December 18, 2009
The incredible rain lasted less than forty hours and a minute before Shabbat the sun was shining again. We had a double birthday party to celebrate at Pappa’s so even though the wind surfers were flying all over the sea shore, we couldn’t stop to watch.
And there they were when we walked in, some of the greatest creators of Israeli rock, waiting with glasses of champagne for a toast. And what was our first item of discussion after we settled down – the theft of the sign over Auschwitz.
Ironic as we were, and full of jokes, there was not a single individual who was not overwhelmed by the vandalism of the ironic brutalism the sign represented. It is as if someone is trying to erase the history of the torture of my aunts, my uncle, to turn a terrible truth into a ‘narrative.’
December 19, 2009
One of my dearest friends has been working for years on proving that the linguistic source of Yiddish is not German but Khazar. This is to prove that Jews are not from here but somewhere else. It may work. But he still lives here and will probably die down the street from me. That is, he may see a theoretical negation of the ‘narrative’ we live, but we still live here. And I’m going off this morning to see some more of Tel Aviv, to kiss the ground as it were.
