Young preachers garbed in white bellowing out lessons at a makeshift outdoor open-plan synagogue with a huge picnic mat underneath, on the corners of King George, Bograshov and Bnei Tzion [the bastion of secular Israel these three corners]. Dozens of religious people sit in a circle surrounding the speaker, wives with head coverings, young children with long locks; as the circle widens the audience becomes less coherent, less uniform, more comprehensive. Those sitting on the mat are listening attentively and are wearing mostly white; those wandering into the circle [that has formed in the middle of the the three roads] are wearing all the colors people wear in Tel-Aviv. The young preachers’ [are they rabbis? does it matter?] solemn words are repeatedly drowned out by the perpetual duos of young children barreling down Bnei Tzion Boulevard in loud, plastic motorbikes. These plastic motorbikes [that make more noise than real motorbikes], always manned by two intrepid 6-year-olds [one the pilot the other the navigator – a combination they'll form again when they're older?] make a huge rumbling noise, which gets louder and closer, as if a fighter jet were roaring overhead, as if God is telling these makeshift preachers and their spontaneous congregation that kids roaring down streets on plastic motorbikes on Yom Kippur is just as weighty a matter as the cleansing of the soul. And skateboards, not so loud, but they can make the street rabbi’s voice harder to pick up. Continue reading →