Haven’t done much with poetry because of the book soon in galleys in Hebrew about poets and their graves. this has been a big job, but it turns out I’ve also been writing poems all along. Just avoiding the consernation of being banned by journals I’d come to think of as home. But it turns out that I’ve been publishing poems all along. Google firstofthemonth and my name and you can find a whole bunch of them.
a few words about new poems – 12.3.25 Read Post »
Forgive Bibi?
We had been seeing the development of hatred in Gaza on tv for years – the schoolbooks in which hatred is embedded in the mentality of the children of Gaza, the military camps for children in which they learned to shoot to kill, the parades of hatred…
We saw the way the people of Gaza lined up at the fence in the days before the massacre and threatened to kill us all. (I didn’t sleep the nights I saw them on the news).
We believed Bibi when he promised us there was nothing to fear, even though there were thousands of other things he said and did that we didn’t believe.
I don’t know how we can pardon ourselves much less the prime minister.
On November 30, the day after the Arab countries refused partition, 850,000 Jews were expelled from the Arab countries and Iran in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel.. So this day is also known as Yom Plitim (Jewish Refugee Day). Many of them came to Israel, many chose more fruitful countries. And for many years I didn’t pay attention to my friends who were born in Cairo or Tunis or towns in Libya.
Only today did I think of a woman who worked for me for almost six years from Libya, quite mad. Her name was Nachama – or at least that was the name given to her in Israel. Married off at fourteen to a man she despised, she bore a few children before the long walk to Israel, and a few after. She used to pour vinager on her head before she started work because it cleared her mind, and it was clear she was erasing her past in order to face her degrading present.
It is amazing how the 850000 who came here overcame their exile, one way or another.
refugee Day – 11.30.25 Read Post »
Can’t do thanksgiving on thursday because the kids are in school on Friday, but it’s also Oren’s birthday so we have to celebrate, so we thought of Saturday Night. But there’s also school on Sunday and there are exams. Ultimately the only evening we can stay up late is Friday – and Friday is not a time when we can do karaoke and make noise. So we did karaoke on Saturday night, even though a morning physics test shortened the evening.
I might have told you that we went looking for a turkey but could only find an enormous turkey breast. Turned out it worked better than any other whole turkey thanksgiving.
And there is more to be thankful for this year than the last few years. Even though our leaders are driving us quite mad, and we’re forgetting all the values and traditions that are important to us, we will recover and return. The hostages that returned help me believe all the time that this is possible.
late thanksgiving – 11.29.25 Read Post »
Today my friend took me for lunch to a “bistro” in a little hard-to find shopping center, and I felt I was in a different world. It seemed a place for special people, but I’m not sure how they are special. The two things I know is that the food was expensive with almost all the details in place (but now I have a stomach ache) and the shops (though local chaims) had things in the window I haven’t seen in this country. Take, for example, La Prairie – a cream I would use if I could afford it.
What a hick I am!
And what an escape it was, to discover another world in a place near my home I have visited often but never felt from the inside.
I can’t be the only one who feels a connection between our extreme need for the return of all the victims with ‘survivors’ guilt.’ How many times have I felt it myself – the sense that it could have been me, that I did not do enough to protect these people. I even recognized the signs – the explosive balloons and occasional flying over the towns in the south that signaled the ongoing hatred, clearly tests of our weakness. But I demonstrated only against the fact that our voice was being taken away, not that the government wasn’t functioning to protect us.
survivor’s guilt – 11.26.25 Read Post »
i keep getting asked where my dual language Yiddish/English book, Inheritance, can be found, but the address kept changing. So now it’s final. The new site of Beit Leyvick is up, and here is the address:
ירושה – INHERITANCE | קרן אלקלעי גוט | בית לייוויק
And while you’re looking that up, check out some of my songs on SoundCloud
or Bandcamp
https://panicensemble.bandcamp.com/track/imaginary-insects
inheritance – 11.25.25 Read Post »
The staging is amazing, the acting, singing, music, etc. is remarkable – and the number and variety of the cast is surprising:
an orchestra, a band, dancers, singers, and of course prominent actors.
But the woman behind me, who left at the break, said soon after the curtain rose “nur dos hat mir gefelt.” (this was all that was missing in my life”) and I agreed. Greedy, evil Jews.
The image of Jews is changing – we’re going back to Goebbels’ description of us. And we are going along with it.
https://www.cameri.co.il/eng/The_Cameri_Theatre_productions/show%7Cfwsa%7C11222/Singer
