Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

Last night, the last night of Hannuka, we celebrated the arrival of a wonderful light. When I was a little girl we used to pray at the kippele shul in Rochester. It was called the kippele because it was next to a big synagogue with a big dome, a kippa. And this was the diminuitive synagogue. I studied, together with my brother, with the Rabbi, Gedaliah Cohen. And while he concentrated on the important things, I looked at the details, the fixtures, the walls, the tops of the heads of the people praying. So when Bob Chait offered to send me the light fixture I was thrilled. And yesterday it arrived.

But since no one else remembers this, our celebration was small.

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.

The sun urged us to come outside, and Alicia and Jerry Ostriker joined us at the port at Yaffo.

There may be much that is new at the port, but somehow I concentrated on the old. When I suddenly overheard Ezi explaining to Jerry that his grandfather had built the hangars whose decrepit state I was admiring, I was thrilled. I knew it must have been around the early thirties, but considered it only in terms of the personal history of Ezi’s grandfather, Arpad Gut. Ezi photographed them:

Then we spotted an old boat in the parking lot

Where is that from? When was it built? I walked around the boat and found a group of old Arab men. “Sit down, have a cup of tea, let’s have your phone number,” says one. “Don’t give him your number,” warns another, “He’s untrustworthy.” “Well,” I say, “My husband’s over there, he’ll take care of me” – I take the tea and sit down. “Whose boat is this?” I ask. “My grandfather built it,” says the guy in the yellow sweater. “Wow,” I respond, “And my husband’s grandfather built that hangar.” “Can’t be, they were built by the British.” “Yes, he was working for them.” A muttering of Arabic I cannot catch, and do not want to respond to.

I’m having too much fun.

They want to know what I do, and I begin to explain, but then Ezi comes to pick me up and I know he will not be too excited about talking to strange oldtimers, so I promise to come back in a few weeks for more tea, at their repeated invitation.

More another day

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.

Don’t know what went wrong. Don’t know how it got fixed.
But this is what I wrote on the days of blog silence:
These candles seem to be having an effect on me this year. Last year I was too involved in what was happening in Gaza to think about holiday spirit, but this year seems to be different. I go back to my favorite heroine, the one who didn’t make it into the five books of Moses, the redeemer of the Jewesses, Judith. I like Judith in part because her name means Jewess, and because although a widow, she defends the town of Betulia, or maidenhood. The Panic Ensemble video of my poem about Judith is here. You can see us doing it together, with the Yiddish by be here

December 17, 2009

After a long busy day, Alicia and I watched “Der Yiddishe King Lear” – or at least the first part of it before we got too sleepy. The rest we need to be awake for.

This is one of the songs we used to sing in shule for Hannukah:

Arum dem fayer,men vert nit mider,

Di nakht iz tayer,mir zingen lider ,
Un zol der fayer, farloshn vern,
Shaynt oyf der himl, mit zayne shtern.

To kroynt di kep mit blumenkrantsn,
Arum dem fayer mir’n freylekh tantsn,
Vayl tants un lid iz undzer lebn,
Dernokh in shlof khaloymes shvebn.

Around the fire, we never get tired. The night is dear and we sing our songs. And if the fire goes out, the heavens shine with their stars. So crown our heads with flower wreathes, we’re going to dance around the fire, because dancing and singing are our lives, and then in sleep create beautiful dreams.

My mother used to sing this and cry, because of her partisan baby sister, but I never understood why – it seems like such a happy song. But now that I think of it, my aunt was in a mixed Russian-Jewish unit – they didn’t sing Yiddish songs

And she had nothing to sing about. She certainly didn’t think of survival, but revenge.

I’m not going to tell her story right now – but sometime soon.

One is not allowed to count people, because that awakens the appetite of the Evil One. So we always counted people by saying ‘not one,’ ‘not two,’ ‘not three.’ If i count the people who aren’t sick I can do it on one not-hand. Swine-flu, shmein-flu – we’ve got colds, bronchitis, strep, and it’s still not cold enough to heat the house. They better invent something to take the place of antibiotics soon because otherwise we’re lost.

I do enjoy enjoy the perspective of Yiddish. Here are two Yiddish songs about Hannukah:

Oh, you tiny candlelights,
you tell such histories
stories without end.
You tell of blood spilt,
bravery and skill,
wonders of days of yore.

Oh Chanukah, Oh Chanukah

Oh Chanukah, Oh Chanukah,
A beautiful holiday,
Lusty and happy,
There’s no other holiday like it.
Every night we play dreidls
And we eat steaming hot latkes.
Come children in a flash
Light the slender, small candles!
Tell of all the wonders,
Thank God for the miracles
(now I’ve forgotten the last line some thing about dancing …)

This is the first anniversary of Operation ‘cast lead’ – It is terrible to me that we have done nothing to help rebuild what we destroyed. Some readers of mine have complained that I only feel sympathy for Arabs, but I see this as part of Judaism, the responsibility for others, and if we lose our humanity we have lost everything.

I only found out about the burning of the mosque in Yasuf this evening. We went to lunch at Abu Khaled’s, at the Paz gas station in Herzlia, and the place was so crowded I couldn’t talk to anyone beside the kids. The food was great, plentiful, and accompanied by so many extras I can’t count them. And I looked around at all the peace signs and pictures and thought about how well our relationships are developing… ha.

And then, at the Hannuka party tonight someone told me. The outrage was so great I could not speak for a while, but I have no right to feel that outrage. It’s a kind of self-righteousness. There have been other events leading up to this for months and I’ve said nothing.

Sometimes one small candle

reveals the great darkness surrounding us

 

Sometimes it takes time

to learn to look only

at the single light

the tiny illumination

December 12, 2009
Only the second candle and I’m already over-doughnuted.  Every year Hannuka is an opportunity to meet with family and friends and eat too much fried food.  The miracle of this holiday is that you only gain five pounds for eating 10 pounds worth of latkes. I’ve got to go to lunch now

Keep this date:December 25-7 – for the Yiddish Tel Aviv Poetry Festival.  I’ll be there on the 27th.
Poetry.org has a hannuka poetry site: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5864″>here</a>