The bus driver asked me for my phone number. I wouldn’t say that I was suspicious or nervous about giving him my number, but I certainly considered it unusual and wondered why he was making the request.
That was in May 2017, and he explained why he wanted to stay in touch. I was completing my decades-long career at the Israel Broadcasting Authority due to the government decision to close the public broadcaster.
He would miss me, he said with a tear in his eye, and would think of me, in particular, when stories would happen around him on the bus, and there would be no one to write about it to my worldwide audience on social media.
“So, if you don’t mind, give me your number so that I can call you when I have a story to tell. Hopefully, I’ll be able to describe it as well as you do.”
I appreciated the compliment.
My wife, Shari, used her artistic abilities to produce a placard that included a photo of me supposedly driving the Egged 417. She was also a good sport and agreed to wear the placard.
At our synagogue’s Purim party, the costume was a hit and a favorite to be photographed. I posted one of those photos on Facebook later that night and the reactions came in fast.
“So cute! You look ready for your next career move,” commented one friend, a former journalism colleague.
It was a watershed moment. Though I had been writing the bus stories for a few years already, they were truly gaining momentum now. I started hearing how the stories were winding up on WhatsApp groups, in emails, and even rabbis’ sermons.
People started writing to me that they wanted to visit Israel, to put me to the test. Were Israelis really the type of people to carry out such acts of kindness as described in my stories? These followers of my social media posts wanted to witness for themselves what I had been describing.
And the bus drivers started to hear about the stories.
A few days after Purim 2017, I showed one of my bus drivers the photo from the Purim party. I explained to him that I do bus stories “as a symbol of what’s right in society, as an antidote to all the negativity in life.”
He saw the many Facebook “likes” and other reactions to my photo of the costume, and seemed to become a bit emotional. “It makes my efforts as a bus driver more worthwhile when I know that people appreciate us,” he said.
By the time the corona crisis struck Israel around Purim time of 2020, a number of drivers had asked for my phone number. It was a good thing they did. During the nine months that I did not travel on a bus due to the pandemic, drivers would call me to give me stories that happened on their buses, and asked me to post them on social media.
My contacts with drivers also gave me an inside glimpse into their lives. I wasn’t just telling the stories of what happened aboard their buses; my growing friendships with the drivers also ultimately led to conversations in which they told me of their backgrounds and how they became drivers.
One night, I was at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station for my bus back home to Beit Shemesh. The driver pulled up to the platform several minutes before departure time, got off the bus, got a coffee and came back.
I said to him: “Drink in good health, you’ve got several minutes until we have to leave.”
He: “You’re so sweet.” He shouts to his nearby dispatcher: “Shmulik, get this young man a coffee. He’s so considerate to us hard-working bus drivers.”
I declined but they insisted. Not only did they get me a coffee but the driver also invited me up to the bus and schmoozed with me. I sat in the second row; the front row of seats is off-limits due to COVID-19.
“American accent, right?” he says. We talked about our backgrounds. He grew up in Afula, in northern Israel. He asked about Brooklyn, where I grew up, and wanted to know why my family would make aliyah from a place that boasted such a flourishing Jewish life.
I told him that even a flourishing Jewish life cannot match the Jewish state. I told him that I spread the beauty of life in Israel through my bus stories. He seemed emotional. “You care about the bus drivers that much?” he asked.
Next thing we knew, the other passengers waiting to board were getting a little impatient. It was just a couple of minutes before the time to set out for Beit Shemesh.
When I got off at my stop, he thanked me again: “Thank you for focusing on bus drivers as real people. I’m going to tell my wife about you. She thinks passengers just ignore us and complain about us.”
Another bus driver recently told me that he used to be a pilot. He had joined El Al after he was discharged from the Israel Air Force. But he decided that enough was enough and that the time had come to transport people on land, instead of through the air.
He thinks it was a great choice. Here’s his breakdown of how the new job is mostly advantageous.
1. More interaction with passengers.
2. Shorter trips.
3. More time with the wife and kids.
4. Stays in the same time zone - better sleeping habits.
Has to drive slower.
The point is that these bus drivers seem like interesting people to me. They have a job that could potentially be exciting as they travel the roads not cooped up in an office but instead enjoying the great outdoors.
On the other hand, I imagine that driving the same route, time after time and day after day, can be monotonous and tiring, and yes, as the driver from Afula indicated, you have to deal with all sorts of people including those who often complain.
Which is why adopting a special attitude to what you do can make the job not only easier, but also meaningful. A driver once told me that he considers it a historic privilege to take people to Jerusalem each year during the intermediate days of the Jewish pilgrimage festivals of Sukkot and Passover.
A bus driver of Ethiopian origin told me he wanted the job because when he heard the stories of how his parents and grandparents had to travel so dangerously and in covert operations to come to Israel decades ago, he felt it symbolic and an honor to transport people around in comfort throughout the Jewish state.
I don’t mean to grade these different background stories; they are all special in their own way. But one bus driver’s tale left me in utter amazement. I felt such admiration for this person who at a young age had set up a plan aimed at overcoming a tragic, traumatic experience and then implemented the plan, succeeding with flying colors.
It was the story of a bus driver who told me that he had decided to pursue the profession back in 1989, though he was only in elementary school at the time.
He explained that on July 6 of that year, he and his mother were on an Egged bus that was attacked as it traveled on Highway One, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Sixteen people were killed, but he and his mother survived, though they were injured. He said that he needed therapy to overcome the traumatic response of never wanting to get on a bus ever again. With the help of his therapist, he decided to tackle the problem head-on.
He made a vow that when he grew up, he would show that he had not succumbed to terrorism. He would not only travel on a bus, he would become a bus driver. He would view bus drivers as heroes. Many kids say that they want to be a bus driver, but this boy would follow through on his vow.
A number of years after that terrorist attack he served in the army, and as a bus driver he has been in war-related situations, transporting soldiers and equipment.
But as I rode with him on an Egged bus, on the same Highway One where he had once experienced terror, he was wearing a broad smile on his face. He said that he loves the regular, seemingly mundane day-to-day interaction with his passengers.
“Actually, not mundane,” he insisted. He had learned the hard way not to take for granted the peaceful rides and arriving home safe and sound.
He is just grateful to be alive and fortunate to have had a therapist who guided him “to the ability to show terrorists that we will not be deterred.”
There is no better proof of that resilience, he asserted, “than an injured victim from an attack getting back on the bus and driving it several times a day, passing the location of that horror, saluting those who died and then moving on to show that life continues.”