Following the Oct. 7 massacre, Israelis began building resilience though interactions with text. At the site of the Nova music festival, visitors memorialize the victims by adding letters to a Torah scroll, a way of fulfilling the mitzvah of personally writing a Sefer Torah. Another unique way is the Ot Hayim (“Sign of Life”) Initiative, through which graphic designers are creating digital fonts from the handwriting of the fallen soldiers and murdered civilians.
Mikve Yisrael, meaning Hope of Israel, was founded in 1870 as the first agricultural school for Jews in what would become the State of Israel. The Alliance Israelite Universelle, a French organization, purchased the land near Jaffa for the youth village and boarding school. Today, Mikve Yisrael has three schools (grades 7-12) catering to students who are secular, religious, or French-Israeli. Students begin working on the school’s farm in Grade 10.
Egged is Israel’s largest bus company. Israeli poet Hayim Nahman Bialik named the company Egged from the Hebrew for “union” after four cooperatives merged in 1933. Today, one of the largest bus companies in the world, Egged has subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria. In Israel alone, it operates almost 4,000 buses taking nearly one million passengers a distance of 622,000 miles every day.
Israel has one Knesset but thousands of “parliaments”. These groups – usually of retired men, who are often army buddies or even childhood friends – convene daily at cafes nationwide. On the agenda: To take their usual table and schmooze. The tradition has its roots in the artsy 1930s Tel Aviv coffeehouse scene, where coffee wasn’t all that they drank.
Israelis and Jews worldwide celebrate Lag BaOmer with bonfires. Traditionally, hundreds of thousands of religious Jews gather at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meron. Early Zionists associated their bonfires with Simon bar Kokhba, who led a revolt against the Romans. Therefore, Lag BaOmer became a symbol for the fighting Jewish spirit. In 1948, the order establishing the Israel Defense Forces was issued on Lag BaOmer.
Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, is an annual breath of fresh air in Israel. Although the majority of Israelis are not observant, most choose to fast and refrain from driving on the Day of Atonement. Nitrogen oxide levels can fall by 83-98% in Tel Aviv, and even more in other cities.
While training to be an IDF medic, Bernard Bar-Natan was issued standard bandages and instructed to use stones for extra pressure to stop bleeding. Seeking a better solution, he perfected a field dressing with a built-in pressure applicator. Since its introduction, medics and first responders worldwide have used the “Israeli Bandage” to save countless lives and limbs.
Voluntarism is an important part of Israeli culture. One way that Israelis help is through Yedidim (Friends), which offers non-medical emergency roadside assistance nationwide. Any one of more than 65,000 volunteers will answer the call 24/6 to change a flat tire, jump-start a car, unlock a vehicle with the keys inside, and more. All services are free and available except Shabbat and holidays.
Many Jewish architects connected to the Bauhaus school in Germany fled to Tel Aviv in the 1930s, following the rise of the Nazis. Today, more than 4,000 Tel Aviv buildings make up the “White City”. It is the largest collection of Bauhaus structures of any city in the world.
