israeli politics

President Higgins and Jonathan Swift - 29.1.25

St. Patricks Mental Hospital was one of the first institutions of its kind, built with 12,000 pounds left by Jonathan Swift, who ended his poem “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”  with the lines:

       “He gave the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad;
And show’d by one satiric touch,
No nation wanted it so much.
That kingdom he hath left his debtor,
I wish it soon may have a better.”

I am sure President Higgins did not intend to insult the Jews and/or Israel when he spoke about the hostage and prisoner exchange on Holocaust Day, and I do not think the people in the audience who were insulted by his implications were expelled from the hall at his decree. But I do believe that they should remember what James Joyce said about how Ireland has much to learn from the Jewish people about reconstructing a culture and a nation.

But how can I blame Higgins?  I remember walking into an exhibit on the Bible in Dublin, and seeing elaborate illustrated books of the Bible in various languages – but not Hebrew.  Did they not know that the Bible was written in Hebrew?  

President Higgins and Jonathan Swift – 29.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

shopping 29.1.25

 

shopping - 29.1.25

I really didn’t want to write a piece for First of the Month about Arabs and Jews.  Every article I’ve read talks about the terrible discrimination -even hatred – and I am burnt out on hatred and stereotypes.  I’d asked Hillel Shenker what he felt about the change in relations between Arabs and Jews and he listed the organizations working for cooperation, and hoe there’s less in some organizations and more in others.  I kept mulling over what I knew.  First, I went to see if I had mail at the university and I looked in on the lecture hall where I used to teach.  The class was full – but from the back it appeared that they were mostly women, and half of them were wearing hijabs.  So much for academic discrimination.  Then, having found only dead flies in my mailbox, I decided I would forget about working in my office and go do some chores. The first 2 places on my list today were the pharmacy and the supermarket.  Yes, as I often tell you, the pharmacists speak Arabic and we are happy to let them take our health in their hands.  What does this tell you?

My next stop was the supermarket, where the cashiers were all women, all with hijabs.  Do we worry about our food being poisoned on the counter, or examine the itemized receipts to see if there were mistakes?  I didn’t notice anyone who did anything more than chat with the cashiers.  


shopping -29.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

This morning I had a haircut.  It is such a often repeated event and I usually busy myself with my phone like everyone else.  But today, as Amir swept the floor, I suddenly recalled physically what it felt like to sweep the floor in my father’s barber shop.  Because of the union he had to work on Saturday, and Saturday was always his busiest day.  For a year or two I was old enough to work for him after synagogue and it was my great honor to do it.  My body remembered the long broom, the repeated movements to catch the fine white hair of the fat old man who laughed a lot, the thick brown-black locks of the young wrestler, the short crumbs of the redheaded boy who always asked to be completely shaved. I remembered the repeated emptying of the metal dustpan, and the sounding of the knocking of the pan against the bin to release the hair.  Of course now the hair is brushed into an electronic wastebin and most of the movements I so enjoyed don’t exist any more.

My payment was a bottle of seven-up from the machine.  

And while I was musing on all this, my coiffeur came out too short again.

 

haircut – 28.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

going home - 28.1.25

Picture this: You have a brother who was taken from his bed one morning to the tunnels of Gaza and has not been heard from again, and you are watching the programs on television of the released Hamas prisoners who might have been the ones pulling your brother out of bed.  And the prisoners are being treated like hostages (welcomed and pitied by the reporters as well as the families)  and your brother will never be heard from again.  How would you feel? 

 

going home – 28.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Poems for Holocaust Day - 27.1.25

here are 2 poems first published in Minyan Mag

 

Absence

“What are you looking for?”

we’d ask Mother, as she rummaged

a cupboard or a drawer or the phone book.

“My lost youth,” she’d answer

absent-mindedly, having forgotten

whatever had occupied her mind

when she first began to search.

 

The bombs, the soldiers, the streets

covered with bodies, the story of the children

smashed against the wall, her babies

washed down the drain in the bathtub in Danzig,

they were always

right there in the cupboard, the drawer,

the book next to the telephone.

Their Tattoos

At the annual picnic of the New Immigrants Society

in the park shelters at Ontario Lake Beach,

while all the children went to swim

I disguised my fear of water and assuaged my boredom

by concentrating on organizing the numbers

exposed to the sun on the refugees’ arms

into some kind of arithmetical sequence.

 

I knew enough to be discreet,

counting the history of their agonies,

without looking directly at the tattoos.

But their arms were bare, exposed,

as they sat telling indiscreet tales

around the samovar and the hill of sugar

and they had nothing to hide

from one another.

 

Now I cannot remember

a single cipher

except the number 1

that looked so much more fundamental

than what we learned in math class.

poems for Holocaust Day – 27.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

p.s. 25.1.25

Gershon Baskin writes:

It is not yet too late for Israel to convey to Qatar and Egypt that it is ready to adopt the three-week deal that Hamas agreed to in September. In three weeks, all the hostages – living and dead – can be released, the Palestinian prisoners who have been agreed to be released can be released, the war can end and the Israeli army can withdraw from Gaza. Israel can also initiate a regional-international conference with neighboring countries and the Palestinian Authority on the future of Gaza – the reconstruction and the alternative Palestinian government that should govern Gaza instead of Hamas. This will of course lead to the fall of Netanyahu’s coalition, but this is actually the will of the majority in Israel. If Netanyahu is so confident in his abilities and the people’s support for him, let him bring this chapter to an end and return the mandate to the people. (Gershon Baskin, January 25, 2025)

p.s. – 25.1.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Another Drop in the Bucket - 25.1.25

4 more girls.  And we’re all estatic.  It is amazing to see them all. Looking healthy and happy and emotionally powerful, they have not begun to tell their stories.  But we want more – we want all of them, all of them that never should have been there in the first place.  

But they are such cool girls – every one of them gives the sense that there is a future for our people.  Each one is worth the thousands of terrorists we paid.

 

 

another drop in the bucket – 25.1.25 Read Post »