Mediterranean drivers—Malta, Sicily, Israel—and the driver's prayer in סִדּוּר וַאֲנִי תְּפִלָּתִי

[lethargic_man]

Why are bike racks not everywhere like this one I saw in Valletta?

I was a bit disturbed to read somewhere recently the one-liner that in Malta people drive on the shady side of the road—disturbed because I heard the same thing twenty years ago on Usenet. To my relief, it turned out not to be the case at all.

I was more trepidatious about getting behind the wheel of a car in Italy for the first time. To my further relief, however, most of the stereotypes about drivers in Italy are not true, or maybe not true any longer, at least in Sicily. The state of road signs in the country, however, is truly appalling; frequently we would be following signs to somewhere only for the sign to be missing completely at a critical junction or two in the middle of the route. Or alternatively, there would be so many signs (many for hotels) it would be impossible to pick out the information you needed in the time available; and the signs were frequently so small you could not read them in a speeding car until you were virtually on top of them.

But generally, driving in Sicily was a less disconcerting experience than driving in Israel, though it shared some characteristics with it, such as drivers assuming that if you were leaving a safe two second distance from the car in front, it was an open invitation to them to fill it. Italian drivers, however, did not, for example, pressure you from mere inches behind to go faster on unfamiliar roads twisting down the side of mountains with hairpin bends. And nothing could compare to the driving I saw by Israeli Arabs in Nazareth,^* with the likes of motor scooters cutting sideways across slowly moving traffic then straight over the central reservation to finish with a rear-wheel skid into a space scarcely longer than the scooter's own length directly in front of me.

* Except non-Israeli Arabs; I don't think I've ever come potentially closer to death than when the jeep I was being driven in in the Sinai overtook another one at 50mph on the wrong side of the road on a blind corner on a road with five-foot ditches either side; if something had come in the opposite direction at that point, that would have been the end of us!

Which is why I was amused, last November, to see a prayer for drivers in וַאֲנִי תְּפִלָּתִי, the new Masorti siddur in Israel, which features "special prayers for uniquely Israeli moments". It began like תְּפִילַּת הַדֶּרֶךְ, the traveller's prayer, and shared some wording with it, but then went on with wording like (accuracy not guaranteed: I'm paraphrasing from memory after six months):

God, help me to be a good driver, and to keep my distance.

which is indeed an intention that Israelis need reminding of; but then went on:

Help me to remember that all other drivers are created in Your image, and that nothing justifies endangering them: neither time, nor money, nor honour, nor revenge.

As you can imagine, my mouth was hanging open by the time I reached the end of this; I've never seen anything like it in a siddur anywhere else before or since.