I saved a man’s life, and then I cooked soup

See, that’s the crazy thing about life’s experiences. You save someone’s life. You protect your nation in a war. You discover America. And then you poop.

No matter what, you always continue to be human: Still doing the mundane, human things that the rest of us do.

Except Pharaoh of course. He never pooped.

I’m serious, by the way. Last night, on my way home from work, I saved the life of a man. AKA, I saved an entire world (read the Mishna and you’ll see I’m not kidding).

Since you’re dying to hear the tale, let me tell it:

I was standing at a Jerusalem intersection. A guy was standing next to me. He was on his phone and looked impatient to cross. And so I watched. Because I’m always waiting for that moment of catastrophe. I mean self-glory. I mean…

Forget it. It sounds bad either way.

Anyway, he started crossing before the light was green and I saw one last car pushing through the yellow/red light on the other end.

And as I saw the car heading toward this dude on his pelephone who has probably survived wars in the IDF, I yelled, “Tizaher!”

Of course he immediately turned to me and said, “Li’eize ulpan at halacht? Ze Hi’zaher! Yesh lach pashut mazal she’ani bichlal adayin bachayim im ha’ivrit hanora’it shelach.”

Loosely translated as: “My God. What is with your Hebrew? Did you not know that ‘Tizaher‘ means ‘You will watch out’? You ain’t no prophet – as you can see, I didn’t watch out – and you ain’t no linguist either.”

Anyway, I’m lying. Twice. What he really said, with a smirk on his face, was: “Didn’t that dude cross on red?” and I said: “It wasn’t red yet.” And then I said: “But either way I really don’t feel like seeing someone die tonight.”

And that is just the point.

We live in a culture that lacks excitement and intrigue so much that we can take one semi-saving-of-a-man’s-life experience and change it into an all-time blog hit. (Just watch.)

Which is why you should all move to Israel. If you haven’t yet, of course.

You should make aliya and join the IDF where you will have authentically exciting and life-threatening experiences. And then, when please God you come out in one piece, you probably won’t feel compelled to blow the half experience of saving a dude’s life out of proportion.

Aliya’s new motto: “Aliya – the antithesis of Facebook. Today.”

Either that or you can just try crossing the street in Israel. Either will do.