Next time you step into a cab in New York City, don’t be surprised if the cab driver speaks Hebrew or identifies himself as an Israeli. This is very likely to happen, considering the fact that presently there are 600 to 700 Israeli cab drivers in NYC.
Interviews with scores of Israelis here, who make their living as cab drivers, disclosed that about 90 percent of Israeli cabbies own their own cabs and that they are making between $400 and $500 a week. Those who are employed by other cab owners admitted to making much less, between $200 and $250 a week. The newly opened Israeli restaurant “Mifgash,” at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, is used as the unofficial headquarters of many of the Israeli cab drivers.
New York Jews are considered by most of those interviewed to be the most generous tippers. The tips are even more generous when the Jewish passengers learn that the driver is an Israeli. Second to the Jew in generosity, according to Israeli cab drivers, are Italian-Americans.
“Israelis in New York are not good tippers,” says cab driver Uzi Perry. “When they learn that the cab driver is an Israeli, they think that they deserve a cut-rate fare,” he explains. This impression was shared by the rest of those interviewed. Eli Chion, from Bat Yam, who admitted to be making between $400 and $500 a week, said that he, and all the Israeli cab drivers he knows, are working “very hard” some 13 hours a day but that the work is “interesting and rewarding.”
The interviews with Israeli cab drivers also disclosed that most of them have no more than eight years of education, but there are also Israeli academicians, actors and professionals who were lured to driving cabs here because the “money is good.” Almost all Israeli cab drivers have been mugged or robbed while at work, usually late at night when they took passengers to high-crime neighborhoods in the city; anti-Semitic remarks, even in a city like New York, also were experienced by many Israeli cab drivers; and most of those interviewed say they plan to go back to Israel “one day” when they feel that they made enough money so they could establish themselves economically in Israel.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
