israeli politics

SDER0T BEN ZION - 9.8.26

This is where Ezi grew up.  This is where my grandchildren are growing up.  But this evening we were there to talk with a friend.  The stand on the corner, opposite Habima, is where Ezi used to buy a soda on his way home from school, and is now called “We Like You Too.”  in Ezi’s day it was called Holtzer because Mr. Holtzer stood there all day and sold soda for two and a half grush.  

Now the sidewalk and the grass are crowded with people of all ages, partly because other places in the neighborhood have closed down, and partly because it feels like a relief from structure.  But it also has really tasty food.

Mr Holtzer would have been proud.


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israeli politics

israeli poetry from its beginnings -8.8.26

I should have titled this “Love Poetry.”

I chanced to day upon a lecture about Israeli poetry by an amazing guy named Avi Alon

who woke me to a whole bunch of poems and poets I’ve known well.  It’s no trick to introduce poetry to an ignorant audience, but to captivate someone who knows most of the facts like me but never thought of the way it all fits together is pretty amazing.

I’ll give you one example – many of the songs that have become classic in Israel were poems written as poems in the ’30s when modern hebrew poetry was just emerging.  The theme of love – often unrequited – suddenly struck me because these were people who had left their homelands to come to Israel and had lost the ties and tradition that would have regulated their love life.   They felt that they had returned home, but the home they returned to had none of the original rules from the Bible, and none of the rules of the shtetl or the cities they knew.  My mother used to sing a song about her socialist sister Batya who was planning to move to a kibbutz (she went to Auschwitz instead).  Anyway, it’s one of those mother/daughter duets, where the mother asks her daughter questions about what happened at camp, and the daughter answered about how wonderful it is.  “And what did you eat, my dear daughter” “Burnt kasha, made by Masha, Oh mother it was wonderful.”  The final verse is about where did she sleep, and she says “In the loft in hay, with two halutzim, oh mother it was wonderful.”   

Of course the revolution in morality was all over the world after WWI, but I never noticed how it appeared in modern Hebrew love poetry. 

More soon 

 

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israeli politics

beach 7.8.26

There is really nothing like the beach.  And, as we were standing  in the place where Ezi’s father built the sewer over 70-5 years ago, while Ezi caught fish among the rocks near the shore, a girl came up and offered to take our picture.  

it looks so romantic, and we are wet with sweat from walking in the heat, deep in conversation about a sewer, and too sticky to touch.

it WAS romantic.

 

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israeli politics

metula - 8.6.26

It’s been a while since I’ve seen my good friend Ricky in Metula. and she’s never told me much about what has happened to her home in the war and how her Parkinson’s has advanced.  At her birthday party in May she could only kvell that so many people came to visit.  

But now she gave me details.  Some of them were obvious – she can barely move.  The long year of displacement and the lack of intense care she needs has worsened her physical situation dramatically, and there is no possibility of regaining that loss.  

Her house, on the other hand, was fixed up after the rocket hit.  The rats that took over the place were eventually conquered and the chewed-up books replaced.  The tables they used to sharpen their teeth were resanded, I believe.  Even the toilets they seem to have loved have been replaced.  The home looks like it did over 50 years ago when I first visited them.  She was more fortunate than many of her neighbors, she said, because her late husband – who built the house – insisted on more and more concrete.  The garden – where I married her daughter years back – needs to be completely recreated from scratch.  I stared at it in disbelief, remembering the call of the Muezzin from Lebanon interrupting my carefully arranged ceremony.  

The wonderful mayor of Metula visits her – she was his teacher long ago.  May the miracle of his rebuilding of the town extend to her recovery, however small.

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israeli politics

Back again -8.5.26

whenever something seems to happen to my computer I don’t understand, I go off line for the day, even though i fixed it.  I do seem to get attacked a lot – which has become irritating and even though i could have fixed it today, I really wanted to go out and celebrate the anniversary we missed when we were caught in Berlin airport.  After my Doppler Eko exam I walked over to meet Ezi in Pastel – forgetting how much it often disappoints me.  And today was one of those days.

And now I’m too tired to write about the yiddish meeting i had today.

 

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israeli politics

advice from friends - 3.8.26

With everything going on in the world, one would think we would spend the evening talking about how to survive the next war.  But our friends have been honing in on getting us to move from our old and quaint apartment to something newer and easier to handle.  The buildings in Tell Aviv were not really built with the idea that they would last forever, they were built to house a lot of people fast, and the old ones are crumbling.  But I don’t like the new fancy skyscrapers.  I always am afraid they’d be the first ones to be hit.  

And my friends are talking about the great new garbage system, and the wonderful doormen

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israeli politics

child's play - 8.2.26

why didn’t I remember this last night – when i slept in my clothes with the radio on, ready for the Iran attack on Israel that was sure to come after the U.S. attack on Iran?  Why didn’t I remember that the children’s handslap game when you pull away your hands at the last minute so that the other finally gets tired and gives up.  If the Iranians can keep pulling back at the last minute, keep the game going, until the coming elections make it impossible for Trump to attack – they can wipe us out and keep going.  It’s a masterful move.


child’s play – 8.2.26 Read Post »