{"id":984,"date":"2018-10-19T11:46:23","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T08:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/?p=984"},"modified":"2018-10-19T11:46:23","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T08:46:23","slug":"a-train-ride-back-to-the-old-israel-new-york-times-oct-17-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/2018\/10\/19\/a-train-ride-back-to-the-old-israel-new-york-times-oct-17-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"A Train Ride Back to the Old Israel (New York Times, Oct. 17, 2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

It takes four times as long as the new high-speed rail. I take it anyway.<\/strong><\/p>\n

JERUSALEM \u2014 Last month, the first section of a new high-speed rail line opened in Israel. When it\u2019s fully operational a few months from now, passengers will board fire-engine-red carriages in Tel Aviv and be whisked on electrified track over the country\u2019s longest bridge, then over its highest, and through the longest tunnel, and finally into a new station 260 feet under Jerusalem.\u00a0The trip, about 35 miles, will take less than 30 minutes, making it, by a wide margin, the fastest way to get between the country\u2019s two most important cities.<\/p>\n

The line, more than a decade and many delays in the making, is the new Israel. Or at least what Israel would like to be: a place that can look any Western country in the eye. The Israeli train of 2018 is shiny, fast and travels in a straight line.<\/p>\n

But progress has its victims. And here it\u2019s the old country \u2014 a small, inefficient but compelling place that Israelis call the \u201cgood old land of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old Israel is represented in this case by the main casualty of the new train: the historic Jerusalem-Tel Aviv line, which has been running on and off since 1892 and isn\u2019t likely to run much longer.<\/p>\n

Like the old Israel, the old train is sporadically functional. It can take four times as long as the new service and twice as long as driving. It\u2019s so impractical for most commuters that even before the appearance of its flashy rival, it was nearly empty much of the time. But the old train has a modest cult following, of which I\u2019m a proud member, and I\u2019d hate to see it pass from the world without proper tribute.<\/p>\n

(Read the whole thing here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It takes four times as long as the new high-speed rail. I take it anyway. JERUSALEM \u2014 Last month, the first section of a new high-speed rail line opened in Israel. When it\u2019s fully operational a few months from now, passengers will board fire-engine-red carriages in Tel Aviv and be whisked on electrified track over the country\u2019s longest bridge, then …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":985,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}