blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

While Sderot gets rockets every day, we in Tel Aviv have been free all week – until tonight.  But we were ready.  Today I was talking with friends who just refreshed the food they keep in the hall closet so they can grab the cooler on the way to the shelter.   

We met at the beach, after the years of Covid and the war had separated us, and the first thing they asked was whether we had a bomb-safe room.  We don’t.  Then we learned about their medicine kit, their food cooler, their coffee maker, the overnight case.  “It’s over,” I said. “We have to concentrate on helping the reconstruction of the concept of Israel.”  “Not yet,” he said, “We should first concentrate on finding a country that will take us in.”  

I laughed.

A few hours later the rockets were shot down over the south of the city as I was news-channel hopping and I saw how much we are hated around the world.  And I had nothing to laugh about.

   

yet more rockets – jan 8, 2024 Read Post »

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

The IAWE is happy to invite you to join our Zoom event with the remarkable Joy Ladin in conversation with Karen Alkalay-Gut.

Sunday January 14, 
19:45 Israel Time / 12:45 p.m. EST

To register, please click here.

Ladin is a poet and scholar, known for her work exploring Judaism and gender identity. The author of ten books of poetry, including 2022’s Shekhinah Speaks, National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna, and Lambda Literary Award finalists Impersonation and Transmigration, Joy Ladin’s forthcoming books are a poetry collection entitled Family and a collection of selected essays on gender called Once Out of Nature. She has also published a memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, and a groundbreaking work of trans theology, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. Her work is available at www.wordpress.joyladin.com.


Israel Association of Writers in English (IAWE)

P.O. Box 39385
6139301 Tel Aviv

Email |  Website | Facebook | YouTube

 

 

Karen Alkalay-Gut

gut22@tauex.tau.ac.il

www.karenalkalay-gut.com

https://karenalkalay-gut.com/tel-aviv-blog/

www.iawe.org.il

 

invitation for Zoom Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

We have been so focussed on the children of Gaza, wringing our hands that they might be injured or killed or they might not have enough to eat or drink.  “How could they be exposed to such weapons hidden in their toys?” Friends have said to me.  We forgot that many times in the past years we saw videos of nursery school children learning how to kill Jews, of armed school children staging attacks on mock settlements, of puppet shows that teach children how to kill.  It only now hit me that the children themselves are dangerous, that the weapons we find hidden in teddy bears are theirs, that many of the deaths and injuries are caused by the fact that they are in fact the enemy, trained from infancy.  

It is terrible to endanger children, but perhaps it is more terrible to teach children to be dangerous.

children – Jan 7, 2024 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

 On Friday we went for a walk, and I had the feeling that Covid was walking along beside me.  Breathless on every incline, yet overwhelmed by the beauty of the greenery, the narcissus, the migrating birds.  Ezi took many pictures, but I had to concentrate on walking.  Today I took a covid test, but it looks like I’ve just got a bad cold.  Whatever it is, I spent most of sunny yesterday at home on zoom, staying away from others, trying to avoid harming others.  

And all the while I was thinking of the question of innocence and guilt.

Who is innocent and who is guilty and what is guilt – we are fighting on all our borders and in the sea, and we’re considered the agressors.  Nasrallah talks about nuking us, people are getting killed from the north to the south, east and west, and it’s our fault.  The hostages who have been freed tell that they were guarded by armed children, and we are blamed for children as collateral damage.  have a look:

This kind of preparation for war has been going on for decades and yet we constantly worry about harming children.   These children have been turned into Manchurian Candidates.  

 

children and innocence – jan 7, 2024 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Since October 7  I’ve been trying to be positive, to present a positive face to my fellow countrymen who are suffering so greatly.  I also try to preserve the privacy of my friends.  But today I broke down.  I looked into the eyes of my friend whose only son is in Gaza, and they were empty.  A similar emptiness I find in my friends who have had to leave their homes while the rockets destroy those very homes, and those whose families are hostages.  I try somehow to fill those eyes, but instead mine too are becoming blank.

empty eyes Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

As we drove up north today, through the same roads we’ve driven many times, I was amazed at how everything seems the same.  The Sea of Galilee is still as breathtaking as ever.  Tiberius looks as decrepit as it did to Mark Twain. p506.jpg (44K)

Nothing much ever happens there, it seems, and not much changes.  

It was only when I talked with the disheartened people displaced from their home for so long and left without a purpose, a framework, a hope, that I saw the change.  And it was so sad I haven’t been able to get over it all day.

 

 

the same country – jan 4, 2024 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

People talk about 200,000 refugees in Israel, but numbers never mean much to me.  Even when I see the tents of evacuees from the south covering the entire plaza between the courts, the library and the museum, it doesn’t mean as much to me as a single old friend caught in the dreadful situation.  

In this case it is a friend of almost 60 years who lives next to what was once called “the good fence” up north, but has been evacuated and has been living in hotels for the past three months because of rocketfire up north.  She is not only old – like me – but she has Parkinson’s and has undergone 2 cataract operations since her exile.  Her house in Metula is booklined but until now hasn’t been able to read, but now she has no books.  So we went up to Tiberias with 3 bags of books donated by a wonderful Tel Aviv friend and left her with no room to move in that small room with all that reading. 

What else is there to do?

  

refugees – Jan 4, 2024 Read Post »