israeli politics

another Hobby - 12.7.25

Now that my book about poets and their graves has gone to press in Hebrew, I thought I would spend the day cleaning up the mess I made when I came back from New York.  After a few hours of this i threw my back out again and had to rest.  So I wound up reading ha’aretz about books in Arabic about Jews.  And there I found that Nada Abdelsamad had just published an expanded edition of her book about Jews in Beirut.  In Arabic.  I managed to download it and begin to translate the introduction with the helo of gpt, and wow.  If I don’t control myself I’ll translate it all. the earlier version, called Wadi Abou Jamil: Stories of the Jews of Beirut, but a new version appeared last month.

I don’t understand why it hasn’t appeared in English or Hebrew.

I’ll have to find an ex-student who will help me. 

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israeli politics

musicians - 12.6.25

 think for a moment of all the musicians who have died in this war so far.  Imagine an orchestra in the sky of musicians from all the countries attacking israel playing somewhere together.

A silly thought.

 

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israeli politics

guiness world record for me - 12.4.25

This was my thought.  If I can stick it out until April it will be 25 years of my keeping the Tel Aviv Diary.  This has to be a world record, doesn’t it?  for one person reporting on her life in Tel Aviv?  

Unfortunately, Guiness is not including Israel or Palestine in its consideration of world records any more.  

This reminds me of my trip to Ireland in September, 2001.  I wandered into the Dublin Library and found an amazing exhibit of Bibles – in English, Latin, and other languages – but not in Hebrew.  And I thought that maybe Hebrew might deserve the Guiness world record for the first bible – but it didn’t get it either.  Wonder if i wrote about it.  I don’t know because I never read my entries for fear I will try to correct history.

 

 

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israeli politics

a few words about new poems - 12.3.25

Haven’t done much with poetry because of the book soon in galleys in Hebrew about poets and their graves.  this has been a big job, but it turns out I’ve also been writing poems all along.  Just avoiding the consernation of being banned by journals I’d come to think of as home.  But it turns out that I’ve been publishing poems all along.  Google firstofthemonth and my name and you can find a whole bunch of them.

 

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israeli politics

forgiveness - 12.1.25

Forgive Bibi?  

We had been seeing the development of hatred in Gaza on tv for years – the schoolbooks in which hatred is embedded in the mentality of the children of Gaza, the military camps for children in which they learned to shoot to kill, the parades of hatred…

We saw the way the people of Gaza lined up at the fence in the days before the massacre and threatened to kill us all.  (I didn’t sleep the nights I saw them on the news).

We believed Bibi when he promised us there was nothing to fear, even though there were thousands of other things he said and did that we didn’t believe.

I don’t know how we can pardon ourselves much less the prime minister.   

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israeli politics

Refugee Day - 11.30.25

On November 30, the day after the Arab countries refused partition, 850,000 Jews were expelled from the Arab countries and Iran   in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel..  So this day is also known as Yom Plitim (Jewish Refugee Day). Many of them came to Israel, many chose more fruitful countries.  And for many years I didn’t pay attention to my friends who were born in Cairo or Tunis or towns in Libya. 

Only today did I think of a woman who worked for me for almost six years from Libya,  quite mad.    Her name was Nachama – or at least that was the name given to her in Israel.  Married off at fourteen to a man she despised, she bore a few children before the long walk to Israel, and a few after.  She used to pour vinager on her head before she started work because it cleared her mind, and it was clear she was erasing her past in order to face her degrading present.

It is amazing how the 850000 who came here overcame their exile, one way or another.

 

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israeli politics

late thanksgiving - 11.29.25

Can’t do thanksgiving on thursday because the kids are in school on Friday, but it’s also Oren’s birthday so we have to celebrate, so we thought of  Saturday Night.  But there’s also school on Sunday and there are exams.  Ultimately the only evening we can stay up late is Friday – and Friday is not a time when we can do karaoke and make noise.  So we did karaoke on Saturday night, even though a morning physics test shortened the evening. 

I might have told you that we went looking for a turkey but could only find an enormous turkey breast.  Turned out it worked better than any other whole turkey thanksgiving.

And there is more to be thankful for this year than the last few years.  Even though our leaders are driving us quite mad, and we’re forgetting all the values and traditions that are important to us, we will recover and return.  The hostages that returned help me believe all the time that this is possible.

  

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israeli politics

escaping - 11.27.25

Today my friend took me for lunch to a “bistro” in a little hard-to find shopping center, and I felt I was in a different world.   It seemed a place for special people, but I’m not sure how they are special.  The two things I know is that the food was expensive with almost all the details in place (but now I have a stomach ache) and the shops (though local chaims) had things in the window I haven’t seen in this country.  Take, for example, La Prairie – a cream I would use if I could afford it.   

What a hick I am!

And what an escape it was, to discover another world in a place near my home I have visited often but never felt from the inside.

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