Bike-Rent Brouhaha Over Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz threatened to cut government funding for Tel Aviv’s bicycle rental service if the mayor does not retract what Katz said was a decision to allow the rental stations to operate on Yom Kippur.
Katz said Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai was “infringing on the holiest day for the Jews” to gain political traction with his many non-religious constituents. But the city later issued a statement saying it had not been planning to allow residents or tourists to rent bikes through Tel-O-Fun on Yom Kippur itself, and attacked Katz for “not checking the details” first.
The municipality and Tel-O-Fun said that only those with an annual subscription will be able to use the bikes over the holiday, as long as they rent them beforehand and return them afterward. Unlike last year, the Yom Kippur rentals will be free for the subscribers.
The city also pointed out that funding for Tel-O-Fun comes from the municipality, not the Transportation Ministry.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
