Who can be deaf to the cry of Ukraine? Our hearts are broken and our hands are tied. Putin’s power over Syria is a serious threat to Israel – we dare not endanger our existence. And yet many Israeli citizens have gone to fight in Ukraine, and at least 2000 Ukrainian workers from here have returned to Ukraine to defend their country. The terrible misery of the people has also brought out their heroism. Zelensky is of course the man of the year.
march 2, 2022 – ukraine Read Post »
what a way to escape the news. what a way to run away from the prospect of the world falling apart.
But the most overwhelming sensory experience was the overwhelming aroma of the Rotem. As Natan Yonatan once wrote. I remember translating this poem with him, and feeling the pain of beauty of which he spoke here
And the rotem would whiten slowly along the way
Tel Aviv wrapped in mist, Jerusalem far off
Someone may not get to the end of this winter, to nowhere.
Blood comes and blood goes and the earth abides forever.
Yesterday a beautiful photographer was shot in the heart.
She who desired the gold of dunes and the noble ascent
Of pelicans from the nature preserve of Ma’agan Michael,
How it chases away clouds in its flight and scatters
A flock of electric poles on its voyage to the winter
Holy‑feast in the slumbering fish pond.
This was not what I had intended from the start;
this draft was written
At the beginning of winter. The first buds of frost
broke out in the air.
The sea green of the rotem were blown waves on waves
In the shore wind.
I wanted to leave after me in these troubled times
A short confession of the love of rotem and the need
To write poems. I thought beauty could protect us
And the children from fire and ice
That delicate longing of the flower along the way
And the one land that remained
And sandy desert rotem and its awful beauty, I thought
march 1, 2022 – Where have the flowers gone Read Post »
i keep seeing it – the ring of tanks surrounding Kiev, the secret forces hunting out Zelenskyy and doing things more terrible to him and his family than Froissard could describe about the100 years war. The world has let things happen like that – people poisoned on English soil, dissenters dragged from planes flying over foreign countries and throwing them into prison, officials imprisoned for their free thinking. Damascus bombed, Crimea taken by force… There are many who support him, and more who are indifferent. but it is beginning to look like a full-scaled opposition is rising up. That will take time, and there will be much destruction on the way. I don’t believe in the talks, and I want Zelenskyy to pull through. But I also fear we’re next.
february 28, 2022 – Read Post »
Two poems of mine appeared in the new Minyan Magazine. I didn’t realize until they were published that they were important to me. they have suddenly become gigantic in their significance of my past. Check them out. Check out the entire magazine. It is a punch in the stomach.
february 28, 2022 – Minyan Magazine Read Post »
Do I have relatives in Ukraine? I keep getting asked that question. And my answer is, I don’t know. I HAD relatives once in Dneipropotrovsk. And I appeared on Russian television years ago looking for them. My mother had one surviving nephew out of at least a dozen. He was away in military school when the entire family in Lida was wiped out. My mother found him in the early fifties, and they corresponded for a while, but he wrote that her letters endangered him and they had to stop. She said they had four sons, but never received more information. I hope they survived and will continue to survive and someday we’ll find each other.
february 27, 2020 – relatives in Ukraine Read Post »
One way from getting away from the news is to go to the beach. In my Arabic lessons on Duolingo, next to the phrase “praise be to God,” the most common phrase is “I love swimming in the Mediterranean Sea,” and almost the only Mideast cities that are mentioned are those on the coast – Alexandria, Beirut, and “ancient Palestinian cities,” and it is so understandable. On holidays and weekends, the beach is full of Arab families, but during the week in winter, there are only surfers, a few brave swimmers, and some stragglers like us. But the sea really helps to recognize how fragile we are. And how universal human emotions.
february 27, 2022 – Beach Read Post »
Because my education in managing this site began with a wonderful guy named Barry, and he disappeared in the middle of the plague to return to extreme religion, I only know about some of the ways to use the equipment. And I’m still learning. So I just learned about approving comments, and discovered my little cousin’s remarks about “Oif’n Pripichock.” I used to sing it to him when I babysat, and just now realized that we were two little war orphans – his father shell-shocked from WWII and my parents overwhelmed with creating a viable existence from scratch. Now I watch – obsessively – the Ukrainian children – and think of what lullabies can soothe their worlds.
february 27, 2022 – oifn Pripichock2 Read Post »
now I’ve worked with Rivka and the more I think of it, the more I think she deserves recognition for her own poems. Here’s one example;
february 27, 2022 – Read Post »
