blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

This is it, the final moments – we’re going to know who is going to run in the coming elections.  what teams, what political parties can combine with the others and whether the government will be a better one.  My favorite candidate is the guy who dropped out.  itzik Shmueli – the guy who was so devoted to the goal of helping win over the corona that he totally screwed up his political career. 

After him, I admire Benny Ganz terribly.  

But I’ll probably vote for Labor as always.  They look good – ideologically speaking.  And it’s a family tradition. 

 

february 4, 2021 – musical chairs begins Read Post »

israeli politics

in these times, not all communication is virtual.  sometimes there are physical things like mail.  and mail is not simple in these times.  Time was when you get a package from abroad, you’d have to go the central customs office to clear it. It was such a complicated affair that Ephraim Kishon invented a complicated board game called “A package has arrived.”  But things became more simple in recent years and before corona many packages arrive to our local grocer next door, who takes on the role of a distribution center.   he’s beginning to do that again, but our packages still go to the post office.  and the post office is a pain in the neck.  Takes forever and is not pleasant.

But sometimes we get packages from Amazon.  And it always happens that Ezi is on the balcony when he comes by.  The delivery man drives by, sees Ezi, and throws it up.  Ezi catches it, and it almost makes up for all the packages we had to go to the p.o. for.   

not quite.  

But sending out mail has been simplified.  You download the forms at home, fill them out, and then take them and the package to the P.O.

so send me my presents by amazon please….

 

february 3, 2021 – mail Read Post »

blog, ,

I’ve been talking all day to friends who are mothers and it seems to me they are the heroines of this entire situation.  All of them are professional women, and in the good days their kids are in daycare, or school from 8-4, with hot lunches, and they pick them up from work, play with them for an hour or two, make a salad for the kids and their partners bathe the kids for bed.   Now everyone is at home and home has become hell.  On the other hand their cellphone has become their real place of residence.  

february 2, 2021 – home Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv,

The anemones are out.  Usually they bloom at the end of February or the beginning of March.  And everyone drives down to the south to see them.  But now the weather is almost summery and we’re in lockdown and the times are wrong and keeps changing : We are expecting rain on the day the quarantine is supposed to end.  That will keep most of us close to home.

But most people don’t believe that the quarantine will end, or that anything will really change with the elections.  There is a sense of relinquishing hope, of .. maybe… despair.  After that great anticipation of the vaccinations, we discover that all our ambivalence about the innoculations was in vain – that we thought and thought and thought about what to do and now we are largely vaccinated and there is a new strain to which perhaps we’re not immune.

 

 

 

 

february 1, 2021 – flowers and weather Read Post »

israeli politics

Frankel Institute Event Series: Stranger Still: Translating Contemporary Poetry from Israel/Palestine

Sabine Huynh and Karen Alkalay-Gut

In this installment of the “Stranger Still” series, we invite the poets and translators Sabine Huynh (French, English, Hebrew) and Karen Alkalay-Gut (English, Hebrew, Yiddish) to join us in a conversation about their experiences as multilingual poets in Israel and the role of translation in their work. They will read selections of their poems and translations, including their recent collaboration: Huynh’s French translation Alkalay-Gut’s collection of Holocaust poetry, Surviving Her Story/Survivre à son histoire.

Karen Alkalay-Gut was born in London on the last night of the V-1 flying bomb attacks and grew up in Rochester, New York, completing a PhD in 1975 at the University of Rochester. Since 1972 she has lived in Israel, raising a family, and is retired from teaching poetry at Tel Aviv University. She was the founding chair of the Israel Association of Writers in English, a position she held until 2014 and resumed in 2018. She was Vice Chair of the former Federation of Writers Unions in Israel and is currently a board member of the Yiddish Writers Association. She has written poetry for the cabaret ensemble Panic Ensemble, as well as wide-ranging essays and scholarly articles. Her poetry publications include the recent collections A Word in Edgewise (English), Derakhim le-ehov (Ways to Love, Hebrew), and Yerusha (Inheritance, Yiddish/Hebrew).

Sabine Huynh is a poet, translator and editor based in Tel Aviv. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is the author of a dozen books (poetry, novel, short stories, essay, diary), and numerous translations (from the French, Hebrew and English). Her poetry collections include Kvar lo, which won France’s 2017 CoPo Poetry Prize, and Dans le tournant/Into the Turning, a bilingual English-French book co-authored with Amy Hollowell. Her first novel, La Mer et l’enfant, was shortlisted for the 2014 Emmanuel-Roblès Prize and for the 2013 Chambery’s First Novel Festival Prize. With Haggai Linik, she is the founding editor of the French-Hebrew literary translation magazine Peham. Her latest poetry collection Parler peau (« to speak skin ») was illustrated by Philippe Agostini and published last year by Æncrages & Co. Her French translation of the complete poetry of Anne Sexton is due out in 2021 with the feminist publishing house Editions des Femmes.
Huynh Photo Credit: Miriam Alster


Zoom Registration Link: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/1216070911601/WN_IsQh-wJARNmcGBeqKf60Qg
Sabine Huynh and Karen Alkalay-Gut
Sabine Huynh and Karen Alkalay-Gut

event – february 16, 2021 Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv, poetry

 Since i haven’t put up any events in a year and haven’t even looked at my event page since I set up this site,  I should start sharing the next week with you.

Let’s see, tomorrow at the SELI conference  I’ve got 5 minutes to explain about the poetry boom on zoom.

then on the 13th we’re probably having a Valentines’ zoom with every one reading love poems – more info coming as soon as we can get ourselves to get along…

then on the 14th at five in the afternoon  there’s a birthday party for Rivka Bassman in Yiddish

then on the 16th Sabine Hunyh and I are doing an afternoon on the book “Survivre son histoire/Surviving her story” for an event at Oxford University and the University of Michigan.  You can register here 

january 31, 2021 – what’s coming up Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Paranoia is the new normal – at least for me.  When we see others on the street, we cross over to the other side.  We fear our children, and now even more than before because even though we’re on lockdown its only in theory – After all, children have to play with each other, shops have to open – even only through the back door, hairdressers seem to be going around to people’s homes.  All this makes life more difficult for those of us who remain vulnerable.

There is also a crazy mental isolation among the population.  In our walk today we met a number of neighbors our age who were without masks and big smiles on their faces.  “Aren’t we lucky?  We’re safe!” they said, as if the while thing is over.  it isn’t.  

january 30, 2021 – corona normal Read Post »

israeli politics

Why should I drive myself crazy over whether the lockdown continues or not?  I’m not going anywhere in any case until Ezi passes his serology somewhere in the second week of February.  And all my voting and campaigning hasn’t ever resulted in getting the government I wanted.  And sometimes I’ve discovered that I voted wrong, or campaigned for the wrong person.  I’m giving up.  Staying home and watching the dumbest series I can find.  

And trying to write wise or funny things.   

All right, I’ll admit it – I suddenly realized that I have been seeing the Labor Party all wrong for 50 years.  My family was devoted to the Labor Party because of its socialism, and the party today seems to follow in this basic theory. But the more I learn about the history of the factories here, the more I understand why there is such bad blood inherited between the haves and have-nots here.  

And I should have seen because I was in the middle of it.   When i came here in 1972 and didn’t get the job I was promised at the University of Tel Aviv, I went to meet a friend of a friend in the Histadrut, the workers’ union.  We met many times at Cafe Olga, where all the officials from Labor party had lunch.  And at last I was offered the position of cultural administrator.  

I was so totally unfit for the job, and maybe that was mutually understood, because I don’t remember ever getting something in writing.  But the fact that I had lunch with all these guys wearing white shirts and blue jackets and no tie means I too had ‘connections’ – probably through my father.   How did I not realize that the job offer was a sign of a corrupted system?  

or maybe the fact that there is no evidence of my job offer means he was just trying to get rid of his obligations by offering me a job I couldn’t take…

 

 

january 29, 2021 Read Post »