israeli politics

We wake to a second shooting, so the sounds of sirens everywhere, just as we are trying to figure out how to get to the demonstration in Tel Aviv tonight.  

The little kids aren’t going, for that I’m grateful, but their reasons I don’t know.  I think one set of kids are playing safe, but the other set are in a movie and that’s going to take all day.  So life goes on even when things are smarmy.

My friends, old and sick as they are, are demonstrating, no matter what happens.  It’s kind of strange -all week we fight for health – doctors, tests, exercise, more doctors, plans – and then we risk everything to demonstrate for a viable society. 

Why is it a risk?  Because the route is risky – we walk far, are bumped and pushed (of course by accident) and then walk back the long way to wherever we manage to park, with no idea what the traffic will be.

   

 

another attack – Jan 28, 202 Read Post »

israeli politics

Their Tattoos

At the annual picnic of the New Immigrants Society

in the park shelters at Ontario Lake Beach,

while all the children went to swim

I disguised my fear of water and assuaged my boredom

by concentrating on organizing the numbers

exposed to the sun on the refugees’ arms

into some kind of arithmetical sequence.

I knew enough to be discreet,

counting the history of their agonies,

without looking directly at the tattoos.

But their arms were bare, exposed,

as they sat telling indiscreet tales

around the samovar and the hill of sugar

and they had nothing to hide

from one another.

Now I cannot remember

a single cipher

except the number 1

that looked so much more fundamental

than what we learned in math class.

this poem first appeared in Minyan Magazine

http://www.minyanmag.com/karenalkalaygut.html

holocaust day – jan 27, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

It was obvious that there would be a great cost.  When the army went into Jenin and killed all those people who were purported to be on the verge of a massive terrorist attack the other night, it was clear that someone on the other side would feel obligated to commit an attack on Israel if only to prove that the attack in Jenin was fruitless.  But to kill people leaving prayers on a Friday night – that was just a bit more than even I bargained for.  

I don’t even know who was killed, whether any of my friends or relatives was among the 8 victims.  The details haven’t been released – and I will not comment on the concept of revenge, except to refer you to Muhammed Taha Ali’s poem, “Revenge.” 

revenge – jan 27, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

They are everywhere.  Yesterday I was getting a disk drive replaced in Herzlia and the high-tech people were marching.  Today we went down the street and there were hundreds at a student demonstration, and I’m sure there were other demonstrations that I didn’t get stuck in traffic for.  A friend wrote me that the New Israel Fund is backing the demonstrations but I think it is important to emphasize that these are grass roots gatherings.  And it’s not about left or right.  It is about democracy and the visible manipulations of sociopathic individuals. 

I must admit, I never minded in the old days that there were restrictions on shabbat.  It didn’t really bother me that there was no public transportation and the stores were closed.  But now, when it is imposed, and new laws are being proposed to make bathing in public areas gender-specific and other nonsense that has nothing to do with religion, I really have a hunger for a ham sandwich on a Saturday train.  Nothing like an arbitrary rule to make me anarchic.

 

demonstrations plus – jan 26, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

Every little new law forbidding one thing or another gives me appetite to ‘sin’.  I’ve never thought of bringing in leavened bread to the hospital when visiting someone on Passover, but suddenly I have an incredible urge to bake a cake for anyone hospitalized on the holidays.  On the other hand, when my grandson was born, on the fast day of the 9th of Av, my daughter had nothing to eat and we were sent home for our dinner.  It was a big mistake – she should have given birth in those hours when we weren’t there, but no one paid attention until it became an emergency.  Religion should never enter into health considerations.

theocracy here we come – jan 24, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

Since it was a hectic day – the junk deposited before our house finally cleared away, exercise, air conditioners delivered,  post office again, return at last the faulty disk drive in herzlia, buy yellow paint to fix the wall, I really felt we deserved mousaka at Al Greco.

But when the waitress offered beer, we refused.  No, we aren’t that desperate.  But ouzo…

So we wound up sharing a bottle of ouzo and the coffee did nothing to dispel our inability to finish the preparations for dismantling our house for the proposed replacement of the airconditioners.  

And tonight I have to make another attempt to change my server before it’s too late.  So I’ll have to sober up.  My occasional helper, Baruch (aka Barry) having returned to his religious roots, no longer appreciates the kind of raunchy humor I exhibit when the stops are pulled out.  

So I take it out on you.

 

 

The only thing possible to do is write a diary entry,

 

   

nothing better – jan 24, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

My favorite house ever was across the street from me.  I’d never been inside. even though I knew the neighbors who died at least 6 years ago.  The house has been empty except for occasional student rentals, and I used to hear Ramadan prayers from the balcony. 

It’s a Frank Lloyd Wright-type house, and now as they have cut down all the trees around it I can see how absolutely gorgeous it was.  It keeps reminding me of that  poem by Howard Nemerov,

 

“Learning by Doing”
(1967)

 

They’re taking down a tree at the front door,
The power saw is snarling at some nerves,
Whining at others. Now and then it grunts,
And sawdust falls like snow or a drift of seeds.

Rotten, they tell us, at the fork, and one
Big wind would bring it down. So what they do
They do, as usual, to do us good.
Whatever cannot carry its own weight
Has got to go, and so on; you expect
To hear them talking next about survival
And the values of a free society.
For in the explanations people give
On these occasions there is generally some
Mean-spirited moral point, and everyone
Privately wonders if his neighbors plan
To saw him up before he falls on them.

Maybe a hundred years in sun and shower
Dismantled in a morning and let down
Out of itself a finger at a time
And then an arm, and so down to the trunk,
Until there’s nothing left to hold on to
Or snub the splintery holding rope around,
And where those big green divagations were
So loftily with shadows interleaved
The absent-minded blue rains in on us.
Now that they’ve got it sectioned on the ground

It looks as though somebody made a plain
Error in diagnosis, for the wood
Looks sweet and sound throughout. You couldn’t know,
Of course, until you took it down. That’s what
Experts are for, and these experts stand round
The giant pieces of tree as though expecting
An instruction booklet from the factory
Before they try to put it back together.

Anyhow, there it isn’t, on the ground.
Next come the tractor and the crowbar crew
To extirpate what’s left and fill the grave.
Maybe tomorrow grass seed will be sown.
There’s some mean-spirited moral point in that
As well: you learn to bury your mistakes,
Though for a while at dusk the darkening air
Will be with many shadows interleaved,
And pierced with a bewilderment of birds.

A bewilderment of birds – that’s how I feel all my friends are feeling about this country right now.”There it isn’t”

learning by doing – jan 23, 2023 Read Post »