The Family Car

Yom sheni, 18 Tevet 5770.

People often ask us how we get around.  Jerusalem is thirty to forty minutes away, depending on traffic; and grocery shopping is easier with wheels.  So we brag a little about the family car.  It's big.  It's green.  And it can seat at least forty of our best friends, and their luggage.

Gratitude being a big part of being a Jew, let me share with you a few of the things I love about our car.

Since we have a competent driver, we can all sit in the back, shmoozing and grooving on the scenery.

AND I can make googly-eyes at the Dearly Beloved, without endangering our lives.

There is plenty of room in the "trunk" to store all of the groceries we could possibly want to load into it -- at least all that one monthly paycheck can cover.

And let's talk kedusha.  This morning, for instance, while our faithful driver navigated much scarier traffic than I ever want to deal with, we listened on the speakers to a "Kol Chai" radio broadcast of a commentary on this week's parasha from the holy Ohr HaChaim.  A public radio broadcast of the parasha hashavua is definitely not something I remember experiencing as I tooled along on the Beltway.

It is true that you can't set your clocks by when the family car will arrive to pick us up.  One of the things that we have come to love about Israel is that pretty much the entire country respects Chasidic time.  And let's face it:  the Germans made the trains run on time.  'Nuff said.

At the end of a long day of transporting many of my friends around -- and even people we don't know, as we are very generous -- someone else cleans and stores our family car.

This post is respectfully dedicated to all of the interesting, warm and hard-working Egged bus drivers with whom we've traveled, as well as their extended support staff back at the station.  Thanks, guys!  We wouldn't be anywhere without you.


Haveil Havalim, Issue #250, is up at Tzedek-Tzedek.  He does a nice, loving job with other people's work -- and with his own.  Give it a read.  Some of my best friends post there.

Glossary:
Shmoozing:  talking, chatting, shooting the breeze, chilling
Grooving:  Ask your parents.
Googly-eyes:  Ask your grandparents.
Kedusha:  holiness
Parasha hashavua:  weekly Torah reading
Chasidic time:  The best way to illustrate this concept is to share the following joke.  "What happens when a Chasid (an extremely spiritually-oriented Jew) marries a Yekke (a German Jew)?  Forever after, the couple arrives at every function exactly, precisely 45 minutes late."
Egged:  NOT pronounced like something rough boys do on Halloween night to other people's cars -- pronounced "EH-ged" -- the name of the most prominent bus company in Israel