Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

We stopped by the new bauhaus museum today, a real treasure trove for minimalist esigners. 

 The photos on this site:

http://www.tchochkes.com/wordpress/bauhaus-museum-tel-aviv.html

are just right.

We immediately recognized most of the dishes and furniture as familiar to Ezi’s parents, but not typical of Palestine interior design of the 20’s and 30’s.  What most people wanted was an imitation of the cultured Europe they left, not some revolutionary modern extension of Morris socialism.  The exterior of the buildings was functional and practical but inside was a private world.

I should be becoming desensitized.  After all the violence and inhumanity I’ve seen I shouldn’t really expect much.  After all, I was born into war and its consequences.  Some of the gorier details I experienced as a child still resurface even now.  But it has only served to make me more fearful of harming others, more vulnerable, to the point where I cannot trust my own reasoning.   It’s not always the right way to go, but I don’t seem to be capable in this situation of other behavior.  In a different situation I could probably react differently.  Take my aunt, for instance.  The one who became a partisan blowing up trains.  Her children were bashed against the wall before her eyes.  Both babies.  How could she have become anything but a partisan?  In my case the enemy is vague, unseen, impersonal, and sometimes even the concept of enemy is not at all clear.

Apologies for all the irregularities.  I’m still trying to figure the mechanics of this site without actually reading the directions.

So much for your ideas. I was hoping someone would write me about how our theoretical values on human life in this country, illustrated in our health care system, and emphasized in our religion, square with greater punishments for people who destroy property than those who destroy lives. But I know this is a situation much more complex than we can figure out without a long discussion and a careful examination of the sources of the decisions made. Still I would like to keep this value in mind all the time when we encounter individual cases.

But by last night when I was perhaps supposed to be writing more about this on the log, I was deeply involved in a discussion with friends about the changing role of parents and children in contemporary societry and in this country. Most of us, children of Holocaust survivors, have always felt a sense of responsibility for our parents, accompanied often by a sense of disdain for their strangeness in the contemporary society. Now that they are unable to take care of themselves, we are not only cognizant of the amazing complexity of their past lives, but also their absolute dependece upon us. Even though I lost my parents over twnety years ago, my sense of responsibility for them only grows and much of what i do now is connected with preserving their memory in a manner that is appropriate for them.

On the other hand we parents in Israel play an important role in our children’s lives. I don’t know anyone my age in Israel who isn’t contributing in some major way to their children’s lives. This could be with money, with child care, and/or with food.

You bet I mean Arabs as well as Jews. I think the increased care we take with our children has something to do with a diminished trust in the society and government.

As Shalom Hamoch, one of our greatest musical performers, says: a person is a person: don’t call me a people.  Today in particular I don’t want to be identified with the Jewish people.  Of course I remain a Tel Avivian and a Zionist, but there is no way I can identify with the additions to Gilo and the destruction of Arab houses.  “it’s a democracy,” says my rightist friend, “we can build where we want.”   But if it’s a democracy, why can’t others? 

There was another incident today that raised my hackles.  A woman at the wailing wall tried to put on her prayer shawl and was stopped and arrested.  It is, it appears, against the law.  It reminded of a recent visit I made there with some American visitors.   As we walked away, I turned to leave and was surprised to see them all backing away from the wall, as if it were an open Torah scroll cabinet.  It is holy, I thought, although I didn’t know we go for graven images, but I’d rather show respect for the scrolls than stones.

I’m working on fonts and stuff.  have patience and comment.

“You have no idea what the world is like fifteen minutes away,” my friend said as she walked in my door today, ”It’s a single bus ride from your home to abject poverty.”  She was coming from work in the south of Tel Aviv, and she is very right – there are families living on the street here.  There are people with no blankets in this cold.  Hungry children.  We used to have a socialist government and mentality, and we still haven’t filled in the gap that was left when the capitalists took over.   

Today is International Poverty Day, and I know people who have much more money today than ever before.  I don’t begrudge them the money, but I do begrudge the economic system that creates such gaps.   We have a responsibility to others, and I would be much happier giving all the donations I make to a benevolent agency in the government which concentrated on equalizing the standard of living through education as well as social services.    

It’s always important to remember that poverty is just down the street. 

In the mean time, my friend went straight to the sink to wash up.

I was thinking about my next class as I rode the six floors in the elevator and listened to the conversation next to me about taking care of the family with swine flu.  Later that evening, as my energy completely failed and I took to my bed, I remembered that conversation and realized that maybe one of us had been misdiagnosed and that elevator is a great place to catch germs from strangers.  Anyway I’m enclosing the ‘rules’ for not catching it.

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be  practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).

2. “Hands-off-the-face” approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat, bathe or slap someone !! ).

3. Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don’t trust salt). *H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don’t underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.

4. Similar to 3 above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water . Not everybody may be good at Jala Neti or Sutra Neti (very good Yoga asanas to clean nasal cavities), but blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with  cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population.
5. Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C ( eg citrus fruits). If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.

6. Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.

A walk through the neighborhood made it clear that the articles about Ramat Aviv are true – there IS a plan to take over the neighborhood. It was a time of havdalah, three stars in the sky, and the only people in the street were families with one parent in charedi clothing and a few children. A man with two bottles of wine and three children, a woman with two children hanging on to a stroller of twins. A family here, a family there. “Is this the way I remember this street?” I said, thinking that I was expecting the usual joggers and fast walkers, and suddenly I had a flashback to when I first came to live here and was awakened by the donkey braying next door and the rooster who couldn’t figure out daylight savings. Sheep would come by, a Bedouin boy with a stick leading them down the street. Except for the rooster, none of this bothered me.

November 13, 2009

As we left the shopping mall this afternoon, a young man with beard and sidelocks stopped us and said to my friend, “Would you like to take some candles to light tonight?” as he extended a pair of candles and a sheet of prayers. “Not in Ramat Aviv,” she said curtly and brushed past him. Now my friend is usually very polite and considerate of the feelings of others, so it took me a good minute to realize that she was indeed upset. This innocuous neighborhood of Ramat Aviv is becoming a little battleground between the old residents and the new extremely religious neighbors who have been moving in here in droves. “What would you have done?” she asked me sarcastically, having attending the recent rally and read the newspaper articles in Ha’ir this week and last. “I would have taken the candles,” I said meekly. But I get the point. There is a definite sense of a planned messianic organization in the recent influx of religious institutions – a study center, an inexpensive kindergarten, and other official places, all within a few blocks of a normally religion-free area. Still, I feel like a teasing argument, so I add, “And do all the Arabs in the neighborhood bother you?” (since there seem to be equal amounts of men in black suits and hats and women in hijabs). “Actually, they do,” she said, “But I know they are only visiting, or working here, or living in the dorms, but the Jewish extremists are out to change my life.” I don’t know whether I agree with her reasoning, but there it is.