Being considerate rules, okay?

Nobody ever taught me not to stop at the top of an escalator. 

No wise elder sat me down and explained that when I reach the top, I should continue moving rather than stopping abruptly to consider my next life decision while a queue of people hurtles towards me. 

And yet somehow we all know this. Or at least most of us do. 

Nobody needed to tell me that although very few newborn babies are objectively pretty, I should not point out to their parents or grandparents that they look remarkably like Winston Churchill. Some, even like Churchill the morning after one too many. I know better than to mention it. 

We live by thousands of unwritten rules. If we borrow a charger, we return it. If somebody lets us merge in traffic, we acknowledge them with a small wave. If someone shows us a photograph of their grandchild, we react as though we’ve just been granted the privilege of viewing the most beautiful cherub in human history. 

These rules are not laws. Nobody enforces them. There are no penalties for violating them. Yet society depends on them. 

This thought occurred to me after a discussion on air about the unwritten rules everybody should know by now. The responses poured in. Don’t stand in a doorway and have a conversation. Don’t use speakerphone in public. Don’t bring 15 items into the “10 items or less” queue, and then argue that a watermelon, grapes, peaches, and guavas count as one deconstructed fruit salad. 

The funny thing was that almost every answer shared a theme. The rules weren’t really about efficiency, but about consideration. The unwritten rules of being human are the ways we say, “I know I am not the only person here.” 

Some years ago, I was sitting at the Mamilla Mall in Jerusalem with my wife, daughter, and one of my sons, enjoying a particularly underwhelming cup of coffee, when we heard a scream followed by several gunshots. Without thinking, my son, who was 14 at the time, and I got up and ran towards the Old City where the incident had occurred. 

This was, objectively, not a particularly sensible response. I have no military training or medical qualifications, suffer from flat feet, and spent much of my childhood managing Lecol-induced asthma. By the time we arrived, a number of far more capable people had already neutralised the terrorist and were attending to the wounded. 

There was very little I could have done other than write a sharply worded email. But remaining at the table and finishing my coffee was never really an option. Because for Jews, one of our most deeply embedded unwritten rules is that we run towards a place of need, not away from it. 

Perhaps that is why Judaism places such emphasis on seemingly small acts. Visiting the sick. Comforting mourners. Returning lost property. Giving charity discreetly. Standing for the elderly. Showing up. 

In recent years, the world has become obsessed with rights, opinions, identities, and personal expression. All important things. But somewhere along the way, we have become less interested in obligations. Less interested in what we owe one another. 

The genius of a community is not that everybody agrees. But everybody understands the rules. No one needs to teach us these things because, deep down, we already know them. And we have endured because enough people choose to follow them. 

Long before we were a people bound by geography, language, and sovereignty, we were a people bound by responsibility to one another. 

That responsibility has taken many forms over the centuries, but it has always begun in the same place. We show up. 

Perhaps that is the most important unwritten rule of all. And it is why we are still here.