Road Rage

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“Judge not lest ye be judged”
-- Matthew 7:1

As I walked through the streets of Jerusalem’s German Colony (neighborhood motto: “Irony personified”), I saw something unusual:

A line of cars, Israeli drivers stopped… mid-traffic… in silence.

Y’see, on the corner of Ha’ish and Ha-Lam-ed Hey there was a student driver (with the big blue and white “lah-med” on the roof of the car). The driver was scared to make a right turn down the hill, and the instructor was… well, instructing!

The three cars idling behind this student… waited patiently! Two words that are usually not used to describe Israelis (can you blame ‘em? After 40 years wandering through the desert and 2,000 years in exile, they want to be on their way).
But these cars waited. No honking, no yelling, no hand gestures of any kind. I was amazed.
Why? Why were they so patient? Perhaps they recalled the words from Matthew 7:1… Or, more likely, they remembered how nervous THEY were when THEY were learning to drive.

An important life lesson—putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

At some point in our young lives, our world opens up. At some point we get a glimpse of the adult world and we are unsettled. Not shocked, just... askew.

For me, it was in 1992. I was 10. A friend’s dad was driving me to school. Carpool, a staple for any suburban child. It gave way to buses a few years later, like innocence of child being pushed aside by gawky adolescence— bussing to high school.

My friend’s dad was also a rabbi.
We were driving along and suddenly a minivan cut in front of us, nearly running us off the road, and my friend’ dad let loose two words that were burned into my brain forever…
“clucking grass bowl.”

Okay, those weren’t the exact words, I cleaned ‘em up for you. But you get the idea.

I immediately judged the rabbi—using such foul language, for shame! I disapproved.

… for 6 years, until I started driving. Then I understood.

Driving can be tough.
Sometimes you’re the person who honks, the honker, and other times… you’re the honkee (or “cracker”).

Well, Sam Elliot said it better:

“Sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes, well, he eats you.”
-- “The Big Lebowski,” Joel & Ethan Coen


So…
We’re all human.
We all make mistakes.
Say it with me, once again:
Pobody’s nerfect.

“Everybody hurts… sometimes”
-- R.E.M.


So don’t judge someone until you’ve been in their situation…

Face-to-face with a “clucking grass bowl.”


And remember:
Drive safely.

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