The Taxi Driver’s Remarkable Kindness to My Daughter
Yesterday my daughter went to Tel Aviv for an appointment. But when she got to the train station at 8:05 PM to come back to Jerusalem, she discovered that because of the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, all public transportation had already stopped at 8.
My daughter didn’t have any cash with her, only her public-transportation card and her ATM/ credit card. So she asked a sweet elderly taxi driver to take her to an ATM so she would have cash to pay for a shared taxi to Jerusalem. But then, oy vey, she realized her credit/ATM card had stopped working!
And then the driver did something that blew my daughter away. He insisted on driving her all the way to the shared taxi stand without payment, and when they got there he reached into his own pocket and handed her 30 shekels to pay for the shared taxi home to Jerusalem.
My daughter insisted she would send him money as soon as she got back home.
“Don’t worry!” he waved her off, “Next time you’re in Tel Aviv, whenever that is, you’ll pay me back.”
I thought of this remarkable story when my friend, whose family’s in quarantine since 3 of her children have COVID, told me that her phone’s been ringing off the hook with offers of help.
Which made me think about how I tend to focus on the ways in which this pandemic isolates us from one another. But in a deeper way, maybe, it’s bringing us closer.
Beautiful!
Only in Israel
That was such a nice story. Thank you for sharing!
How I love those Israeli taxi drivers!!!