israeli politics

It’s Hannukah, so the kids are on vacations and doing their usual thing.  One of my granddaughters was using her time today to do a film for school and needed a grandmother for a short scene.  So I found myself in the morning at an empty room in an old age home playing the role of grandmother alive and dead.   When my little role was finished, I went to do some chores in the mall, and – not surprisingly – was captured by the Lancome team in the pharmacy.  Turns out I have been their customer for 15 years and it is now sale time.  But in the middle of the makeover, the sirens began, accompanied by warnings for customers to make their way to the underground garage.  I was brought into the safe room of the pharmacy and found myself facing the pharmacists. “Who’s watching the store?” the manager was asked. “Nobody steals during a siren,” she answered, but we didn’t wait the required ten minutes to leave.  Of course, after the shock of the numerous sirens, I was ready to buy out the whole shelf of make-up.  Luckily Ezi came to help me carry my loot, and was happy to take me out to lunch.  But the restaurant was so crowded, there was no chance in the mall, and I suggested a place that was open to the air, where, I assumed, people might be reluctant to go after an attack of seven rockets on Tel Aviv.  There we managed to find a table for two, and were given discounts on the beer.

Now I’m ready to get to work.

simple days – dec 11, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Okay, we’re big gamblers around here.  Especially now.  When we leave the house, we’re gambling there will be a place to hide if there’s a rocket.  We’re gambling with the lives of our soldiers that we’ll find the hostages. We’re gambling on this holiday with our dreydls that we spin and hope the right letter will fall and we’ll win the kitty.  And I’m gambling on this site that I’m still learning how to program.  

If it doesn’t work right, know I’m still looking for someone who will teach me what to do.  

Not what to say.  I may be wrong most of the time but I take full responsibility  for my mistakes.

Let’s see.  If I disappear for a day or two – it’s my fault and I’ll be back.  

I ‘m gambling on my luck.

Now I will share a memory of dreydls:  My mother always gave us Hannukah gelt – money for Hannukah.  It’s a beautiful custom – the gold coins to remind us of the festival of light, the rebuilding of the temple, the miracles.  And, as part of the miracles, we gambled.

And my mother seemed always to win back her money.

dreydl – dec 9, 2023 Read Post »

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One thing I learn from Hannukah is how quickly everything can change, can flip from day to day.  Look at this picture, for instance:

These are German-Jewish soldiers from World War I celebrating the holiday.  There were about 100,000 Jewish soldiers serving in Germany then.  12,000 died for their country.  

The guy I’m researching whose portrait will be in this exhibit of the work of Shalom Sebba was one of them. 

Kurt Gerron.  

He was wounded twice in WWI and returned to serve, finishing his medical degree in between.  But right after the war he decided he could cure more people through entertainment and comedy than medicine.  After 94 odd movies he was involved in, and countless plays and caberets, the Nazis caught up with him and he ended up in Auschwitz after having been forced to make a propaganda film about Thereisenstadt.    

When I first started looking him up, there were a number of films, photographs and recordings of his on youtube, but recently as I tried to put together a little monograph in Hebrew to fit in with the exhibit, I couldn’t find usable works.  Everything that was left was copyrighted, and I had to use material I had from previous lectures and articles.  The monograph is out but I now wonder whether i should have done it in English for a wider audience.  

 

 

 

hannukah – angles – Dec 8, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

We lit candles with friends tonight – my friend insisted on discussing the entire story of Hannukah and it’s encouraging message, and I really needed it.  I had been racing against the clock to get my little monograph on Kurt Gerron printed before the exhibit opens – and I can see I wont make it.  But I’ll keep trying, and if you want to encourage me, write me and reserve a copy and I’ll try hard to get it for the opening of the Museum exhibit.

The exhibit is of the work of Shalom Sebba, an artist who died in the eighties and whose work is mostly about Israel.  The invitation for the opening shows a kibbutznik shearing his sheep.  But the work I wrote about is of a man who, although a decorated German war hero in World War I, left his profession as a physician to heal the world through film,  Kurt Gerron made at least 94 films, musical and endless recordings before he was forced to make a Thereisenstadt film for the Nazis and was killed before it was complete.  My book is an attempt to give him back a semblance of the presence he had as a Jewish star way back before Goebells started cutting him out of the films he had made.  We lent the museum our painting of him by Sebba for this purpose.  

He never got the miracle he deserved.  I’ll tell you more about the paiting soon.

Miracle needed – Dec 7, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics
The word kept coming up in the congressional questioning of university presidents, “Is a call to genocide against the code of the university?” And I kept thinking that the response of Presidents like Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania that calling for the genocide of Jews is against the university’s code of conduct “is a context-dependent decision.” How similar it is to all I have written about the effect of the dismisssive response to rape as a second rape. The negation of the crimes against Israel on October 7 is also not a question of context, but an affirmation of series of horrendous crimes, planned years in advance. Any negation of these crimes is a repetition of the same crime. I’m too tired to make sense right now but maybe i’ll rewrite this in the morning. in the case of the university presidents, the cord “context” is just a standard ass-covering so the world doesn’t sue them. If there’s anybody left to sue after the next massacre

context – dec 6. 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

yesterday i was explaining to my cousin Howard and brother Joe that rockets come on the hour, and I have come to plan my activities around that.  Yesterday we went to pick up some vitamins from a business that seems to have lost their shop and are working out of their apartment. I said we should leave after the hour and make it home within the hour, but Ezi dallied, and when we got there the electricity on the whole road was out, so we had to find out way in the dark past the electric door and up the steps.  And by the time we left, it was almost on the hour.  So I made Ezi wait next to the shelter in their dark house until the hour was over. 

Nothing happened.

But today, as I was thinking about an afternoon nap, the sirens went off – no where close to the hour.    

there goes another theory.

rocket timing – dec 5, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

this is an old poem, but i think of it often when we speak about how we determine the blame for this war:

HOSTAGE CRISIS

I

“This is the game …” You draw a diagram.

“First,  a river” – a line across the page.   

“On this side lives a husband and wife.”

You write (H) and (W) on the bottom half.

“On the other side are her lovers,” (L1) and (L2),

who live in view of each other.

(L1) loves (W) madly but (W) is mad for (L2)

who doesn’t really care but consents

to sleep with her when she’s there.

“There are two ways to cross the river –  

a bridge and a boat.  The boatman, (B),

for a coin will carry anyone anywhere.

The bridge is free, but from eight at night

until eight A.M. is patrolled by a murderer (M)

who destroys those who try to pass.

“One morning (W) goes to see (L2).

They spend all day in bed.

She is so besotted 

she forgets the time, and it is eight.

“When she runs to (B) she sees

she has left her wallet at home

and asks to owe the money.

(B), a businessman,

does not operate on credit.

“Returning to (L2) she asks

for a small loan, but he – reiterating

what he said in the morning – shakes his head.

He has no ties to her, except, as she knows,

an indifferent willingness to acquiesce.  Can 

she stay the night, she asks.  He shakes his head.

“(L1) watches her run down his path, desperate,

hysterical.  ‘If you love me at all, please 

lend me the money for the ride or give me a roof

for the night!’  ‘Not I – who have watched you two all day –  

in love and pain – I will not be further used and wounded.’

“It is bitter cold, and if she sleeps outside

(W) will surely freeze.  Perhaps, she thinks, the

murderer will not come out now.  She tries

the only way left.

When she gets to this point,” You draw an (X)

with your pencil half‑way across the bridge, “She is killed.

“Now,” you say in triumph, “List

the letters in order of responsibility.”

II

That was years ago and I, a young American, newly wed,

wrote down (W), (at least she should know

to take her purse) then (H), (who could not keep

his wife at home with love, understanding, reason,

who did not go to look for her).

The lovers were somewhere in the middle

but he who loved should have wanted

to save her, had an obligation to that love.

The one who didn’t care should 

have cared for self respect.

The boatman – can you blame a capitalist?

At the bottom of the list, I wrote (M).

After all, I had been everyone, felt shame

for all of them, except the man on the bridge.

———————

Now I think of how we blame Bibi and others who ignored the pleadings of so many people in intelligence.  We blame the businesses for raising prices, the tv for spending so much time on the news and not giving us something to relieve our pain.  

We blame Sinwar and Deff, but the situation is so much more complicated.  Sinwar and Deff are the product of their society, even if they were not really chosen.  We constantly worry about the people in Gaza, even though from the hostages who returned we know they tortured them needlessly.  And we feel terrible guilt.

 

who to blame Read Post »