Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Yom Haatzmaut in Tel Aviv - A big village or just another big city?

A blog post by Adam. We arrived in Tel Aviv on Yom Hazikaron, or Memorial Day. While we missed the evening ceremonies, we were present at 11:00 am when the entire country observed a moment of silence. At exactly 11:00 people stopped walking, cell phones went quiet, and cars stopped dead in their tracks. For an entire minute the noise, hustle and bustle of Tel Aviv ceased, and all was silent. How incredible that an entire country would stop in honor of fallen soldiers...not exactly the American style Memorial Day.

That evening, Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, began. We went to Rabin Square, and watched a performance of singing and dancing. There we met Steve and Shelley from Toronto who have spent 6 months of the past few years living in Israel because their 20 something son has also been living in Israel. They were incredibly friendly and very proud of Israel. At one point Shelley commented that while Israelis could be a little brusk and pushy she knew that if she was ever in trouble or hurt on the street everyone would stop what they were doing to help her out. Israel was the kind of place where people looked out for one another. It was sort of like a giant village. True to form, before we left the performance Shelley provided us with her son's email address so that he could help us with our plans to do the Sea to Sea hike in a couple weeks.

After the performance we wandered the streets where people of all ages were out - some singing, some dancing, some spraying shaving cream all over, some just hanging out and chatting with friends. It was quite the scene with so much energy. Just before arriving at our hostel, however, we passed a man who was sprawled across the sidewalk with a very infected leg protruding from a blanket. Although hundreds of people walked past him nobody stopped to help (including us). It was awful and so different than the image Shelley had presented an hour before. Why did nobody stop? Was it because help had already been called? Or because he was a person of color? Or because Tel Aviv was really just like any other big city, where people take care of themselves and tend to avoid strangers. We will never know, though we certainly can't help but ask ourselves why we didn't try do anything to help.

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