live?'

Recently I blogged elsewhere about a telling – and moving – experience I had during my daily hitchhiking commute to and from work between Jerusalem and the community of Efrat where I live, south of Bethlehem. In it I mused over an unexpected, and telling slice-of-life snapshot about Israel that you probably don’t hear much about in news coverage abroad.

Today’s snapshot developed out on an evening’s ride homeward aboard Egged’s No. 71 stretch city bus, as it trundled southward from downtown along Hebron Road, and towards the junction where hitchhikers headed towards the Gush Etzion settlement bloc gather. The 20-minute bus ride then continues on into the Gilo neighborhood (yes, that Gilo – but that’s a story for another time).

Anyway, I got on in town, and, as the bus pulled away from the stop, made my way down the aisle to just past the mid-bus articulated segment, where I sat down next to another guy in a set of four seats, two facing the other two.

A stop after mine a young couple with two young children – a toddler and an infant – got on. The two were each slinging a child in one arm, as they both struggled with a collapsible stroller, and all the bags, bottles and accessories that are part and parcel of moving tykes.

The driver allowed the parents to find their seats and then return to pay their fares.

After folding down and stowing the stroller mid-bus, the wife squeezed into the seat behind me, with the infant in her arms and bags at her feet. Her husband stood alongside me in the aisle and looked around for a moment, while still clutching to his chest the deeply sleeping toddler in one hand, and a wad of bills in the other.

(…still with me? Good, here’s where it gets interesting)

After a moment’s thought, the dad, who wanted to go pay the tickets for the ride, took his young son and gently laid him – still fast asleep – across the two seats facing me and the other guy. And then, without a word, gesture, or other acknowledgment to us walked away to pay the fares.

Go back and read that last sentence again. I’ll wait. When you get back, take a look at the camera-phone photo I snapped, while I reached out with my other hand to steady the child:

Face fuzzed at dad’s request, of course.

Not only did the doting father trust two unknown male strangers on a public bus to watch over his two-year-old child while he went to pay the driver, he also assumed, no – expected – that we’d no doubt catch the child if it fell off the seat as the bus lurched and swerved through traffic – which happens a lot, as anyone who’s ever ridden an Israeli bus can attest.

The guy sitting next to me also instinctively reached out to steady the kid (who peacefully dreamed through it all…) as the bus accelerated up one hill.

While this may strike some as irresponsible parenting, it’s not when viewed in context: public transportation is widely used here, in a land about the size of New Jersey or Wales. Nor is it the first time I’ve seen such an assumption of trust and shared values among strangers here; similar examples abound, on buses and elsewhere.

Incredible as it may sound abroad, handing kids to strangers to watch over while fumbling for bus fare is just generally accepted behavior, so much so that even the father was surprised that I even thought to point out the incongruity of the situation to him.

But I ask you: Can you still do this where you live? And dollars to donuts you’ve never heard stories like this out of Israel, am I right?

Look, I’m not naïve nor trying to be pollyannish; too many war, terrorism, kidnapping and, yes, pedophile stories datelined Israel are big news too, and rightly so.

But, from this side of the keyboard, it’s just these intimate, slice-of-life moments that never seem to make it into the foreign media coverage when Israel is in the headline that I’d like to share with you from time to time.

To quietly revel aloud (and for me, in a very personal aside, cathartic, after wallowing in hard news all day…) in those small moments, and in the unlikely places here that the foreign media never get to – or usually even care to mention.

Places like a Jerusalem city bus, where a tired, still struggling mother and father put their trust not in princes, but in strangers, as we all rolled homeward together on a cold and misty winter’s night.