People talk about 200,000 refugees in Israel, but numbers never mean much to me.  Even when I see the tents of evacuees from the south covering the entire plaza between the courts, the library and the museum, it doesn’t mean as much to me as a single old friend caught in the dreadful situation.  

In this case it is a friend of almost 60 years who lives next to what was once called “the good fence” up north, but has been evacuated and has been living in hotels for the past three months because of rocketfire up north.  She is not only old – like me – but she has Parkinson’s and has undergone 2 cataract operations since her exile.  Her house in Metula is booklined but until now hasn’t been able to read, but now she has no books.  So we went up to Tiberias with 3 bags of books donated by a wonderful Tel Aviv friend and left her with no room to move in that small room with all that reading. 

What else is there to do?