The Purim Trip to Israel - Oy, What A Trip ! A first-hand account from Chaim Shmendrikson Sitting at the airport in Newark, no one seemed to smile, and the talking was minimal. Some of the masses awaiting boarding were wearing Purim costumes, or maybe that was just the way they normally look, it was hard to tell. The calm was broken by the boarding announcement for the handicapped and special needs passengers with a message everyone else should stay put – could you believe over half the crowd suddenly thought they were disabled? There is a reason for the boarding crunch. The trick is to board the aircraft early or your carry-on luggage might get stuffed on the next plane or if you are lucky – in first class. If only I were so lucky, the travel agent got me a special bargain rate, in the cargo hold. I probably had more space to sit than the economy fliers, who if they weighed more than 120 pounds soaking wet, needed to grease their hips to fit into the seats. Here’s another strange fact: About a third of the passengers hop on board after the scheduled departure time. These are the poor souls who, after the flight, will spend an hour looking everywhere from the bins over the seats to the sinks in the bathrooms wondering where their designer cases were stuffed by the flight crew. On El Al, there’s an extra problem of those big black hats and corresponding hat boxes that many Chasidic men want to store next to their carry-on. Some are the size of a Toyota Prius. Is it possible they are hiding a kid or two in them to avoid paying another air fare? It takes about an hour for the stewardesses to play luggage jockey so the plane can disembark. A twelve-year-old Yeshiva kid in the back of me starts kicking my seat in an oft-repeated scene despite my frequent threats to take his legs off if he continued. If the same kid gets the same seat on the way back, he’s dead meat! Every time I fall asleep – rap – bump- bump! I kept waiting for the turbulence to mask the incessant stampede on my vertebrae. We left the ground shortly after midnight, which means the darkness of the flight never leaves you. There seems to be no set time to daven Shacharit. You leave by the light of moon and arrive at Ben Gurion after sunset. So, the Haredi men and the modern Orthodox people, grab their tefillin at various times on the flight and begin the morning prayers while the plane is in continual night mode. Down come the hat boxes and out come the chapeaus and an occasional shtreimel, and I swear I saw a racoon run out from one of the circular containers and a Satmar Chasid running down the aisle after it. Suddenly I heard a scream – one of the kids escaped from a hat box! They find him two hours later in the cockpit – flying the plane! A stewardess wearing a chicken costume comes down the aisle with a cart full of food, handing out meals for the hungry. A piece of chicken, a salad, a veggie, and a magnifying glass to find it. After about 30 minutes she comes back holding a trash bag and announcing, “Ashpah, Ashpah” (garbage, garbage). A woman three rows in front of me asks if she could go through the trash bag. She’s still hungry and hoping there’s some leftovers in there. Most people on the plane watch movies, listen to music, or try to sleep. On the entire trip, I watch the GPS screen on the monitor in front of me. I want to make the sure the pilot doesn’t make a wrong turn. And, with a little imagination, I can even pretend I am driving to Israel. What an exciting life I lead. Then there is always the Chasid that is not permitted to sit next to a human of the opposite sex and insists they move his seat. On this flight, Rav Shmuel looks out the window of the Boeing jet craft from 30,000 feet up and thinks he sees a woman bathing in the ocean (despite the darkness below). He yells, “Tzniut!!! Move me Qvick! Qvick, I say!” Unfortunately for him, the flight is ninety-one and a half percent filled with Hadassah women and the only available seat they could come up with not next to the female variety, is in one of the lavatories. He was doing very well in there until he ran out of toilet paper. Your mind can really wander when you are in the air for eleven hours. I begin thinking of what I can do for a living if I ever make Aliyah. There’s a lot of money to be made in the religious sector. You can sell “Nerf” stones in the Haredi section of Beit Shemish so they can’t hurt anyone when expressing their disdain at Shabbat violators or those immodestly dressed. In Mea She’arim, you can be a glue salesman for those hundreds upon hundreds of posters that go up daily. I am convinced the walls in that community are five feet thick – one foot of stone and four feet of paper signage. No wonder the streets are so narrow. Want to have fun? Count the number of times the word ‘assur’ appears on posters on any given street in Mea She’arim. That should kill a day! One boy in the neighborhood thought his name was Assur as it heard it so many times from his parents. Another bochur told me he was left on a doorstep when he was three weeks old and until he was bar mitzvah’d, he thought he was a Shalach Manot basket. Well, I got off the plane and presented my passport to customs. The guy in the booth starts laughing hysterically. It’s a good thing he didn’t see the photo on my driver’s license. “Nice Purim costume”, he says. I’m not wearing a costume. It was really an experience. Israelis always do everything better. First, they sent people over to Manhattan to see how drivers handle big city traffic. Then they returned to their country and adapted car horns as the primary means of moving vehicles, even before the light changes. In fact, they instituted the brief yellow before green traffic signals to allow motorists to beep with a vengeance even before the light turns green. What Israel really needs is a foldable car that fits in your pocket while you’re shopping. In all the years of massive growth and development, no one ever thought about parking. And speaking about cars, one day I am going to try and break the Guinness Book of World Records for how many times you can circle around a kikar (small traffic circles at street intersections). After searching for three days, I finally found a parking space in Ra’anana. You have to know the town has at least thirty-five percent Anglo speaking residents and maybe another twenty percent French. At times, you hear more English than Hebrew. I sat down at a table at Café Café in front of a window facing the street so I can see the children from the local school parading in their Purim outfits. “Nice costume!”, the waitress tells me. I am not wearing a costume – and that’s the last time I’ll buy my clothes from the clearance racks in Kmart, not to mention the ten-dollar dress shirt I bought last year at Shop Rite. The thought crossed my mind that if I went to Jerusalem on the next day, I would have to endure one more day of insults. I got back in my car, the one I rented from Eldan that stalls out at every corner, it supposed to save gas that way. The only weapon I had to fight the other Israeli motorists didn’t work either – the horn! It was the last rental they had on the lot at the airport. I think it’s called a Fiat-sco or maybe a Cit- ruin, or something of that ilk. I saw the smirk on the rental clerk’s face when she handed me the paperwork to sign, I should have known. The motorbikes on the road were zipping in and out of traffic and occasionally over or under cars. It’s pretty scary, but they are the only vehicles moving in rush hour. I wanted to get to the beach in Herzliyya Petuach to watch the sunset over the Mediterranean. Maybe if I left about two hours earlier, I would have made it – it’s only ten miles between the towns. While I’m sitting there waiting for the cars to move, a man came up to my car window. I rolIed down the window - it was a Lubavitcher and asking if I put on tefillin today. I was about to tell him yes, when he says, “Nice Purim costume, did you bring that with you from America?” Well, the sun came down just before I got to the water, and Purim was just about over. I went back to the hotel, davened Arvit (Maariv for Ashkenazi fans), had dinner, and went to bed. Purim was over. And the next day, I went into the dining hall for breakfast happy the prior day was over – then the Maitra-d’ asked me why I was still wearing my Purim costume. © 2012, 2018 Jonathan Weber – used with permission of the author.