i always forget to invite you to these events – readings that tell you something about what is going on here – but through prose and poetry. Readers include Simon Lichman, Bilthl Freedman, Ann Bar-Dov, and 10 others. looking forward to seeing you there.
this is the link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86214190565?pwd=4ljTlbjhusNwmOtxGDxOOtay3tagQW.1
invitation – 12.12.25 Read Post »
The product of many years of delightful research, my book on “Here Lie: Poets and Their Graves” is coming out in Hebrew in the next few weeks.
Why did I pick the subject? It started out when we found ourselves in Newark airport at 5 a.m. and didn’t dare wake up our relatives to visit. The restaurants were closed, and we weren’t going to sit around and wait for an appropriate time to have breakfast. So we followed the directions in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry to get to his grave. It was an abandoned cemetery and dawn was just breaking as we walked through the gates and began to look. And Ginsberg made it so easy to find!
I began writing an article about the complexities of the grave (there are many) and even did a youtube talk about him, But when I tried to publish it, I ran into a few strange responses from editors who, I began to realize, were simply jerking me around. So I published it in Doug Holder’s mag and then in Hebrew in Haaretz and then began a long series.
At some point I sent the mss in English to Northwestern Pess which began a strange correspondence with the editor – one that made me believe my Israeli identity was making it hard for him to give me a direct response. It was before the boycott was blatant, but it left me with the strange feeling that I was not wanted anywhere.
So I left the 10 chapter manuscript in English and Hebrew and one day ran into a publisher in the Little Prince who asked me what I was doing. Apologetically I told him I was writing a book on Kurt Gerron, but had published a draft of it to coincide with an exhibition of a painting of his, and now had to flesh it out. He pushed a little further and I told him about the “Here lie” project.
That started it – he got funding, gave me an editor, and last month made us stop our blathering and get on with it because he had received prizes for the book on the condition that the book come out by the end of 2025.
And it will be out! A gorgeous cover – all the photographs by my trusty sidekick – Ezi. And now maybe I’ll even try an English publisher again.
I underestimated the storm. Our neighborhood isn’t flooded – but it looks like the rest of the country is. And Gaza must be a total mess. All that water at once – the ground cannot absorb it. So the rain washes away the top layer of earth and leaves behind the sand, the unplanted earth. When the rain is over, we’re left with ….
The fuss we’re making over this storm coming up makes me feel as if we’re avoiding the bigger issue. Normally it would be a big issue in itself, but we’re still in existential danger and we haven’t been addressing it. We focus on the one hostage who hasn’t been returned as if the memory of the incredible massacre will be erased once his body is found.
Byron will pass and I believe we can weather this storm, but I am less and less sure of the damage we are doing to ourselves by not admitting our internal damage, the way we’ve been torn apart physically and morally.
i used to read the newspaper from cover to cover. Every morning at breakfast.
Now I do the Times puzzle after the headlines.
Simply speaking, every day brings worse and worse news about our government and its policies.
But the worst part of it is that, as my late mother-in-law used to say, “We will not take them pour this shit on us. We will open our mouths.”
and that’s the most I can do is to make you laugh. Opening my mouth just makes me swallow more shit.
how to read the papers – 12.8.25 Read Post »
Now that my book about poets and their graves has gone to press in Hebrew, I thought I would spend the day cleaning up the mess I made when I came back from New York. After a few hours of this i threw my back out again and had to rest. So I wound up reading ha’aretz about books in Arabic about Jews. And there I found that Nada Abdelsamad had just published an expanded edition of her book about Jews in Beirut. In Arabic. I managed to download it and begin to translate the introduction with the helo of gpt, and wow. If I don’t control myself I’ll translate it all. the earlier version, called Wadi Abou Jamil: Stories of the Jews of Beirut, but a new version appeared last month.
I don’t understand why it hasn’t appeared in English or Hebrew.
I’ll have to find an ex-student who will help me.
another hobby – 12.7.25 Read Post »
think for a moment of all the musicians who have died in this war so far. Imagine an orchestra in the sky of musicians from all the countries attacking israel playing somewhere together.
A silly thought.
musicians – 12.6.25 Read Post »
This was my thought. If I can stick it out until April it will be 25 years of my keeping the Tel Aviv Diary. This has to be a world record, doesn’t it? for one person reporting on her life in Tel Aviv?
Unfortunately, Guiness is not including Israel or Palestine in its consideration of world records any more.
This reminds me of my trip to Ireland in September, 2001. I wandered into the Dublin Library and found an amazing exhibit of Bibles – in English, Latin, and other languages – but not in Hebrew. And I thought that maybe Hebrew might deserve the Guiness world record for the first bible – but it didn’t get it either. Wonder if i wrote about it. I don’t know because I never read my entries for fear I will try to correct history.
