The checkout divider, sometimes called the “next customer” bar, is one of the supermarket’s quiet little inventions, created to keep conveyor-belt checkout organized as modern grocery shopping got faster and more crowded. In most countries, it’s a small plastic stick. In Israel it’s more of a vibe. A philosophy. An aggressive handshake between strangers’ groceries.

Because in Israel, personal space is considered a charming European myth. Not offensive, just… irrelevant. Like “lightly salted” peanuts or “this meeting could’ve been an email.” We’ve collectively agreed that if you can physically stand somewhere, you’re allowed to exist there in a way that makes everyone else’s skeleton negotiate new terms.

You see it everywhere, but the supermarket is where it really sings. The automatic doors open and the air hits you. Recycled AC, overripe peaches, detergent, and faint despair (especially by husbands trying to fulfil the entire shopping list, curated by their wives). People are already moving like they got a notification, “Hurry. Someone else might buy the last normal cucumbers.” Trolleys aren’t pushed, they’re driven, and we all know about driving in Israel. With intent. With the kind of confidence usually reserved for generals and men reversing into parking spaces.

And yes, I’ve been rammed by a trolley more times than I care to mention. There’s always this tiny half-second where you think, maybe it was accidental, maybe they didn’t see me. Then you look back and they’re staring straight through you like you’re a decorative plant. It’s not personal. It’s just that if your kidneys are in the way of their path to cottage cheese, your kidneys are wrong.

The counters are their own separate kingdoms. The meat counter line is less a line and more a group chat that nobody can mute. People form a loose semicircle, like they’re watching street theater. Someone shouts their order from three meters away, someone else insists they were “here from before,” and a third person just starts listing deli items like they’re placing a ransom call. Patience isn’t a virtue there. It’s a foreign passport.

But the purest concentration of Israeli no-personal-space energy is the checkout. Especially before holidays, when the supermarket turns into a collective ritual of panic purchasing. And especially when Pesach looms closer every day and everyone is buying like they’re preparing to feed an army for forty years in the desert, but also quietly wishing the whole thing could be postponed until after the war. The matzah aisle looks like it’s been looted by people who heard a rumor that flour is illegal. Every cart has at least one item bought out of fear, not need. Six bottles of grape juice. Twenty rolls of paper towels. A bag of plastic cutlery big enough to cater a wedding and 500 rolls of toilet paper (just in case) even though nobody is hosting anything because who has the emotional bandwidth for a Seder speech right now.

And then you get to the checkout lane, where civilization is supposed to return. This is what the “next customer” bar was invented for. Supermarkets evolved into self-service conveyor-belt checkouts, where multiple customers’ groceries sit on the same belt, and a simple boundary keeps things fast, clean, and less error-prone. In plain English, it’s a plastic stick that says, “These are my tomatoes, those are your tomatoes, and nobody has to argue in public.”

In Israel, that boundary does not exist. Not physically, not spiritually. A separator implies order, and order implies someone has time for that. Time is not something we have. We have urgency. We have opinions. We have the deep national belief that if your groceries touch mine, we’re basically family now.

So what happens instead? The unofficial separator is the cashier yelling, “Shel Mi Zeh?” which translates roughly to: “Whose is this?” and more accurately to: “Which of you people did this to me?”

The belt becomes a battlefield. There’s the person who wants to put their products down before the person in front has finished unloading. Not after. Not when there’s space. Before. They’ll slide their items into the last available gap like they’re docking a spaceship. A bag of onions wedges itself between someone else’s yogurt and a block of cheese. A bottle of oil appears, rolling casually toward your eggs like it has diplomatic immunity.

And then there’s the trolley saver. The one who leaves a trolley in line to “save their place” from basically the moment they arrived in the supermarket. This trolley will sit there, empty or half-full, like a silent threat, while its owner disappears for what feels like a semester abroad. You think, ‘surely they’ll be back in a minute’. They are not back in a minute. They’re wandering through aisles like they’re on a spiritual journey, occasionally returning to toss one more item into the cart, then leaving again. The line advances around the trolley, but nobody touches it because touching someone else’s trolley is how feuds start. Also, because it’s probably related to someone in the line, and in Israel everyone is related to someone in the line.

The divider was tested once, but three people argued over who put it there first. Someone asked if it came with a discount. Someone else used it to reserve space for their cousin who was “just getting one thing.” The cousin arrived with a full cart and a look that said, if you object, I’ll call the rest of the Hamula. The separators disappeared soon after, presumably recycled into something more culturally appropriate, like additional parking signs nobody follows.

Why use a plastic bar when you can simply launch your hummus onto the belt with confidence? That’s the Israeli system. The belt is not a line, it’s a negotiation. The border between your groceries and mine should remain fluid, contested, and subject to appeal. If the cashier gets it wrong and scans your cottage cheese into my bill, what’s the big deal? We’ll sort it out. We’ll shout a little. We’ll laugh a little. We’ll both pretend it was the other person’s fault. It’s fine. It’s community.

And don’t forget the body language. No need for a separator when the woman behind you has already pushed her cart into your kidneys to indicate she is next. It’s not violence, it’s communication. A polite culture might tap your shoulder. We prefer blunt physical feedback. If you can still breathe comfortably, you’re probably leaving too much space and encouraging anarchists.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the cashier is a seasoned professional with the dead-eyed calm of someone who has seen every version of human behavior and has emotionally moved to another planet. They’ll scan items at the speed of light while simultaneously untangling disputes like a judge in small-claims court. “This is yours. This is yours. No, that’s not yours, that’s the lady behind you. Yes, you already paid. No, you can’t pay with this coupon, it expired in 2019. Next.” Their hands move, the barcode beeps, and your dignity slowly leaks out onto the floor.

Now add the small inconvenience of incoming rockets and sirens. Because nothing says “holiday spirit” like standing at the checkout, clutching a bag of carrots and a box of matzah, while the air suddenly decides to scream at you. The siren goes off and everyone does that split-second calculation: Do we move? Do we finish paying? Do we pretend we didn’t hear it because we’re so close to tapping the card and leaving? People look at the cashier like, maybe we can just complete this transaction quickly and then seek shelter with the receipt as proof we were responsible adults.

You can feel the absurdity in your teeth. There’s a person arguing about a price tag on strawberries. There’s another person trying to bag their groceries with the urgency of someone defusing a bomb. Somewhere, a kid is whining for Bamba. The loudspeaker is calling for a manager. The siren is wailing. And in the middle of it all, the conveyor belt is doing its steady little loop, carrying your items forward like it’s committed to routine no matter what. It’s almost comforting, in a twisted way. The belt doesn’t care about your nerves or the war or Pesach or your personal space. It just keeps moving, taking your groceries toward the scanner and your patience toward extinction.

If Israel ever adopts the checkout divider properly, it won’t be because we suddenly discovered manners. It’ll be because someone finally realizes how much time we waste yelling “Whose is this?” at a pile of mingled avocados. But even then, I wouldn’t bet on it. The country already has enough divisions. At the supermarket, at least the groceries can mingle. And if you’re not cutting, you’re just standing very meaningfully near the belt, pressing your cart into the person ahead of you like a gentle reminder, “we’re all in this together. Whether we like it or not.”

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)