israeli politics

As we sat together with our friends and talked of photography and art, the room began to darken.  My friend said, the end of the Sabbath is always sad, and I thought, it must have been like that for me when I worked – especially when I worked four jobs in order to survive.   I worked all week and could pay attention to my home and friends only on the Sabbath.  There was no internet so I Couldn’t work and . Now the children come on Friday night or Saturday at lunch and we rest for the rest of the week.  

There is something very sad in the way we barely keep the sabbath – and the visit of my friends reminded me of that.   

Unfortunately, I begin the week with a stress test first thing in the morning so I’ll keep this short.

 

end of sabbath sadness – june 25, 2 Read Post »

israeli politics

Oh, no!  Don’t tell me women are going to have to start looking for sane states for an abortion, after 50 years of just a little freedom over their bodies.  They are so traumatic as it is!  I can’t believe people do them for fun and need to be regulated.

Suddenly I recalled poems by Gwendolyn Brooks and Anne Sexton about their abortions, and you can see that what they did was never taken lightly. Brooks’ poem can be found here.

but although I’m sure Sexton’s poem is copyrighted as well, I can’t find it, so I’ll put it below.  I’m sure the world is happy that she didn’t have a third child.  She was amazing but totally crazy:

The Abortion by Anne Sexton
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.

Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,


Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all…
he took the fullness that love began.

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward…this baby that I bleed.
 
In Israel, abortions have to be okayed by a board – I think it is 3 people.  But to my knowledge it is usually okayed.   It must be terrifying to have to explain yourself to a board, though. 

Roe vs.Wade – June 24, 2022 Read Post »

israeli politics

One thing I am always tempted by is reading poetry, so when I was asked 10 days ago to read 8 American poems for an adult education class in the museum, together with a musician, I squeezed it into my schedule.  And every few days, another complication arose, making my job much more difficult.  

Today, when I showed up with my little powerpoint of poems I discovered a large hall, with at least a hundred people, and not enough time for half the poems I’d worked on.  The audience had come for the pianist and the singers, and I was there just to give the rubber stamp of education. 

It was like in college when because my boyfriend was far away I played the beard for at least half a dozen gay friends.

When will I learn my lesson?

adult education – june 24,2022 Read Post »

israeli politics

“Yom Assal, yom bassal” was one of the first expressions I ever learned in Arabic. “One day honey, one day onion.”  So with the teachers’ strike the kids are getting used to having school every other day.  The school year is almost over, the kids are learning less and less and now – the government is still negotiating with the teachers about salaries.  

Nobody wants to be a teacher anymore anyway.  They don’t see it as a calling – as I came to see it after many years of struggling to stand in front of an audience.  And why should they think of it as a calling when they are not considered important enough to be paid a living wage?

 

june 23, 2022 – Read Post »

israeli politics

The annual festival of ‘book week’ has been expanded to book month, and there are real bargains and lots of suggestions as to what to read.  But schools are on strike and the fourth grade kids are reading on second grade level.  So who are going to read the next generation of books?

Me, I’m reading the Alexandria Quartet again.  But I’ve also just read  Doma Mahmoud’s “Cairo Circles,” which reads like a jewish novel, Lucy Atkins,'”Magpie Lane,”  Lisa See, “The Island of Sea Women,”  Pip Williams, “The Dictionary of Lost Words,”  Louise Edrich, “The Night Watchman,” Dara Horn, “Guide for the Perplexed,” (Couldn’t get through “People Love Dead Jews”) and a whole lot of trash.  The book I liked best was Rachel Kadish, “The Weight of Words.” 

I’m still looking for books to distract me from the fact that like the children, I don’t want to learn anything either.

june 22, 2022 – book month Read Post »

israeli politics

The last days of a government before elections is the best time to demand things.  And the teachers have not been getting their demands for months – so today is the perfect day to strike.  A week before the end of the semester for those finishing grammar school.  

There are lots of other demands as well – and Lapid has to win for the safety of the entire country, so he is an easy target.  It really doesn’t matter to people who follow Bibi whether he is convicted on corruption – they don’t believe in truth anyway (or they know something that I can’t figure out).

Anyway I’m going to explain why I was on strike yesterday.  It begins with a class I was asked to teach for the adult college Katedra.  This coming Friday at noon.  As someone who has a hard time saying no I agreed last week to read some poems to a class that basically is about musicals.  Then came the additions: explain about them?  power-point?  translations?  Okay.  In the meantime I’m trying to do the paperwork for the IAWE that should be done by an accountant.  Many pages of nothing with original signatures.  And I’m trying to fill in the forms for payment for the many lectures I gave all over the place.  So by the time for my Arabic lesson, the blog and then sleep, I was asleep. On strike one could say.

Anyway save the following dates:  July 27 for Beit Hasopher on 6 Kaplan Street, and August 25 for the municipal library on Shlomo Hamelech street.  The first one is  for the writers organization.  The second is about me.

but it turns out that all the forms I filled out were wrong, so I’m back where I started yesterday

 

 

june 22, 2022 – Strike Read Post »

israeli politics

So here we go – we’ve got elections at the end of October.  And Lapid is our prime minister in the interim.  Usually nothing happens between now and after the holidays – The Knesset goes on vacation and then come the holidays and nothing gets decided.  And Iran is weeks away from a nuclear bomb…An interesting situation.

June 20, 2022 – Elections Read Post »