israeli politics

Why i published "Survivors" on my Own - 7.12.25

 

“Why?” a friend asked, when I mentioned that she can only get the book on Amazon.  And I heard myself giving the answer I didn’t know I had.  

When we were at home with Covid, I thought it was important to get out the pieces of history that I had collected over the years, that history has to be composed of individual stories as well as statistics.  So I started sending it out to Jewish presses.  One at a time.  

I received no responses.  

Each time I waited a few months before following up, assuming there was a panel and these things had to be decided.  but no answered were received.  One – that I had given up on – came back after a year with a form letter, even though their website had invited poetry submissions, and almost all of the individual poems had been published in various journals so they couldn’t be all that bad.

I decided to give up the project.  There were so many other things to do, and this one physically pained me that it had not been given any attention.  Not even an email response.

But then the war broke out, and when the Iranians started bombing us with the same bombs into which I was born, I began to realize that I may not make it through and there would be no chance that someone would read the stories of my family and the refugees that I grew up owing.   

So I put it on Kindle.

The cover was also home-made.  I had used the photograph of this group of refugees often to remind myself – of the elderly twin sisters who did not speak to each other and who had no children, of the little Rumanian girls I was sent to introduce to American culture, of the German family who lived in our attic for months but would not speak with us – and were not in the photo.

I remembered when the photo was taken, at one of the “Griner” picnics when my mother shoved my brother and me into the group at the last minute, even though I protested I was not a refugee.    There we are in the corner.

And in the corner this book remains.  I have no idea how to publicize it, and no sense of who would want it.  

But perhaps it will let me go.

why i published “Survivors” on my Own – 7.12.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

The Waitress - 7.11.25

I had my eye on her from the first moment we sat down.  Efficient, good-natured, pretty, witty – where will I find the flaw?

I was in the mood to find flaws.

But she was so perfect .  So I started talking to her, about the weather, the view, the usual.  And then we hit on something – and she said she wasn’t allowed to talk about these things in public.  Public?  We said.  We’re friends!  And she said – remember 1995.  And she left.

I remembered – it was the year our hope died.

The Hope

 

Karen Alkalay-Gut

 

On the night Rabin died I dreamt I wandered the streets

homeless and lonely in a crowd of confusion, ricocheting

off relatives and friends barely regarded, while dogs of peace

ran with panthers and tigers all loose and all free. 

 

No one was working — everyone

out on the streets or in groups

sleeping in different houses, using

 interchangeably each others’ phones —

connecting  with wrong numbers

saying a few impotent words,

disconnecting indifferently

 

Unseasonable cold penetrated my clothes,

and uncoated  I sought shelter

in cloaks of the dead,

but found myself in other byways

before I could wrap myself in them

 

The river was solid and the earth

liquid under our feet — the worst

walked on water while the best

fell in the treacherous sands.

 

Nothing held  the dream together

and everything could fall apart

at any random moment

 

 

The Waitress – 7.11.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

touring tel aviv - 7.10.25

The day started at 5 a.m. with a siren and a race to the shelter.  

We probably should have gone back to sleep for the day, but because we needed a piece of leather to fix the Vassily chair Orit returned to us after years of service, and the upholsterers are all overwhelmed with work, we decided to venture to old Tel Aviv for a search.  The problem was getting there – traffic, parking, heat.  And maybe the banality of driving.  

So we decided to park at the train station, walk through to the light rail and take that to Allenby. 

This was my first time in the city light rail system and I must admit it was overwhelming – Everything above ground was dusty worn, and blinding in the sun, and everything below ground was spotless, roomy, automatic and clean.   

 I must have been so impressed that, although I wore my hat in the heat from the parking lot to the train station, I must have dropped it at Arlozorov as we entered the train, so when we walked from the light rail to the shop I was dazzled by the sun.  

And when we finally got to Begin St., the shopowner hadn’t opened the leather scrap store, even though it was almost ten, but when we called the number on the door he promised to open within the hour.  

So we went to Barzellai Street for breakfast and I began with a jar of water.

We headed home – in the sun – with the perfect piece of leather and three new belts, (just so the owner wouldn’t have wasted his day opening the shop – but they are impressive).

And feeling a little drunk with the stifling air in the dusty shop and the heat, we then began our return.  

Again I was overwhelmed by the size, the sterility and modernity of the train station.  “It’s like being abroad,” I said.  But as soon as we entered the train we knew we were back home.  Although there were few people traveling in the heat of the day, a group of ten came in the train together.  The loudspeaker announced:  “We have so many doors in this train and everyone has to come in on the same one door?”  All the passengers broke out laughing.  And when the group left at the next stop, they all called out together, “So many doors in the train and everyone has to use the same one door?”    I knew then no amount of modern architecture and engineering could cover up the basic Tel Aviv nature.

As we left the station in Arlozoroff it occurred to me to ask the security guard about lost-and-found.  “Oh, the hat!” she said, and directed me to the office.  At the office I was given my hat, and the security guard suggested I take a pair of sunglasses as well.

And thus we returned to our car, wondering whether we needed to go abroad to have adventures.

 

touring Tel Aviv – 7.10.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Dana International - 7.9.25

When I had to use the bathroom at the accountant’s office, the Ladies’ Room was busy, so I went elsewhere.  But when I left the Men’s Room, I was met with questioning looks, so I said, “It’s all right, I’m trans.”  The accountant smiled.

I would not be surprised if his reaction and mine was first conceived with the rise of the trans singer Dana International.  She is probably the one who ‘normalized’ transgender behavior by treating her own gender independence with bravery and defiance. And she won the Eurovision contest with a song about great women.

She is also one of the first who pointed out to LGBTQ communities around the world that Israel is a more positive environment for them than a radical religious country.  

And she won my heart again when after hearing a religious woman describe her son’t pride in being in the army she expressed her thoughts about how soldiers really feel. “Not everyone is happy on the front, and not everyone feels like a lion. There’s no such thing as ‘a nation of lions.’ War is terrifying,” 

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-09/ty-article/.premium/not-everyone-feels-like-a-lion-famous-israeli-singer-shatters-the-wars-illusions-on-tv/00000197-ef6e-d963-addf-ef6f7dd60000

 

Dana International – 7.9.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

The strangest thing - 7.9.25

p.s. Talking about Lolita – it took me a few hours to realize that in all the conversations we had after the film, no one compared Iran’s bombing of Israel to the wretched rules for women that forms the body of the plot.

The strangest thing – Read Post »

israeli politics

Reading Lolita in Tel Aviv - 7.8.25

The last movie we went to was a re-viewing of Paterson (2016) about a poet who is stymied by a well-meaning but limited wife.  The wife grabbed my eye but she played such a bad part that I longed for more. Today we saw Reading Lolita in Teheran (2024) and I was thrilled to find her there.  Golshifteh Farahani. This time, her role gave her something of the opportunity to show the range of her emotions.  

What is the range demanded of her?   love of a country that gradually turns from a promised democracy to a religious autocracy, defiance that gradually turns to defeat and is replaced by the power of self preservation.  And throughout, a belief that literature can help extend the boundaries of the individual and open minds.  

Of course as a professor of literature there was no way I could avoid identifying with her, and as a troubled citizen in Israel there was no way I could avoid the fear of extremism.  When she explains her position to a friend ““My grandmother was the most devout Muslim I knew. She never missed a prayer. But she wore her scarf because she was devout, not because she was a symbol,”  I could not avoid thinking of how many women in Israel dress – the Muslim women in a hijab, the settlers in long skirts and weird headpieces (Ezi calls them chamberpots)… I could go on but then I’ll never get to make up some of the sleep we missed during the Iranian bombing.

Reading Lolita in Tel Aviv – 7.8.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

get over it - 7.7.25

Everyone I know – almost – is shell-shocked in some way.  Somehow the past seems to be remembered and  relived.  Today I had a facial to spoil myself, but she spent the whole time talking about  anti-semitism and the pogrom she endured when she left Tunisia.  Yesterday it was a neighbor who reminded me of her biography about holocaust childhood in Holland.  And last week it was the Moslem hairdresser talking about how we have to learn to get over the past.  Me, I have a feeling I rushed to publish my book of holocaust poems because I’m also trying to fit this war into history.

get over it – 7.7.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Where are they - 7.6.25

Some of my Israeli friends who live abroad have been giving me flak about my lack of ability to change Israel’s government  policies – “Why aren’t you demonstrated more? Why are you allowing the government to condemn Aiman Odeh, for example?”  And here is my answer to them –  “Where are you? Why didn’t you come back here to vote? ”  In the last elections I begged my  Israeli friends to come back to vote, and their answer was they weren’t living here so they didn’t really have the right to affect Israeli policy.  Now they must see that Israeli policy affects them wherever they are.  The fact that so many of my friends who left this country before the elections were in the opposition and left in protest of the government’s policies – has come back to bite them as well as me.  I hate to use this page to criticize people or politics, but I really miss all the people who left me – I miss their energies and their ideals – energies and ideals that have been buried and lost around the world.

where are they? – Read Post »