home -4.15.24

Tablet Magazine has an essay contest that got me thinking – even though I’m not eligible to enter. Here’s their pitch:

Where do you feel at home—or no longer at home—physically, spiritually, or culturally? How do you find community, or a sense that you’re a part of something larger than yourself? Are there places where you feel a sense of belonging, or alienation—or both? Tablet is seeking personal essays that wrestle with these questions.

We are looking for previously unpublished work by writers living in North America who have never published in Tablet before.

Years ago, when my daughter lived in New York and was making movies, she interviewed people for a film she wanted to make about the idea of home. The one I remember most was a woman who said, “Home is a place you can defend with a gun.”

She was a Palestinian lady, as I recall, and so surprised my daughter that she never made the film. That was a period in which I thought that peace was around the corner and we’d be next door neighbors exchanging recipes and babysitters.

I cannot forget the moment I first stepped foot on the ground here. The argument I had had years ago with the rabbi my mother thoguht would be my perfect shiddach about why I wasn’t going to go to a religious college for girls. I told him I believed in being part of the world, and not only was I going to find a way to pay for tuition for a good university, but I was going to see the world. But somehow a ticket to Israel appeared, and although I thought I’d escape to Athens and parts unknown, I stepped on the soil of the Holy Land and was hooked. That was it. I was home.

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israeli politics

I’m about to get to bed at 9 p.m. because we were up too much last night, but I have to answer the question every one keeps asking. How did we get through the night?

It was easy – I went to sleep at 11 when Danny Adari said the long range missiles would take 6 hours to get to us. But Ezi woke me at 1 to tell me that rockets were falling. He wanted me to look outside the window but everything was clearer on TV. At 4 or 5 I fell asleep and woke up to discover that the whole thing was over.

May all battles end while everyone is asleep.

Getting through the night – 4.14.24

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blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Drowning in Drones - 4.14.24

It was Star Wars at home last night. All around us we were diverting and dropping missiles, guarding us, guarding the Mosque of Omar, guarding everyone but the Bedouin in the desert who don’t have houses much less shelters. 330 rockets.

But this is a chess game and we made the opening move by killing a Palestinian terrorist in the Iranian embassy. So their response was to try to flatten our half of the chess board. We had the amazing fortune of friends like the US, Jordan, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, France, etc. As they say in Hebrew – more luck than wisdom.

Thank goodness for Biden. And if we can build on his amazing help and organization, we can rearrange the order of the Middle East, create a Palestinian State. help alter the Iranian government, and make this entire area blossom.

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israeli politics

We're Waiting 4.13.24

The big bombs are on their way – slowly. That should give us a few hours before the sirens, but there is also the possibility that they’re drop faster stuff on us while we’re waiting for the slower ones. So it’s going to be a long night. Let’s hope I’m back in the morning to tell you how things are.

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blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv, poetry

Gezer - 4.13.24

So sorry I can’t go to kibbutz Gezer today to see the exhibit with poems and pictures that include my own. Instead I am bedridden and kvetching.

But Ira was kind enough to send me the picture of the poem

that goes with a painting. You’ll have to go to the exihibit itself.

If Iran looks for me, it’ll find me under the covers.

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blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

rattling sabers over our heads.4.13.24

all exciting events are cancelled, not because of the threat of 100 drones and all kinds of missiles, but because of a UTI. I’m in bed and will finally get a chance to see Grays’ Anatomy or some such nonsense.

Am I going to get bombed? It won’t be the first time.

After all, I’m Jewish.

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blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? 4.12.24

Remember the hysteria that the Russians were going to nuke us in the US in the sixties? Well, here we are back again with the hysteria. I was out of it back then – too busy with my daily life. And I’m out of it again. Overtired of the threats and dangers. They come at us from all directions, and we get blamed for it no matter what we do.

And there is another dimension – I dream that I am walking behind my husband’s donkey that’s carrying a mattress, remembering how I used to sit with my friends on the seashore in the evening, and now weeping over my lost children. I identify with both sides and that neutralizes my terror.

Or maybe I’m just numb.

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blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv, poetry

A Tikkun Poem - 4.12.24

This poem was supposed to go into Tikkun, but that journal is closing and i now offer it to you:

Karen Alkalay-Gut

Praying in Israel

מחיה מתים ברחמים רבים

“In his great mercy, He revives the dead,”

Prayers shift their substance,

when the congregation is armed.

M-16s sling over folded tallitim,

ready for prayers, ready for battle

From the women’s section in the rear,

male backs are all I can perceive,

I mouth praise to the Lord

as I recall the flash of a girl

in a field of her friends’ corpses

begging to be released from life.

רופא חולים

“He healeth the sick,”

The soldier before me at the pharmacy

shrugs his weapon back on his shoulder

as he takes his prescription out of his pocket

and hands it over the counter.

Mahmud examines the paper and says,

“It must be painful, Dan, but maybe let’s try

a cream less extreme. Does it burn when…”

They drop their voices and move away for me

so their consultation is not overheard.

ומתיר אסורים

“And frees the imprisoned.”

I grasp my protest dog tag,

that says, “Bring Them Home,”

and want to say

“Let my people go.”

וּמְקַיֵּם אֱמוּנָתוֹ לִישֵׁנֵי עָפָר.

And fulfils His faith to those who sleep in the dust

Resting by the Jordan River

eyeing the automatic baptism chair

that lowers the penitent into the waters

and revives the newly saved into a new life,

unused now while the rockets fall,

I long to bathe, soak my hair and spring up

enlightened. Instead, I fulfil my hunger

with the shawarma at the stand of Al-Babur,

until recently known as the gourmet restaurant

of the village of Um Il Fachem.

a Tikkun Poem – 4.12.24 Read Post »