Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

Whoops. I too work for the government. And I’m proud of what they have accomplished in the university until now. Would I go to Ariel? Yes. Not if the government told me my job depended on it.

So we have one of our chief rabbis calling for the death of Mohammed Abbas and a few of our best theater people announcing their refusal to perform in Ariel. Well at least some people are taking a stand on something.

To get serious for a minute, Rabbi Ovadiah Yossef has been saying things for years that show a total lack of connection with the real world. The theater people don’t seem to be more in touch either. They are supported by the government so it would not be surprising that the government withdraw funds. Not terribly idealistic, but reasonable.

Gilad Shalit’s birthday. I promise you he isn’t celebrating his fourth birthday in a hole somewhere in Gaza.

We made moussaka today – it was very much like Margalit’s moussaka, which I gave up trying to imitate years ago. We only had 2 eggplants, so we added another kilo of zucchini, and started out with a layer or sliced partly cooked potatoes. while the eggplant and zucchini were baking in their breadcrumbs, we fried up some onions, garlic and a kilo of meat (I would have preferred lamb but this was a last minute thing), half a cup of wine, cup of crushed tomatoes and some paste, parsley, sugar, allspice,cinnamon, salt and pepper, layered it alternately with kashkaval, and covered it all with a bechamel flavored with nutmeg. An hour of baking at medium heat made it perfect.

Since we’re talking about repentance, and sometimes not knowing what needs to be repented, the group shovrim shtika is particularly relevant. They are an organization of soldiers who discuss some of the inhumane occurences they have witnessed or participated in. Some say that they are mistaken, or they are betraying their people, even endangering their country. As far as I am concerned it is not at all wrong to speak about what they see, it is wrong that these things take place, and their moral obligation is to repeat the ‘confessions,’ to educate us. The only way we can be better people is to recognize, acknowledge, and endeavor to improve our behavior. This is the month for recognition.

It is hard to describe the extent to which I am collapsing – a perfectly healthy person, unable to cope with the heat. Even though today was a kind of relief.

But we are heading into September, the beginning of school, and the high holidays. So maybe the height of all the questions I’ve been asking about religion are what is tiring me out. Like, when the Messiah comes, what will happen with all my implants? will I get to keep them?

And then all the questions about sinning and confessions. I know that “A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory,” but I don’t feel the whole thing is so simple. Like individual responsibility for collective crimes, or collective responsibility for individual crimes. I always thought that in Kol Nidre we begin with associating ourselves as one of the community, all sinners, but there are communities and there are communities.

What about Tel Aviv? Now that the heat wave is slowly diminishing and our nerves are returning to their normal hyperactive state, the city is looking better. Some people are even turning off their airconditioners for the night. It is even becoming possible to being plans for the new year. Like where will we put our ever-growing family this year for dinner….

On another note, I don’t like to make other people’s private lives the subject of my journal, but the wedding on the border had so many parapersonal implications.

see in the background the sign for the good fence. While I’m talking about a wedding, we are surrounded by the memory of the moment of a union.

The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Jewry in Safed was one of the best parts of our weekend. All I knew about Hungary in the past I learned from Bandi Gut, who taught me a great deal about fashion, about computers, about engineering and about cursing, but very little about his background. And yet it must have been significant, since I have been searching for his and his father’s history since we connected to internet, in 1985.

And one day not long ago we found some correspondence of the family with the Hungarian museum from way back. So even though we were in a bit of a hurry to get home, we stopped for a visit.

The museum is really a gem, with every aspect of Jewish life in Hungary covered. The integration of the Jewish population into the general culture is evident here, and I am not surprised that Bandi’s father, Arpad Gut, about whom I have written in these pages, was a noted builder of public institutions that are still respected today, such as the thermal baths at Budapest’s Hotel Gellert the water tower in siofok, the iron bridge at Oroszfalut and the Brick works at Granitgyar. It was only when he walked back from Keirgestan where he’d been a prisoner during WWI, and saw that the mood was changing, that he took his family and left for Palestine.

Another stop was Banias. The last time I was there, we swam in the waters. But now it is a nature preserve and too beautiful to dirty with our bodies. The Temple of Pan was always there – and the name Banias comes from the Arab pronunciation of Pan – but now I learned that this is where Peter was told to build the church. It wasn’t just the sand press that spelled out Matthew’s quote in different languages, the bottles of holy water for sale at the kiosk gave it away. Well, you can’t sell water from the Jordan, but you can sell little plastic bottles that pilgrims can fill up by themselves. A guard from the nature preserve helped us figure out all the changes – the different fish, the greenery, the amount of water, the half-eaten fruit (hares). It’s a dry summer so the water is only a modest flow, but I remember it as a rush.

check again for photos soon