Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Public Transportation on the Sabbath?

Of all the ways that religion impacts the Israeli public sphere, the lack of public transportation in most of the country on Sabbaths and religious holidays has possibly the largest week-to-week impact on people’s lives. It means that those who don’t have their own vehicles can’t get far from home on these days.

The difficulty this poses is made greater by the structure of the work week here. In contrast to in the United States, where Saturdays and Sundays are rest days, here Sunday is a working day. That means that Saturday, when there is no transportation until nightfall, is the only full day off available for going on trips or to visit friends and family.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai has just taken up the issue, calling via his Facebook page for all-week transportation in his city and elsewhere in the country. He has criticized the Transportation Ministry for the current state of affairs, declaring: “The ministry is the body responsible for public transportation. I expect the ministry and the government to listen to the voice of the public and operate public transportation on weekends and holidays.”

Though this debate is not new, this iteration of it comes with a fresh twist. In the past it was always a discussion about the rights of those without cars, but now it’s also an environmental issue. Huldai believes that the current public transportation situation “damages the proper development of the State and the public’s ability to give up their expensive and polluting private vehicles.”

Huldai is an important figure, and the addition of his voice to the transport-on-Sabbath lobby is significant. It puts the onus on the Transportation Ministry to explain to him why it makes exceptions for Haifa and Eilat and lets them run buses on Sabbath, but not for his city or others in Israel.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.