israeli politics

What do you do when your loved ones are sick?  You run to them and feed them and hug them and comfort them.  But in our times we take another step back and wish them a speedy recovery.  So a few of my kids are sick – again – with covid or covid-results: strep, exhaustion, etc. And we are sitting home twiddling our thumbs.   I keep thinking about the people I would have kissed this week if I dared.  But this week has been the worst for serious cases and deaths since covid began.  

I’d love to write about other things, but nothing else seems to exist.  The price hikes don’t seem to matter much to my budget.  The announcements have come during the week that food prices will not go up but it looks to me that there is an awful lot of tricks being played on the consumer that disguise the real prices.  And the real prices – gasoline, taxes, electricity, etc.  are skyrocketing.  

february 4, 2022 – covid and more covid Read Post »

israeli politics

I keep putting the title ‘hair’ in this entry but obviously, the subject is too trivial to be written about because the word keeps disappearing from my page.  For me, hair hasn’t been significant for years.  Out of laziness, I have been getting my hair cut at the same place for decades.   But lately, I’ve been longing for the old days, when the hairdresser knew what he was doing.  I mean,  I spent years sweeping the floor in my father’s barbershop and I know what artistry is.  I used to drag my daughter to Sassoon in New York and was not disappointed in the legendary Violette in Tel Aviv, even though it meant sitting and waiting for hours with some very important people before the star stylist deigned to make an appearance.  

We shall not discuss my long fall into banality.  But the other day when I read that a well-known professional had closed up his salon on Kikar Medina (which I shun if only because of the parking) and is accepting clients in his garage, I became curious enough to make an appointment.  This is despite the fact that I have been butchered in Kikar Medina as well, even though it is considered to be akin to Rodeo Drive by many.  

The garage, it turns out, is an open-air upscale hair salon, with heated floors, bright but flattering lights, stately order, and a very professional haircutter – Amir Mizrachi.  The place was classy and so is my haircut. 

I’d forgotten what it was like to be in a place where the staff whispers to each other and the concentration is on the client and not the angry squabbles of the employees. 

We didn’t even talk politics. 

february 4, 2022 – Read Post »

israeli politics

I always loved Amos Oz, and tonight, when I saw the program on channel 12 about his daughter’s book and her accusations against him, I even watched the commercials.  I kept hearing his wonderful voice – and his terrible pain – so much greater than his daughter’s revenge.  Rena, you who were his student, know the greatness of his heart.  It wasn’t a mask, and when he didn’t win the Nobel prize I lost my admiration for the prize. 

What he wrote to her, that even an empty pail that refuses to be filled at the well, is filled again, that has to happen to his daughter.  I too had problems with my mother that I understand through the years.

A person must be larger than anger – even if it was carried with that person from infancy.  Think of the poem by Taha Mohammed Ali, “Revenge.”    

February 3, 2022 – Amos Oz Read Post »

israeli politics

What was once mothers’ day has been recently celebrated as family day.  If you walk around Tel Aviv you can see why: Families are very important and can consist of two fathers, two mothers, one parent, but almost always children.  It’s always puzzled me because although in thinking about what I will talk about next week when I speak about Yiddish in my life, I realize how much I was involved in my parents’ lives, and always wondering if I was really related to these people.  Their foreignness was always strange to me.  But now I see families who grew up in the same country, and who value family life – that’s such a fine experience.

Because my daughter and granddaughter have corona we didn’t get together, but we had dinner on zoom. 

It’s amazing to me how so many of my friends come to Tel Aviv from abroad to meet the gay world.

february 1, 2022 – family day Read Post »

israeli politics

There is so much going on with writing here.  Here are translations of two recent poems by Rony Sommek and Rafi Weichert respectively.  Copyrighted.

Rony Sommek

18 Lines in Honor of the Raised Hands of the Milker From Nitzanim

 

It’s no trick to hear only the call of the crow

on top of the lion’s head in Tel Hai,

or to picture the robin pecking

the parachute cords of Hana Senesh.

The trick is also to salute the raised hands

of the Milker from the battle of Nitzanim,

the hands that knew how to squeeze the cows’ teats

for the cups of coffee in the dining hall

from whose windows were squeezed

the trigger of a rifle more than once.

 

In the end he surrendered,

because after the clip was emptied of ammunition

it was preferable there, in the dust of the desert,

to fling up his hands

To the clouds of his God.

 

Heroism is sometimes to want not

to become another row in the 1948 guide

that indexes dead birds.      

 

Translated by karen alkalay-gut

Rafi Weichert

A Lament for a broken peeler

 

Without you how will I breach the body of a carrot

How can I cut a peeled apple for a muesli

For without the blade you’re like a poet without laurels

Unable to injure but only to softly tremble

 

In front of a potato or the skin of a zucchini

In the face of smirking cucumbers

facing your body that is like a imprisoned eunuch

within the impotence already empty of action

 

Tomorrow you will find rest in the garbage bin

With the rest of the vegetables peeled by a blade

Of the knife that played them like a harp

When it stripped them of all their arrogance.

 

translated by karen alkalay-gut

february 1, 2022 – two poems by Israeli Read Post »

israeli politics

The numbers are going down, the chances of a medication that will render Ezi immune are going up, and his shingles are disappearing

.  This makes me more able to cope with the crises in the IAWE, in my family and my health.  I will finally be able to look at the m

aterial for my talk next week about my book (to which you’re all invited, by the way) 

zoom in on February 7 here

But the subject for today is ‘found’ – and today in the middle of an attempt to make peace in a feud, one of the guys asked, “But how can I speak to him?  He’s totally mad!”  And I started to tell a story.  When my father was in the ward for brain-damaged patients, my mother spent every day with him.  One of the first times I went to visit him,when I got out of the elevator to his floor, I was confronted by a man in his underwear who began screaming at me in Yiddish, “You took my trousers!  Where did you put them?  Give me back my trousers?”  My stuttering attempts to assure him that I had no idea what he was talking about did no good, only angered him more.  Then my mother appeared suddenly, turned him away from me, and said, “A platoon of soldiers came and took them away.”  This – he accepted, and he disappeared back into his room.”  When someone is mad, I added, go with it.  This, I’ve decided, is the only way to go.


january 31, 2022 – found Read Post »

israeli politics

I thought it was only a local phenomenon – people going crazy.  After all, where else in the world but Tel Aviv does a pedestrian fear for his life from the delivery boys on their scooters?  Where else in the world do people scream at each other for almost no reason?  In what other country do the writers fight with each other for no reason?  Everyone in this country is crazy. 

That was the kind of day I had.  

And then I invited some cousins to zoom with me from the other side of the world – and I realized that they’re crazy now too.  And so am I.    

And my cousin tried to point out the positive aspects of our situation – like I do off and on.  But seeing him in me made me realize how crazy I really am.

And I belong to this world that is falling apart because of our own foolishness

 

 

january 30, 2022 – crazy Read Post »