blog, my life in tel aviv

I know I’m way behind, but we have been incredibly careful about meeting with friends – to the point that we almost have lost the ability to make connections with people.  Every meeting now with friends is a big deal – we learn so much – the ways our friends have been entertaining and educating themselves – no one says much on zoom, and we don’t really chat on the phone.  It’s like we’ve forgotten all that sharing – but we seem to be beginning to exchange information again.  Today one friend reminded me that her daughter has a wine-tasting company that sends you different wines.  Another friend has flight tickets for next week. But most people believe that as soon as the election is over, we’ll go back into shut down, and everything will be back in the nightmare.

march 20, 2021 – brunch Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv

Everywhere in tel aviv tonight the cafés were open and crowded.   There were a few masks here and there, but I felt like a dinosaur in my hospital mask.  We just rushed past the happy people on the streets, hoping to get by without catching something, hoping someday we’ll be able to join them. 

Not that we were not celebrating.  We’ve been gradually moving out of our shell for weeks – a bit reluctantly – wishing we’d finished some of the projects we’ve promised ourselves to complete.  A few more weeks of cleaning, of writing, and we’ll be set…

or is it only me who feel guilty that i’ve wasted a year. 

march 17, 2021 – tel aviv cafes today Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv

Sometimes I have these conversations with my American friends and we seem to be precisely on the same page.  And then suddenly there comes a question that I have no idea whether we’re speaking the same language.  Today, for instance, I was asked a question I almost couldn’t find a voice to answer.  “But would you allow an Arab into your neighborhood?”  “Let’s see…” I began,  “In my building, there are three girls.  One of them irritated us a bit because she plays the drums too close to the wall.  We gave her a little carpet to put under her foot pedal and I think we’re all right. .. Across the street there three boys together.  Sometimes they pray on the balcony just a little too loud for Friday evenings.  Otherwise, we’re okay with the idea of the possibility of an Arab moving into our neighborhood.”  

Of course, I live next to the university, and almost fifty percent of the students are Arab.  In fact, today at the university I barely heard Hebrew. 

So to answer my friend – i don’t know what I would do without them.

 

march 15, 2021 – neighborhood Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv

The printer calls to ask about the photographs in the book I’m printing for the kids about the Jewish presence in Egypt.  Turns out I am not as good a photographer as I had thought, and there was much to remove and to discuss.   Although I have known him for 40 years, ever since we started printing arc with him, we have never had a conversation – and it began this way.  “You know, I was in Egypt…in 1973…”  It took me a minute to pick up on the significance of the date… When he added:  “for 8 months… about a hundred kilometers from Cairo…”  I began to realize that we were at war then, and as he went on, describing the generals on opposite sites who became friends, I realized there was another chapter in the Egypt-Israel book.  I wouldn’t begin to write it yet – I haven’t even begun to explore the war at Megiddo that according to the scribes of Thutmose III wiped out the seed of Israel.  There is so much more to learn!

march 14, 2021 – egypt Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv, poetry

a while ago this guy came over and said he was doing this evening on clothes and i had books on clothes.  i liked him and gave him all my clothes books, just because of his interest.  then we corresponded for a while, and one day he wrote me that he was sorry but he wouldn’t be using the poems in the evening,  I had probably not even understood that he was considering them, but I asked for the link anyway.  So with great surprise I discovered that my name was listed in the program as first writer.

Anyway I found a line here, an idea there, but nothing of my text.  It was a wonderful evening of monologues, and I would have loved to have been a part of it – but it wasn’t me at all.   

march 13, 2021 – clothes Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Usually, we know about the seder months in advance.  We order lamb and the fish for the 20 or so people, empty out our freezers and fridges (since most people I know don’t have extra freezers), check for dishes and glasses, buy missing pieces before they run out.  Sometimes even matzah runs out in the grocery, and sometimes eggs are scarce.  But we always know.  This year it’s harder.  We don’t believe that the freedom we’re feeling will last – that as soon as the elections are over, everything is going to be closed down again and we’ll go into the dark ages.  

There’s no real logic to this – we’ve got more than half of the population vaccinated.  The greater likelihood is that we’re going to have a war.  Nevertheless, no one feels comfortable about planning for the future.

That’s why the bat-mitzvah we were at this evening was so unusual.  We were invited to our grand-niece’s bat-mitzvah party months ago.  It was just the elderly relatives on the mother’s side – less than 20 people – but elegantly catered and served.  The caterers return in the morning the father’s elderly relatives and last week was for her friends.  So the parents had planned for most eventualities.  That is the kind of planning I admire.  Reasonable, clearcut, and probably much more expensive.

This is in contrast to our political planning.  Our crisis of the day is with Jordan not letting Bibi fly over their airspace to get to his meeting with the Emirates.  Hasn’t anyone in the government realized that we’ve been irritating the Jordanians for years now in many ways, and payback would eventually come?  Even Seders show more planning than our foreign policy.

march 12, 2021 – seder planning Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv, poetry

it is a truth university acknowledged that our lives in the epidemic have centered around food.  In Israel, we’re beginning to smell freedom, and that prospect for many has just added to our sense of confusion.  The other day I heard someone say: “The heart says – restaurant.  The head says – take-away.  The pocket says – toast.  

The possible opening of opportunities is wonderful for some, frightening for others, terrible for still others.  Mothers whose children were sent back to school and are now in quarantine are to me at the top of the list.

And we just had a take-away from Akiko… “Do you have a Green Card?” she asked.  “Wonderful!  Come in, sit down.”  She knows how much I love watching every process of the making of sushi, but we’re not safe yet, so we couldn’t bring ourselves to sit at the counter.   Eating sushi at our kitchen table I kept thinking how much I would rather have had toast…

 

march 11, 2021 – take-away Read Post »