Tel Aviv Diary -July 10-14, 2019 - Karen Alkalay-Gut
July 10, 2019
i have no idea of what i will say on friday. July 11, 2019 I wonder now if there will be an audience. it's a bit of a mess. enough of this narcissism. want to see a movie to remind you of why people like me first fell in love with Israel? Watch "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer": If to listen to the end you can hear my sister-in-law in the choir. And of course my old friend and partner Azariah Rappaport with his deep voice has a role in it. Azariah Rappaport was the guy who actually arranged my papers to come to Israel, and ten years later appeared with me in readings at places like the American Embassy and Beit Zion America. Even though it is all over the web that Leonard Bernstein fell in love with him, i can't find any decent pictures of him online and have no idea where the pictures we took together in the 80's are. wait! I found 1!
Look for him in the movie. But what about my sister-in-law in the choir? at the end of the movie there is a choir. She was 19 - just out of the army. The song is about hope - and the final phrase on the screen is "the Beginning"
July 12, 2019
so I figured out what to say. and the panel was fine. the multilingual nature of the local culture was really apparent - one translated from Norwegian, one writes in Ladino, one learned to write again in Polish after learning Hebrew, and me. It was even exciting. Ezi filmed a little of it, but can't seem to get it to me to show you at the moment. so i'll talk about it later. Afterward we went to Jaffa to celebrate Yaniv's birthday in a place called Shafa, it is on a pedestrian street and we ate an interesting Seniya (in this case baked lamb and tehini and cauliflower) and a tehina dessert they called "Snickers" but it was healthier and less wonderful. Jaffa by the way is incredibly crowded on Fridays - everyone celebrates - its the holy day for Muslims and the night before for Jews. July 13, 2019 i'm going to upload the unedited, uncut version of the little talks i gave at the Cinematheque yesterday. just because most of my friends weren't there and maybe they're a little sorry... Some couldn't make it and some had to leave in the middle for many reasons, especially since we went on too long and the busses had stopped running for shabbat. if there's enough demand i'll translate them to English - because the way Yiddish was embraced by the crowd was amazing. on the way home I saw the first sign for the election campaign. "Make Israel Normal Again." It was Leiberman. part 1
part 2
i think it did it wrong. i may take it down and change the format.
July 14, 2019 Because all the museums are closed on Sunday, and my friend Linda who was here on a short visit wanted to see a museum before she left, we went to the only museums open - in Ashdod. The Museum of Art had one major exhibit that left me breathless - First Person Singular - about masculinity. Three amazing floors of a perfect blend of space, art, installation, video, painting. There was another museum - of Philistine history - How could we not go and learn about the history of the people who gave the name to this land? people who came, conquered, and disappeared. I don't know how the Arabs have decided this was the name of their land. or why. is we're going to share this land we're going to have to find a name for all of us that doesn't have the smack of foreign invaders.
