Tthe text message arrived in the early hours of Sunday morning from an Israeli friend with a question in Hebrew (and in most other languages) that had not been asked in months: “Shall we go out tonight?”
After a full year of pandemic and repeated blockades, the second of which, in September, closed all Israeli restaurants and bars and cafes, and either way, Tel Aviv, the country reopened almost completely yesterday. its vaccine against the COVID campaign. The locals, meanwhile, made the most of it and came out strong.
“Back to life, first in the world,” long-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sang from a cafe during a live Facebook broadcast about cappuccino and cake. “First” was a loose concept: many countries, especially in East Asia and Oceania, don’t even close or are already open after reducing infection rates to zero.
But for most other countries in the world, equally affected by the coronavirus, Israel is, in fact, a test case to reclaim our lives (thanks to vaccines) and how such a life can seem. Based on the first night in Tel Aviv, it’s definitely festive, decidedly surreal and deceptively normal; he limits recklessly.
On Dizengoff Street in downtown Tel Aviv, home to high-end shops and many low-end bars, the Sunday evening scene was a massive party: balloons tied to awnings, people walking along sidewalks with beers and young partygoers which overflowed from most beverage establishments. while electronic music was playing.
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In one of these bars, Fasada, a table of ten friends, all about twenty years old, drank red wine and beers, catching up with life, work and romances. Next to them were two boys rolling and smoking together, more concerned with everyday worries, like a piece of fallen pizza. Nearby, three friends were working together with a bottle of white wine while watching people.
“It’s wonderful to be back,” Sapir, 28, the waitress, told me. “So was Tel Aviv.”
Apparently, the only rights to the nasty last year were the masks hanging under some beards and tables further apart than usual. A large part of the government’s reopening plan is linked to the “Green Passport” plan for all vaccinated or recovered from COVID.
In the current wording, 40 percent of the entire Israeli population of 9 million people has been fully inoculated with the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, including 90 percent of those over 50 who are most at risk. Health authorities have even started vaccinating teenagers with the aim of completely stopping the increasingly distorted transmissions of younger people.
But general hospitalizations and critically ill patients due to the virus are declining, even in the face of daily rates of COVID infection which remain, per capita, one of the highest in the world (almost entirely among those not yet vaccinated). Several studies by Israeli researchers in recent weeks point to a clear fact: vaccines work. The Israeli Ministry of Health released official data this week showing that of the more than 3.3 million people considered completely vaccinated, less than 5,000 had become infected and of whom only about 900 had developed symptoms.
Hence the great reopening of the economy through the “Green Passport” scheme, which aims to return to everyday life to an appearance of normalcy, responsibly.
Available through a government-launched application or an electronic PDF issued by the Ministry of Health (which can be printed), the small document allows entry into restaurants, bars, function rooms, concerts and other public meeting spaces, with restrictions capacity and there are other guarantees in force. For those who are not yet vaccinated, there is still the option to sit outside, which in the mild late winter climate of Tel Aviv did most of those on Dizengoff Street.
It’s not that they necessarily had to. In reality, the Green Passport was more of a recommendation than a hard and fast law, with masses of people inside and outside in various bars mixing freely (and without masks) for the most part.
“No one really looked at the Green Passport,” Tor, 25, an alternative medicine professional with friends at a bar on nearby Rothschild Boulevard, told me.
And, in fact, Tel Aviv has more than 1,700 nightlife venues, cafes and restaurants, a number impossible for local authorities to control. The barcode at the bottom of the “Green Passport” is, at this point, an ornament; So far, all it takes to access, according to The Daily Beast first-hand, is a quick flash to a doorman of a document who may or may not be the holder.
Although the vaccine or no vaccine, people went out to enjoy what Rebecca, 35, a British journalist, called “our new and old way of life”: a good meal in a restaurant with her cousin who doesn’t it was served in the plastic kitchen. dishes outside or the ubiquitous plastic boxes installed during closing outside of many restaurants (instead of tables and chairs).
The restaurant scene, similar to the rest of the city, was “like last year it never happened,” he said. “The excitement was palpable. People were dancing at the tables with Israeli pop songs, like it was a holiday weekend.”
There were, of course, those who found the whole process difficult to process, at least at first.
“It was weird to go out after so long and be around so many people,” said Tor, the alternative medicine specialist. “But in the end it became normal, especially after alcohol.”
In a gesture to regain that lost normalcy, Baruch and Lauren, both 29, enjoyed a quiet drink together outside a cocktail bar above Dizengoff Street, away from the hordes. “It’s a déjà vu of the lives we had,” Baruch, who runs a human resources company, told me, referring to the exit. “It’s our first date after the crown,” he added.
“Our second date,” Lauren corrected her jokingly, her promise. “We went to a cafe this morning.”
Manager of a bar service company, Lauren had been singled out when the entire industry shut down due to the pandemic. However, both she and Baruch had not been vaccinated yet, a recurring theme among many younger Tel Avivis who are not so much anti-vaxxers as hesitant.
“I don’t want to be the first to jump in the pool,” Baruch said metaphorically. “We’ll see in the future.”
Others seem more angry with the government for conditioning their lives on getting a vaccine, and for those who ask. “It’s nobody’s business whether he does it or not,” Waitress Sapir replied when asked, now with less of a smile. “The government shouldn’t tell us what to do … and if a restaurant asks me for a Green Passport I’ll turn around and not go in.”
Of course, it was a loophole in the arrangement: sitting inside a club or restaurant after showing a vaccination document, while the waiters or waiters could not be vaccinated. But there is no way to legally force employees to inoculate themselves.
Tor, meanwhile, was furious at those who have not yet taken advantage of Israel’s abundant supply of vaccines and their easy access.
“I have a lot of family in the US and they go crazy [trying to get a vaccine]… People here in Israel don’t understand what the situation is like in the rest of the world, ”he said.
For 22-year-old Ohad, a bartender at the Baruch and Lauren cocktail bar, it was an easy decision. He had just gotten his first punch and, like his colleagues, was wearing a plastic mask.
“I want the customers I serve to feel safe and comfortable,” he said. “I’ve been waiting six months to start this job, because in reality, how long can you sit at home [on unemployment] get lost? “
It was an important point: a whole generation of young people in the hospitality industry (and other sectors of the economy badly affected) who have lost a year of their lives due to the pandemic.
It was the first night of rebirth after nearly half a year, and both sides of the nightlife equation were thirsty to return to normal.
Idan, 42, majority owner of the Jasper bar, a Dizengoff speaker known for his non-existent closing hours, said it had not been easy. “It was all stress: the government didn’t dialogue with the industry and their financial support basically covered our income.”
However, he was considered one of the lucky ones: his staff remained loyal and returned, and judging by the heavy traffic both inside and outside his establishment, so did the customers. He hugged and kissed me goodbye as he said to me, in dismay, “Tel Aviv … Tel Aviv … things should go back to what they were.”
After the first day of reopening, it looks like yes. And as Tel Aviv does, so does Israel, and Israel, with its high number of vaccinations and infection rates, is likely that most other countries will fight the pandemic.
If the vaccine manages to keep the number of people seriously ill, as the economy and daily life remain open, the world will have a model of how to really live with the virus. And if not, Sunday night will have been the first step toward a new closure.
In the meantime, however, Tel Aviv will remain open and the routine will be back.
“We’re going out this weekend, aren’t we?” my friend asked at the end of the night, a sign perhaps of which it was already normal.