israeli politics

glatstein - 1.11.26

Even though I spent a few happy hours examining the underbelly of  shopping malls in Dizengoff Center, my mind was on Jacob Glatstein’s poem that Michael sent me and was burning my phone.  Unlike Glatstein’s other poems, “Good night, world” is written in the kind of street Yiddish I haven’t heard for ages.  It was like the gangsters whose hair my father cut in the fifties.  April, 1938 – he was mad at the whole western world that had pretended to absorb Jews into the culture, devastating Jewish culture and all the while the holocaust was brewing…

 

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israeli politics

why not english? -1.9.26

Because a few people wrote me that they wondered why I was publishing a book about English poets in Hebrew and not English, it was because I couldn’t get responses from publishers in the U.S.  I didn’t try very hard, because I was thinking that I may well die in a rocket attack and it would be good to get it off the table.  So now the book is out and I’m still here – so I’ll have to start looking for a publisher again.  

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israeli politics

beach -1.8.26

i always write about the beach, because it is always fascinating.  The sea has a way of reassuring me that some things endure even when everything else is a mess.  Unfortunately the restaurant was closed and only a takeaway window remained, but the food was great and the birds enjoyed it very much. 

Ezi enjoyed even the less friendly ones.

 

 

beach – Read Post »

israeli politics

blood tests - 1.7.26

I know this isn’t the place to tell you this, but I am so happy with my repeat blood tests I’m celebrating everywhere I can.  they were scary last week – the same results as ten years ago when i was hospitalized.  I couldn’t get hold of a doctor (except the one on call, who pooh-poohed my fears and told me to take the tests again), didn’t  want to risk Emergency because i wasn’t thinking straight, and decided to take the antibiotics i had stashed away exactly for this kind of emergency.  And today I took the tests again and everything is back to normal.  Maybe I was just all dried out, maybe there was a mistake in the tests, but I feel so much better I know I had something that the antibiotics fought.  

The isolation was the worst – not having someone take responsibility for me.

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israeli politics

return of the flu - 1.6.26

I’m sure you have heard enough from me about the flu – but it’s back again.And a friend in NY wants me to go to a flu rehab hotel in the city.  I’ve always trusted the docs here, but lately – with our brain drain – I’m trusting the docs less and less.   But I’m not doing to a flu rehab in NY because my experiences there have not been better… not lately.  somehow i feel that we’ve lost the direction of progress in medicine lately.

but it could be the fever talking

 

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israeli politics

 

In Every Generation

jan 15, 2026

7:30 p.m. – jerusalem time

Simon Lichman, Ann Bar-Dov, Michael Kagan, and Karen Alkalay-Gut — four members of the Israel Association of Writers in English.

write me for the zoom link a gut22@tau.ac.il

 

 

reading – 1.6.26 Read Post »

israeli politics

mourning - 1.5.26

 

 

We went to see the deconstruction of the camp of the hostages and their families.  Next to the museum, the library and the courthouse, the yellow chairs stacked up, the flags in a pile, the signs praying for the release of the body of the last hostage.  Everything pointed not to the end of a chapter, but the beginning of a release to mourn.

I have told you before, haven’t I, that we are all in shock – every one in this country in one form or another.  This change signals a form of metamorphosis.

 

mourning – 1.5.26 Read Post »