slowly slowly I’m beginning to realize how much this year was wasted – for me as well as the world. will I ever work with others to make things like I did before? will i do something better?
march 31, 2021 – longing for the future Read Post »
these are the worst days ever to travel in Israel – why? the weather is perfect, the corona seems to be on its way out, the holidays are here, everyone is on vacation. And just try to move from here to there on the streets! We may not have a government, we may not have a budget, we may not have any prospects for a sane and non-criminal leader, but we’re celebrating!
Twenty years ago, when I started this diary, the streets were exploding. Now they’re exploding with revelers and we’re in a worse place. how strange is that!
march 30, 2021 – the busiest day on the streets Read Post »
and 20 years on this blog. would you believe it? how many people can write something like that? Actually the blog began on april 2, when i was getting phone calls after each bombing in Tel Aviv. “Are you still alive?” it was a little scary. So I said I’d write something when i could and people concerned with my survival can check in. it worked – the few people who HEARD of the bombs could look and see what i wrote about it. I sat at Oren’s cafe every day, thinking of the sign I had seen on another cafe – “we have terrorist attacks every other day. There was one yesterday” and I convinced myself I had a good record of survival and therefore a good chance. When my dance partner got blown up – waiting at the bus station to go to see her grandchild – i kind of lost it. Safi was so much more gracious than I was. She could swing a cane and swing her hips and nothing fell. Me, I’d get twisted up in the moves.
march 29, 2021 – yes it’s my birthday Read Post »
is it only that I’ve made it so far that I keep thinking of seders of the past, seders I’ve been to, seders that took place elsewhere, in other times. Did the Jews who lived in Egypt until the 1950s celebrate the exodus? Did the Jews in Auschwitz manage to put something together to keep up the tradition by the light of the crematoriums? How many of us associate ourselves at the beginning to the seder with the evil son, thinking it has nothing to do with us, and then getting into the songs and the symbolic food and the jokes? So our wonderful seder with my family around me and my birthday cake and all that still seemed one layer of freedom.
march 28, 2021 – seder thoughts Read Post »
Every year we make our family hagada, with photographs of the participants and the personal involvement in the story of slavery, freedom and religion. this year we’ve prepared a corona hagada – why do we have to sit so far apart? why do we have to wash our hands with alcogel….
march 27, 2021 – corona hagada Read Post »
The question everyone is asking: How is Bibi going to succeed in creating a government? It’s not – there’s no way he’s going to succeed. It’s like watching Houdini, knowing he will escape, but holding your breath until he does. Wait – once he didn’t.
So who is Bibi going to peel away from his declared party? There are a few possibilities – people who can be wooed away from their pre-election promises.
My ideal outcome is that Benny becomes the compromise prime minister and we begin to trust one another again. (I feel like I’m closing the big storybook with all the kiddies sitting on the floor around me open-mouthed.)
march 26, 2021 – where is the hat and who is the rabbit? Read Post »
Every day I think of the luck I’ve had – not to be born a slave, to be able to make choices – at least some of the time. I know our election would probably not make a difference in our society, but the fact that I can try to change something still makes things better to my mind.
And now here is a moment of confession. This is one of the rare years when my birthday is the same in the Hebrew calendar and the Roman calendar. I’ve probably said this already in these pages. The war was still raging, my parents had escaped a bombing by chance – the story as I heard it was that they were about to meet each other and were walking toward each other from opposite corners of the street when a bomb fell between them. I have no way of verifying this story but as of now none of my mother’s stories have been proven fantasies or exaggerations. So this event probably happened today 76 years ago. Maybe it was before then, but I still remember the smock my mother wore and how I pictured her when she told me the story.
i’ll tell you more about my birthday some other time. My point in this story was that my parents were in the middle of the mess, but they were free, They weren’t rounded up and shot, or pushed into gas chambers, or given poison injections – they were walking on the street…
so i choose to limit my activities to relatively safe alternatives. and i’m free
march 26, 2021 – the day before the seder Read Post »
