Last Thursday, Adina did some errands in Yerushalayim after work, drove home, and parked in front of the maon (day care) to pick up Moshe. Five minutes later she went back to the car. And it wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even try to start. As in: turn the ignition and nothing happens. I tried to get a jump start from a neighbor, but it wouldn’t work at all.

Of course, this was made more strange by the fact that the car had been driven to and from Yerushalayim that day, with absolutely no incident. And now, less than five minutes after stopping, the car wouldn’t start. Turning the key resulted in a click-click-click noise. And after a few minutes of trying that, I couldn’t even lock the doors using the power locks, or turn on the radio. Our battery had instantaneously become a worthless hunk of plastic.

Now although we have a nice little merkaz mischari (ie: some stores) in Yad Binyamin, there is not exactly an auto supply store (or anything even close). Though there is rumored to be a mechanic who lives in a neighboring community, we couldn’t get a hold of him. So walking to a shop, picking up a new battery and installing it myself was out of the question. I also had more than one neighbor very generously offer to take an hour out of their schedule to drive me somewhere to pick up a battery, but I wanted to see if there was some other option before taking up time from someone else’s schedule.

Someone on the YB Yahoo! mailing list responded with the name of a man who had helped them before. He works with cars during the day, and at night he moonlights as a private car repairman, in order to make more money. He had helped them out with a similar situation in the past, and they had been satisfied. So Adina called up Elchanan. Due to Shabbat and his work schedule, he wasn’t able to make it over until Sunday evening (the battery died on Thursday afternoon, but it took us a little while to get our act together). He pulled up in a small car. Dropped off what looked like his wife, mother and two children at the nearby park (it seems that they came along for the ride, or he picked them up on the way) and within five minutes, had replaced the battery (and verified that the old battery was truly dead).

Elchanan only charged me the cost of the battery (a good quality one, he said, and he provided the achrayut - warranty - certificate, so I am pretty sure that it was brand new). He said that since it was my first time using him, and since the repair didn’t take so long, he wouldn’t charge me any service fee (I had been prepared to pay him a couple hundred shekalim for his time in buying the battery, bringing it over and installing it). He did ask that I spread the word to my friends. So, if anyone in central Israel needs a private AAA replacement to fix minor issues with your car, let me know and I will send you his number. (If you live here, you will see that private helpers/mechanics/service people are all over the place. It definitely pays to have a few in your virtual rolodex for times of need).