Karen Alkalay Gut קרן אלקלעי גוט

Traffic - 4.16.23

I forgot. What can I say? I should have known there was no way to get from one place to another when the Passover vacation begins. I should have written a nice letter of consolation and stayed home. But something drove me to make the trip that should have taken 30 minutes but took an hour, each way. Most of the time we didn’t move, but we must have moved some of the time because we made to the museum just in time for a lecture about Sebba.

We raced past the tents and exhibits of the hostages, rebuffed the ladies to invited us to make matzos with them, and ran to the museum library just in time.

It was liking exiting the crazy real world to enter the sane make believe world of art in a different time zone.

traffic – 4.16.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

home -4.15.24

Tablet Magazine has an essay contest that got me thinking – even though I’m not eligible to enter. Here’s their pitch:

Where do you feel at home—or no longer at home—physically, spiritually, or culturally? How do you find community, or a sense that you’re a part of something larger than yourself? Are there places where you feel a sense of belonging, or alienation—or both? Tablet is seeking personal essays that wrestle with these questions.

We are looking for previously unpublished work by writers living in North America who have never published in Tablet before.

Years ago, when my daughter lived in New York and was making movies, she interviewed people for a film she wanted to make about the idea of home. The one I remember most was a woman who said, “Home is a place you can defend with a gun.”

She was a Palestinian lady, as I recall, and so surprised my daughter that she never made the film. That was a period in which I thought that peace was around the corner and we’d be next door neighbors exchanging recipes and babysitters.

I cannot forget the moment I first stepped foot on the ground here. The argument I had had years ago with the rabbi my mother thoguht would be my perfect shiddach about why I wasn’t going to go to a religious college for girls. I told him I believed in being part of the world, and not only was I going to find a way to pay for tuition for a good university, but I was going to see the world. But somehow a ticket to Israel appeared, and although I thought I’d escape to Athens and parts unknown, I stepped on the soil of the Holy Land and was hooked. That was it. I was home.

Elementor #17101 Read Post »

israeli politics

I’m about to get to bed at 9 p.m. because we were up too much last night, but I have to answer the question every one keeps asking. How did we get through the night?

It was easy – I went to sleep at 11 when Danny Adari said the long range missiles would take 6 hours to get to us. But Ezi woke me at 1 to tell me that rockets were falling. He wanted me to look outside the window but everything was clearer on TV. At 4 or 5 I fell asleep and woke up to discover that the whole thing was over.

May all battles end while everyone is asleep.

Getting through the night – 4.14.24

getting through the night – 4.14.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Drowning in Drones - 4.14.24

It was Star Wars at home last night. All around us we were diverting and dropping missiles, guarding us, guarding the Mosque of Omar, guarding everyone but the Bedouin in the desert who don’t have houses much less shelters. 330 rockets.

But this is a chess game and we made the opening move by killing a Palestinian terrorist in the Iranian embassy. So their response was to try to flatten our half of the chess board. We had the amazing fortune of friends like the US, Jordan, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, France, etc. As they say in Hebrew – more luck than wisdom.

Thank goodness for Biden. And if we can build on his amazing help and organization, we can rearrange the order of the Middle East, create a Palestinian State. help alter the Iranian government, and make this entire area blossom.

Drowning in Drones – 4.14.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

We're Waiting 4.13.24

The big bombs are on their way – slowly. That should give us a few hours before the sirens, but there is also the possibility that they’re drop faster stuff on us while we’re waiting for the slower ones. So it’s going to be a long night. Let’s hope I’m back in the morning to tell you how things are.

Elementor #17069 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv, poetry

Gezer - 4.13.24

So sorry I can’t go to kibbutz Gezer today to see the exhibit with poems and pictures that include my own. Instead I am bedridden and kvetching.

But Ira was kind enough to send me the picture of the poem

that goes with a painting. You’ll have to go to the exihibit itself.

If Iran looks for me, it’ll find me under the covers.

Gezer – 4.13.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

rattling sabers over our heads.4.13.24

all exciting events are cancelled, not because of the threat of 100 drones and all kinds of missiles, but because of a UTI. I’m in bed and will finally get a chance to see Grays’ Anatomy or some such nonsense.

Am I going to get bombed? It won’t be the first time.

After all, I’m Jewish.

saber rattling Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? 4.12.24

Remember the hysteria that the Russians were going to nuke us in the US in the sixties? Well, here we are back again with the hysteria. I was out of it back then – too busy with my daily life. And I’m out of it again. Overtired of the threats and dangers. They come at us from all directions, and we get blamed for it no matter what we do.

And there is another dimension – I dream that I am walking behind my husband’s donkey that’s carrying a mattress, remembering how I used to sit with my friends on the seashore in the evening, and now weeping over my lost children. I identify with both sides and that neutralizes my terror.

Or maybe I’m just numb.

remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? 4.12.24 Read Post »