Chief Rabbinate Committee members held Monday a meeting on the endless carnage on Israel’s roads and highways during which they decided that Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar would draft a special prayer – which will be recited by local rabbis at locations in their area which have witnessed road accidents.
The committee also decided that committee member Rabbi Yaakov Roza, who serves as the rabbi for the ZAKA organization, would give rabbis updates on accidents within their area. The purpose of the prayer is to raise residents’ awareness to road safety and includes an appeal to God to put an end to the road accidents plaguing the country.
Another initiative approved by the Rabbinate Committee is the publication of a halachic document on correct driving which addresses issues like driving when tired, driving while texting and using a cellular phone and driving over the speed limit in order to make it home in time for Shabbat.
The document will be formulated by two of the committee’s members – Kiryat Ono’s Rabbi Ratzon Arusi and Givatayim’s Rabbi Yosef Gliksberg.
The President of the Chief Rabbinate Committee, Rabbi Yona Metzger, who initiated the discussion said: “Road accidents have become a national plague and we must do what ever we can to decrease accident numbers.”
Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar added: “The goal is to shock the public. A prayer like this will, without a doubt, leave an impression.”
(Source: Ynet)
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3 Responses
If you’ve ever witnessed Israeli drivers, you know prayers are secondary to driving better, defensively and according to sechel and the law. Israeli drivers are, without any doubt, the most aggressive, worst drivers in the world.
Would be a good idea here if rabbonim spoke sometimes about the importance of being careful on the road. Several fatalities have occurred over the years by tired drivers racing to and from early morning brissim. If you cannot make it safely, don’t go. Too many stories of rebbeim almost boasting how they get to Baltimores from NY in 3 hours, to Monsey in 45 minutes from Brooklyn and to lakewood in an hour and 10 minutes. All those people are causing sakono.
The primary reason there is a culture of HEFKER on the roads in Israel is due to lack of police enforcement. It has only been about 20 years that there has even been a dedicated traffic unit. For the first ten years or so they mainly drove around the major cities and only spottily enforce the laws. The past few years has seen a bit of improvement but not much. My guess is that the level of professionalism of Israel’s traffic police is on par with that of the firefighters and we saw recently what that is.
The next major reason is that driving and road safety are not taught in the High Schools as is in many other countries. Here it is a private and very profitable business. Any time there has been an effort to require or even just offer driving courses in High Schools, the private schools successfully fought the effort.
Aryeh Zelasko
Beit Shemesh