I didn’t know they had conquered Egypt. I didn’t know they were probably Turkish or Greek. All I knew was that they were all over the Bible and then they disappeared.
There’s so much to learn.
And we went to escape from reality through archeology. Unfortunately, there were a thousand people there and 100 of them were coughing. So now we too are sick. But that’s nothing compared to the mess we’re in the real world.
Philistines – Jan 19, 2024 Read Post »
We decided to change phones today. So on an impulse we raced to the apple store near us, and began to bargain. “How much for our old phones?” Osama, perfectly dressed and beautiful, sensed immediately that we were not of the class he was used to serving, and even though I was partly kidding, he didn’t crack a smile. “What if we buy three phones?” No smile. In New York I got smiles from the Apple people, sometimes supercilious, but still smiles. Here nothing. “KSP gives more on the trade-in.” “So go there.”
We did.
Now I am sure that if Ezi had been coddled just a bit, he would have been happy to buy them, right then and there. But not from Osama with his superior mien.
We now have 2 new phones, bought from a sloppy. unshaven guy named Dror in KSP and I am wondering whatever made us go out this morning.
apple – jan 18, 2024 Read Post »
You ask an Israeli on the street how he is and she will probably say “Well, considering the situation.” We’re at war, people here are dying every day, the world hates us, and we’re “well.” In a way it has something to do with the past, and how absolutely terrible the Holocaust was for everyone. Even here, when we waited for the British to run away and leave us to the Nazis to slaughter us all. Or after the war when we in the US sent packages of food and used clothes to Israel. Or during the Yom Kippur war when we had no communication with our relatives who were soldiers for months (I have no doubt that war ruined my marriage and many more.) So the fact that we’re still functioning, even though some of us are being hidden in pitch-black tunnels, and more are fighting down south and up north against pretty brutal enemies, is not the worst that can happen to us.
Well, considering – jan 18, 2024 Read Post »
We went through the Moshe Castel Museum with the best guide possible, the CEO Eli Raz, and it is truly an amazing structure, overlooking the Jerusalem Hills, and filled with the works of one artist, unique in his use of letters of many ancient civilizations.
There was surely something mystical in what his letters and figures in the paintings were saying but I was perhaps too tired to be impressed. Perhaps I felt him pretentious. Actually it was his earliest painting that most attracted me.
This means that he had genius in him, and my failure to connect with his later works may well have been a personal prejudice, or a grandiose direction he took. The ‘guide’ Eli Raz, did everything possible to bring Castel down to earth, and I would have loved to give him a delicate kiss.
Ein Fescha – I wasn’t expecting it: to go down to the Dead Sea and to find sweet water flowing through the local greenery, ponds for swimming, fish and the apple trees of Sodom. It was all the antithesis of desert in the middle of the desert.
Maybe things can exist and contain their own antithesis at the same time.
The Hidden Nature Reserve – Jan 16, 2024 Read Post »
We have begun today to speak about hunger in Gaza. Until now we believed it was just another tactic Hamas has been using to sway public opinion, but even if it is one of their tactics, we can’t be a party to permit hunger. After all, people like me are products of the Holocaust, and although I inherited from my mother, my children have inherited from me. When my son was finishing up high school with the usual trip to Sinai and I was driving him to the bus, he suddenly voiced qualms. “I’m having separation anxiety from the refrigerator,” he exclaimed. I’m going hiking tomorrow and my knapsack is already filled with sandwiches, cookies, coffee – much more than I can carry.
How can I not make every effort to help promote aid to Gaza?
hunger – Jan 15, 2024 Read Post »
I had to cancel the event the night before because we received a number of complaints, some strongly worded, that the speaker supported UNRWA, and this led me to fear that I wouldn’t be able to moderate a discussion in which politics dominated.
This led me first to ask 12 friends if I did the right thing, and then look up UNRWA all over the web. The web is extremely enthusiastic about UNRWA, giving glowing reports about how it gets an annual billion dollars to help the people of Gaza. (how much is that per person? $500) Only Israel seems to question its authority entirely – like here https://www.jpost.com/tags/unrwa
or here
UNRWA: an obstacle to peace?
But I don’t get it. Where does the billion dollars go? and why do UNRWA sites show people living in tents before we apparently destroyed what we saw in the footage as gorgeous villas and apartment buildings?
I don’t have the answers – We say that UNRWA is doing the work that a government should be doing, that they are helping Hamas and in many cases are working for Hamas and UNRWA simultaneously, helping Hamas to maintain control. But we’re the only ones on the web who say that – why? Because it is false or because they are using their funding to control the news?
My lawyer friends, who are active in politics, never raised these issues, perhaps because they saw my little issue as too trivial to counter or perhaps because they unilaterally agreed that UNRWA is a problem.
uNRWA – jan 15, 2024 Read Post »
We’ve been hostages to this war for 100 days. The hostages in the tunnels of Gaza go through daily hell and our helplessness in the face of a violent government and an impossible military situation makes us hostages as well. Of course there is no comparison, but the helplessness is extremely painful.
not that I am not continuing to enjoy my personal life. i have the perfect conditions to ignore the world and ways to forget what is happening outside. But I couldn’t be a human being if i forget.
100 days of hostages – jan 14, 2024 Read Post »
