Shalom Israel!

“This is an extra cleaning service we provide,” the dashing Israeli security officer at Zurich airport winked at me. He started rubbing my travel bag and shoes with a wipe to detect if I had been around explosives or other bomb ingredients. They say that Israelis are gregarious and hospitable and I must say that I think it’s true. After waiting at the El Al gate for about an hour, I had a couple of phone numbers in my pocket, more than a few invitations, and lots of good advice. I felt wide-eyed and excited and hopped on the plane for a week of work and two days off.

(Graffiti in a back alley behind Rothschild Boulevard.)

About four hours later, I was at Ben Gurion International Airport. Soon, I was driving my rental car from Tel Aviv to Netanya, curious to meet my Israeli colleagues the next morning. If you are used to driving in Brussels, getting around Israel is a breeze. Drivers are just as creative and they pretend the lanes are mere suggestions. They drive like dolphins: they cheerfully pass, slow down, speed up and dance with grace around each other.


When a friend of a friend gave me a ride a few days later, she chitchatted while reading directions from a snippet of paper that had one line in Hebrew that was supposed to cover a distance of about 100 kilometers. Whenever she thought she was close to the highway exit she was looking for, she slammed the brakes until the car did about 40 kilometers an hour. I thought she was a very bad driver who had just gotten her license until she had to back up on an overcrowded parking lot: she turned her head and reversed the car in a few seconds in a manoeuver that would have taken me at least half an hour.

(This elevator operates automatically on Shabbat. See NY Times, For Jewish Shabbat, elevators that do all the work)

After a couple of intense days at the office, it was Thursday night and the weekend had started. My new friend Tali invited me to her friend’s wedding. Wow, how much more generous can you be? Because it was so impromptu, she assured me she would bring me a proper dress and I had to quickly get up to speed on the rules of a Jewish wedding. And so I took off, carrying good advice from Sima, the receptionist at the office who directed and, of course, also warned me in true Jewish-mother style – in Israel they would say “Polish mother.” She made me promise I would watch out and not drive through the religious neighborhoods of Jerusalem on the Shabbat; she warned me people might throw rocks at my car if I would take a turn into the wrong neighborhood.


The Wedding


I think only a small part of the Israeli weddings is really religious but I was lucky. This was a truly religious wedding and religious Jewish weddings are very convenient for lesbians and gays: men and women dance separately. A fabricated wall divides both groups at the beginning of the evening. I put on the dress that my new friend had brought me and took off my shoes to dance. We had a great time dancing in the moonlight.

(The wedding was outside and even later at night it was still very warm - something very remarkable for Belgians.)

(A cloth wall separated men from women. But as you can see, the division was not that strict and the crowd was a mixture of Orthodox and less Orthodox guests.)

Some guys brought their guns to the wedding. I was initially startled when I saw them. Someone explained that these kids were in the army. When IDF soldiers come home for the weekend, they have to put their gun under three locks or carry it with them and not leave it for a second, not even for a wedding. Though these kids look like they are only 18 years old – and they probably are – they seem to be pretty responsible with their guns. Of course seeing guns was new to me. After a few hours, I felt more intrigued than startled. Finally I was seeing a part of the real world.


(To be continued! I wrote three more blog posts about my trip to Israel. I will post them soon :-))