Day 5: Sabbath

Caption: The sun setting over the Mediterranean and the huge Tel Aviv power station chimney reflecting the sun set.

The great revelation of the day is that the Tel Aviv Ace Hardware store is open on the Sabbath and was doing a brisk business. This has theological implications that go far beyond my tiny mind to analyze. I’m listening to a book called The End of Faith by Sam Harris and he does a great job of pointing out that on the realistic level we require so much proof before we make decisions, but on the faith level we require so little. The concept of God “resting” is probably in that category. There are places in the world, obviously not Tel Aviv, where people are punished for not resting on the Sabbath and the reason they must rest on the Sabbath is because that’s what God did. Curiously, was he tired, did he get so much done on the other 6 days, that he ran out of work and rested out of a lack of ideas, or did he create Ace Hardware to enable people to fill in the projects he didn’t completely finish.

Anyway, as we say in the States, the boardwalk was cooking both in a social and in a culinary sense. There were so many people just walking and hanging out. I had a pizza slice with what looked and smelled like bacon, but I’m almost sure that can’t be true. The kosher laws seem pretty strict and I don’t think I’ve seen any evidence of pork anywhere, although I did see some great shrimp plates. I don’t know if there is a hierarchy of kosher food, but pork definitely seems wrong, and shrimp seems, while not right, at least less wrong. I need to check with someone on that. To give you a frame of reference, I went into a MacDonald’s and they didn’t offer a cheese burger because I suppose they can’t mix milk and meat.

So I sat and read most of Saturday at a café along the Sea and now its Sunday morning and it’s the first day of the week. It weird because everyone dreads Sunday as a back to work day, but the banks can’t change money because they don’t know the exchange rates because the rest of the world’s financial markets are closed.

I think President Bush is coming to town, but the big excitement is over the championship soccer game on Tuesday and I'm going to try and get a ticket. The stadium only holds about 15,000, what's with that. In Mexico they get 100,000 people for a Little League game!