israeli politics

yeah yeah, I know the question is complicated beyond measure.    I know the nature of Judaism changes with every block in every city of the world.  We, ourselves, are immersed in Jewish life and history, connected to every element of Jewish existence, and – as jews – enjoying criticizing other Jews with great pleasure.  But would we last under the pressure in the United States to be Jews and yet not ‘reveal’ it to the world, to hide any signs of our religion?  Within Israel we argue all the time about being overwhelmed by the laws of the domineering religious culture, and yet would defend our self-definition to the death. 

We managed to escape from Holocaust day in Israel this year.  I always find it unbearable – remember my mother weeping uncontrolably before the television – but always remembering every individual in our family who disappeared.  Even yesterday as we were being immersed in the massive beautify of Boston, I kept thinking of having missing the opportunity to discuss the great gap in our history with others,  

 

april 29, 2022 – what does it mean to be jewish? Read Post »

israeli politics

We just escaped Holocaust Day in Israel by a few hours, but I never feel I can escape it.  The memorial for Lida will take place next month, in which I mourn my grandmothers, my cousins, aunts, uncles, and others.  And I keep finding myself writing poems about the holocaust.  Why poems?  Because the experiences I know about are scraps, individual events, fragments with no logic, no plot, no context.

people are scared of poems, but they are precisely the way you can get the feeling of the individuals in the situation.

 

april 27, 2022 – holocaust Day Read Post »

israeli politics

You all know that scene where Seinfeld goes to pick up the rental car and they offer him a different car because they don’t have the one he reserved.  Well, we’re beginning that series now in the US.  We come to a hotel after a long miserable journey in the middle of the dark drizzling night hoping to sleep in the warm bed we had often reserved in the past, and it isn’t available.  So we take the room and wake up in the morning totally ready to fight or leave.  

And then you keep shut because you go on to the next disappointment. 

Well, not this time.

On one leg of the plane ride, the one where I was supposed to sleep,  I had one of those reclining chairs that are supposed to induce total comfort, but it kept sitting me up straight every time I drifted off.  The chair really wasn’t so much of a problem because the lights were kept on.  But I had complained so much about the movie screen and the lifebelt door opening up all the time, I was embarrassed to keep kvetching and just mentioned it at the end.    My fault, but the steward was so mortified he gave me a bottle of champagne and I grabbed it with joy.  

We should have drank the champagne in the crummy room overlooking the parking lot, but we went right to sleep and are now ready for revenge.  Let’s see how that goes.

 

april 27, 2022 – keeping the reservation Read Post »

israeli politics

This is the way it began.  We were about to get to sleep around 9:30 figuring that if we are getting special treatment with Fatal services so we could get up at 4 and leave at 4:30 to get in time to be 2 hours early for the flight at 7.  But suddenly Ezi got a message from Fatal that they can’t handle our special treatment.  That meant that we would have to be at the airport at 3:30 and should leave by 3.  That meant that there would be no sleep for us because we had to spend an hour vainly pleading with Fatal and the other places they referred us to that we were relying on help and therefore didn’t ask for a wheelchair.  Nope. 

So with no sleep we caught the flight to Boston with a stopover at Heathrow where we had decided to forego  our visit with dear cousins who live nearby and play it safe.  Well, it soon became apparent that we were wise to forego the visit because Heathrow is a combination of Louis Carroll and Kafka.   And it took us almost 2 hours to get through customs and to the waiting room.  One feature: the incredibly long queue waiting for security check.  How long?  So long that we got stopped at various stages of our journey because there was no room to progress.  And when we finally arrived at the queue, having followed all the directions for putting every possible liquid in a regulation transparent bag, and removed our watches, revealed our devices, etc., travellers became so nervous that they began asking questions of the guard.  This reminded the guard to forbid another item and everyone bent over to search through their trolleys for the newly listed item. Stick deodorant?  Toothpaste given on the previous flight?  Handcream presented on the previous flight?    So the exercise was take 10 steps, stop, bend over trolley, open, search, remove, rearrange, stand up, repeat.    

And now we’re almost on our way back to the gate, and after we all vow never to go through heathrow again, we’ll take off for a 7 hour flight.

why oh why do some many relatives live so far away?

april 26, 2022 – heathrow regards Read Post »

israeli politics

Eitan Stiva and the crew are splashing down even as I write and I imagine it is as exciting to every Israeli as it is my this family.  Ezi is already imagining himself in space. 

And just as we are admiring the egressing of the capsule, the company that is supposed to enable a VIP boarding for us at 4 this morning just cancelled because they’re busy.  We had paid a lot of money for this VIP service because I have problems standing in lines, and now we’ve got to get up at 2:30.  Talk about progress.  I’m watching the treatment the astronauts are getting and wishing there was that kind of progress for the simple folk.

April 25, 2022 – splash dow Read Post »

israeli politics

We are packing and testing ourselves and beginning to make plans and our neighbors keep calling and coming by – not to visit or say goodbye – but to argue.  Most apartment houses in Tel Aviv are old and frail, and many of the residents as well.  And the young people moving in to replace the dying and dead are cramped and disgusted and frightened by the peeling walls and the rusting pipes.  Me I never notice it, think it is part of the charm of the city, but I remember Mark Strand would go around collecting samples of the walls.  There is no doubt the buildings should be replaced, but the old people can’t be moved.  And now the problem is coming to a head in our building.  Out of 18 apartments we have at least 7 widows and 2 apartments being rented out to students because their owners have died.  we’ll be away and who knows what will be decided.   

Sorry if I’m repeated yesterday’s blog but I didn’t realize then how general this problem is in the entire city…

April 25, 2022 – old and new Read Post »

israeli politics

We were going to pack tonight, but our apartment building is in the middle of a great mess.  We’ve been arguing about how to fix up our old building, rather how to keep it from falling down – since it is, like most buildings in Tel Aviv – very old and poorly constructed.   The younger tenants want to tear it down and build a taller, bigger, building.  The older residents – who have lived here since the building was first erected – want to do as little as possible.  They don’t want to move away for two years because some of them won’t make it back.  And we’ve been together for so long… Who will take care of our old aushwitz graduate?  She told me today she came directly from the camps to this apartment.  We’ll have to try to stick together until the end.

Anyway tonight was the night everyone came to us to argue about the petition and who wanted what.  So no packing and no decisions. 

april 24, 2022 – Flat in Tel Aviv Read Post »

israeli politics

nor about Temple Mount.  Yes I think we should stay away from Temple Mount on holy days unless violence emerges from there.  Yes I think we should clean up our act on this issue, that we shouldn’t have started visiting Temple Mount until we straightened out our situation with the Moslems.  But I don’t think we have the moral right to abstain from helping the Ukrainians.  Maybe it’s dangerous for us to defy Russia, and maybe Russia has some rights in the Ukraine, but we have to do all we can for simple citizens.  

Sorry to be so unclear.  I’ve spent three days trying to figure out what I did wrong to screw up my site, and now I have to pack…

april 24, 2022 – nothing about Ukrain Read Post »