TThe text message came early Sunday morning from an Israeli friend with a question in Hebrew (and in most other languages) that had not been asked for several months: “Are we going out tonight?”
After a whole year of pandemic and repeated blockades, the second of which closed all restaurants and bars and cafes in Israel in September – and in Tel Aviv – the country reopened almost completely yesterday behind the vaccination of COVID, the world leader in the campaign. The locals, in turn, took full advantage and came out strong.
“Back to life, the first in the world,” long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sang from a cafe during a live Facebook show on cappuccino and cake. “First and foremost” was a weak concept: many countries, especially in East Asia and Oceania, have never even closed or are already open after infection rates have dropped to zero.
But for most other countries in the world just as severely affected by coronavirus, Israel is indeed a test case to get our lives back – thanks to vaccines – and what such a life might look like. Based on the first night in Tel Aviv, it is certainly festive, decidedly surreal and deceptively normal – limiting itself to recklessness.
On Dizengoff Street in downtown Tel Aviv, home to luxury shopping and many luxury bars, the scene on Sunday night was a massive party: balloons tied to awnings, people walking on beer sidewalks and young partygoers pouring out of most units. to drink. as electronic music played.
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At such a bar, Fasada, a table with 10 friends, all at the age of twenty, sipped red wine and beer, reaching each other for life, work and stories. Next to them were two boys rolling with wire and smoking joints, worrying more about everyday concerns, such as a piece of fallen pizza. Nearby, three friends worked together on a bottle of white wine as they watched the crowd.
“It’s great to be back,” Sapir, a 28-year-old waitress, told me. “That’s how Tel Aviv was.”
Apparently, the only allowances for last year’s inconvenience were the masks hanging under longer beards and tables than usual. Much of the government’s reopening plan is linked to the “Green Passport” scheme for all those vaccinated or recovered from COVID.
As of this writing, 40% of Israel’s entire population of 9 million people has been completely inoculated with the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, including 90% of those over 50 who are most at risk. Health authorities have even started vaccinating teenagers in an attempt to completely stop transmissions that are getting younger and younger.
However, general hospitalizations and critically ill patients due to the virus are declining, even in the face of daily rates of COVID infection, which are still, on a per capita basis, one of the highest in the world (almost entirely unvaccinated). ). Multiple studies conducted by Israeli researchers in recent weeks indicate 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 became infected and only 900 of them developed symptoms.
Hence the great reopening of the economy through the “green passport”, which aims to restore everyday life to an appearance of normalcy, responsibly.
Available through a government-launched application or electronic PDF issued by the Ministry of Health (which can be printed), the small document grants entry to restaurants, bars, event halls, concerts and other such public meeting spaces – with restrictions on capacity and other guarantees still in force. For those who have not yet been vaccinated, there is still the option to stay outside, which was done by most of those on Dizengoff Street in the mild Mediterranean late winter climate of Tel Aviv.
Not that they necessarily had to. On the one hand, the green passport was more of a recommendation than a hard and fast law, with masses of people inside and outside at several bars mixing freely (and without a mask) for the most part.
“No one really looked at the green passport,” Tor, a 25-year-old alternative medicine professional, told me at a bar on nearby Rothschild Boulevard.
And indeed, Tel Aviv has over 1,700 nightlife and cafes and restaurants – a number impossible for local authorities to monitor. The barcode at the bottom of the “green passport” is currently an adornment; All that is needed for entry so far, The Daily Beast has learned from the first hand, is a quick blink to a doorman of a document that may or may not be the holder.
Vaccine or no vaccine, however, people went out to enjoy what Rebecca, 35, a British journalist, called “our new old way of life”: a nice meal at a restaurant with her cousin, who did not was served on plastic dishes or ubiquitous plastic boxes installed during the lock-up outside many restaurants (instead of tables and chairs).
The scene at the restaurant, similar to the rest of the city, was “as if it never happened last year,” she said. “The excitement was palpable, people dancing on the tables to sing Israeli pop songs, as if it were a holiday weekend.”
They were, of course, the ones who found the whole thing difficult to process – at least at first.
“It was weird to go out after so long and be around a lot of people,” said Tor, an alternative medicine specialist. “But in the end it became normal, especially after alcohol.”
In a nod to claim such lost normalcy, Baruch and Lauren, both 29, enjoyed a quiet drink together in front of a cocktail bar above Dizengoff Street, away from the hordes. “It’s already vu from the life I’ve had,” Baruch, who runs a human resources company, told me, referring to the fact that I was out. “This is our first meeting after the Crown,” he added.
“Our second date,” Lauren, his fiancée, joked. “I went to a cafe this morning.”
A manager of a bar service company, Lauren had been pursued while the entire industry was shut down due to the pandemic. However, both she and Baruch had not yet been vaccinated – a recurring theme among many Tel Aviv youth, who are not so much anti-vaxxers as they are hesitant about the vaccine.
“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 annoyed by the government because they make their lives conditional on receiving a vaccine – and by those who wonder. “It’s nobody’s business whether I did it or not,” Sapir, the waitress, answered the question, now less smiling. “The government should not tell us what to do … and if a restaurant asks for my green passport, I will return and not enter.”
There was certainly a gap in the arrangement: sitting inside a club or restaurant after presenting a vaccination document, while bartenders or waiting staff could not be vaccinated themselves. But there is no way to legally force employees to be inoculated.
Tor, in turn, was furious at those who have not yet used Israel’s copious supply of easy access.
“I have a lot of families in the US and I’m going crazy [trying to get a vaccine]”People here in Israel don’t understand the situation in the rest of the world,” he said.
For Ohad, 22, a waiter at the Baruch and Lauren cocktail bar, it was an easy decision. He had just received the first blow and was wearing – like his colleagues – a plastic mask.
“I want the customers I serve to feel safe and comfortable,” he said. “I’m waiting six months to start this job – because really, how long can you stay home? [on unemployment] are you lost ”
It was an important point: a whole generation of young people in the hotel industry (and other sectors of the heavily affected economy) who lost a year of their lives as a result of the pandemic.
It was the first night of rebirth after almost half a year, and both sides of the nightlife equation were thirsty to return to normal.
Idan, 42, the majority owner of Jasper Bar, a Dizengoff man known for his non-existent closing hours, said it was not easy. “Everything was stressful – there was no dialogue with industry from the government, and their financial support practically covered our rent.”
However, he considered himself one of the lucky ones: his staff remained loyal and returned, and judging by the heavy traffic both inside and outside his unit, so did the customers. He hugged and kissed goodbye as he said to me, interrupted, “Tel Aviv … Tel Aviv … things should just go back to what they were.”
After the first day of reopening, it looks like they will. And just as Tel Aviv is doing, so is Israel – and so is Israel, both with its high number of vaccinations and its infection rates, so are most other countries fighting the pandemic.
If the vaccine manages to keep the number of patients seriously, as the economy and daily life remain open, then the world will have a model to really live with the virus. And if not, then Sunday night will be the first step towards another deadlock.
In the meantime, however, Tel Aviv will remain open and the routine will return.
“We’re going out on the weekend, aren’t we?” my friend asked at the end of the night, perhaps a sign of how familiar everything had already become.