My city is your toilet

People often ask me how I get the ideas for what I write here. The truth is that for the most part things just happen and I am just left to report them. I rarely have to sweat it out thinking of what to say because life continually presents moments that leave me speechless.

And today proved to be one of the best speechless moments I have experienced in a very long time. Early this morning a pregnant woman with a small boy presented my next story right out of the blue.

I was walking to my 8:15 doctor's appointment on a downtown street in Ra'anana. There weren't a lot of people on the streets yet, however I noticed a woman and a small boy who was probably two-years old. Normally that wouldn't be such a big deal but in this case it was because the boy wasn't wearing anything other than a T-shirt.

The woman, who I can only assume was his mother, looked normal enough. She was nicely dressed which led me to believe that she could afford pants for her child. She didn't look spaced out so it's not as if she forgot to put some sort of bottoms on him. But here it was, not even 8:30 and this little kid was just out on the sidewalk having a nice stroll without pants, diaper, or underwear.

I am sure if feels great to be out walking around without pants -- if you are two. A nice cool morning breeze to air out your privates. Who could ask for more than that? And I am not a prude. Naked little kids are fine -- in places where nudity seems within the boundaries of propriety. The backyard. Maybe the beach -- although you could get one heck of a sunburn on your nether regions.

See what I mean? I could never have come up with this line of thought on my own. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried for a week. It never would dawn on me to write about a kid without his pants. However, that is exactly what happened.

I knew almost immediately that I wasn't going to be able to simply let this go and walk by as if there wasn't a pantless kid a few feet from me. So .... as I passed the woman, I asked her in hebrew where her son's pants were. I would have asked why he wasn't wearing pants but I wasn't sure I could say that properly in hebrew so I opted for the simpler question.

I am sure she was surprised but she told me that she was toilet training him, so rather than run the risk of wetting his pants (like he would be the first child on earth to do THAT), she simply didn't put any pants on him.

On the face of it, it almost sounded reasonable for a brief moment. But speaking on no one's behalf but my own, that is the most warped logic I have heard in a very long time. I can understand taking that approach in one's own backyard, but on the city streets????

Essentially, she had decided that it was better for her child to walk around pooping and peeing anywhere he wanted -- just so long as it wasn't in his pants. She was using my city as her son's toilet. Can you imagine if every toilet-training child in town was allowed to do this? We'd be living in the middle of the sewer in about three days. You would have to wear Wellies all year round -- and a nose plug. The rats would think they had died and gone to rat hell -- all smack dab in the middle of God's country.

Frankly I had no idea what to say next, so I just nodded half sympathetically and half incredulously -- and then I walked away. I hope she didn't mistake my disbelieving smile for complicity. I was simply trying to keep my face suitably neutral so she wouldn't know how mortified I was.

I am still not really sure what to make of the whole matter but since it is now 12 hours later I guess I am just going to have to let it go. And I am going to avoid the sidestreets of downtown Ra'anana until enough time has passed that I figure this kid has been toilet trained.

God's Country

I was born and raised in Sydney, Nova Scotia. And I spent the better part of my seventeen years there believing that I lived in a special place. Actually, I was told that in no uncertain terms by pretty much every adult I knew; Nova Scotia and more specifically, Cape Breton Island, was God’s Country. Everyone in Cape Breton called it God’s Country and I never doubted it.

If you have ever driven over Smoky Mountain on the way to the Cabot Trail, you have seen its natural beauty for yourself. And if you made it as far as Cape North on a sunny day, you may have actually seen a piece of heaven.

Or so I thought.

Then seven years ago I moved to Israel, which is considered by millions of people worldwide to be God's Country.

Hence the dilemma. Where precisely is God's Country?

Yes, Israel is part of the cradle of civilization. Cape Breton surely is not because the people who live there are generally adverse to civilized living. When they desire moments of civility.... they get on a plane and go somewhere else to find it. Then they go home.

Cape Bretoners are not particularly interested in progress and modernization. They like things just as they are (and as they have always been). Not like Israel, which is considered by many to be the next largest concentration of high-tech brain power outside of Silicon Valley in California.

Is it possible that God has two homes -- His winter abode in Israel and when the weather gets too hot here, He shifts to his northern summer home in Cape Breton? If I were Him, I would pick that option. Why upset the Cape Bretoners who think they have a piece of Him when He can just as easily shift location in the summer?

There is one advantage to Cape Breton that I think Israelis would actually like. Cape Breton is all but completely ignored by the outside world. No one there is in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything. And no superpowers are giving them instructions on how to live their lives. There are no katusha missiles aimed at its population. Cape Bretoners never worry about their kindergartens being blown up or getting on a bus (yes, there are buses in Cape Breton).

Something about all that peacefulness makes you really wonder if it might actually be God's Country.

I don't think that the snow or the everlasting cold are working in Cape Breton's favour, but what do I know? Maybe tobogganing and skiing are holy experiences. Of course, maybe sitting on the beach in Netanya or overlooking the Negev as the sun is coming up are as well.

The people who choose to live on the edges of Cape Breton -- literally in the middle of nowhere -- do so to be alone. (They must; I can't for the life of me think of another reason why they would move to a cold, perpetually damp, rocky cliff on the edge of the sea. They could fall in.)

People who move to the outer parts of Israel do so to inhabit those places and secure them as Jewish land. These Israelis are securing the frontiers of this tiny state – not militarily, but emotionally. The exact opposite of the Cape Breton logic.
The people who live at the outer reaches of Israel are not trying to get away from civilization. Many of them made conscious decisions to play an active role in populating the outer reaches of the country. I see them as Israel’s remaining pioneers.


Both places have lots of beautiful mountains and vistas. But just over Israel's mountains live some of the least friendly neighbours anyone could ask for. If you look too far over the edge of a mountain in Cape Breton you will be swimming with the whales -- Cape Breton doesn't really have any neighbours and even if it did... how could you not love a Cape Bretoner?

So you can see the dilemma. Where exactly is God’s country?

I am rather nervous to vote for one place over the other. Both are holy in their own ways to me.