ByZIONA GREENWALD
Updated:

It’s seven o’clock on a Tuesday, the demolition crowd rushes in…

Not exactly Billy Joel’s scenario, but an apt description of a typical morning in Israel.

If you live in Jerusalem or any of the country’s other construction-crazed metropolises, there’s a good chance you are periodically woken up by the ear-splitting sound of drilling coming from a nearby apartment or building site. Equally discomforting is trying to fall asleep at night while mega-decibel music blares from a neighbor’s party.

(Pause to yawn.)

The law permits heavy construction from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays. Music can be blasted until 11 p.m. on weeknights, midnight on weekends. These times overlap with many people’s sleeping hours, from babies and children to adults of all ages. I’m not talking about ultra-sensitive types unsuited to the vagaries of city life, but normal people with reasonable expectations.

Life is hectic enough and sleep not always easy to come by. Why should Israelis have the green light to disturb their neighbors so early in the morning and so late in the evening, thereby engaging in what the Talmud deems a form of theft under the Eighth Commandment?

It’s high time that Israel revise its residential noise regulations. Heavy construction should not be permitted before 9 a.m. (light work could start at 8) and should end by 6 p.m. Music-blasting and other loud activities should be prohibited after 10 p.m. at the latest, 11 on weekends.

Previously, I wrote in these pages about the need to do away with this country’s antiquated “quiet time” rules in force between 2 and 4 p.m. in the afternoon. Barring children from playing in parks and courtyards and even on their own balconies or in their own gardens in the heart of the afternoon, including on Shabbat and holidays and during school vacations, is unfair and unnatural. It also invites vigilantism. (If you’ve ever had your kids yelled at from a window by a nasty resident while they were playing – quite nicely – outdoors, you know what I mean.) 

But it makes no sense that a country that still keeps that unreasonable law on its books – and on every municipal playground signboard – simultaneously permits extreme noise pollution during hours that many more people are actually in their beds trying to sleep.

In a country so heavily beset with existential threats – many citizens having recently suffered through the far worse sound of incoming rockets – it may seem trivial to focus on this relatively small issue. But little problems in this wonderfully cacophonous land add up to subtract from our quality of life. They also wear away at our sense of arevut, mutual concern and consideration. It’s a lot easier to feel in harmony with your neighbors if you’re not prematurely awakened by their shiputzim (renovations) or consigned to tossing and turning by their teenagers’ loud partying. 

While Israel continues to pursue the elusive goal of peace on a national scale, increasing the peace in our neighborhoods could, at least, be made easier.

The writer, who holds a J.D. from Fordham Law School, is a contributing editor to The Jewish Press and a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of two children’s books, Kalman’s Big Questions and Tzippi Inside/Out (Targum Press).