Tel Aviv Diary - July 19-23 2013 - Karen Alkalay-Gut
July 19, 2013
We began our evening yesterday at the evening in honor of Sasson Somekh at the Bialik House. But as much as one colorful speaker followed another, the chair was impossible for me and I found myself escaping in the middle. The roofs of Baghdad were left behind as we walked past the beautiful gentrified houses of early Tel Aviv. It was a different world. The strains of Yair Delal's oud were still in my ears as we walked past the Bialik Cafe where Daniel Solomon was playing his wonderful soft rock. Of course we passed the Prague restaurant and walked to Pappas. There we bumped into family who were entertaining an Italian priest, and spent the rest of the evening discussing religion. We seem to have covered the world in two blocks. But if that wasn't enough we spent today watching Istavan Szebo's "Sunshine" about the generations of a Hungarian Jewish family. Since the first half of the three hour film follows Ezi's family's history we were transfixed. All this multi cultural stuff helps us to ignore the political reality.
July 20, 2013
That was Panic Ensemble on Saturday Night. July 22, 2013 What great times - summer in Tel Aviv means moving as little as possible but I am throwing out half of my papers and enjoying every moment. I decided no one is going to save archives any more, and what's past is past.
Apropos past, a few words about the peace talks. They keep talking about returning to the 1967 borders, but I'm old enough to remember that they weren't borders - they were cease-fire lines. And if we go back to 1947, those borders weren't accepted by Jordan, Syria and Egypt, and there was no such place as Palestine except as the Jews established it - you know the Palestine Post (now Jerusalem Post), the Palestine bank (now Bank Leumi), etc. So why are we talking about what was? We should really focus on what needs to be.
July 23, 2013 Don't expect anything special from me tonight. I had eye drops this afternoon at the doctor and I think I've overdosed on belladonna. Our eye doctor however is a trip. About 35 years ago I started going to his father, who filled out careful index cards for his patients, including hand-drawn diagrams of the eyes. He died about twenty five years ago, while we were away, and when we came back and Ezi needed an eye doctor right away, his son was recommended to us. Imagine our surprise to find the original cards of our patient history, and the continuation of the same, careful, handwritten technique. The same malformation of my eye socket that troubled the father was there from the beginning and has been watched ever since.Ah, those German Jews.