Karen Alkalay-Gut
January 22, 2019
so people in the south will be sleeping in their shelters tonight. After all that has happened today, it looks like we're going to have a tough time ahead.
January 23, 2019
two friends who don't know each other told me today they are leaving the country. one for family reasons and the other for her career. it saddens me every time - such an exciting country and so many people cannot fulfil themselves here. and yet it is such an inspiring place!
January 24, 2019
After five days of inhalations I felt so good that we went out to the hills of Jerusalem. "Bar BaHar" was the place we put on Waze, and once there we began to walk on one of the many paths. But the descents were a little steep for me so we turned around and tried another path. How wonderful are the smells, the sights, the feel of every plant, tree, herb! Every path, every road, every view. When I got tired, we had lunch at the little restaurant, which was packed. Even though, as the mother of a former restauranteur, i pay particular attention to the turnover, which was fast. i shouldn't have thought somewhere so off the beaten path would have so many customers, especially just before lunch time. But the weather was so warm and the day so beautiful after weeks of storms, i shouldn't be surprised that so many people were out.
When I read Michele Alexander's op ed in the NYTimes last week I couldn't believe it was serious. To celebrate the message of Martin Luther King by distorting the Palestinian issue, misrepresenting every political and military element of the conflict - how would King himself have reacted to this? (And just after the confession of Alice Walker in the Times that her bedside reading was antisemitic.) The response came from Alan Dershowitz, but not, as I would have thought, in the Times, but the pages of The Hill.
I'm not sure what happened to the Times, but it isn't all the news any more. For a while I'm been considering cancelling my subscription because it doesn't seem objective, and there is so much more sheer shmaltz and fashion than news, but it has only been recently when antisemitism seems to have become okay that i'm getting closer and closer to going for some other paper. any suggestions?
January 25, 2019
Last month I bought tickets to a film of Van Gogh at the museum. it went along with a guided tour of the exhibit of modern art, and the exhibit will be closing next week. but when we got there the entrance hall was crowded with people waiting in line for their tickets. and it turned out the film was cancelled. we had raced to the museum after exercise class and there was something wrong with the equipment. we could have stayed in bed. instead we had to stand in line for half an hour to get our money back. so we decided to drop by the port and buy vegetables at the market. unfortunately, there was no place to park. but somehow we squeezed in , and somehow managed to get through the lines to actually buy cheeses and figs and invite some friends over to eat and drink with us. so much better than someone else's creation.
January 26, 2019
The battles in the north, in the south, and throughout the country today could be ignored by the fact that it was the sabbath and we don't get much news on this day. or because we need to ignore the fact that the iron dome defenses have been put up to protect Tel Aviv from missiles from all over.
Me, I was downing shots with the bartender at the Ozen this evening when i didn't particularly like the music in the concert. i kept thinking how free i was to go out alone, to go to a concert as I please, to leave as I please, to go downstairs and drink tea at the cafe... if i lived anywhere else but New York maybe, could i do this?
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