Six-year-old Peach has had her heart set on a bicycle for weeks now. Beans (8 years old) has had one for a couple of years, and learned to ride a tw0-wheel bike last summer. Even 4-year-old Banana recently acquired a bike. But so far no one has had Peach’s size in stock. So the Cap’n and I went to Beit Shemesh today to hit the shuk, shop at the American foods market, and check out the stock at Bike Ben (where we bought Beans’s bike).
We are aware that secular Jewish kids love Yom Kippur, and that the streets of Tel Aviv–and even the Ayalon Freeway–are crowded with kids whizzing around on bicycles. Some people figure that kids under the age of bar or bat mitzvah can do as they please since they don’t have to fast. Other parents are a little annoyed at the lack of regard for one of the holiest days of the year. And I’m not sure how ambulance drivers feel, but the Cap’n read that ambulances drive much slower on Yom Kippur for fear of hitting a kid on a bike.
Despite knowing all these things, coming from Efrat which is nearly all religious, we somehow didn’t expect that the stock at Bike Ben would be almost nil. The guy there was apologetic that they didn’t have a 16″ bike for Peach, but after shrugging his shoulders, he said resignedly, “It’s the day after The Bicycle Holiday [Chag HaOfanayim].”
Shimshonit 
Weird, that’s all I can say.