Swimming logic in Israel

Every August 31st pools and beaches throughout Israel are swarming with people who are frolicking in the water. It's not surprising considering how hot it is here at that time of the year.  However, 24 hours later, it is still as hot as it was a day before, but if you go to a pool there will be a noticeable absence of swimmers and pool-side loungers. Why? From what I can gather from asking around, once it is September it is no longer swimming season. The date is just an arbitrary -- yet non-negotiable -- line in the sand (pun intended).

The exact opposite is true of Pesach vacation. Pesach almost always falls in April and more often than not, public pools are clean and full of water .... and families. The weather is not nearly as hot as it is on September 1st, but according to some unwritten but nationally understood rule, people are in bathing suits. Wet bathing suits. Why? Again, from what I can ascertain, April is return-to-the-water time.

My Canadian brain simply cannot accommodate this logic. When it is 35C plus on September 1st, which it has been every year since we arrived, there is nothing you can do to keep me away from a watery respite. And that is saying a lot because there has to be skin-peeling heat to get me to that point. On the other hand, yesterday when the thermostat hit 29C for the first time since last November, everyone was in bathing suits -- myself included. Granted, it was very warm but the water didn't know that yet and it was still uncomfortably cold.

How do I know that? I ventured one toe into the pool and made an executive decision that there would be no second-toe follow-up for a few months. And I trust my toe. I grew up where you had to run the one-toe-test in various bodies of water as late as the first week of August. Even then you had to be prepared for a major cold-water provoked muscle spasm in the arch of your foot. I would like to see all the Israeli April swimmers deal with one of those crushing spasms in the arches of their feet. It is not something that you quickly forget.

In the meantime it just dawned on me that I have a similar set of expectations about winter; hats and gloves in particular. No matter how cold it was in Canada, I would have never considered wearing gloves prior to December. And I would have had to be forced into wearing a hat before January. There was no particular reason for those dates other than a subconscious belief that caving into the cold prior to those dates would have simply seemed weak and wrong.

We also wore shorts in the 20C summer days of Cape Breton Island simply because it was summer and under no circumstances were we going to miss it -- even if it forgot to arrive in the first place. You might need a heavy Fair Isle sweater and Kodiak work boots, but you were going to wear shorts because it was July.

Hmmmm. Maybe Israel swimming logic is clear to me after all.