• The rooms in all public buildings have mezuzos on their door-posts.

• When you greet the street cleaner in the morning, he may respond with a quotation from the Tanach or siddur.

• The sign on the hospital entrance reads: "Today, entry of kohanim is permitted."

• A passerby on the street, hearing the call from a balcony for a "tenth man," will go up to the apartment of mourners and complete the minyan.

• All the daily newspapers put out a special Purim edition with bogus news, and radio and TV news programs often do the same.

• When a family goes away for a holiday, they routinely turn over their keys to a neighbor who needs spare sleeping space for holiday guests.

• Bins of bread and rolls, and of milk bags, are deposited at dawn in front of closed grocery stores and restaurants - and no one touches them. (Unless someone needs his groceries early, in which case he takes what he needs, and sends a child, after the store opens, to pay the bill.)

• Trucks, buses, and ambulances are parked overnight in front of their drivers' homes.

• During the days preceding Pesach, visitors to public buildings are requested not to bring in any chametz.

• The check-out girls in the supermarkets dress up in costume for Purim.

• On the months with major Jewish holidays, government pension checks are sent out a week before the holiday, instead of the usual last week of the month. Government employees receive a substantial advance on their salary the week before a holiday as well, to make holiday buying easier.

• Handicapped drivers have permanently-assigned parking places in front of their homes.

• There are 12,000 doctors for a general population of 4.5 million (the highest ratio in the world).

• There are over ten thousand synagogues.

• Youngsters get up in the bus and give their seats to elderly, or pregnant, passengers - and get yelled at by strangers if they don't.

• Fathers of newborns are granted paid leave from work; and if it's a boy, they get the day of the bris off too.

• Framed copies of the aseres hadibros (the Decalogue) are posted on the walls of railroad passenger cars.

• All Jewish holidays are national holidays.

• There is a supply of Tehillim books available for the families of patients in hospital waiting rooms, as well as in doctors' and dentists' offices.

• In the only subway system [in Haifa], the doors that let passengers in and out are inscribed with the Torah's commandment to rise before old age and to honor the elderly.

• The remains of soldiers, uncovered by archaeologists, are given a proper Jewish burial 2,000 years after they fell in battle.

• There are branch offices of banks in hospital lobbies.

• After office hours, mayors answer phone calls at home from regular citizens. Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals also list their home phone numbers, and accept calls after hours with good cheer.

• The President and his wife hold open house, welcoming groups and individuals - over 5,000 in all - on the first day of chol hamoed, in their sukkah.

• Strangers stop you in the street at midday and tell you to put a hat on your child's head - the sun is too strong.

• An invitation to a simcha automatically implies husband and wife, children, grandparents, and grandchildren - without reply cards.

• Most blond, blue-eyed kids are Jewish.

• Soldiers pore over tractates of the Talmud at the side of their Sherman tanks.

• Almost every home is a private hotel, with relatives and friends from all over the world dropping in all through the year.

• The capital city has seventy names.

• Political parties set up their own banking networks - some with international branches.

• Total strangers on the street, in buses, and in public places greet you with a hearty shalom aleichem!

• Before the high holidays, and on each erev rosh chodesh, special buses are scheduled by the bus companies to take people to cemeteries at the outskirts of the cities.

• Bank guards and street beggars read Tehillim as they sit.

• In the cities and rural settlements, the music that fills the air each weekday morning is the sweet sound of little children shouting out-side their kindergartens in Hebrew.

• A man eating in a restaurant is asked to leave his meal and join a minyan in the kitchen - the cook has yahrzeit.

• There is an annual Bible quiz for prison inmates.

• All your neighbors are Jewish - as are your doctors, dentists, grocers, carpenters, plumbers, and repairmen.

• On a Sabbath or holiday, you realize that the bael-Shachris was born in Russia, the baal-koreh in America, and the bael-Musaf in France.

• So many people who still live abroad, and even those who died there, have their names inscribed - on a wall, a door, in a park, or in a building lobby... each wanting his little part in building the Land.

• Small neighborhood grocers offer lower prices than the super-markets.

• Bible contests are held regularly in the armed forces.

• Bulletin boards in government offices list the daily times for Mincha.

• Civil servants, pensioners, and employees of many institutions receive gifts twice a year at work: before Rosh Hashana and before Pesach.

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