Photo by Matthew Bell

Today is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year on the Jewish calendar. And for Jews around the world, it’s a day spent at home and at synagogue to ask God for forgiveness. In Israel, the “day of atonement” means that much of the country simply stops. Stores are closed, there’s no school, no newspapers and no Israeli television. And much less traffic. In and around Tel Aviv, the holiday has turned into a festival of bicycles for children. The World’s Matthew Bell has our story.

• See more of Matthew’s photos
• More information about Yom Kippur

A couple of videos Matthew shot on the streets of Tel Aviv:

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JEB SHARP: The revelations of Iran’s nuclear facility and its missile tests may have made the holiest day of the Jewish calendar more somber than usual in Israel.  Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement.  It began at sundown yesterday.  TV and radio stations in Israel went off the air.  There were no flights in and out of Israel’s international airport.  And nearly all businesses closed.  But The World’s Matthew Bell reports that not all of Israel came to a halt.

MATTHEW BELL:  Hundreds of Jews gathered to pray in front of the western wall in Jersualem’s old city hours before the start of Yom Kippur.  They were mostly men and boys.  The women and girls were cordoned off to one side.  They all faced the holiest site on earth for Jews, the Temple Mount.  Many rocked back and forth as they recited from books of scripture.  It was an example of the kind of religious devotion that makes Jerusalem Israel’s most pious place.  On the other side of Israel, less than an hour’s drive away, a different kind of preparation for the holiday took place, at bicycle shops.  Six-year-old Itimar was with his dad to pick up a few last-minute items.    Itimar wasn’t exaggerating.  Traffic in most of Israel completely stops for Yom Kippur.  And so the holiday has turned into a festival of bicycles for children, especially in and around Tel Aviv.  Karen Brima and her husband assembled a new Spiderman bike with training wheels for their three-year-old son.  They got it ready just in time for the big day.

BRIMA:  Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv might seem like a carnival, with all the kids on bikes.  But it’s also a solemn day.  This is when we fast and repent, and it’s the most important day of the year for the Jewish people.

BELL:  But for the young kids, who don’t fast, Yom Kippur is mostly about having fun.  By sundown, the normally traffic-clogged streets of Tel Aviv were free of cars.  That’s when the kids took over.  These kids say the best things about Yom Kippur are being able to ride as fast as they want, pop wheelies in the middle of the street, and stay up past their bedtime.  Lots of people in

Tel Aviv also go to the beach on this holiday.  But many secular Israelis here still fast and go to synagogue on Yom Kippur, even if they aren’t especially observant throughout the year.  Some people see all the bikes and the people at the beach, and are saddened by the growing secularization of Tel Aviv, but Raafi thinks it great.

RAAFI:  It is a very, very special atmosphere that suddenly, the city stops all the usual daily activity and becomes a unique capsule of quietness.  And the kids and the noise of laughter and all that is not something that is continuing the daily aspect.  Because it’s very, very different.  Usually, you have cars and the kids have to be very afraid and suddenly everything opens. It’s an amazing experience.

BELL:  Raafi says there’s something else that makes Yom Kippur special this year.  2009 is the 100^th anniversary of the official founding of Tel Aviv.

RAAFI:  We are really a fantastic place.  And every week almost you have an event that is happening here that is exciting, artistic, whatever.  You walk in the streets and see all the paintings.  So it’s a very exciting year, very strong acknowledgement of how far Tel Aviv came in terms of simply love of life and happiness and optimistic view of the future.  And Yom Kippur is simply part of the fun in that sense.

BELL:  The holiday ended tonight for many families with a meal to break the fast.  Tomorrow, Tel Aviv returns to the faster rhythms of modern-day city life.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell in Tel Aviv.

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Sorry it’s taken a while for Tech Podcast 251 to reach your earbuds. I was suffering from the (not aptly-named) condition known as Benign Positional Vertigo. Nothing benign about it, in my opinion, at least not in my case. But that’s not what you’re here for. You want some global technology, and you’re in luck, because we’ve got some cracking stories for you. In the midst of my vertigo spins, I missed two major news stories. The first was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Now, I know that there was, to put it mildly, and abundance of coverage of different aspects of the anniversary. I was lucky enough, though, to have a heads up on a story by my BBC colleague Jonathan Fildes. He wrote a terrific piece looking back at the computer systems that were, quite literally, woven together for the Apollo 11 mission. I missed the chance to run it when all the moon landing hoopla was going on, but you know what? The story is so good that it still leads the podcast this week.

The other story that I missed was on the undersea fiber-optic cables that went live in East Africa last week. Again, my friends at the BBC were really across this story, and so I devote a large chunk of the podcast to reaction and analysis from various parts of Africa. There is hope, some say a still distant hope, that faster, cheaper Internet access is on the horizon for Africans. Then again, just ask West Africans how fickle undersea cables can be. And we stay in Africa to end the podcast this week. We have a great little story on Zambikes, a Zambia-based organization that builds…wait for it…eco-friendly bikes made out of bamboo. That’s right, bamboo. The cycles are apparently quite popular in the local market, and now the organization has its eyes set on foreign shores. The first shipment of Zambikes is due to arrive in the United States this week!

Remember, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and/or FriendFeed.

You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, or via RSS.

(Bottom photo courtesy of Laura Rumbley)

Kathleen Schalch: Meet Rob von de Kind, age 66. He lives in Amsterdam.

Rob von de Kind: This is my bike.

Kathleen Schalch: He keeps his bike in the vestibule by the front door.

Rob von de Kind: Wherever have to go, if I go to my friend I take the bike. If I want to buy a book, I take the bike.

Kathleen Schalch: He wheels it down the steps and out in the street. Flocks of bikers spin by. Men in business suits. Women in dresses, some toting groceries or kids. This is an alternate universe, a big city where cars are allowed, but where bikes rule. City transportation official, Ria Hillhorst says that’s especially true in the heart of the city

Ria Hillhorst: About half of all trips is made by bike, and we are very proud of it, I can tell you.

Kathleen Schalch: And even when you include Amsterdam’s outlying areas, residents now take more trips by bike than by car. It wasn’t always like this.

Pascal Van de Noort: 25 years ago, this would be just cars where we sit now.

Kathleen Schalch: Amsterdam cycling promoter Pascal Van de Noort heads a group called Velo Mondial He’s sitting at an outdoor cafe. He says, by the 70s, cars were getting more and more popular here. The city paved over many of the old canals, to make room for them. Still, traffic jams kept getting worse.

Pascal Van de Noort: And we choice between leaving Amsterdam as it was, make it totally car free or doing somewhere in the middle and we chose in a referendum for the middle option.

Kathleen Schalch: Voters decided turn the city back over to bikes, by gradually squeezing out cars. Every year the number of parking spaces shrinks, and the cost of parking climbs. Parking your car can now cost seven to eight dollars-an hour. Drivers crawl through a maze of one way streets, where the speed limit is typically under 20 miles an hour. And bikes can go lots of places where cars can’t. The result?

Pascal Van de Noort: When you would like to go by car from Amsterdam south to Amsterdam north, it will take you approximately an hour. When you do that by bike, 30 minutes will do the trick.

Pascal van de Noort (on left) with a friend at a bike path

Kathleen Schalch: Van de Noort proves it. We climb on bikes, and veer onto a wide strip of pavement, with a cemetery on one side and a creek on the other.

Pascal Van de Noort: Until recently this was a road for cars, and now it is only pedestrians and cyclists.

Kathleen Schalch: When we cross the street, cars stop for us. Even when we turn into the major thoroughfare at the end of this path, we’re protected.

Pascal Van de Noort: The cycle path is separated from the city streets by parked cars, parked bicycles, and some bush.

Kathleen Schalch: The Dutch say this is key.

Hans Voerknecht: In the Netherlands the bike routes are so separate that it’s not possible to have an accident with a car.

Kathleen Schalch: Hans Voerknecht is International Bicycle Coordinator for the Netherlands. He says the the problem with many bike lanes in the US is they sit between parked cars and traffic.

Hans Voerknecht: It’s dangerous because a lot of people get doored in the U.S. They pass cars and car drivers just open the door and then you usually get launched onto the street.

Kathleen Schalch: Voerknecht says a bike path between parked cars and the sidewalk can broaden cycling’s appeal. You don’t need to be young and daring and have lightning reflexes to feel safe. Here, the very fact that so many ordinary people cycle, makes cycling safer. Car drivers think like cyclists, and watch out for them.

Hans Voerknecht: Car drivers are bicyclists themselves also, because 60 % of the Dutch people bicycle at least three times a week. So when they turn right they know, probably there will be a bike on this bike path so I better look out.

Bicycle parking lot at the local train station

Kathleen Schalch: Cycling has its drawbacks, even here. Bike theft is a problem. And bike lanes get congested, complains Pascal Van de Noort. His pet peeve? Bikes with big cargo containers, often peddled by moms.

Pascal Van de Noort: And in front are three of the kids having breakfast in the morning, and they are phoning with their girl friends and doing their makeup, and that doesn’t go fast. And if you’re stuck behind those and it’s two or three of those, then you’re really in trouble.

Kathleen Schalch: Parking’s can be a hassle too. Bikes are everywhere, fastened to everything. But Amsterdam is working on this. It’s built a beautiful new underground parking facility near the river, and a huge three story parking garage near the train station — just for bikes.

For the World, I’m Kathleen Schalch, Amsterdam.

View more pictures from the Netherlands