Despite the fact that I have not ridden the public buses since my arrival in Israel three months ago due to their high terror risk, when I travel the country, I do ride private buses that go directly from point A to point B and have highly enforced security. This past weekend, I went home with my Israeli roommate on one such bus. As I stepped on the bus, aside from being hit by a sea of green army uniforms worn by faces of young boys and girls practically filling half the bus, I also noticed that the bus was already completely full and I’d have to sit on the floor. Little did I know that within the duration of that bus ride I would be provided with much insight into Israeli society.
Once situated in the aisle, I started up my Coldplay album and began to enjoy the ride. Ahead of me was the panoramic view of the open winding road surrounded by the magnificent mountains and countryside. Then, I looked in the driver’s rear view mirror. I noticed that the driver alternated looking at the road and at all of us on the bus. Upon seeing the passengers all at ease and resting, he’d make this face of satisfaction, almost fatherly in a way. Something especially struck me about the bus driver: how important his job was to him, and his realization of how important his service was to Israel. You could see that in his mind, he didn’t feel like some disgruntled Greyhound driver, rather, like an established essential role in Israeli society.
I started looking around on either side of me, noticing all of the shoes that surrounded me: Clogs, tattered and worn Keds, big black boots, business shoes, black leather laceups. After studying the shoes a little longer, I looked up, tracing each pair of shoes to their respective owners. The clogs were worn by an indie-hippiesh girl probably in her mid-twenties. The Keds were sported by an elderly woman wearing a head covering and long skirt. The black boots were those of a baby-faced soldier, wearing his olive uniform and cradling an M-16 rifle with its head to the ground. The business shoes were paired with a full suit and tie that were worn by an executive-looking middle-aged man. The simple black pair was accompanied by a full suit, long white beard and black velvet kippah (skull-cap). When I studied the people a little longer, the image of the young soldier sitting next to the religious man was extremely juxtaposed, yet, neither seemed to be phased in the least by the person he was sitting next to.
It was then that I realized these people represented a cross-sectional paradigm of Israeli society. Each knew his role, however, each was also comfortable with that of his neighbor, no matter how glaringly different their lifestyles and beliefs were. Then, I realized, the reason each person was so comfortable with himself, yet also with those surrounding him, was due to the Israeli-Jewish dynamic. In a country the size of New Jersey each and every person really matters and affects society. It is as though, just as the bus driver realized, each person is single-handedly holding the country together, just by fulfilling his function.
When I spoke about it later with my roommate, she said: “The thing that is so great about Israel is that if you drive by someone’s crops and see that they are bountiful, you aren’t envious of him even if yours aren’t, because you know that it is good for the country’s economy as a whole.” Instead of each person living his life in his self-important independent bubble, as we often tend to do in the U.S., each person is not only making his own salary, but also really enhancing everyone else’s. This realization made me especially blissful, sitting on the hard floor of that bus, because I too, was an essential part to the whole picture. Without tourists and students such as myself, Israel’s entire industry would be without a market.
Israelis are often referred to as “sabras.” A sabra is a prickly-peared fruit, hard and spiky on the outside, yet soft and sweet on the inside. My experience on the bus couldn’t have better exemplified this persona of Israelis. Each person sat quietly next to one another; however, I believe that we all knew we were really in this together, in a quest to live peacefully and prosperously in the face of the hardships and challenges presented in the country each and every day. Toward the end of the ride, the bus driver looked back again, except that time, I smiled.
Leah Vitale is a Collegian columnist on exchange in Israel.
