No, it won't be OK!

Fasten your seat belts folks... this morning we wander into that uncharted territory located somewhere between the cultural norms within which I was raised and the rich tapestry of cultural attitudes which hold sway here in Israel.

Most of the time when I venture into this gray area it is to point out something that tickles my fancy, or in some way pleases me with its newness or ingeniousness.

Not this time.

Last week I was driving home from work around 7:30PM. As I drove through the south Hevron hills my headlights illuminated a small group of women hitchhikers waiting outside the front gate of a settlement called Karmel. It was bitter cold outside and had been raining intermittently, so of course I stopped to pick up as many of them as my car could hold.

As several of the women climbed quickly into the car, I took note of the general appearance of the new passengers without paying too much attention to the individuals.

Most were dressed in what is often referred to as ‘settler chic’, but which a good friend calls ‘the layered shmatte* look’. When done nicely, I find ‘settler chic’ to be quite attractive, in a bohemian sort of way. When done poorly (or overdone), it drifts over into ‘hippie bag lady’ territory.

I know... I’m being judgmental, but there it is.  Anyway, back to the story of my car full of hitchhikers.

Since moving here I have become much more of a stickler about all passengers in my car wearing seatbelts. Not only have studies shown that an unsecured passenger is particularly vulnerable to injury or death in an accident, but also such an unsecured body acts as a potentially lethal projectile to anyone else inside the car.

As if that weren’t enough to convince me, as the driver of the car I am also the one who would get a very expensive ticket if the police were to stop me and find anyone unbelted.

So, as the last of the group got into the car I made my usual reminder for everyone to put on seatbelts and checked my rear-view mirror to see if it was safe to pull back onto the road.

Geographically, if one is headed north on Route 60, Karmel is the last Jewish settlement before entering a long stretch of the road where there are only Arab villages. While I don’t find this stretch of my drive to be overly worrisome, I also don’t dawdle or stop anywhere on this stretch. Why tempt fate, right?

Well, as soon as we were approaching the first of the Arab villages I heard an odd sound from behind me: A baby crying!

As I said before, I didn’t look too closely at the women who had gotten into the car, but apparently, tucked somewhere in the folds of one woman’s ‘shmattes’, there was a baby!

Now I was pissed! I didn’t have a baby seat in the car and this idiot had put herself, her baby, and me in a very awkward (not to mention dangerous) situation.

If we were near a Jewish settlement I would have pulled over and let her out right away. But in a potentially hostile area I was faced with the unhappy choice of continuing on with an unsecured baby in the car, or turning back and wasting half an hour in order to return her and her baby to Karmel.

In the end I fumed in silence and dropped off the group in Kiryat Arba without a word.

I have related this incident to several Israeli friends, and have been shocked to find that nobody seems to view this the way I do. In fact, while most people I’ve asked agree that it is not safe to transport a baby without a car seat, they were very quick to suggest excuses for this dopey mother, such as:

Maybe she doesn’t have a car and therefore never bought a baby seat.

Perhaps she can’t afford a baby seat.

What if she has a baby seat but her husband has the car and she needed to take the baby somewhere.

Among the young, ‘new-age’ religious settler crowd, there seems to be a kind of blind optimism, above and beyond the typical Israeli ‘yihiyeh b’seder’ (loosely translated as ‘everything will be OK’) attitude.   The subtle subtext of this attitude seems to be that personal responsibility is no longer necessary because everything is in the hands of G-d.

I understand that this total trust in the Almighty (read: surrender of basic common sense/prudence) is a necessary personality trait for anyone who elects to raise a family in a trailer on one of these windswept hilltops amidst a gazillion angry Arabs. But where does one draw the line?  When does this blind faith that everything will be OK cross over into dragging others (e.g. me) into extremely serious safety/liability issues?

Since this incident I have noticed a few other cars on the road with unsecured infants on a parent’s laps. What the hell is going on here? Has everyone taken leave of their collective senses?!  Is this kind of thing happening in Tel Aviv???

Somebody please tell me that I’ve simply been unlucky enough to witness a few isolated examples of incredibly bad judgment, and not a trend towards the ultimate, reckless level of ‘yihiyeh b’seder’!

* Shmatte is a Yiddish word that literally means ‘rag’, but which can also be used to describe a dress or garment. It is rarely a compliment when used in the latter sense.