July 9, 2017
I spent the entire morning going over films that Kurt Gerron was erased from. Leni Reifenstahl's "The White Hell of Pitz=Palau," "People on Sunday," etc. all from 1930. I watched some holocaust films too. All this did not put me in a good mood for a poetry reading to raise money for creating an English library in Gaza. And after a discussion with the poet and librarian,Mosab Mostafa. watching a video about Gaza, and listening to some of his poems, as he sat in the darkness. He also listened to one of the poets in Israel reading and then apologized that his battery was dying and disconnected. Then the rest of the poetry read, donated, and talked. The link is here: here
I must admit that every time I turn on the light in the evening I think of the people in Gaza suffering from the electrical shortage. We think of it all the time, and yet feel powerless to help. So what good is poetry? Still, how else can we begin?
July 10, 2017
The labor party won Avi Gabbay. The hope is that he's a new kind of politician like Macron.
A Bengladesh reporter, a friend, asked me some questions in preparation for a tv program that didn't work out for technical reasons. one of the questions was about the UNESCO decision to give world heritage status to Hebron. Now Hebron includes the tomb of the patriarchs which, as we know contains Sarah and Abraham and the lot. And we know that both Isaac and Ishmael buried Abraham there and the tomb is sacred to both religions. so giving the special status to Palestine at a time when the land is disputed seems like a terrible breach to us, especially when the entire procedure was uncomfortably political at the UN.
July 11, 2017
It's good when there is no big news. It's good when i don't feel i have to check in every minute.
Or maybe I just don't know what is going on.
I'm particularly pleased with Avi Gabbay, and I see that he's doing well in the national polls. So far he's okay. He seems to have practical solutions to political problems, like Jerusalem, for example, calling for a united Jerusalem but defining Jerusalem in narrow borders.
July 12, 2017
the IAWE voted to continue today - the Israel Association of Writers in English. It has been almost non functional for the past 2 years, in part because of the withdrawal of funding from the government and in part because we just haven't been friends. But apparently we want to be friends. So we're going to make an effort.
Because the meeting was in Jerusalem, and we have grandchildren visiting, we too
July 13, 2017
last night we went to a concert of Miron Isaacson's poetry. I dragged my family there because Ronen Shapira, who was one of the major composers of the evening, opened the show with part of a symphony he wrote around a little poem of mine. I was overwhelmed by what he did, even though the poem was not mentioned on stage. it was printed in the program. More of that soon.
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