In Tel Aviv I Meet the Prophet Elijah

Note: The prophet Elijah has a long, mythic role. Hundreds of stories from all over the Jewish world tell of Elijah entering into the life of a person to make a small but nonetheless important role in that person’s life.

Note II: I wrote this piece long before the war that is upon us. It’s a snapshot of my experience of Israel, of one particular experience in Tel Aviv last February.

PC

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Much of my life has been lived through Israel. It’s unfair to say in Israel, because the actual number of days I’ve spent there over the years don’t add up to all that much.

My first visit in early 1974, a post-college romp, took up maybe three months. I returned four years later for a full year as a rabbinical student. The only other time of some duration was a five-week stint in 1999. Otherwise, the many trips I took to the Jewish state — twenty-some and counting — were bits and pieces — conferences, vacations, and very brief visits for personal reasons. I’ve lost track of the exact number of times. But now that I have a daughter who’s an Israeli, I hope to make my way there at least annually.

I’ve lived through Israel, no doubt. I’ve watched Israel experience wars, bad politics, occasional good politics, economic growth, population growth, departing Gaza and southern Lebanon, the absorption of some 40,000 Ethiopians, absorption of a million Russians, the absorption of my younger daughter, the growth of Israel as a foodie capital, Israel seen as a curse, Israel seen as a blessing, Israel as the Holy Land, Israel the ambivalent conqueror, and lately, the Israel at war.

When I land at Ben Gurion, it’s always a place that’s familiar yet foreign. It’s not my country. I don’t have to live with Netanyahu except vicariously. My Hebrew is abysmal. My knowledge of its geography is embarrassing. Yet through this sense of not being entirely an owner, I have a continually shifting familiarity with the landscape that’s far more than a first-time tourist, but far less than a citizen completing even her first year as an immigrant.

This story concerns a lack of familiarity that’s not altogether total. You’ll see what I mean.

I was last there in February 2023, for a rabbinical conference, and remained another week to be with Talia, my citizen daughter. But this is not a story about the conference. This story really begins after the conference, when Talia and I were supposed to travel to an interesting village in the north of Israel that somehow inhabited by Alawaites, Lebanese, and Israelis in a village called Ghajar on the Israeli side of the border, though just barely. We’d rent a car, spend the day and see something new and different.

But Talia was to begin a new job the next day and felt reluctant to spend an exhausting day, and I agreed. I agreed partly because I was feeling tired. But we’d still have two days to travel.

I arrived at her apartment after the close of the conference where I was to spend a night or two before checking into an Airbnb, an agreement we had. I’d be on my own before we’d begin to get in each other’s way and on each other’s nerves.  Because I was tired and had also begun to cough, Talia pulled out a home Covid test.

Positive.

We went immediately into hygiene mode. We separated, I slept on her couch and the next day moved to an Airbnb on Dizengoff Street, one of Tel Aviv’s most famous avenues. There I stayed for six days more or less in quarantine, leaving the apartment only to walk. Talia brought me groceries and visited me every night after work with her pooch, Lyla. We met outside— I sitting on a bench, the two of us chatting until we ran out of things to chat about. And so, it would have gone, except she came down with Covid herself, undoubtedly catching it from me. I am nothing if not a generous father.

So I quarantined in that cute and comfortable Airbnb over those days, occasionally perambulating up and down Dizengoff Street, an avenue filled with Tel Aviv life, coffee houses, restaurants, banks, shops, and plenty of faces to look at. Israel is a crazy quilt of faces and bodies that express a collective personality like you wouldn’t believe.

The quarantine experience wasn’t terrible. I had my computer with which to write and to watch endless videos. And lots of napping, as befits someone with Covid.

My story really begins here, at the end of the quarantine experience, around day six, when the articles told me I was no longer contagious. This was also the day before I was to return to the States. I needed my large suitcase which I had swapped with Talia for a smaller one. I caught a cab to her place, climbed the four flights of stairs (no elevator) to make the switch. Talia opened her door, and we said our socially distanced goodbyes. It was not the end game we’d hoped for, but there’s always next year.

About a block and a half from her place sits a pretty good felafel stand. Though my age should dictate that felafel and I should part company, I ordered one, and dined al fresco.  I then ordered a cab and made my way back to the Airbnb on Dizengoff, which sits in the dark at the end of a long alleyway. Once I arrived, I set down the suitcase and reached into my pocket for the key, not finding it in one pocket, nor in another. I tried my two back pockets unlikely as it is that I would have put the key there, and then tried all four pockets a second and then a third time. I considered attempting a fourth time, but I realized I’d lost the key.

Gone.

What to do?

Like most Airbnbs, this one was not part of any kind of complex. I’d stayed in such places where the host owned an upstairs place and the rental was downstairs, making the owner easily available. This Airbnb was part of a business called Beach Apartments TLV;  the owners were not immediately reachable.

So, I had me a dilemma, a problem, a conundrum. Why hadn’t I, for example, taken this lone key and maybe attached it to a ring of keys, or at least done something with it to enlarge its presence in my pocket to make losing it less likely?

But I hadn’t taken such wise council of my own personal wisdom and had lost it—perhaps in the back seat of a cab or at the felafel stand. Add to this my phone was down to under ten percent with no clear prospects for charging. I was about to lose contact with the world, locked out of my room in a foreign country.

A plan arose. A dumb plan, I admit, but only one I could think of. Call Talia, tell her I’m coming back to charge my phone at her place, and figure out my next step, whatever that might be. I didn’t mention that the two times I’d taken a cab that evening they had been inexplicably hard to get. The entire Israeli cab enterprise is like one big Uber system called Gett. One brings up the app on one’s phone which knows your location. You type in the desired destination, and a call goes out to a cab which normally comes quickly, picks you up, and delivers you to the right address. No money is exchanged; it’s all accomplished anonymously thanks to the brilliance of our digital age.

I called Talia with my plan. She told me, “There’s a Super Yuda right across the street. Go buy a charger, go to a coffeehouse, and charge your phone there.”  

 Super Yuda is a 24/7 convenience store chain chock full of stuff, including, one hoped, a charger for my iPhone.  But I looked across the street and there was no Super Yuda as Talia had claimed. But a check with Google Maps revealed that a hundred or so meters down the road on the right one sat awaiting my business.

Now let’s be clear as to my mood at that moment. I am not of Litvak stock, able to withstand the crises of life without much emotion. At least on one side of my family, I come from the more emotional end of Ashkenazi Jewry, the Galitzianers, and at this point, the Galitzianer in me was more than a little stressed. I could feel bits of sweat flowing down my back. I was alone in a foreign country. No matter how more or less comfortable I felt in Israel, it’s not my country. Regardless that I have a daughter living in Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv’s not my city. And, oh yeah, though I had my wallet with my North Carolina driver’s license in it on my person, my passport was upstairs in my Airbnb on the same table as the spare key to the apartment. Thoughts of this ilk filled my head as I entered the Super Yuda on Dizengoff.

I dumbly pointed my phone to the fellow behind the counter, and I said something in English about buying a charger. But instead of selling me a charger, he took my phone, pulled a charger wire out of somewhere nearby, plugged my phone in, and returned to selling convenience store stuff.

I sat on a bench outside the store and pondered my next move. I realized I might need to rebook my ticket for the next day, Tuesday. How much is that going to cost? What if the plane two days hence is full? What if an aisle seat, a necessary condition for me wherever I fly, is unavailable? I’d need to book another night in the Airbnb. What if I couldn’t? What if it was already booked? Now keep in mind it’s Tel Aviv a Middle Eastern city on the Mediterranean. So, although it was early March, the weather was warm, and the hour was yet early, around 9:00 pm. My anxiety decreased slightly, though a workable solution on the horizon did not yet manifest itself.

The fellow from behind the counter came out with my phone and plugged it into a charger connected to his bicycle conveniently parked immediately to my left. At that point, it had charged up to around twenty percent. The danger of losing contact with the world had been reduced. My benefactor and I chatted for a moment, but he had to return to the counter.

I called Betsy, my wife, at our home in Greensboro, North Carolina. After telling her my tale of woe, she proceeded to castigate me for my innate lack of personal organization—this being precisely just what I needed to hear in my hour of desperation. I made the mistake of reminding her of times she’d lost her cell phone and the like.

We cooled down and twenty minutes later, began to problem-solve.  Our first solution: not far down on Dizengoff there was a nice boutique hotel we’d stayed the previous year. I attempted to contact this hotel to see if a) they had a vacancy, and b) they’d give me a room without presenting a passport. Their automated answering system was so convoluted that I couldn’t get to a live voice with whom to consult. Instead, their system just kept routing me to the beginning of my options. Finally, I hung up.

I recalled that Talia had suggested I contact the Airbnb folks, which hadn’t occurred to me, and which turned out to be an easier task than I thought. In the email acknowledging my reservation was an Israeli phone number that led to a human person rather quickly who listened to my problem and attempted contacting the host. Those of you unfamiliar with the Airbnb system need to know that Airbnb will identify certain hosts as Superhosts, owners known to be easy to reach, and who put into their labors an extra dollop of TLC. Alas, this did not turn out to be immediately true of my Superhost. I then messaged the host several times, again without success.

During all this, the fellow from behind the counter came back.  We spoke in Hebrew. I asked him his name.  Amir. I told him my problem and just chatting with him had a calming effect on me. It’s a small problem, he said philosophically. Of course, I thought, it wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t expected on a United Airlines flight the following morning at 11:30 am. Nonetheless, it got me thinking how I wasn’t in a hospital or hadn’t been assaulted, nor had I experienced some other bad thing that might have left me in a worse state than I was in. He went back behind the counter, and I sat, periodically messaging the Superhost and the Airbnb folks.

This went on for perhaps two hours — all the while receiving concerned texts from Talia inquiring as to my situation, and Betsy doing the same. I still hadn’t much of a plan, but the evening was young, and comfortable, and there were people in my life who cared — including a perfect stranger.

Amir came outside and announced that his shift at the Super Yuda ended. He asked me if there was any other way he could be of help. Not thinking of anything he could do, I said “no” and thanked him profusely. My phone was now charged to around sixty-five percent, well out of the danger zone.

Minutes later after Amir departed, I received a message from Shai, my Superhost, who said that I always could have gotten hold of him by phone — but I had not seen a phone number in any of the contact info. After clarifying the problem, Shai said that he’d look to see if he had a spare key. This uncertainty didn’t do much to raise my confidence, but I am a man of faith. And after perhaps fifteen minutes, he texted to say that someone would be by with a key in about five minutes.

I rushed back to the Airbnb and within those five minutes, a skinny kid on a motorized scooter came along with a spare key and opened the door. He offered the key to me, but I assured him I had a spare of my own upstairs. Out of proper caution, he advised me to fetch the key and make certain it worked. It did. I asked him his name and he gave me an Arab name that I’m embarrassed to report I do not remember. As he scooted off, I said, “Shukran” and he turned and smiled at that tiny piece of Arabic. He was off and I was in.

There are several characters populating this story. Without Talia, the Super Yuda would have been unknown to me, and I would have had to rely on plan A, catching a cab, crashing at her place, getting to the Airbnb the next day, and leaving a day later.  It would have worked, but uncomfortably, especially given that she had Covid. If I hadn’t been persistent in contacting my Superhost, I might have found my way over to the not-too-distant hotel on Dizengoff and crashed for the night without my passport and without a change of clothes. If it hadn’t been for the skinny Arab kid with the key who arrived on the scooter, my place would have remained locked at least until the next day.

To me, though, the real hero in my story is Amir, who silently took my phone, plugged it in, and then gave it a temporary home on his bike’s charger. Amir, who offered a bit of solace, and made two hours of my life bearable.

And that’s how it is when you encounter the Prophet Elijah. He comes into your life for a moment, makes it just a little better, then takes off on his bike to places unknown.