With the lowest rates on the planet, Israel is the world's cellular petri dish. Strolling through a mall in the heart of fashionable Tel Aviv, where a Hamas terrorist recently blew himself up next to an ATM, and where Israeli youngsters bungee-jump in air-conditioned comfort - I occasioned upon a real Israeli novelty: a spanking clean men's room. Inside, I saw a man urinating into a shiny porcelain receptacle, his fingers occupied with matters at hand.
But crooked between his shoulder and ear was a cellular telephone. The fellow was taking a whiz while instructing Shula, his secretary, which bills to pay now and which to leave for later.
Not wishing to interrupt, I headed for a stall. Soon someone entered the one next to mine and began talking. I assumed he must be speaking to me and wondered at this latest intrusion of personal space, which seemed gauche even by local standards. I quickly understood, however, that he was making an appointment with his dentist. Suddenly, it dawned on me why Israeli newspapers kept writing about a rabbinical ruling forbidding Jews to converse with others while engaged in elimination.
This prohibition was well known among Orthodox Jews: the faithful may not answer anyone - even a family member - who calls while they are thus engaged. Apparently, the rabbis felt a renewed need to educate consumers not only in the rudiments of Jewish law, but also in the appropriate use of cell phones. Israelis, having succumbed to cellular mania, simply have no concept of downtime anymore. The three-hour afternoon siestas and leisurely work habits of yesteryear have been largely relegated to mythic memory.
So, it turns out, has the leisurely dump. I soon found myself ceding the rabbis their point. A brief jaunt almost anyplace in Israel these days reveals that the Jewish state is chock-full of cell phones. People carry them everywhere: to the beach, the desert, the corner store, even to pray at the Wailing Wall.
