The Last Day of Summer

Every year the Israeli public school system holds its first day of school on September 1st. It does not matter if this day falls on a Friday and is, for all intents and purposes, a wasted day, no teacher or student would agree to start earlier and the Ministry of Education will not settle on later.

This makes today the last day of summer vacation. Living in the center of Tel Aviv, I can tell that summer is winding to a close. Dizengoff Square is a popular hangout for the punk kids of Tel Aviv. Usually there are a handful of them loitering around, asking people if they have a shekel or two and playing their music. When I rode my bike through the square the other day, I had to weave through the dozens of punk kids hanging around the square. Some were lying on the ground, others were jumping from bench to bench and still others somehow managed to climb into the fountain. You could feel everyone trying to soak up the last drops of summer freedom.

At this time last summer I remember sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a friend. There was a mother with 2 kids next to me and each child had a massive looking dessert that could easily feed 4 people. The chef came out and said “this is for a sweet new year. Do well in school and make your mother proud.” To an outsider it looked like a mother who was trying to bribe her kids to do well in school or trick them into thinking that the whole school year will be as sweet as this dessert.

I am not going back to school, so I do not feel this shift first-hand, but I will admit that it will be nice to walk down the streets when they are little less crowded and go into a clothing store that is not over run by teenage girls. (But who are we kidding, when do I really shop?)

For me the end of summer means a month full of jam packed meetings to schedule and conference calls to connect before the “holiday season” when everything slows down again to an almost non-existent pace. Whether school or work, I think that people look at September as the crazy month to make it through for their reward- one Jewish Holiday after another for the next month.