A couple hundred meters from your house, Haim, there’s a bakery, a capitalist enterprise to the best of my knowledge. For a couple of years, I went there every Friday after morning services and bought the big flat pitot that my kids love for Shabbat dinner. The first time that the owner, or manager, or staff thug – I didn’t check his precise title – shouted at me for daring to stop to talk to a friend in his store, I ignored him. The second time, I put down my pitot on the counter and left. My friend came out and told me that the reason he does the Friday morning bakery run is that his wife refuses to enter the place, after she was target of a similar tantrum.
I feel a bit uncomfortable telling this story, because I generally enjoy life in South Jerusalem, and I’ve found another bakery where the pitot are great and the guy at the register is generally polite. But if you ask me :
Remember standing in line endlessly at the bank only to finally reach a surly teller? Remember sales clerks who thought they were doing you a favor by deigning to speak to you?
– well, yes, I do remember. And I don’t have to stretch terribly far back into my memory