Saturday, June 2, 2018 4:22 PM

The billboard just before the coastal road and the Industrial Zone rotates images and videos to entertain and entice us while we're stuck in traffic. Ads for flights to New York, London, and elsewhere flash past, with prices in dollars and Euros, never shekels. Ads for performances by touring stars, several months in advance, pulse in sync with unheard soundtracks. Here, the pop bands are a big thing. Back in the States, they might just be another act at a second-tier venue. Teaser trailers for movies show the names of stars, spelled out in Hebrew. Charlize Theron's name stays onscreen long enough for me to sound it out. I can only decipher the first names of others. It's much harder when the names don't have vowels. Another ad flashes the words "New York, America, Canada," stacked above each other in large print. I don't know the context. Behind and above them, a cut-out figure of a founder of the nation, several stories tall, glares down at us from atop a water tower. The blue sky glows through the holes in the image. We sit in traffic long enough to see small high clouds drift through and past him toward the sea.