As we were packing up one morning to head out for our daily tiyul, we stopped to say goodbye to the guy running the place, named Ezra. A nice guy who tried to be helpful in whatever way he could, and pretty flexible as to the comings and goings of the campsite (he let us come in the first night very late, after he was planning on locking up, for example).

So Ezra asks where we are going for the day. We tell him which tiyulim we have planned and which we are considering. We ask him what he can recommend, being he is probably more familiar with the area and hears from the various people staying in his campsite how their trips were.So we ask which have more water, which he thinks are better for kids, which are more and the like.

So Ezra thinks for a minute and then he asks us if anybody had a specific request for a tiyul. We figured it was pointless to go into the whole debate of what we were considering and who wanted what, so we did not really answer. We just said not really. but one son piped up and said he wanted to go to a specific tiyul.

So Ezra made his recommendation. he said of nobody wanted to go to anywhere specific and one person wanted to go somewhere specific, we should go to that place. After all, nobody else cares, and he does, so everybody will be happy. If we were to go to somewhere else, everybody will be happy but him. So why go to somewhere where the one person who has a request does not want to go and will not be happy? Go to where he wants and make everyone happy!

It was great advice. It really was. But it did not answer our original question. Our question was which place is more fun, more water, more appropriate. Our son did not know why he was picking what he requested other than our having suggested it and he liked the name or what we told him about it. Had Ezra said "that place has no water you can go into" or something like that, my son would have changed his mind.

So Ezra's advice was good, but only for somebody with all the information and just trying to decide between a couple of choices. We did not have the information. We were asking him for that information.

So this observation from our tiyul is another manifestation of how Israelis give advice. This is like when you go outside with the baby and 20 people come over and tell you the baby is not bundled up well enough or her head is not covered well enough. Instead of giving us the info, he was telling us how to keep our kids happy.

Todah Achi!!!