"Baby you can drive my car" -- The Beatles

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“He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver.”
- Job 39:7

The drivers of Jerusalem are often given a bum rap. Well…

Jerusalem at dawn— a beautiful thing (also, I woke up at 6 AM anc couldn’t fall back asleep).
So I went running this morning and I negotiated the streets of The Holy City with some of the worst drivers in the world.
Translation of “negotiated”—tried not to get run over.
And you know what I’ve learned here?
Ironic—the “best” drivers are actually the STUDENT drivers!

Let me explain—this town was not built for the horseless carriage, Henry Ford’s metal contraption known “a car.” Like Boston, with its cobblestone pathways, the narrow, winding streets hearken back to simpler times of John Adams and King David (portrayed on screen by William Daniels and Richard Gere, respectively).

So taxi drivers that would normally seem merely “Manhattan-crazy” are exponentially more terrifying in the nooks and crannies of Jerusalem.

But not student drivers! The roofs of their cars are clearly marked with a white sign displaying a big blue “lah-med” (Hebrew equivalent of “L”), signifying “Lomed” or “learning.” And they are the only defensive drivers in this city. They are cautious and courteous and… usually women.
And 9 times out of 10, when I jog past a student driver, I see a lady behind the wheel, wearing a concentrated, slightly nervous expression and a head-covering. Sometimes it’s a sheitel (for Jewish women) and sometimes it’s a hijab (for Muslim ladies). Women driving cars. Religious women.

Even though there is a lot of old-school, backwards thinking in this part of the world, fundamentalism on all sides of the Torah, New Testament, and Qur’an—people living as they did 1,2 even 3 thousand years ago and thinking everyone else should do the same—we are moving forward, advancing into the 21st century… one green light at a time.
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