I spend six days in the city and wonder what my life would have been like I lived here – the amazing opportunities, the libraries, the connections, the friendships… There are so many people I want to see that I don’t have enough time to meet up with. If I had another week I’d want to sit in the library all day and see friends all evening. wow.
but I am so excited about going back to Israel, it seems like the choice is moot.
had i lived in new york Read Post »
I seem to have lost all orientation in the past year. The shops are confusing to me, the museums make little sense, the restaurants seem to operate differently. Is it me? Is it New York? Is it the world?
It is Shavuot, and I have been missing being in a land where the order of holidays provides a level of orientation. That’s on me. It isn’t what New York was ever about. But what about the rest of the orientations? Take the museums, for instance. Only when I went to the Museum of Natural History to admire the new Gilder Hall did I see how everything connected. Whether it is rocks or insects – everything has its place, and everything is clearly cataloged for the purpose of understanding more about the universe and how it works. The art museums made no sense at all to me. What is art and what are we supposed to learn or gain from art? Maybe this picture explains it. If you put two cultures together, a blend of the two will result. Or maybe I’m in the middle making a shadow.
In any case, I enjoyed making my own sense of things . See how the Museum of Natural History comes together:
read the signs.
All right, it is clear I see the world in a different way….
this means nothing but to get to sleep last night I forced myself to write letters in different languages to peoples who are at odds right now with us. I wrote a letter in Yiddish explaining that while they are succeeding in many ways to achieve their goals, they will ultimately fail because they only exist because they are destroying the support structure that surrounds them. Then I wrote a letter in Arabic about the need for a citizens’ watch party for all citizens in this country. We used to have a guard system. Ezi was even issued a carbine and went out once a week with some other old man to parole the neighborhood.
it worked.
anyway I didn’t write the letter, but I did fall asleep. I should have written them.
“why are you here?” people ask me “At least there you can try to effect some change! Here, we’re helpless.” Helpless, my friends say, because we’re old and there are so many people with so many different opinions, one person’s ideas don’t matter. Anyhow one scientist said to me, even science has become constricted and it has become goal-oriented in such a way that unknowns are discounted as insignificant (you know, like long-range vaccine effects)
If I were in Israel, they say, I could be demonstrating and my voice would be counted….
Because I began this journal about living in Tel Aviv, with no looking back to edit or revise, it is difficult for me to write when I am outside of Tel Aviv. And this time it is doubly difficult because I am careful not to write details about family and friends and coopting their lives into my own narration, and I am spending all my time with friends and relatives in New York. So I have only theory to discuss.
And as you know, my theories of the Jews are strange and changing. And then Marek asked me:
“How can we transcend these oppositions and rise above these limitations?” – that seems to be a difficult question. But I am interested in a question that I hope is much easier for you to answer: What do you think is actually stopping Jewish religious interpreters in Israel from emphasizing universal love? Can you name like some key factors that make the concept of universal love undesired?” And my first response is. “Universal love is much to be desired – but if we have been persecuted and murdered throughout the generations, it is a bit unrealistic to assume we will continue to believe that universal love is something to sing about. One thing I have noticed is that we continue to send out fully staffed and equipped field hospitals every time there is an emergency in the world, as well as financial and other help. I’ve also noticed that this is rarely mentioned in the media. So that while I think we practice universal love in general, we are not ideal, and we are not recognized for it. On the contrary, we are blamed for what we do not do.
The problem is more that although the Jewish religion is supposed to discourage non-Jews from converting to Judaism, the aggressiveness of the extremists to realize their messianic goals makes it difficult to include them in the concept of universal love.
But what do I know? I admit my lack of complete information in the world. This lack of complete information is the major problem in most of the issues we discuss in which we pretend to have authority.
Tel Aviv from Far Away – May 23, 2023 Read Post »
Jews – I can’t stop thinking about them. After being immersed in Jewish prayer and Jewish community for a few days with my wonderful modern religious family, I thought I was finished comparing what I knew about the meaning of words with the way Americans interpret them – the love they put into their relationship with the Divine seems alien to the Jewish religion as it is understood by the religion as I know it in Israel. We just don’t emphasize universal love.
But the big kick came to me in Nyack when I discovered that the yeshivot were putting the lean on public education just like in Israel, strengthening their form of education by the same methods of holding meetings at unscheduled times, channeling funding through deception, etc.
How can we transcend these oppositions and rise above these limitations? I know we have to if we are to survive as a people, but how?
opposites and parallels – May 22, 2023 Read Post »
My mother told me that when I first reunited with her after my medical examination at Ellis Island, I fell asleep on the train to our relatives at Worcester and when I woke up at the end of the trip, I looked around at the dismal poverty and said, “This is America?”
No world since has come close to the world I dreamt I was sleeping on that train ride from Ellis Island to Worcester, but each time I return to the US I am filled with that dream. When I first read Langston Hughes’ poem America, I was reminded of it
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
The streets where I am staying in New Brunswick reflect that hope, and that despair. The people I don’t know, as people, are wonderful and seem to manage despite an absence of optimism. At least here they don’t lock up all the items on the shelves in the pharmacy because theft is so rampant. But they’re not having the fun I used to feel just feeling a part of their neighborhood.
It’s my first day here. I have no right to complain, and the news I hear from Israel is much worse. It is as though everyone is attempting to impose their dream on the world.
More cheer soon.
news of the new world – May 18, 2023 Read Post »
Because our airline credits – postponed 4 years already – will expire next month, we’re taking British Airlines to the States. The occasions for our trip are wonderful, but I feel like I’m leaving too many things unfinished. We go from crisis to crisis. And seeing it from far away doesn’t decrease our sense of helplessness.
What do I mean by this? Our values and laws are so mixed up there is no way to uncomplicate them. Here is one example I like: The family of the Palestinian worker who was killed in a rocket blast the other day is now entitled to compensation. Since he was cleared for working in this country, he was not a member of a terrorist association in Gaza. However, since his wages were supporting the entire hamula of more than 20 people, who is to say that he was not taking care of a Jihad cousin? Nevertheless, these 20 people will continue to be supported by Israel’s government. At the same time, I know of numerous families in Israel who would be saved by some government support.
Here’s another one: During the rocket attacks a few days ago, our reporters started announcing that according to Al Jezira, we are close to a cease-fire. Shortly after Al Jeriza reported that according to Israel news, we are close to a cease-fire. So if we’re communicating what we know through the news channels, why can’t we announce peace?
How can I leave the country without unravelling some of these tangles?
taking off – may 15, 2023 Read Post »
