Tthe text message came early Sunday morning from an Israeli friend with a question in Hebrew (and most other languages) that had not been asked for months: “Are we going out tonight?”
After a full year of pandemics and recurring closures, the second of which in September closed all of Israel’s – and go-go Tel Aviv -‘s restaurants and bars and cafes, the country reopened almost completely on the back of its world leader yesterday. COVID vaccination campaign. The locals, in turn, took full advantage and came into force.
“Back to life, first in the world,” longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shouted from a cafe during a live Facebook broadcast over cappuccino and cake. ‘First’ was a loose concept: many countries, especially in East Asia and Oceania, were never even closed or are already open after infection rates dropped to zero.
But for most other countries in the world that are also affected by the coronavirus, Israel is indeed a test case for how we can get our lives back – thanks to the vaccinations – and what such a life can look like. Based on the first night in Tel Aviv, it is definitely festive, definitely surreal and deceptively normal – bordering on reckless.
In Dizengoff Street in the middle of Tel Aviv, home to expensive shops and very cheap pubs, the scene was a big party on Sunday night: balloons tied to canopies, people walking on the sidewalks with beer, and young revealers overflowing of most drinking places. as electronic music is played.
Beast Travel Digest
Get the whole world in your inbox.
At one such bar, Fasada, a table of ten friends, all in their late twenties, drank red wine and beer and caught up with each other over life, work and romance. Next to them were two guys who worked hard and smoked joints, and they were more worried about worries like a slice of pizza. Nearby, three girlfriends worked together on a bottle of white wine while watching the crowd.
“It’s great to be back,” Sapir, 28, the waitress, beaming at me. “That was how Tel Aviv used to be.”
The only allowance for the unpleasantness of the past year was apparently the masks hanging more than usual under some chins and tables. A large part of the government’s reopening plan is linked to the “Green Passport” scheme for anyone vaccinated or recovered from COVID.
Currently, 40 percent of the entire population of 9 million people in Israel are fully vaccinated through the two-shot Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, including 90 percent of those over 50 who are at greatest risk. Health authorities have even started vaccinating teenagers in an effort to stop the broadcasts that are getting younger in full.
But overall hospitalizations and those critically ill due to the virus are declining, even in light of the daily COVID infection rates that are still per capita one of the highest in the world (almost entirely among those who have not yet been vaccinated). Multiple studies by Israeli researchers in recent weeks point to one clear fact: the vaccines work. The Israeli Ministry of Health released official data this week showing that out of more than 3.3 million people considered fully vaccinated, less than 5,000 became infected and that only 900 developed symptoms from it.
Hence the grand reopening of the economy via the “Green Passport” scheme, which aims to make daily life look responsible in a responsible way.
The small document is available via an app issued by the government or an electronic PDF that can be issued by the Ministry of Health (which can be printed out) and provides indoor access to restaurants, pubs, meeting rooms, concerts and other such public meeting spaces – with capacity constraints and other guarantees still in place. For those who have not yet been vaccinated, the option to sit outside still exists, which has made most of those in Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv’s mild Mediterranean climate do in the winter.
Not that they necessarily had to. At first glance, the green passport was more of a recommendation than a hard and fast law, with masses of people inside and out at various bars mingling mostly freely (and without masks).
“No one really looked at the Green Passport,” Tor, 25, a professional alternative medicine professional at a bar on nearby Rothschild Boulevard, told me.
And indeed, Tel Aviv has more than 1,700 nightlife venues and cafes and restaurants – an impossible number for local authorities to monitor. The barcode at the bottom of the “Green Passport” is a decoration at this point; All that is needed so far for entry, The Daily Beast has learned first-hand, is a quick flash to a porter of a document that may or may not be the holder.
Vaccination or no vaccine, however, made people enjoy what Rebecca (35), a British journalist friend, called ‘our new old way of life’: a nice meal in a restaurant with her cousin that was not taken on plastic – dishes or the ubiquitous plastic crates set up outside many dining areas (instead of tables and chairs) during locking.
The scene in the restaurant, similar to the rest of the city, was “like the previous year never happened,” she said. “The excitement was palpable, people dancing on tables to cheesy Israeli pop songs, as if it were a holiday weekend.”
Of course, there were people who found it difficult to process – at least at first.
“It was strange to go out after such a long time and be with so many people,” said Tor, the specialist in alternative medicine. “But in the end, it became normal, especially after the drink.”
In the nod to regain such lost normalcy, Baruch and Lauren, both 29, enjoy a leisurely drink outside a cocktail further down Dizengoff Street away from the hordes. “It’s a déjà vu of the lives we’ve had, ” Baruch, who runs a human resources company, said he was outside. “This is our first appointment after corona,” he added.
“Our second date,” Lauren, his fiancée, jokingly corrected him. “We’re going to a cafe this morning.”
Lauren, a manager of a bar service company, was disregarded when the entire industry was shut down due to the pandemic. Yet she and Baruch had not yet been vaccinated – a recurring theme among many younger Tel Avivians who do not have as many anti-vaxxers as hesitation against vaccines.
“I do not want to be the first one to jump into the pool,” Baruch said metaphorically. “We’ll see it in the future.”
Others seem harsher to the government because they make their lives dependent on receiving a vaccine – and on those who inquire. “It’s nobody’s business whether I did it or not,” Sapir, the waitress, answered a question, but now less smiling. “The government should not tell us what to do … and if a restaurant asks me for the Green Passport, I turn around and do not go inside.”
It was definitely a lacuna in the arrangement: to sit inside a club or restaurant after showing a vaccination document, while the bartenders or service staff may not be vaccinated. But there is no way to legally force employees to be vaccinated.
Tor, in turn, was furious at those who had not yet taken advantage of Israel’s abundant vaccine supply and easy access.
‘I have a lot of family in the US and they go crazy [trying to get a vaccine]”People here in Israel do not understand the situation in the rest of the world,” he said.
For Ohad, 22, a waiter at Baruch and Lauren’s cocktail party, it was an easy decision. He had just had his first jerk, and – like his colleagues – was wearing a plastic face mask.
“I want the customers I serve to feel safe and comfortable,” he said. ‘I waited six months to start this job – because really, how much time can you sit at home? [on unemployment] lose yourself? ”
This was an important point: a whole generation of younger people in the hospitality industry (and other hard-hit sectors of the economy) who lost a year of their lives to the pandemic.
It was the first night of the 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 the Jasper Bar, a Dizengoff speaker known for his non-existent closing hours, said it was not easy. “Everything was stressful – there was no dialogue with the government, and their financial support basically covered our rent.”
However, he considers himself one of the lucky ones: his staff remained loyal and came back, and judging by the busy traffic inside and outside his establishment, the customers did the same. He hugged and kissed one goodbye when he quietly told me, “Tel Aviv … Tel Aviv … things just have to go back to what they were.”
After the first day of reopening, it seems like they will do it. And just like Tel Aviv, so will Israel – and Israel too, with its high vaccination rates and infection rates, will probably bring most other countries to the fight against the pandemic.
If the vaccine succeeds in limiting the number of seriously ill people, as the economy and daily life remain open, the world will have a model for how you can really live with the virus. And if that is not the case, Sunday night would have been the first step towards another closure.
In the meantime, however, Tel Aviv will remain open and the routine will return.
“We’re going out this weekend, aren’t we?” asked my friend at the end of the night, a sign perhaps of how ordinary it all had become.