December 13, 2017
Even though Ezi showed up to pick up our car from the garage on crutches, and I was limping, the girl behind the counter with the bill paid no attention to us. After a while, I got Ezi a seat while she coaxed a new client on the phone, and I began to pace. Finally another clerk spotted us and took over our file. Not with the greatest of pleasure. Our car is old and there is neither status nor fortune in the maintenance of our vehicle (you can see I was reading Jane Austen today). Anyway I spotted her name on her desk as she was rattling off the stupid little repairs we'd done - new battery, new headlamp, new lining for the passenger side window - and I said "Ada Levenson, almost the same name as a wonderful author - Ada Leverson!" "Oh, I couldn't be a reincarnation of an author," she said, "Nothing ever happens to me - I've been married for over 40 years and can't remember when something exciting enough to write about took place." "She wrote a lot about marriages and how boring they can be." After that we got fast and good service. Once in a while I remember how people become human beings when they are treated like human beings. Everyone except beautiful young women of course. The thing is, I really like people. I even sympathized with David Biton who is in the process of being taken down from the high position of majority leader to .. perhaps .. prisoner. He really seems like a great guy, even if he is a bully.
December 15, 2017
Every once in a while a snatch of a song comes back to one of us. It's part of betting old. So on the way back from the physiotherapist Ezi starts singing "Johnny is the goy for me..." and even though i've heard him sing it before, i suddenly wondered what this 60 year old song could mean. it turns out it was about the fact that what was happening in the "Jewish" state was that in order to keep the state going and keep the religious parties happy it was now important to have a whole bunch of "shabbes goys," and the hypocrisy of it was wonderful for satire. And then we realized how much greater this hypocrisy has become today. And yet this hypocrisy has forced us to embrace the 'other' and bring the non-Jews into our society. Which is giving us an opportunity to encounter and sometimes befriend the Arab population. So maybe part of the big effort on the part of the religious parties to close shops on saturday - because it brings us in contact with potential friends.
maybe not.
December 16, 2017
After a long conversation with the sponsor of Foxtrot, and an article the other day in the NYTimes, I almost changed my mind about it. I know it is really good, and deserves its place in the shortlist of the Oscars, but it really hit a few nerves in my house.
the weekly protests is on tonight and although both of us are out of commission physically, we want to express our identification.
December 17, 2017
Rockets from Gaza. I was reading about Benjamin Israeli today and he described the inhabitants of what was called Syria as stubborn and haughty, although he loved the Arabs. But if we weren't so haughty and stubborn maybe we wouldn't be trying to kill each other all the time.