Day 11: Shabbat in Tel Aviv... aka beach time

Young Judaea is a pluralistic organization, such that all sects of Judaism are welcome to participate and everyone is free to practice their religion in a supportive environment. However, Shabbos tends to lean toward the more religious end of the spectrum, and one of the major rules enforced by YJ (and, therefore, yours truly) is that Shabbat is to be kept in all public places – i.e., no music, cell phones, writing, money exchange, etc. outside your hostel bedroom from Friday night to Saturday night.
I have two words to say to that: lame ass. Fortunately, for the sake of all of us secular, atheist Jews, I’ve found a creative way around this whole “keeping Shabbat” thing, and that is finagling my way into a cab ride to the emergency room.
Before you chuckle and ask what I did to myself this time, let me just proclaim that all I did was walk into the corner of my bed a few times and develop a large bruise on my knee. My chanicha, on the other hand, leaned too hard on a glass door and sunk her hand through shattered glass, obtaining something like 16 cuts up and down her forearm in the process.
Dvir and I hopped in a cab and took our little troublemaker downtown to the Tel Aviv hospital, which pretty much takes the cake for coolest place in the “other” holy city, way beyond Shenkin Street or the shuk or Yaffo or any of those tacky tourist traps. First of call, the longest amount of time you can spend at a site like Kikar Rabin is like 45 minutes, one hour tops, after which point your mind begins to wander and you start thinking about the McDonald’s across the street and how long it’s been since your last cheeseburger, rather than the sorrow and whatnot of Rabin’s assassination. Spend more than 30 minutes at the shuk and you’ll probably develop a rash or at least rug burn from squeezing by so many peasants in the tightly packed alley. But the ER? You can easily pass four, even five hours there without ever getting bored.
Attraction #1: A man in his fifties or sixties strolls in around 15 minutes after we arrive in the ER waiting area. He is wearing denim shorts and a white pocket t-shirt, and he carries a bag with some recent purchases from a nearby mukulet – a box of cookies, a bread roll, and some cigarettes - you know, just the necessities. In his other hand is a bouquet of wilted flowers. Had he been American, I would have pinned him as a Joe or Bob, but seeing as those names don’t normally pop up in Israel I’d guess he’s either a Yosi or Yitzhak. Not only is this man sloppy drunk, but he keeps letting out these reverberating coughs – not those weak, gurgled, pneumonia puffs that are a mere aftershock in the greater scheme of lung ailments; we’re talking, the earth-shattering explosions that cause you to dry heave and buckle over as you feel as though your entire lung could hurtle out of your mouth at any moment, but it doesn’t matter because you’re probably shitting yourself at the same time or developing some kind of hemorrhoid while your body struggles to release these colossal thunder hacks without dislodging any internal organs.
Every few minutes or so, he closes his eyes and purses his lips, attempting to force his approaching coughing burst to stay inside, but he suddenly feels it erupting through his ribcage and throat, ultimately driving into the open air with fiery velocity. He leans over his knees, releases nine roaring blasts and cries out “nurse, nurse” in between coughs, at which point the storm subsides and a lopsided smiles appears on his face, as if realizing that his body is still in one piece.
A nurse finally approaches to make sure he hasn’t died yet. She is relatively attractive, dressed in petrol-blue scrubs, with her highlighted black hair tied back in a ponytail by a fake Dior barrette. She slows her pace as she smells the whiskey and half-digested dinner in the air. “How are you,” she demands in Hebrew, glaring at him as though this is the 14th time she’s seen him in her waiting room this month.
“Everything’s OK,” he replies, shoving the bouquet in her direction.
“I don’t want,” she spits back, brushing the sickly flowers aside as he makes a feeble grab for her hand.
Fifteen minutes and three more coughing waves later, a nearby patient is discharged. Our comrade leaps from his seat and into the newly vacant bed before anyone has time to change the sheets or tell him otherwise, not that it would have made any difference. Within seconds, he has passed out, snoring louder than a leaf blower, his left leg hanging off the cot and twitching sporadically against the folded curtain.
Attraction #2: A man who should have his wheelchair license revoked, because he keeps ramming his wife into doorways. Incidentally, it is her knee that needs to be treated in the first place.
Attraction #3: My chanicha, getting three sets of stitches on her forearm. Apparently viewing of this attraction is severely limited, and I was hostilely expelled from the observation area because there were too many people in the doctor’s way.
“But I’m the madricha!” I pleaded.
“Go over there, you’re disturbing me,” she asserted.
Israeli hospitals are the best.