First Day of School; Israeli Style

So Yonah - our little one (not so little, truth be told) - just started third grade yesterday.

It's sort of an Israeli tradition that the Prime Minister and many of the Knesset bigwigs fan out to schools across the country to welcome elementary school students to the first day of the academic year. 

Early yesterday morning after most of our neighborhood had been hermetically sealed off by an advance security detail, a helicopter set down on the playground of Yonah's school, disgorging Israel's Prime Minister who spent part of the morning welcoming our community's children back to school.

As if this wasn't enough to bring home just how tiny our country is, while Zahava and I were talking with Yonah last night about what it was like to meet the country's Prime Minister, I couldn't help notice that he kept referring to the PM as 'Bibi' (Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname).

Only in Israel would an eight year old be (justifiably) excited about having just met the country's Prime Minister... yet refer to the country's leader as if he were a schoolyard buddy!