Human beings and Haaretz

The Mahane Yehuda shuk in Jerusalem [Image Source]

I found the following Hebrew article from last weekend's Haaretz very moving. So I translated it (without anyone's permission) to share with my English-language readers. Apparently I wasn't alone in my appreciation because it generated 313 comments (so far) on Haaretz' website, most of them adulatory. 

I've translated a sampling of them which appear below after the article.

It's a Human Being, You Must Help
Alon Idan - published in Haaretz Magazine, June 26, 2020

(The title on the Haaretz website translates to "A Large Man Falls in the Middle of Mahane Yehuda. Here's What Happened Next")

Translated by Frimet Roth

The man simply fell. 

Actually"fell" isn't accurate. Everybody falls. He didn't simply fall. He collapsed. He exploded. He was sprawled on the ground like a sack thrown from a truck. It was horrible. Truly horrible. Everybody stood nearby. 

It happened next to "The Best Falafel in the Land" stall. Every city has a "Best Falafel in the Land". It happened beside "The Falafel of the Levi Brothers" in the Mahane Yehuda shuk which is the best in the-land-called-Jerusalem and he was a large man, tall, broad, impressive, mustachioed, dressed in light brown pants, a light brown buttoned shirt, shiny black shoes and he wore what looked like a luxury watch and in both his hands he held white bags with the shopping he had done at the shuk, and in one bag were all sorts of items that were hard to discern while in the second bag was a large tray of eggs, the old fashioned kind with, I believe, 30 eggs or maybe even 36, in any case it doesn't matter anymore because all the eggs were now broken and had become one huge yellow batter.

And what happened is that there were many metal blue barriers, the sort the police set up in order to close off streets when there's a demo, only this time they closed the entrances to the shuk so it would be possible to measure people's temperature. But there were several barriers that they hadn't used and these were placed on the road, one next to the other, with the edge of one of them, the last in the row, simply protruding toward the sidewalk such that, if by chance a large, broad, impressive, mustachioed man holding two white bags and rushing home, didn't notice it, he was likely to encounter it, slip, fly in the air and then when he would attempt to place his other foot on the sidewalk in order to block his expected fall, he'd discover that there isn't a sidewalk, just a road on which he is now spread out, in pain, shocked, with blood covering the upper part of his face.

And this is what happened afterwards: 

Everyone who was near this large man lying on the ground came over to help. People left their shopping, their bags, their plans - and helped raise him. And afterwards they sat him on a red chair near The-Best-Falafel-in-the-Land. Then they gave him a drink, and then a fellow from the neighboring stall, a too-thin person with a white undershirt, arrived with a litre and a half bottle of water and offered to rinse the large man's flow of blood that leaked from the upper part of his nose. The large man felt uncomfortable and said "It's OK, it's OK, I'm OK". But the thin man with the white shirt told him it was not OK and that he should stop arguing and allow him to rinse the blood. And he stood beside him and rinsed off his blood. 

And in the meantime a rather elderly woman who had two minutes earlier helped the large man stand up from the road whispered something in her daughter's ear. The daughter heard the words and left the place. When the large man looked like somebody who was considering standing up and trying to walk, the woman approached him and said: "What are you doing? Sit, you aren't moving from here, you got a strong knock, rest". And she stood beside him to make sure that that would actually happen.

Simultaneously, another man arrived, with grey hair and glasses, took the large man's hand and asked whether he was alright, and whether he needed anything and how to help. The large man said with a stammer diluted with embarrassment, "I'm OK. Everything's OK." Another man, with a stubble and slicked-back black hair, meandered nervously near the blue barriers and tried to understand what had happened. He too works in the shuk and now he kicks the rebellious barrier that caused the fall as one avenging the large man, and mutters "Look at this, because of this Corona look what's happened to a person. It's not alright."

He was so angry that the only way for him to be rid of the anger was to approach the large man and console him: " It's OK, everything will be OK."

After around ten minutes, when the large man again tried to stand, the too-thin man with the white undershirt simply wouldn't let him. "You might have a concussion, you musn't stand, sit, there's no reason for you to hurry, we'll bring you what you want," he said.

The large man nodded embarrassedly, he knew the too-thin man was right. The other people also remained in their places, waiting, watching with concern, from the corners of their eyes, the large man who sat on the chair.

He finally rose. His left leg was in great pain. He limped. People supported him. They said maybe he should rest a bit more. but this time he insisted on walking. "I'm fine", he said, " Believe me, I'm fine." He wasn't fine. You could see he was in pain. And that woman who had whispered something in her daughter's ear stopped him. "Wait just a moment," she pleaded "just a moment." He didn't understand why but he waited. After several seconds, she said "Here, she's coming." And her daughter indeed came. With a white bag and in it was a new, large tray of eggs. 30 eggs. Maybe 36.

The man didn't want to take them - "There's no need, really no need" - but he had no choice. "Take, take," the woman told him, "It's yours, take." So he took. And then he hobbled in the direction of the street. A large man, dark, mustachioed, with a large, Muslim skullcap on his head. And when somebody approached the woman and told her "Bravo to you, really. Bravo to you," she replied: "What's this Bravo? Bravo for what? It's a human being, you have to help".

END

This story elicited 313 comments!

Here's a sampling:

• Nice to read something a bit positive. A bit of respite from the columns and articles that arouse endless despair
• Thanks for the lovely and touching column. This is the beauty of humanity in the most direct, simple and pure form. I always had the sense that people in Israel are good as individuals and something is lost when we expand the picture and reach politics and other systems on whose bases we live.It's really a good and important question for sociologists of Israeli society. In addition I'd be happy to translate this piece into Chinese, there, in similar situations people flee and don't reach out because of the (real) fear that the person requesting help is pretending and liable to ultimately harm you.
• Excellent writing. Reminds me of Etgar Karet.

And beyond the moving story, written in a really excellent manner, this from a nurse in the pediatric hematology unit at Hadassah hospital:

Thanks Alon. I work in a place where Jews and Arabs lift one another up every day. An hour ago, a photo was posted on our department's Whatsapp of R., a girl from Gaza, blind from a cancer called Retinoblastoma. The NGO "Salimatcom" organized a trip to the zoo for her the "see" the animals. The photo also shows R.'s mother, Sh. who is very attached to her, H., who just got married a week ago and I. The latter are all "Kosher Jews" who work in our department. They went voluntarily. This morning one of our doctors, also a "Kosher Jew", (she's even with a head covering) wrote an email in which she described the efforts of the staff to send one needy family from East Jerusalem, from your united capital, for a special treatment in New Jersey. [Working together are] an Israeli NGO, the patient's health fund, and the social worker who is ours (also with a head covering but not a kosher one - a hijab) and the coordinator of our department - all united in a race against time, against faxes, American regulations and against bureaucracy - in order to fly them there. It's strange to me that compassion is mostly revealed when a child has cancer or a man is bleeding in the shuk and his tray of eggs has broken. One of our staff members once suggested that Palestinian and Israeli politicians should be obligated to volunteer with us for a week, say every six months. All the best.