Bikeway: The best way to cycle in Jerusalem

The Business

Bikeway began life at a different address in Givat Shaul in 2005. Five years ago, proprietor Moshe Ben Naim relocated to the current generously proportioned premises on Shatner Street. The 44-year-old owner’s name, Naim, meaning “pleasant,” clearly fits the personality bill.

When you enter the high-ceilinged store, you immediately get an inviting buzz. Ben Naim invariably greets you with a welcoming flash of teeth and a hearty handshake; or if he happens to be out on some errand or on a bike ride, another member of the staff jumps into the breach to do their best to make sure you get what you came for. Having done the rounds of quite a few bike stores in Jerusalem over the past couple of decades, I can vouch for the special feel-good factor at Bikeway.

Things seem to have gone pretty well for Ben Naim from the start. “When we moved here, we shared the space with a falafel eatery,” he recalls. “Then they moved out, and I expanded. I was glad to lose the smell of the oil,” he laughs.

He says it was never a case of a bridge too far. “There was no real risk in expanding. There was no big leap. We gave fair service. We did it with love.”

He says he was not on his own. “The personnel that worked here over the years, I think they are unique in that they all ride and love bikes.”

It was, he says, just a matter of letting things take their course and pan out naturally. “All the staff were once customers. I never put out ‘Help wanted’ ads.”

Who is Moshe Ben Naim?

The go-with-the-flow continuum, it seems, has been there from the beginning. “I always loved sports. I remember I once skipped class, cycled through the Jerusalem Forest, and the principal caught me,” he laughs. “I was always on a bike.”

That may have been so, but Ben Naim did not consider it a possible career path until a health scare pointed him in the right direction. “I was going to serve in a combat unit in the IDF,” he recalls. “My whole life up to that point had been built around becoming a battalion commander or something like that. Then, thankfully, God arranged for me to get diabetes.”

That was said with a smile, without a trace of sarcasm or bitterness. The discovery proved to be the game changer that eventually led to Bikeway. “I think that, today, I am in a place where I am more able to make a difference, and where I am more needed than where I might have been [if he had followed a military career].”

How Bikeway got up and pedaling

The medical wake-up call got Ben Naim going down a healthier avenue of thought and deed. “It involved some psychological complexities – a kid who had always had a certain dream, which was dashed, and is then faced with deciding what to do next. People find their emotional outlet. It could have led me to a psychologist or to bicycles.” Thankfully he opted for the latter. And, judging from the dynamics at the Givat Shaul store and Ben Naim’s positive demeanor, things have worked out well for all concerned. “Every time I went out for a ride, I felt better,” he declares

That mood lifter also informs the way Ben Naim runs his business. “When a 25-year-old kid decides to open a bike shop and invest everything he’s got and what he hasn’t got, that can be a real kishkes [gut] grinder,” he chuckles.

Luckily, he got a helping hand and a pat on the back from near and dear quarters. “My grandma from Lithuania, Shprintza – that’s ‘hope’ in Yiddish – encouraged me and also helped me financially. I anguished over whether to open the store. But I realized that people of that generation from Lithuania were go-getters. They just went for it. She told me, simply, ‘Go do business.’ So I went for it.” Close to two decades on, Ben Naim is still happily going for it.

The name

Kippah-wearing Ben Naim says he arrived at the store’s moniker courtesy of 18th-century Kabbalist and philosopher Rabbi Moshe Haim Luzzatto, aka Ramchal. “He wrote a book called Derech Hashem (“The Way of God”). I was looking for a name. I’d read the book, and it just clicked – The Way of God, Bikeway.”

Way to go!■

• Name: Bikeway
• Address: 5 Shatner Street
• Owner: Moshe Ben Naim
• Website: www.facebook.com/bikewayshop.co.il/