We arrived early Friday morning, slept a few hours at a hotel in Tel Aviv and then met the group from Holland for lunch. We went to a shopping mall near the hotel but to our surprise we were told that the restaurants and stores would probably start closing around 2 PM. Why? Because the employees had to be able to get home before the start of the sabbath, which is actually called the “Shabbat.”
Perhaps I am woefully ignorant of Jewish culture. I obviously knew that the Jews have the sabbath every Saturday, but I thought there were enough secular Jews and that Israel was a secular enough country that the whole darn country wouldn’t shut down. I was obviously wrong. The Shabbat starts at sundown on Friday, which for us in November meant around 5 PM. And since no one is allowed to do any work after sunset, everybody packs up and goes home a couple of hours before.
Okay, I thought, does that mean we can’t check in at the hotel if we are late? Well, apparently there is enough practical realism to realize that you can’t have a billion-dollar tourism industry if there are no services one day a week. So we could check in at our hotel and we could eat dinner there, because the entire staff were – at least for that day – Arabs.
We decided to eat dinner at the hotel because we were tired and the hotel was some distance from the center of Jerusalem—and most restaurants were closed. Most of the other guests were obviously Jews, and given that they dug into the buffet with zeal, it was obvious that Jews can eat on the Shabbat. However, apparently they can’t prepare food—it has to be prepared ahead of time or be prepared by others.
Jerusalem seen from the Mount of Olives.
After dinner comes the next surprise. We were on the fifth floor so we obviously took the elevator. There were three elevators and when Helen and I came out of the dining room, the middle one had the doors open. We obviously walk in, and before the door closes, two Jewish ladies walk in with three children. They first look at us with disapproving looks while holding the door open, and then finally start talking to us. I could barely understand what they said, but the meaning was clear: This was a special Shabbat elevator and it was for Jews only—and we obviously didn’t fit the bill. They clearly wanted us to get out, but I finally had to ask them to let us out so we didn’t have to step on their children.
So the explanation here is that Jews cannot perform any work on the Shabbat. I had always thought they couldn’t do any work for which they got paid, but it is much more complicated than that. Apparently, eating is not work but preparing food is. Walking is not work, and neither is taking the elevator. However, pushing the button in the elevator IS indeed work. So they have a special Shabbat control that allows the elevator to run automatically and stop at each floor, so people can get to their rooms without pushing any buttons. Apparently unlocking your door and turning the handle is NOT work.
Do I sound like I am making fun of the Jews? Well, this is where my logical mind simply cannot help but ask logical questions. For example, I was told that Jews cannot turn on or off the light on the Shabbat. If they want the light on, it has to be turned on before the start of the Shabbat and left on for 24 hours. Okay, I say, sounds logical, but then what about flushing the toilet? If pushing the light switch is work, is it work to flush? If so, it could be a smelly affair at the end of the Shabbat. Quite frankly, I don’t know the answer to that one, as I couldn’t get myself to ask.
The sun goes down behind the city wall.
The bottom line is that I have a hard time taking this seriously. I mean, we have adult human beings who seriously believe that it will damage their prospect of salvation if they flip a light switch. Yet they can open doors and do certain other things that are okay according to their tradition. I was reminded of Jesus’ words to the scribes and Pharisees, “Ye have made the word of God of no effect by your tradition.” Clearly, tradition is more important than logic.
Now, obviously, I have no problem with people having their own customs in their private homes, but this affects an entire nation, which clearly wants people from all over the world to come in and spend their money—only it has to be on certain terms defined by them. You may say, “Well, what’s wrong with the Jews defining terms in their own country?” And I am not saying there is anything wrong with it, I am merely saying it is peculiar compared to any other country I have been in—and it definitely is funny. As to the concept of the Jews and their own country, let me return to that one later.
