As Ezi explains the story of the chapter of the week to the 10 year old I hear the little boy adding the details under his breath. This is a kid that at the age of 3 negated the existence of the divinity. I don’t know whether to be very proud of his knowledge or worried that he is getting a religious education in a public school. but it was nice to know. And yes, I was proud.
december 19, 2020 – explaining the chapter of the week to small grandchildren Read Post »
Can you imagine Joseph in Egypt? When I was wandering around the Egyptian museum, his image kept coming into my mind. A slave, sold by his brothers, to a guy named Potiphar, who turns out later as Potiphara, and the rabbis say he bought Joseph as a sex slave but was later castrated. You can see the status of slaves as they appear – hands and feet bound – on the footstool of the Pharoah, and anything could be done with them. And then Joseph gets thrown in prison for turning down Potiphar’s wife, but when he interprets the Pharoah’s dream he gets to marry Potiphara’s daughter. So the 7 years of plenty and then famine for Joseph was all good. He’d already gone through hell, and now he’s making life bearable for his adopted nation. what a story – how sexually complex! how emotionally flexible! i rarely talk about the weekly portion of the bible but i do read it every week, and this one may be the most dramatic of them all. Especially now that I have been in Egypt and constantly think about the Egyptians I wanted to meet there.
december 19, 2020 – parashat hashavua Read Post »
Because our internet is out – for some reason – I’m writing this offline and will post it without looking when it comes back. You know I don’t even go back and correct anything even if Grammarly tells me to.
First off, I woke up with a sense of doom and by the evening hope I will have forgotten this feeling. It was partly because everything went wrong with yesterday. Except for the IAWE arc reading itself last night, it was quite mad. We spent a great deal of the morning updating my computer, and then tried to install the usb microphone so I could record poems for Robert Priest. That seemed to wreck my audio in zoom and I couldn’t give my little speech at the amazing arc 28 launch about the Israel Association of Writers in English and how we work together to finance the journal and produce these evenings and how we’re going to have a newsletter soon….
There was also the matter of the discovery that I will have to take the vaccine in hospital surroundings because I’m allergic to penicillin, and we have no idea how the vaccine will behave on anti-body-less Ezi. In the meantime my son-in-law is in isolation having been exposed to a corona family member.
And every muscle in my body aches – for no reason.
But the worst part is that I’ve been so long away from a hairdresser – partly because of corona and partly because of my sinuses – that I dyed my hair and it turned out black and I look like a witch.
Just writing that down made me feel better, made me realize that all my troubles are minor and my own situation is the best it could possibly be. Yes, I will gradually lighten and ultimately go grey as it grows in. and I’ve seen it on my cousins – it’s totally white and gorgeous. Watch me, by 2022 I’ll be a distinguished mature lady.
Maybe I’ll even grow up.
And I made friends with a hedgehog today who gave me proportions –
i mean if she can survive in a totally unexpectable world, so can I
december 18, 2020 – Read Post »
Because we were fooling around with the usb microphone on my computer, in preparation for recording a professional reading, the computer complained when I had to get on zoom a few minutes later. and it shut down its sound. I was supposed to greet the editors of the latest arc, and say something about the Israel Association of Writers in English, and nothing came through. After various attempts at fixing it, I gave up and went on my iphone, but i couldn’t see what was happening and became more and more frustrated as the evening went on. i managed to read Erica Jong’s poem, and later mine, on the phone, but i didn’t get to frame the evening in any way, to put it in its official context, and now i’m supposed to be meeting friends tomorrow morning and suddenly realized i will never manage to make up the work i missed this evening in preparation for a different zoom on sunday, because my grandchildren are coming for shabbat lunch. Am I dancing at too many weddings with one toches. as they say in Yiddish? You bet.
december 17, 2020 – dancing at too many weddings Read Post »
The journal of the Israel Association of Writers in English, which I chair, is coming out very soon and the launch is tonight. 7:30 Israel time. Email me for the link, but I fear you may be too late. The theme is ‘kisses’. and there are so many people who want to hear about kisses it may be impossible to satisfy their curiosity. For example, do you know there’s a difference between a Western kiss and an Arab kiss?
december 17, 2020 – reading tonight and kisses Read Post »
I miss making music. i really do – reading a poem with music… I’ve been recording poems with Robert Priest – he gives me instructions how to do it, and Ezi and I work on them, send them to him, and he gives us more instructions. patiently.
Roy Yarkoni just sent me the link to where he put our Thin Lips album. It’s here. the whole album for free.
i even learned a bit about performing
as you can see here from a short clip
Roy went on to take my poetry and make three more albums with Panic Ensemble and they were very successful but I still think we would have been better alone. Here’s one album
it would be great to hear what you think of these. Lately I only get letters from people who want something from me.
december 16, 2020 – music Read Post »
Ever since I’ve lived here, December 15 is a holiday for me. Why? Because today is the day Ezi turns on the heat for the building. When I first came to Israel the usual method of heating was a gasoline space heater. you rolled it out to the balcony, closed the door, lit it, carefully, and then rolled it back to the living room. Then we all sat around it to warm up. After that gas heaters became popular, but I had an accident with one that scared me. i was sitting by my little daughter’s bedside at night and because she was ill, I moved the gas heater close to the door of her room. At some point I fell asleep and woke hours later to the strong smell of gas. The pipe had come loose.
Everything worked out in the end and I am probably the only one who remembers this incident.
But for 40 years I have been living in an apartment with heated floors, and I always rejoice on this day. Heated floors are long out of fashion, and many apartments in our building have disconnected from it, but we stay with this old system because it is amazing.
This is a hot country, and most of our concerns are about keeping cool. We don’t do it the inexpensive indigenous way, though, with thick walls and small windows, but with air conditioning. But in the few months when it gets cold here, it’s very cold inside, and inevitably I get sick.
So forget about the miracle of Hanukah – today is a holiday. Definitely.
december 15, 2020 – heating Read Post »
somehow i think this is a special hanuka, and a special menora is needed. so here’s our symbolic corona menora:
it gave me great pleasure to find good use for our toilet paper.
december 14, 2020 – fourth candle of hanuka Read Post »
