Brian Blum
November 3, 2011, Updated May 14, 2012
Fortunately in Israel, we have nicer bathrooms than this one in Nepal

Abby Leichman has written one of the most off-beat and yet voyeuristically engaging Top Ten Lists I’ve read in a while on Israel21c. It’s a compilation of the best public toilets in Jerusalem. Now, while such a grouping is necessarily gender subjective at best (after all, Abby couldn’t visit the men’s side of her chosen bathrooms), it still represents an alternative eye into Israeli society.

I have to admit that moving to Israel has brought up my own fascination with public facilities. On the one hand, it’s the often-lacking comparison with the luxury of North America. I remember a month back, when my mother came to visit Israel for the first time, she was decidedly less than enamored of the old school gas station toilets (the ones out back, around the side of the station, not the newer “lavish” facilities inside the mini-mart).

Still, she has nothing to complain about. A few years ago, I was driving with the family from San Diego to Los Angeles at 3:00 AM to catch an early morning flight from LAX back to Israel. We needed to use the restroom, so we stopped at a gas station. “Sorry, it’s out of order,” the not particularly interested clerk mumbled. We got back on the highway but the next station we pulled into also had a toilet that mysteriously was “being cleaned” (there were no cleaning supplies nearby). After the same thing happened another couple of times, I got the message and found a bush in back of a Denny’s (which apparently wasn’t one of the 24-7 restaurants I remember from my youth). Bottom line: I’ll take stinky Israel over non-available America any day.

An outdoor bathroom in the Serengeti

It’s also hard not to appreciate the lowly Israeli facility after traveling in the third world. Most Israeli toilets flush; they usually have seats (other than a few in the Old City, squatters are a rarity in Israel); any bad smells tend more to the urine spectrum (don’t even think about the other side!); and these days you can even find toilet paper and soap.

Here’s one more praise for the Israeli restroom: very frequently, the walls for your stall go all the way to the floor, so that you’re actually in your own separate room. Nearly uniformly (and especially at hotels and airports), North American public toilets have short knee-length dividers between stalls so that you are forced to see your neighbor’s shiny shoes wiggling around (not to mention the uncomfortable audio feedback).

So, thanks Abby, for bringing to light the unseen heroes of the Israeli toilet. If you want to go even deeper into the bowels of the public facilities, visit the user-generated toilet site urinal.net, which has literally thousands of photos of the fabled stand up facility from all over the world (I particularly liked the one from the Mir Space Station).

Read more: