On September 4, 7:30 pm Israel time, the Israel Association of Writers in English will present a Zoom program of poems and prose, by its members, from the period of the current war: “We’re still here!” All are invited to tune in.
The link is <https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81864641631?pwd=0PCKDbn1CJZEgZqwQJtz4f7yE19tpH.1>
(Meeting ID: 818 6464 1631 / Password: 185746)
invit for tomorrow – 9.3.24 Read Post »
At Hersh Goldberg Polin’s funeral today, the mourners sang a prayer that is usually reserved for a few days of repentance
Our Father, our King, forgive and respond
for we are at a loss
That sums it up. I was sitting in a traffic jam at the Ramat HaSharon junction today because demonstrators had blocked it. Later I got stuck elsewhere.
I wasn’t one of the demonstrators today because I felt hopeless. I can’t solve the problem. Were there no human beings involved I would go for tough bargaining, but I would have given everything up immediately to get those people back.
But then I heard Bibi asserting the need for stubborn negotiation and power and I realized that it isn’t going to happen, that participating in a demonstration isn’t what’s going to do it.
And now I am at a loss
at a loss – 9.2.24 Read Post »
אין לנו בית עד שכולם בבית
We have no home until everyone is home.
That’s what everyone is marching for tonight. The redemption of hostages remains our highest value, and we can’t bargain and play that it’s not important the way people walk away from the salesman when buying a car. No one is going to call us back and make a counter offer. And we can’t afford to lose these people.
Ever have the feeling we’re behaving like all is lost? Well, here’s the truth. We’re in mourning, yes. But that’s because we made some big mistakes, we lost many many people we love, we don’t like war and we don’t hate our enemies. We just want to live a nicer life.
(All right – this is a very far-fetched comparison. But when I took the Titantic tour in Cobh last month I thought, there’s got to be something I can salvage from this tourist trap – and that’s my ticket. So here it is.)
we’re not on the titantic! – 9.1.24 Read Post »
I think my friend Pam Peled speaks for all of us today in her blog:
Just stop killing us. And give us our country back.
a word about Bibi – 9.1.24 Read Post »
Everyone in Tel Aviv knew that even the sky was weeping for us. The first rain of the year – a few minutes of downpour – always clears the air and brightens the colors of the city.
But today, the news that 6 hostages were murdered days before their bodies were discovered, has shattered whatever remains of our hope for the future. And then 3 policemen murdered in the West Bank. The need to regain control of our government and get the deal done in Gaza, to pay attention to our thousands of homeless, to restart our government and economy, is so keen that every group in my whatsapp list is begging people to go to the center of Tel Aviv tonight to demonstrate. A million people.
I have thought about the change in this blog in the past year, the fact that I can’t really write about my life in Tel Aviv any more because whatever happens in the country affects every single person. And so many of us feel the same thing. We’ve been trying to get ourselves out from under this oppressive leadership. It’s true we don’t have alternatives, no leader who could replace the present prime minister, but we can’t remain with the one we have. I know that many people in Jerusalem don’t feel the same urgency as we do, but surely we could find a compromise. I would never wish on them the human losses that the rest of the country have experienced, and I know that in many things we agree and feel a sense of unity, even family.
The rain, after all, falls on all of us.
One of my major pleasures upon leaving Jerusalem is hummus in Abu Ghosh. Somehow it seems to get me back a sense of balance. It also reminds me that many years ago I had a friend from Abu Ghosh – one of those people who remains in your heart forever. He disappeared long ago. Friendship for me lasts forever.
There were so many people at Mishkenot Shaananim and the
e
other sites of the festival, I couldn’t count them – and I’m good at counting audiences. There were so many people – PAYING ATTENTION – and on the panels I was in, there was a lot to pay attention to. At first, for example, I couldn’t understand why suddenly a prose writer, pen name Ka.Tzetnik, would be of interest to a poetry festival, and then discovered – after listening to the work of Nili Cohen and Dina Porat who both wrote books about him and/or the legal implications of the trial of Eichmann – that much of what I had known about the porno of Nazism was all wrong. My father had a stroke while watching ‘Night Porter’ – a film whose drama was based on the then popular Nazi porno, so I too had a lot to say.
The next 2 days were also exciting. I got to talk a little about sex, and Ilan Scheinfeld wowed me for the second time in a poem that was the most erotic interracial, homosexual poem I’ve even heard.
Notice though that all I’m describing has little to do with the fact that there are over 700 soldiers dead and still counting, that there hundreds of rockets falling on the area where the festival was supposed to be held. Even though we did have some discussion and poetry about the war, we couldn’t get around that subject.
For me, the most important thing was the fact that literature and culture has to continue.
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greetings from jerusalem culture – 8.30.24 Read Post »
