To Drive or Not to Drive, That Is The Question
Maybe it isn’t so clear to Jews or others outside of Israel what happens on Yom Kippur in Israel. Cars stop for the day. They just stop. It looks like a post apocalypse movie where the oil ran out one night and all we have left are bicycles and roller blades.
As far as I can tell (people are very vague on this) there really is no enforceable law against driving, it just isn’t done. The police could stop you, but they’d just ask why you were driving, tell you to be careful and let you go. There is no religious police to enforce this kind of thing in Israel as it isn’t a religious state.
Now it is true that this happens in places where observant, religious Jews live in large majority: parts of Jerusalem, highly religious towns like Tzfat (Safed, Zefad, whatever) and many others on every Sabbath: but on a regular Sabbath in Tel Aviv Friday night traffic is bad and the restaurants serving pork or shell fish are full to overflowing.
On Yom Kippur, however, everything stops. Non-observant Jews and observant Jews alike, just hide the car keys. For sure, if your kid falls off his bike and needs the hospital nobody (from both those communities) would think twice about driving the car to the hospital.
But on Yom Kippur the non-religious Jews just organize their lives such that they don’t need to drive.
For sure many of them will not fast, and they probably stock up on DVD’s because the state TV channels shut down (but there’s plenty of other cable channels).
But they just don’t DRIVE their cars. The air smells good, the visibility gets better and from sundown to sundown the streets are full of people strolling or cycling along 10 lane highways. People have found a way to organize their lives that for just one day a year, nobody drives except for emergencies.
I left my apartment to have a look this year and I saw one pickup truck and 3 police cars moving. Slowly. Through the crowds of children on bikes.
Below is a slideshow of what that looks like in Tel Aviv that I found on YouTube, there are many more videos but this kind of gives a good idea.
Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv on YouTube
However, some of you may have heard the stories of violence in Acco this year. Of course this wide agreement among JEWS to selectively observe one of Yom Kippur’s rules and not to drive cars can be abused. As I’ve tried to explain, non-observant Jews almost uniformly observe this rule even though their usual behavior isn’t to observe the laws of the Sabbath (of which Yom Kippur is really a special case).
Arabs, on the other hand, don’t feel this need and as the streets in Jewish parts of Israel are full of children riding carelessly on streets that would normal be chock full of cars, if an Arab decides to drive through these parts, the children’s parents have a right to feel annoyed.
It’s just not something that other Jews do and if they do it, its an emergency and they are driving VERY VERY CAREFULLY (which is certainly not the norm here!)
This is the kind of background you’d never get when AP tell tales of Jews and Arabs fighting over something stupid like someone driving on Yom Kippur. Meryl Yourish picks apart the bias but without really explaining why driving in Jewish areas on Yom Kippur is such a big deal. That’s not a criticism of Meryl, I’ve never really understood or believed the no car thing here until I saw it this year with my own eyes.
Even when you read a first hand account, its not till you understand how widely observed the no car rule is that you get a feel for why fast moving cars driven by anyone, Jew or Arab, on Yom Kippur are SUCH A BIG DEAL.
Sometimes you really do just have to be there.
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About the Author: Besides blogging here, Brian of London hosts 
In the Galil traffic is almost as usual on yom hakippurim and especially in the areas with a lot of Kibbutzim no one seems to have heard about not driving. And since many secular Kibbutzim cannot get a minyan together there is also no prayer in the bet knesset. And with the arab majority in some communities it's just like a typical work day. Mny Israelis there tell me this as if it's something to be very proud of. In fact, I was quite shocked. It's like another world, only some 30 minutes from Haifa.
I live on a secular kibbutz in the Galil and I don't know even one kibbutznik who would drive his car on Yom Kippur. I had to bring a baby to hospital some years ago on Yom Kippur and in the Nahariya region, where many Arab villages are, there was indeed more traffic. But no kibbutz cars (they are easy to recognize because they have these yellow stickers in front). Secular kibbutzim also usually don't have batey knesset and the members don't pray at all. Kibbutz members who want to go to pray on Yom Kippur usually go to city family members. We have a special cultural program on Yom Kippur that is related to the idea of the day, and there are members who fast.
After 10 years of net trawling i have truly reached the bottom. I have 2 questions if you would be so kind……….Are you really Australian? If so, how does an Australian find anything in common with the racist apartheid region they call Israel that is verifiably the most hated area on planet earth!??
M Ossad (such a clever name. Well crafted. </end saracsm>) I did not write the post if you care to pay attention, but I'll answer you anyway. 1. Yes I am really Australian. 2. Because it is not a "racist apartheid region." And considering I like to align myself with the good guys, Israel is the easy choice. I can guess which side you are aligned with, judging by your wording and evident lack of intelligence.
Never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed your judgmental highness ; ) Worldwide polls from nearly every nation on earth show that Israel is, rightly or wrongly, the most despised area on the planet. How does that equate with your seemingly narrow view that Israel are the "good guys"?
"Worldwide polls from nearly every nation on earth show that Israel is, rightly or wrongly, the most despised area on the planet." I love this comment. I hate having injections at the dentist. I suspect if asked most people hate injections at the dentist. Does a world wide poll mean we shouldn't let dentists inject us? Hatred of Israel is hatred of Jews. The same old same old. No less dangerous but no more surprising. If you do your best to believe the hatred is justified (so many others do it so its OK for me to do it too) and then you borrow concepts from another continent and stretch the metaphor to fit your abhorrent views, then yes, you too can hate Israel and pretend its not about hating Jews and what Jews gave to the world. The rule of Law, applied equally to all without bias. The amazing revelation that all people are created equal in the eyes of one God and that no man's father is greater than any others. It's all too much to put in a comment that shouldn't be left to feed the trolls. You've been instructed to hate Jews, its OK. Some of the cleverer people in your position, when told to hate Jews see the lies for what they are but its no surprise that most don't. Many millions of good Germans didn't see the lies either so you're in good company. Tyrants have always wanted to tell their people to hate the Jews because equality is what Tyrants can't bear. Today's Tyrants might not always look like South American dictators (though there are some of those today), they might look like employees of state broadcasters or professors of phony grievance studies. But their belief in equality is very different from the Jewish beliefs so they desire to crush Jewish ideas (and the Jews who hold them).
"Hatred of Israel is hatred of Jews"……….are you for real, seriously!? What the f are you on about Brian, i dont hate anybody until given good reason, i am here merely asking questions and seeking the Israeli side of the story.
You just had to say that "Israel is, rightly or wrongly, the most despised area on the planet". NOW if you'd inserted the word Government after Israel you'd have been on a better wicket. I'd have even joined you (for different reasons). But you didn't say Israel's Government, or the "actions of the Zionist Regime". You said Israel. Israel is the Nation of the Jews. Criticise how Jews (and the significant Arab minority in the Kinneset) are running the place by all means, but when you say "Israel is the most despised area on the planet" you join the multitudes of irrational Jew Haters. Enjoy your new Islamic and and Nazi friends. Or wise up. Choice is yours.
Speaking of wising up, you cannot be a NATION until you declare your borders which the Zionist area, region, entity has never done. What the f has Islam or Nazi have to do with our banter or is the eternal victim rearing its ugly head?
Don't you see you are giving away your true views? "Eternal victim"? Comes straight out of a Stormfront site. You asked me before about Israel being the most despised nation on Earth. Leaving aside the accuracy of that statement, I can very easily explain why anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment exists. Isaiah 53 :""(3) He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with sickness; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not" This refers to Israel. Israel is despised because that is G-d's plan. But not to worry. It won't always be that way, and those on the wrong side of history will be in for a nasty surprise.
Two birds with one stone.
Besides, nothing makes the world who looked the other way whenever Jews were killed and persecuted feel better than finding an explanation why "the Jews deserved it" or claiming that they "do even worse now". No need for checking the conscience. How convenient and easy. It's one of the most primitive mechanisms of the human mind, dehumanizing and blaming the victim.
Just let this damn troll starve
[...] hasn’t had the chance to post much about the Acco riots and the post I wrote yesterday about what happens on Yom Kippur, even in non religious neighborhoods was not meant to be about the riots. I had that post in my mind long before I knew what happened in [...]
I do understand the whole respecting a holiday for observant jews by other (perhaps secular) jews, but i do not understand why this should be forced upon non-jews (christians, muslims, bahai, others) who are living in Israel as well. Wouldn't we want Jews and other non-muslims to live their own lifes as well and not be enforced to some islamic law in islamic countries as well?
As I say, its not really forced on any one. You can drive if you're slow and careful about it. The police patrol and one or two cars do venture out. Most normal people would realise that killing or hurting a child is something to be afraid of. From a religious point of view, riding a bike is little different from driving a car. I know one Doctor who has often had to return home from the hospital during Yom Kippur and says the experience of driving is not fun: apart from the funny looks, you just have to be so careful. One of the people we were with early on the evening of Yom Kippur was pregnant and didn't feel well. At midnight she was driven carefully to a hospital. In this case if you can't organise you life such that on one holiday you can stay home (or stay in one place) from sundown to sundown you really need to look better at your organisational skills.
Suzanne, would you give a mad party on Good Friday if you live next to deeply observant Protestant neigbours? Or on Corpus Christi when you live among pious Catholics? I hope you wouldn't. Nobody is forced to observe Yom Kippur, and as I said above, in Arab towns people do drive. But why not respect a holy day of a religion other than your own? I wish my Arab colleagues a happy Id el Fitr when it's their holiday, and they bring cookies and other stuff for their holidays. I don't eat in their presence when they have the Ramadan fast. Nobody forces me to do it. It's just a matter of courtesy and making their fast a bit easier.
M Ossad Why don't you stick your head back where it belongs,in that dark and moist place from where you just pulled it out. Signed……. Darren Malone A Ridgy Didge Dinky Die True Blue meat pie eating, beer guzzling (VB ofcourse) Saint Kilda supporter,M ossad would you like to make something of it?.
What if the life of the pregnant woman and/or the unborn child was in danger. You really think that the ambulance still would drive slowly on Jom Kippur?
Of course it's not respectful when driving like crazy through a religious neighbourhood during Jom Kippur. But driving in normal speed through Nazareth and even Haifa, should not be such a big problem. As if in the back ol' times the Bedouins would stop herding their cattle during Jom Kippur or other non-Jews would stop doing their businesses during Jom Kippur. Jom Kippur is a day in which you should reflect yourself and not start pointing at others already – even if that person is bothering you by noise.