Coronavirus, Purim, and Elections!
I’m still in medical ulpan – my final exam is actually this coming Sunday. And for the past several weeks almost all we’ve talked about is the coronavirus. Each morning we start off by reading the latest headlines in Hebrew and learning any new words we can find. The virus hasn’t yet affected our daily lives here, but it does seem to be talk of town. There are a lot of East Asians in Israel, both tourists and workers, who are unable to travel back and forth to their home countries, and no new people from many of those countries are being allowed in to Israel right now. From my perspective, as sad as it is that we don’t have more friendly relations with our neighbouring countries, the fact that our borders are pretty well controlled will hopefully help to keep the virus out.
Purim is also right around the corner, and the corner stores are overflowing with purim gift baskets! And instead of just one party at school or just a one day Purim Carnival, they have a whole week of events at the schools here: pyjama day, inside-out day, backwards day, then a party day, etc, all leading up to Purim itself.
And, of course, next week will be our third election in under a year. For a while there wasn’t much excitement. It seemed that everyone was pretty sick of politics. But just over the past week the energy level has increased a bit. The signs and billboards are out there, but not quite as much or as varied as they were last time around. Instead, the candidates seem to be going a bit more grass-roots this time, with big get-out-the-vote campaigns. They are also doing a lot more local speeches and trying to mobilise voters by physically meeting as many as they can. Benny Gantz has been doing a lot more talking and interviews, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennet have been speaking personally at different shuls across the country, and Netanyahu has had a bunch of campaign events as well. In fact, he had one near Ra’anana specially for anglo olim, in English, which I attended. It was a great opportunity to see and hear the Prime Minister up close – something which I had never done before. Whether you like him or hate him, he is our Prime Minister and he has presided over this country for a long time – I was thankful to have been given the opportunity to hear him speak.
Poster for Netanyahu:
“Likudniks – go out and vote! Our success depends only on you.”
Poster for Gantz:
“Worries about Israel. Worries about himself.”
Poster for Liberman:
“Bibi-Gantz will divide Israel – to the Haredim!”
