T.The text came in early Sunday morning from an Israeli friend with a question in Hebrew (and most other languages) that hadn’t been asked for months: “Are we going out tonight?”
After a full year of pandemic and repeated lockdowns, the second of which closed all of Israel’s restaurants, bars and cafes in September (and go-go in Tel Aviv), the country almost completely reopened yesterday thanks to the world’s leading COVID vaccination. campaign. The locals, in turn, took full advantage and went out with vigor.
“Back to life, first in the world,” long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu crowed from a cafe during a live Facebook broadcast about cappuccino and cake. “First” was a loose concept: many countries, especially in East Asia and Oceania, have never even closed or are already open after reducing infection rates to zero.
But for most other countries in the world that have also been hit hard by the coronavirus, Israel is indeed a test case for how we can get our lives back – thanks to the vaccines – and what such a life might look like. Based on the first night out in Tel Aviv, it’s absolutely festive, decidedly surreal and deceptively normal – bordering on recklessness.
On Dizengoff Street in central Tel Aviv, home to upscale shops and many inexpensive bars, Sunday night was the scene of a huge party: balloons tied to awnings, people walking on sidewalks with beer, and young partygoers coming out of most drinking establishments. flocked like electronic music played.
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In one of those bars, Fasada, ten friends, all in their late twenties, were drinking red wine and beer, chatting about life, work, and romance. Next to them were two guys who were diligently rolling and smoking joints, more concerned about mundane worries like a dropped slice of pizza. Nearby, three friends worked together on a bottle of white wine while watching the crowd.
“It’s wonderful to be back,” Sapir, 28, told the waitress, beaming. “This is what Tel Aviv used to look like.”
Apparently, the only compensations for the past year’s unpleasantness were the masks that hung under some chins and tables that were more spaced than usual. Much of the government’s reopening plan is tied to the “Green Passport” program for anyone vaccinated or recovered from COVID.
Today, 40 percent of the entire Israeli population of 9 million people has been fully vaccinated through the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine with two injections, including 90 percent of those over 50 who are most at risk. Health authorities have even begun to vaccinate teens in an effort to completely stop transmissions that are getting younger.
But the number of hospital admissions and the number of seriously ill due to the virus are declining, even in light of the daily COVID infection rates, which are still among the highest in the world per capita (almost entirely among those not yet have been vaccinated). Several studies by Israeli researchers over the past few weeks point to one clear fact: the vaccines work. The Israeli Ministry of Health released official data this week showing that of the more than 3.3 million people considered fully vaccinated, less than 5,000 were infected and of those only about 900 had developed symptoms.
Hence the grand reopening of the economy through the “Green Passport” program, which aims to responsibly return everyday life to a semblance of normalcy.
Available via a government-launched app or an electronic PDF issued by the Department of Health (which can be printed out), the small document provides indoor access to restaurants, bars, event halls, concerts, and other similar public gathering areas – with capacity constraints and other safeguards still in effect. For those not yet vaccinated, there is the option to sit outside, which in Tel Aviv’s mild Mediterranean climate in late winter most people did on Dizengoff Street.
Not that they necessarily had to. At first glance, the Green Passport was more of a recommendation than a harsh law, with crowds of people inside and out at multiple bars mingling freely (and without a mask) for the most part.
“No one has really looked at the Green Passport,” Tor, 25, an alternative practitioner out with friends at a bar on nearby Rothschild Boulevard, told me.
Indeed, Tel Aviv has more than 1,700 entertainment venues and cafes and restaurants – an impossible number for local authorities to keep an eye on. The barcode underneath the “Green Passport” is an embellishment at this point; All that’s required for entry thus far, The Daily Beast learned firsthand, is a quick flash to a doorman of a document that may or may not belong to its holder.
Vaccine or no vaccine, but people went out to enjoy what Rebecca, 35, a British journalist friend called, ‘our new old way of life’: a nice meal at a restaurant with her cousin that wasn’t served with plastic take-out dishes or the ubiquitous plastic crates that are set up outside many eateries during shutdown (in lieu of tables and chairs).
The scene in the restaurant, similar to the rest of the city, was “as if it never happened last year,” she said. “The excitement was palpable, people were dancing on tables to cheap Israeli pop songs, as if it were a holiday weekend.”
There were, of course, people who found it difficult to process everything – at least in the beginning.
“It was weird going out after such a long time and interacting with so many people,” said Tor, the alternative medicine specialist. “But it eventually became normal, especially after the alcohol.”
In a nod to regaining such lost normalcy, Baruch and Lauren, both 29, enjoyed a quiet drink together outside a cocktail bar down Dizengoff Street, away from the hordes. “It’s déjà vu of the lives we’ve had,” said Baruch, who runs a human resources company, in connection with his absence. “It’s our first date after corona,” he added.
“Our second date,” his fiancée Lauren corrected, jokingly. “We went to a cafe this morning.”
As a manager at a bar service company, Lauren was on leave because the entire industry was closed due to the pandemic. Yet both she and Baruch had not yet been vaccinated – a recurring theme among many younger Tel Avivis who are less anti-vaxxers than hesitant to vaccinate.
“I don’t want to be the first to jump in the pool,” Baruch said metaphorically. “We will see in the future.”
Others seem more angry with the government for making their lives dependent on receiving a vaccine – and those who ask for it. “It is nobody’s business whether I did it or not,” replied Sapir, the waitress, when asked, now smiling a little less. “The government can’t tell us what to do … and if a restaurant asks me for the green passport, I turn around and don’t go in.”
It was certainly a loophole: sitting in a club or restaurant after showing a vaccination document while the bartenders or wait staff may not have been vaccinated themselves. But there is no way to legally force employees to get vaccinated.
Tor, for his part, was furious with those who have not yet taken advantage of Israel’s abundant vaccine supply and ease of access.
“I have a lot of family in the US and they go nuts [trying to get a vaccine]… The people here in Israel don’t understand what the situation is like in the rest of the world, ”he said.
For Ohad, 22, a waiter at Baruch and Lauren’s cocktail bar, it was an easy decision. He had just received his first injection and was wearing a plastic face mask, just like his colleagues.
“I want the customers I serve to feel safe and comfortable,” he said. “I waited six months to start this job – because how much time can you really spend at home [on unemployment] lose yourself? “
It 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 in the pandemic.
It was the first night of the rebirth after nearly half a year, and both sides of the nightlife were thirsty to get back to normal.
Idan, 42, the largest owner of the Jasper Bar, a Dizengoff speakeasy known for non-existent closing times, said it hadn’t been easy. “Everything was stress – there was no dialogue with the industry from the government, and their financial support basically covered our rent.”
However, he considered himself one of the lucky ones: his staff stayed loyal and returned, and judging by the heavy traffic both inside and outside his establishment, so did the customers. He hugged and kissed a goodbye as he hesitantly told me, “Tel Aviv … Tel Aviv … things just have to get back to what they were.”
After the first day of reopening, it looks like they will. And as Tel Aviv goes, so does Israel – and like Israel, with both its high vaccination rates and infection rates, so likely most other countries will start fighting the pandemic.
If the vaccine manages to keep the number of critically ill people down while keeping the economy and everyday life open, then the world will have a model for really living with the virus. And if that is not the case, then Sunday evening was the first step to another lockdown.
But in the meantime, Tel Aviv remains open and routine has returned.
“We’re going out this weekend, aren’t we?” my friend asked at the end of the night, perhaps a sign of how normal it had all become.