israeli politics

Caves and cars - 7.23.25

Why we decided to leave all the work on our desks and drive to Beit Govrin I don’t know.  Maybe it was the idea of leaving our troubles behind, maybe it was the idea of escaping the heat in the caves…who knows.  We went.  

What we forgot was that the caves are cool and exciting  but getting to the caves means going through incredible heat.  Yet there is something incredibly inspiring in the caves. 

in many ways…

see?

The problem was getting home.  By the time we headed back it was a bit later and we got into a jam – which turned out to be the charadim blocking the highway.  They looked healthy and powerful enough to be great soldiers, but the draft they revile might endanger their way of life.  The problem is their way of life endangers our lives.

 

caves and cars – 7.23.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

A Sample from Survivors 7.21.25

Because so many of you have written that you bought the book, I was surprised that Amazon wrote me that they had zero sales.  So I went to facebook to see if anyone else wrote that they had the book, and discovered that Ira had been hinting to me to put a poem on facebook as a sample. and if people liked it they would buy the book.  Here’s the poem I chose:

Absence

 

“What are you looking for?”

we’d ask Mother, as she rummaged

a cupboard or a drawer or the phone book.

“My lost youth,” she’d answer

absent-mindedly, having forgotten

whatever had occupied her mind

when she first began to search.

 

The bombs, the soldiers, the streets

covered with bodies, the story of the children

smashed against the wall, her babies

washed down the drain in the bathtub in Danzig,

they were always

right there in the cupboard, the drawer,

the book next to the telephone.

 

The interesting background was that this was the last poem I wrote for this book, and I had in mind my grandchildren and all the children in this war who have indelibly been scarred.  It was the first time I realized how much my mother had been through. 

A Sample from Survivors Read Post »

israeli politics

scheherazade - 7.20.25

A kid in Gaza died of malnourishment today and I spent the afternoon discussing the situation of the individual soldier in Gaza and the alternatives available to him/her.  That they shouldn’t be Gaza in the first place was a given to all of us – but we haven’t figured out a way to change the government.  But what is a soldier supposed to do?

I’m sitting in a concert hall entranced by a wonderful surprise – the concert we were meant to hear was a little stiff and maybe a bit pretentious but the conductor got sick at the last moment and since he was the only one prepared for these obscure pieces we got an amazing violinist Etamar Zorman instead.  So I was happy and in the mood to listen to Scheherazade carefully in the second part.  And there I imagined my political dream come true.  There is the tyrannical sultan and the woman who convinces him through stories that dialogue that they can make harmony together.  I know this is a crazy interpretation of Rimsky-Korsokov – but it made sense at the moment…

scheherazade – 7.20.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

graduation - 7.18.25

No where in the world could there be as messy a doctoral ceremony as this one at Tel Aviv.  Even the BA ceremony at Barnard where the sense of anarchy and revolution dominated every aspect of the ceremony,  Here it was a forced sense of joy – Clearly the occasion demands celebration, but how can one celebrate when one’s colleagues are – hostages, dead, in the army, crazy….

I wanted to leave when the drums took over – even though they were great girls – I don’t thin the rector of the university should be preceeded by a drum.   Or the other deans and rectors.  The doctorants – maybe.  But there were so many of them!

Okay I had nothing to complain about.  Maybe if I had eaten of the elegant spread I’d be less crochety.  And the address was wonderful.  Even though I’m embarassed I don’t know the name of the researcher who concluded her technical brain research lecture with the idea that antithetical science experiments should work together to find the answers that combine the antitheses.  

In a crowd of people who are so different they could not sing the anthem with any unity, this was an important talk.


graduation – 7.18.26 Read Post »

israeli politics

My Mother - for Lorraine - 7.16.25

CLOCKS

 

I look for more than time in my digital watch –

the connection of the dots, direction

of the moments.  Always I remember Mother,

who slipped Father’s timepiece on her wrist

when his swelled up with final infections,

how she wore that watch for two years to the day

after he died.  And as she was going in

for the operation she would not survive,

she answered the nurse who asked,

“Why do you wear two?”

with “So one can watch the other.”

My mother – for Lorraine – 7.16.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Druze october 7 - 7.16.25

The reports from the Druze in Syria are terrifying.  Decapitation, rape, murder of Druze there have incited Israeli Druze to cross the border to save their relatives, and the reports are of total chaos.  This is an event that can only end badly.

 

druze october 7 – 7.16.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Different Strokes - 7.15.25

I’ve always thought that the more variety in the way people think the better the chance for solving problems.  I’m not talking about the Druze and the Syrians, or even the politicians (a plague on all their houses).  

We are working on a 1000 piece puzzle.  One person begins on the frame, another on the more visible parts that might connect, a third on any pieces that might pair up.  It’s the way we think.  I like to think in pieces after I have a frame.

now let’s apply this to my politics.  My frame is mutual benefit in the middle east and maybe everywhere else.  Two pieces at a time.

 

different strokes – 7.15.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Riefenstahl (2024) 7.13.25

The film about Leni Riefenstahl is something that everyone should be encouraged to see.  Not because it is a good film, or that she is a good woman, but that she is the key to the next generation – the dangerous people who believe in themselves and their race to the point where others are not human beings, should even be destroyed.  And that belief is a basic factor in their art – the creation of a perfect film even at the expense of the lives around them.  Our values today are so confused, we don’t know what to think.  It’s exactly at this moment that someone will arise to lead us the way Hitler led – feeding on our broken egos, making us believe we are not to blame for anything.

Reifenstahl – 7.13.25 Read Post »