Buses and Burnings in Arad

On the morning before the Passover seder -- after the momentous Blessing of the Sun -- the menfolk of the family stood around the pile of burning embers at the curb in front of our house in Arad.

Men and boys like to do this. They are enthralled with poking flames and watching the sparks fly up in dangerous masses, somehow.

My daughters had already abandoned the fire in which our chametz -- leavened items -- was being extinguished, bored and busy with other things.

But then we heard the roar of an Egged bus come trundling down the street. That made no sense, because we live at the mouth of a cul de sac. Big Green Buses do not come down to the end of our Dead End street. They turn politely at the corner.

Not today. "Hey, come on out here!" my husband bellowed out to me. Obediently (yeah, sure, OF COURSE) I trotted right out there. NOT. "HEY!!! COME OUT HERE!!"

Okay. The bellowing was rude so I went racing out to scold him. Instead I found a bunch of grinning males, with my husband pointing at the fire. A Big Green Bus was roaring off into the distance.

"Paki dropped off his chametz," he said with a huge smile.

Two nights later, on Friday night, my husband returned from synagogue to the Sabbath meal, chuckling and telling me, "I saw Paki tonight."

Turns out that Paki -- an Egged bus driver and esteemed member of the minyan at the nearby synagogue -- had to work the day of the Passover seder, hours before the holiday.

He told my husband that he had known he would not have a chance to fulfill the mitzvah of burning his chametz, thus eliminating that forbidden substance from his existence prior to Passover, so instead he brought it with him on the bus, figuring he would find a fire as he drove through town.

Once he hit the corner of our street, all he did was look toward our house, and he knew his problems were solved, he said. Other people on the bus forwarded their chametz as well, making Paki a sheliach mitzvah (mitzvah messenger) and my husband the Grand Passover Firebrand.

How could you go wrong?

A Yishuv State of Mind

“Hello?”

“Hello. I have your daughter’s phone.”

“Oh no….”

Faint chuckle.

“Tell someone to be at the corner at 8:00 p.m.”

Sigh. “Okay. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

At 7:45 p.m., I still had no volunteers, so of course I trudged out the door into the cold, dark, windy night. It was perfect weather for a murder, a kidnap, a ransom note. No rain to make things messy; just a frigid, biting cold to make it mean.

I headed toward the corner. A car stopped next to me. “Shalom!!” Moshe was at his brightest, which meant I was in for an hour-long conversation, wind notwithstanding, about the benefits of “Intra”, a fancy nutritional supplement that he believes will even wash your dishes for you. The truth is, the stuff does beef up the immune system; my husband’s gout disappeared because of it. But the enthusiastic insistence of my happy-go-lucky neighbor that the entire world will be saved by this liquid was just too much to handle on a cold dark night.

“Moshe, I gotta go. I’m supposed to meet someone…”

“We’ll get you to drink it one of these days!” he threatened with a big smile. “There’s no escape!”

Cheerful thought. As I turned back toward the corner, I saw the car, headlights blazing, peeling a U-turn with tires screaming in protest. The car slammed to a stop. A horn honked impatiently.

I kicked up the trudging just a notch. As I reached the car, the passenger’s window rolled down. A tired, slightly irritated young man glared at me as I leaned down.

“Here,” he said, clearly resigned. A muscular arm stretched toward me, brandishing the family cell phone.

“Thanks,” I said apologetically. “Give Shloime my best and tell him thanks for bailing out my kid.”

He nodded, a small grin escaping the scowl. The window rolled up. I turned away.

My husband was just getting home when I walked in the door. “Which one this time?” he asked.

“Esty. Apparently she left it on Shoime’s bus this afternoon. They called earlier, but she forgot to go to the corner at 6:00 p.m. and it was the last run. They caught this guy leaving to go home and made him bring it.”

We looked at each other. My children now own the cell phone-forgetting record for the Egged Bus Cooperative, Arad division. And the Egged Arad bus drivers, together, own the cell phone-retrieving-and-delivering record probably for the entire country.

Arad -- it's small town living in a yishuv state of mind. Ya gotta love it.