While waiting at a bus stop

Notes from waiting at a bus stop:

1. Lady with a huge gold "Imma" (mother) pendant who blesses each soldier as they get on a bus "Safe journey, Hashem watch over you and keep you safe, give you success in every mission"

2. A young Ethiopian-Israeli man who stopped at a memorial sticker of a fallen Ethiopian-Israeli soldier. Touched the picture of the soldier, caressed it, kissed it, said a quiet prayer.

3. So many memorial stickers and posters. Each bus shelter a cenotaph. So many faces. No one passes the shelter without stopping to pay their respects. Some study each one, some a cursory glance, but none is indifferent.

4. Group of agricultural volunteers in their blue Leket food rescue t-shirts, many of them pensioners, comparing farms they've worked on and trading stories while waiting for their volunteer transports.

5. Sunrise on a relatively cloudy summer morning.

6. The peel of early morning church bells.

7. Stream of private buses pulling up calling out the names of kibbutzim and moshavim in the Otef - destinations for today's agricultural volunteers.