Shopping in Israel: chaos, carts, and comedy

Often, I am in a rush and don’t have time or energy to argue with fellow shoppers about who was first in line, so in true British fashion, I let it go. Once, an older man who was behind me in the line actually shouted at me for only buying one item and insisted that I should have gone to my local makolet because I was “wasting his time.”

Shopping here can also be an exhausting and overwhelming experience - especially if you don’t have a car or lift in your building, like me. Then, of course, there is the whole saga of figuring out how to carry all your shopping home. Now imagine schlepping all your shopping in peak summer heat. Just the thought of it makes me want to collapse in bed. But alas, after putting it off until there is no food left in the house, and when my hunger finally gets the better of me, I drag myself to the shops.

Sure, there is always the option to shop online, but the few times I’ve done this, half of the food I ordered didn’t arrive or was replaced by something else entirely.

Several people I interviewed mentioned that often when they ask for assistance at stores, the staff appear visibly irritated - as if they’re doing you a personal favor. Of course, I have also encountered many friendly shop assistants too!

Another challenge, one oleh related, is trying to locate bags of flour that are more than 1 kg. or a place that sells six eggs instead of 12. I’m sure these shops exist, but I have yet to find them.

One thing is for certain - shopping in Israel is never boring and definitely makes for a lot of humorous anecdotes.

Below, I’ve shared some of my favorite shopping encounters from fellow olim:

If you have been here long enough, I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the iconic safta (granny) cart - basically a survival tool in Israel. Well, for a long time, Avigail from Manchester resisted using one, insisting that she couldn’t bear the humiliation. However, after schlepping heavy bags up three flights of stairs, often in the blistering heat, she realized that she could no longer do it and finally relented - old safta cart it was!

That Sunday, when shopping day arrived, her roommate kindly allowed her to use her old rusty Safta cart. So with the cart in hand, she reluctantly dragged herself to the shops once again. But as she packed her cart and began the arduous trek home, the relief she felt of not having to carry everything was enough to make her lose any lingering humiliation. Suddenly, she didn’t care anymore - her shoulders and back didn’t ache, her hands were free, and she was an unburdened woman, happily wheeling her groceries down the street, taking in the fresh air, and going on her merry way.

That is until things took a sudden turn for the worse. Just as she was soaking in the bliss and thanking God for creating such a smart invention, one of the wheels of the cart suddenly fell off and rolled - all the way down the street. Sighing, Avigail managed to chase it down and pop it back on the cart. Again, she merrily continued on her way, ignoring the grunts of the overburdened cart sighing under the weight. Not even 30 seconds later, the wheel popped off again, followed by the second wheel - both went flying down the street.

Try as she may, Avigail could not get the wheels back on, as her shopping sagged further to the ground under the heavy weight of a now-legless cart. Suddenly she found herself stranded barely 100 meters from her home but unable to move as she contemplated how she was going to get herself and her shopping home.

Luckily, she managed to flag down a kind gentleman who she recognized from her neighborhood, and he helped her schlep and carry her shopping all the way to her apartment. The experience, however, traumatized, and she swore that she would never use or be seen with a safta cart ever again. To this day she only shops online.

“Since this incident I have decided that shopping online and receiving three containers of onions instead of chicken isn’t so bad after all. I will just make an onion quiche,” she related to me.

Sometimes the encounters are slightly less pleasant.

My friend, Tali from South Africa, shared how she once saw a woman bite into a peach in Rami Levy and then put the remaining half-eaten peach back in the pile of other fruit!

Another Jerusalemite, Ayelet, from London, shared her unfortunate experience when she went shopping at her local supermarket one day before chag. As she approached the fruit and vegetable section and was reaching for a tomato, to her horror, she suddenly saw a massive rat scutter out from under the shelves and run past her. Terrified, Ayelet jumped back and started hyperventilating before letting out an involuntary ear-piercing scream that could have notified the entire city.

“I was so scared that I could hardly breathe. And then I screamed - loud!” she recalled. Naturally, the other customers jumped back in fright too - at the sound of her shrieking. Two Israeli women in particular were not very pleased (understandably), to put it mildly, and became enraged, shouting at Ayelet that she’d make them think there was a terrorist. (Sadly, shouting in Israel can be triggering...) This was the last time that Ayelet stepped foot into that supermarket.

Often, shopping in Israel can provide some amusing anecdotes.

Clara, from France, told me that she once worked in a kindergarten in Israel for about three months. One day she told the kids that she had a cousin called Levi. One of the kids looked at her and responded, “Levi isn’t a name. It’s a supermarket.”

Another olah from America, Yael, recounted that she knows someone who walked into a grocery store in Israel and asked one of the shopkeepers, "(Where are your eggs?) איפה הביצים שלך?"

The man responded, with a straight face: “ביצים שלי פה (my eggs are here)" and pointed down, אבל של החנות הם שמה״ (but the shop’s eggs are there)." Thankfully, he pointed her in the right direction, luckily, before she could say anything else!

Mryiam from France described one particularly interesting shopping experience at Rami Levy. Every oleh is familiar with the rush of Friday shopping in Israel, she said. Either you still have to buy all your food for Shabbat, or even worse, you’re only missing one ingredient, but you still have to stand in line to buy a kilo of tomatoes just to make your shakshuka.

That time, Myriam had packed her cart quite full with various food items, and thinking she was done, she headed to the checkout. Along the way, she suddenly realized she had forgotten to get milk and bread. So, as many Israelis do, she left her cart where she had been standing and quickly ran to fetch the missing items.

First, she grabbed some milk. On her way to get the bread, she noticed a man behind her, rushing toward the counter with a full cart, and thought to herself, “Wow, he must be in a hurry!”

Meira grabbed the bread and headed back toward her cart - but it was no longer there. It had vanished. “Now what,” she thought, “people are stealing shopping carts? That’s a first!”

Shopping in Israel may be chaotic, exhausting, and at times surreal - but one thing’s for sure: you’ll always walk away with a story.