Highway robbery & the Jerusalem Mosh Pit

Introduction

A large part of our travels has been visiting places such as museums like the Louvre, art exhibitions of artists like Picasso and ancient ruins like the Parthenon. Instead of physical locations, today was a lovely afternoon interacting on a personal level with 4 groups of local people in Jerusalem. While Chels and the boys were relaxing in the Zion Hotel room, Cora and I decided to go for a walk around the neighbourhood looking for any live music and buskers we could find. Cora packed her little tin of coin shekels that she calls her "busker money" that she can give away, I grabbed an umbrella and water bottle before we hit the town.

Agam and Racheli

We literally walked round to the corner of Ben Yehuda St and Dorot Rishonim St and found a man playing the electric guitar. We both sat down on a bench across from him. A minute later two little girls about Cora's age sat down on the bench beside us and had a little wooden stand with a glass jar full of candies. On the outside of the jar was a sign saying "1 shekel" in Hebrew. We decided to talk to them, but soon realised they did not speak a word of english. So we used google translate on our phone and introduced ourselves as Cora and Zaf. 

The girls were called Agam and Racheli. Agam was 8 years old and Racheli was 9. They were trying to sell candy to earn 10 shekels to buy a ring they wanted. They persevered for an hour asking people as they walked passed, but without any success. Cora and I decided to buy some of their candy and enjoyed eating their sugar coated, banana and strawberry flavoured marshmellows. 

Cora buying candy from Agam and Racheli

We later met their parents and realised they were not sisters, but friends from school. Agam's  mother Sonya explained that the girl's get everything they wanted, so this time she said they have to earn their money by selling candy on the streets. Racheli's father Minokem spoke fairly good english and helped us translate for the girls. I enjoyed having a meaningful conversation with Agam's mother about begging, busking and teaching kids how to earn money and appreciate it's value. The girls were very friendly and generous with their candy. At the end we gave them a 20 shekel note to help them with their future careers in sales.

Lefty Busker

Across from the bench we were sitting with Agam and Racheli there was a man busking with a guitar. The first thing I noticed about the busker was that he was left handed. He was playing pop songs, but performing the melody with a simple but effective finger picking style. Interestingly he seemed to be in his own world, and even when people came up to give him money, he did not make eye contact or smile.

Cora sitting on the bench next to Agam and Racheli with the Busker in the foreground

After an hour of watching him and enjoying his music, an old lady in a motorised wheelchair came up to him. She parked her chair right up near his busking guitar case which held his money. The old lady beckoned to him and asked him if she could take some of his money. The busker hesitated then reached into his busking case and gave her a 20 shekel note. The lady took the money, then reached down again and took 50 more shekels from his case! He used his hands to ask her why she was taking that much of his money. She shook her head, put her hands to her mouth as if to say "I need to eat" and she drove off stealing 70 shekels of his hard earned cash! 70 shekels is about $30 dollars. 

Cora and I were shocked to see a disabled old lady do a "highway robbery" of another person in broad daylight. We talked about how unkind that was and what we could do to help the man. We decided to give him an extra-extra amount of money to help him. Cora reflected about how we could use the money to buy something for ourselves like a souvenir pin, or to get a new hair cut, but that giving the money to this man was more important at this time. It was an opportunity for us to "be generous in prosperity". This was the Generosity quote that we have been memorising this month, so it seemed like a good chance to put this virtue into action. 

When the man turned around to unplug something, Cora ran up and put a large amount of money into his guitar case, then we ran and hid behind the corner of the building hidden away but still able to see him. We saw him come back to the case and we enjoyed seeing the look on his face when he saw the cash notes sitting in his bag. His eyes went wide and he looked around to see who had done it. We remained hidden behind the wall corner smiling. We later went back to the bench and sat down as if nothing had happened. We talked about the story of "the shoe maker and the elves" and how the elves helped the shoe maker in secret. This is how we wanted to help the busker man, to help him in secret. It was fun!

Teenagers nearby

After the wheelchair robbery and our secret act of generosity, we sat back on the bench. We looked up to the right side of the busker and there were 3 teenage girls staring at Cora and I. When we made eye contact with them, all 3 girls raised their hands together and gave us a big "rock n roll salute" with their fingers and they all nodded their heads at the same time. At first I was confused why they did this, but then one of them pointed to the busker's guitar case and then I realised they were saying "we saw what that old lady did, we saw what YOU did, and we acknowledge you". I explained to Cora why the teenagers were all smiling at us and she smiled back. It was a wonderful uplifting feeling to have seen an injustice, try to correct it, and be unexpectedly acknowledged by complete strangers.

Teenagers to the right 

Hadag Nahash - the Fish-snake 

It was now 3pm on Friday afternoon and the start of Shabbat, the sabbath, and all the shops were starting to close. After the busker packed up his things, Agam and Racheli ran back and gave us a big bag of lollies. We said good bye and decided to go for a walk towards Hillel street. When we walked a couple blocks to Hillel street we could hear some loud music so walked down the hill to see what was happening. 

Israeli Mosh Pit

It was a massive "mosh pit" with about a thousand people dancing in the street! Cora was jumping up and down saying "let's go closer, let's go closer!". We got to about 20 meters from the "Jerusalem Front Stage" and I lifted Cora onto my shoulders.

She was a dance machine! Waving her arms around to the beat for the next 2 hours... non-stop.

The Shaggy haired man high-fiving Cora

There was another little girl on her father's shoulders, so we decided to move closer to them and danced together with them. 

Another dance-machine kid on her Dad's shoulder

We had at least two people offer Cora drinks of bottled water (which she did not take), one guy with long black shaggy hair gave her a fist pump in the air, another guy asked if he could take a photo of her dancing and said "she is so cute", another two ladies danced on either side of us and were smiling and interacting with Cora following her arm movements, another lady at the end said to Cora "you are so awesome and inspiring!". Cora absolutely loved the music, the people were so friendly and had so many positive uplifting things to say to Cora. After 2 hours of dancing in the sun, I left with soaking wet armpits and aching shoulders. Cora left with a bright red face and a new found level of confidence from her fellow Israeli dancers.

The Shaggy haired man moshing with us

The band was exceptional. They sang in hebrew and were obviously well known because for every single song the entire audience was able to sing the words. I found out from the black shaggy haired guy that fist-pumped Cora that the band was called "Hadag Nahash" which means "the fish-snake". The band's songs call for peace, tolerance and equality, and include political and social protest.

Conclusion

We returned home to Zion hotel 3 hours later to find Chelsea and the boys as we left them. It was a little bit surreal to have been 10 minutes earlier jumping around in a mosh pit with a thousand sweaty Israeli youth, to now coming back to reality of our hotel room. It was hard to explain the utter excitement and emotional joy Cora and I had experienced this afternoon. Meeting so many friendly people in Jerusalem has definitely been the highlight of my trip so far.