It started as Neruda. It ended as Shabak.

In Israel, your garbage bin doesn’t just hold trash.
It holds opinions. Territory. Stories. Sometimes even a verse or two.
It might even be under surveillance.

One of my best friends—someone I love in the kind of quiet, deep way that doesn’t need a label—sent me a voice note the other day. I figured it was a quick hello, something small. Instead, it was epic.

Because this friend has been through the worst loss a parent can face. Not long ago. Not in a war. Not in the news. Just real. Personal. The kind of loss that cracks you open from the inside and leaves you standing there with nothing but breath and time. And when I heard her voice—laughing—I just froze.

That laugh wasn’t small. It wasn’t polite. It was full-bodied. Free.
And for a second, I didn’t care what the story was. That laugh could’ve been caused by a watermelon falling on a diplomat—I was just glad it happened.

But the story? The story was gold.

She goes to take out the garbage. And she sees that someone—yet again—has moved the bin.
Not a few centimeters. Not nudged. Moved.
Repositioned it right in front of their own gate—like it had always lived there.
And apparently, her neighbor had even put up a camera to watch his bin.
Yes. A security camera.
To protect a bin.

And my friend, in her very Israeli way, doesn’t yell. Doesn’t call the city.
She writes a note.

Not just a note.
A poem.
She tapes the poem to the bin.

And then—because in Israel nothing ever stops at one verse—someone else responds.
Also with a poem.
Also on the bin.

She tells me this, barely able to breathe between the laughter:

“It went back and forth! Like a whole debate, Mark! A conversation! On the bin!”

I’m sitting there, phone in hand, laughing so hard I’ve stopped making sound.
Because it’s so Israeli. So utterly them.
A full-on poetic back-and-forth over who gets to park a bin where.
A curbside Knesset session in rhyme.

She says, completely straight-faced,

“Next time I’m bringing a shaliach tzibur to chant it at Mincha.”

This doesn’t happen in Montreal.

Here in Montreal, if someone moves your bin, you get a municipal notice.
Not a fight. Not a poem. A polite, utterly uninspired bureaucratic leaflet printed in gray.
You recycle it. You stew silently. And maybe—maybe—you glare at your neighbor during snow clearing.

There’s no passion. No argument.
No salon-based surveillance ops.

But in Israel?

In Israel, your bin is fair game.
Your sidewalk is a group project.
Nothing is just yours, and everything is open for feedback.
Loud, loving, chaotic feedback.
The kind that starts as a disagreement and ends in couscous.

And then—plot twist.
Her husband, who is normally the picture of Zen—like if meditation had a human form—snaps.

She tells me:

“So now my husband—he put up a camera. I’m not kidding. An actual camera. Outside. Pointing at the bin.”

And I’m sitting there thinking:

Wow. Far out.
A full surveillance op… over garbage.
And then my brain—Israeli, anxious, slightly theatrical—runs.

I imagine it escalating.
I imagine a gate going up overnight.
Not metaphorically.
A real wooden fence, hammered together in the dark like some holy act of resistance.

Just like Birya, 1946—when the British kicked Jews off Jewish land in the Galil, and overnight, they came back, rebuilt the outpost, and raised the flag by morning.
A trash can intifada.
A one-family Meretz stronghold with cameras instead of checkpoints.

Suddenly in my head, her husband is a Maccabee, and the bin?

The Temple.

A plastic shrine to domestic sovereignty.
With motion alerts. Wi-Fi. Possibly a smoke detector repurposed as holy incense.
And a full salon-based command center.

The neighbor tries to move it again?
Forget it.
This isn’t curb space anymore.
This is liberated territory.

And then she tells me:

“Now the indoor camera is watching it too. From the salon.”

I nearly dropped the phone.

Because now?
The garbage bin has coverage.
From within the house.
Like the ner tamid in the Temple—never to be left unwatched.

This isn’t sanitation.
This is sanctification.

It’s like Fauda meets recycling day.
It started as Neruda. It ended as Shabak.

And somehow, it works.

The thing is, you Israelis don’t avoid conflict.
You metabolize it.
You turn it into debate. Into noise. Into something that breathes.
That bin wasn’t just a bin.
It became a bulletin board.
A platform.
A poetry slam in plastic.
A neighborhood group therapy session in rhyming couplets.
With sensors.

And my friend?

She wasn’t angry.
She was glowing.

She said:

“The bin’s back where it was. I think we won.”

She paused. Then added,

“Or maybe we all did.”

And I keep thinking about that.
About the way something so mundane—so pointless—could still make her laugh like that.
After everything.
After the kind of year that leaves most people speechless.

Only in Israel do neighbors argue over garbage in couplets and then install cameras to watch their bins.

Only in Israel does a bin become a message board, a community scroll, a minor act of national theater, complete with live streams.

Only in Israel would that somehow be healing.

And only someone like her could remind me that even grief makes space for absurdity.
That laughter doesn’t need permission.
That sometimes, it sneaks up on you—by the curb, in the middle of nothing—and suddenly you’re laughing again.

Oy vey.

Od yavo shalom aleinu, sure.
But in the meantime?

Bring a pen.
And maybe a drone with night vision—
because apparently, even the shefa takes out its garbage under supervision.