1.
On Wednesday morning, the day after the elections in the United States, I got in my car. It was eight in the morning, I turned on the radio and waited to hear the true results, or at least what the direction was, what was emerging, who was going to be president of the United States.
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I wasn't alone. On the road next to me were hundreds of drivers who got into their cars in the morning, turned on the radio, and tried to understand the same thing. And not just on the road next to me, but on all the roads of the world, or the kitchens of the world, or the offices of the world, or the bedrooms of the world (depending on the time zone), people were sitting at that moment, turning on the radio or the television or the Internet, and trying to understand.
Wow. What a moment of global tension. The entire cosmos is waiting to know what's going on. Then, the Earth heard, in seventy languages, the following amazing answer: To understand who won the election in the United States, you need to know who the residents of three states voted for: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And in these states, the counting has just stopped.
Why did it stop? Is there a computer glitch? Something happened? No, on the contrary, nothing happened. Everything is ticking like clockwork, and the clock on the East Coast of the United States shows that it is already after one in the morning. It is late. The writers have gone to bed. They will continue their work with dedication tomorrow morning.
I guess billions of people around the world were shocked to hear this report. Rabek, they said in seventy languages, what's the problem with continuing to count? It's all one in the morning. Keep going. The whole world is waiting. And the world is waiting, you're waiting, this is your country, aren't you? Don't you want to know who the president is? You don't give a damn whether it's Biden or Trump? Well, then sleep tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. Now count.
This is inconceivable. We are not talking about a backward third world country here, but about the United States of America, a light to the nations in all that concerns progress, power, and breakthrough. The land of unlimited possibilities.
So how is it that the world's greatest power can't solve the issue of working hours and rest periods for voice writers from southern Michigan? Can't we organize replacement writers? What's going on here?
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2.
And I was the only one sitting in a traffic jam in Jerusalem, lost in memories from last year, and I understood everything. Oh, how unsurprised I was. If there is one central characteristic that I learned firsthand during our year in the United States, a characteristic that runs like a second thread through all the customs of the country, it is the sanctity of procedure. Everything according to the book. No flexibility. No flow. No improvisation. The land of inflexible possibilities.
Those who understand this, those who internalize this, may be able to deal with the various systems in the United States. Those who have difficulty with this, like me, are destined to suffer in every contact with the mechanisms there. And when I write "mechanisms," I'm not just talking about the official state institutions and their conduct on issues like obtaining a visa, health insurance, and the like. That's a stretch. I'm talking about all the mechanisms. The grocery store, the barbershop, the square sanitation workers who only collect the garbage you put in the right bin. Take everything you think about the Hicks, multiply by a thousand - and you've got Americans.
I know, it sounds strange. Because we identify American culture and also the American character as something turbulent, loud, colorful, ketchupy, chippy, hamburgery. Everything is true, until it comes to procedures. There is zero flow there.
3.
Want examples? I don't know where to start. Maybe the fact that in order for a girl to go play at a friend's house from kindergarten, she has to open diaries and coordinate a "play date." True, thank God, not everyone is like that. But by and large, that's what is accepted (and maybe it's actually like that for everyone, except that we Israelis have brazenly broken the rules and spontaneously scheduled play dates for five-year-old girls from time to time. Barbarians like us!).
Next: You want to take your child out of school on Friday half an hour before school ends, because you have a four-hour drive to Shabbat, so it's worth taking a safety margin? Well, what's the problem, you go into the school, knock on the classroom door and tell the lovely teacher that the child needs to leave, right? You made them laugh. This is in Jerusalem, not New York.
First of all, you need to notify the administration in advance. And if you forgot to notify in advance? Well, that's what happens to those who don't live by the rules. Someone who skimps on scheduling a playdate for their five-year-old daughter will end up acting recklessly on a core issue like scheduling a child's release half an hour before the end of the fourth-grade school day.
4.
Wait, I'll stop for a clarification that's very important to me: The educational institutions where our children studied during their mission year in the United States were wonderful. You have no idea how much we owe them. To this day, we cherish the investment, the caring, the wonderful staff, the welcome, and the warmth of their faces.
But all the above good qualities, and many others, cannot accommodate such a brutal breaking of all the rules and frameworks, cannot accept something like a student's father barging into the school just like that. Do you want the child to leave? No problem. First of all, send a written request. Then you stand here next to the big guard at the entrance to the campus, he will contact the guard at the entrance to the specific building where the child studies via walkie-talkie, who will ring the buzzer for the secretary of the class's floor, who will send one of the staff members with a signed note to the teacher to take the child out.
And then, by the grace of God, after many minutes of waiting, the boy finally came out. I fell on his neck with joy and started running home with him, singing "And the boys returned to their borders," but the big guard almost shot me.
It turns out that the child forgot to collect the signed exit permit from the floor secretary, which prevents his early release. Good Lord, I tell myself, it would have been better to wait another ten minutes, the child would have finished school by now and I would have taken him home. But then I abandon the subversive idea, because I recall the very complicated protocol of picking up a child by a parent, when the child appears in the school records as going home on the yellow school bus.
5.
But my most traumatic encounter with the American fixation is related to one of the most moving events I have ever been privileged to be at in my lifetime. The conclusion of the main Shas at the MatLife Stadium in New Jersey. Close to a hundred thousand Jews saluting together for Torah study. A huge, powerful, historic event. And here we are, privileged to be there in the United States, right when it is happening, to cover it, to bring the voices and sights to the inhabitants of the Land of Israel.
I feel a pang in my heart now, when I remember that mega-mass event, just before the outbreak of the Corona virus. What has happened to the world since then. What has happened to American Jewry since then. How many Jews who danced and sang and rejoiced there in the stadium are no longer alive today, how many 'only' lost their loved ones and how many 'only' lost their livelihoods.
But let's get back to the American schedule. Of course, our arrival at the event was coordinated weeks in advance, we knew what time (very early) we were supposed to arrive, which gate, and where we would park, and what equipment we were allowed to bring and what we were not allowed to. As soon as we got out of the car, the ushers directed us to the line to distribute the wristbands that would allow us to move around and take pictures freely in all parts of the complex. The line was long, two lines standing in an orderly line, side by side, in front of a pavilion like this, with two portholes, and at each porthole a station where wristbands were received.
6.
It was terribly cold outside, several degrees below zero. At such a temperature, you don't feel cold inside, but your insides hurt. Just a sore nose. After very long minutes of suffering, our turn finally comes. We say hello nicely to the cashier at the window, identify ourselves by name, and even show our press ID on our own initiative. This was after a few months in America. We know how to behave in procedural situations.
She sees the journalist's ID and says with a helpful smile: "Wait, are you journalists? I'm sorry, but you stood in the wrong line, this is the line for the guests of honor, the line for journalists is here at the other window." Oh, sorry, we say, misunderstanding, they told us it was here, and we didn't see that there were two lines for two separate ticket offices. Sorry. And she says: "No problem, everything is fine, go to the right line and get your wristbands there. Have a wonderful day." And smiles.
We realized that there was nothing to talk to her about, so we tried to explain to the people in the next line, the journalists' line, that they should let us go to the cashier at the other window, because we had accidentally stood in the wrong line, and it was already getting late, we still had to manage to get the camera equipment and laptops through security and we were about to have a live broadcast to Israel, so here we were in front of her, we just had to quickly grab our bracelets and go. They looked at us as if we had asked them for their credit card to go shopping, because we had simply forgotten ours.
Skip the line? There's no such thing. It's not an option.
7.
But wait, the story isn't over. When we finally got to the right window, after a long wait in the freezing cold, I peeked inside, and what did I see? These aren't two rooms. The two cashiers are sitting at the same table. There's no wall or partition between them, they're right next to each other. They even shared the same stack of bracelets, except one has a guest list in her hand and the other has a list of journalists in her hand.
Well, then let the right-winger of the respected turn to the left-winger of the journalists for a moment and bring us the bracelets through her window and we'll run to broadcast. Hahaha, you made America laugh. It's much easier to end an entire Shas than to mix up two completely different lines like that.
I don't know where the cashiers from the Shas graduation went to work after the huge production there ended, what their next project was. But it's not impossible that they became voice writers in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Michigan. It's definitely not impossible.
And now the entire world awaits with tension the results of the fateful elections, while they peacefully die the year. Order is order. Good night, Cosmos.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
