israeli politics

shimon peres

Complaints about Shimon Peres and sexual abuse have been coming in for weeks since Colette Avital first confessed that he assaulted her. It’s so strange to me, because I spent those years being assaulted by so many people of authority, but never by Peres.

Maybe he had no opportunity and maybe I wasn’t attractive enough for him… But I found him such a wonderful, brilliant man – with a great need to be loved. I’m not defending him, but I am separating what he might have done sexually from what he wanted to do to save the country, to save the world.

october 17, 2021 – Read Post »

israeli politics

They say that public violence has increased dramatically in our society. It’s understandable that after 19 months of distancing and terror of illness, we would be suspicious of everyone and untrusting. Still, I personally have no greater reason to be nasty to others than before Corona. A friend lost her lover to cancer, another lost all her money in a nasty investment, a third hasn’t been able to find a job because who wants to hire an older man. I don’t have any of those problems. I am just realizing I put my poetry life on hold for the past year or so. Maybe others feel that way too. Maybe that’s enough to become violent….

october 17, 2021 – evil mood Read Post »

israeli politics

This is one of the poems he asked me to translate – years ago – but I don’t know what he did with it… he didn’t always tell me and didn’t always thanks me.

FINAL INTERVIEW

Prelude: This is an interview with a dying poet.

This is perhaps his ultimate word.

Yellow, feeble, and tormented,

he drowns in his pallid sick bed.

Q: What do you remember now?

A: Cities and studs.

Q: Which cities?

A: The cities within cities.

Cities from which cities were born

Cities in morning when all is waking.

Cities producing the dead for graves.

And the suburbs, leprous, scarred, stinking

suburbs that breed filth, whoring and sobbing –

nether cities, minor cities, pus cities

cities awaiting invaders from distant galaxies.

Q: And the studs?

A: The youths I could have been

youths I could have contained

youths I could have burned

the surf-boys returning barefoot

leathered and buckled motorcycle boys

dyed painted disco boys

yellow coated delivery boys

and Arab scaffold boys speckled with plaster.

Q: You sound gushy and gay.

A: It isn’t an election speech.

It’s a text that postpones the praise of girls

for different issues on different endings.

Q: And what do you remember now?

A: Parks.

Night parks with blinding lights

stage bushes, trees of light, artificial suns

shining grass stages for the lonely doubting rabbit

naive morning gardens sprayed by sprinklers

where a black man practices trumpet

and mothers adjust the swing’s movement, the dizziness of whirl,

interpreting childhood to their children

and mazes of greenery between palace and lake,

love corners, marble icons, ridiculed mythologies

and the tired gardeners in the shuddering shadows,

and arid gardens for spirit trees –

sand and stone gardens made by scalp-shaved monks –

bowers of sand around patterns of rock.

Q: And where from here?

A: A step garden with a thousand fountains

mazes of spouts and slivers of light

from mouths of demons, animals, heroes and goddesses –

a garden where the strollers converse in Italian.

Q: Are you hinting of the Tivoli Gardens?

A: No. Of the gardens within the Tivoli Gardens.

Q: And now?

A: Now I am fading.

A curtain rises before gilded balconies

and on stage lovers are dying

becoming a song for a final voice;

The soprano drowns in her heights

The tenor drowns in the balconies, the ceilings.

A woman as a perfect voice

A man as a symmetrical jet in the hall’s space.

Q: We’re back in Italy!

A: We’ll sail from Italy to Greece.

Marble statues in blinding brilliance

Apollo bathes in the light of mountains

lizards in shards of shining shrines

and the muses his only true love

conceive his children in the shade of groves.

Q: And some thing Israeli?

A: The Pieta Palestrina is coming.

Q: Nevertheless – some thing Israeli?

A: A spreading tree in white-hot Jerusalem

and in its shade a stone pallid and cool.

It is the stone for the wanderer of light,

It is the stone for summer rest.

Q: That’s it?

A: The valley of Beit Netufa in a blue haze

and the distant Kinneret among violet mountains

Q: Anything else?

A: The Essenes’ Caves near the Dead Sea.

FINAL INTERVIEW

Prelude: This is an interview with a dying poet.

This is perhaps his ultimate word.

Yellow, feeble, and tormented,

he drowns in his pallid sick bed.

Q: What do you remember now?

A: Cities and studs.

Q: Which cities?

A: The cities within cities.

Cities from which cities were born

Cities in morning when all is waking.

Cities producing the dead for graves.

And the suburbs, leprous, scarred, stinking

suburbs that breed filth, whoring and sobbing –

nether cities, minor cities, pus cities

cities awaiting invaders from distant galaxies.

Q: And the studs?

A: The youths I could have been

youths I could have contained

youths I could have burned

the surf-boys returning barefoot

leathered and buckled motorcycle boys

dyed painted disco boys

yellow coated delivery boys

and Arab scaffold boys speckled with plaster.

Q: You sound gushy and gay.

A: It isn’t an election speech.

It’s a text that postpones the praise of girls

for different issues on different endings.

Q: And what do you remember now?

A: Parks.

Night parks with blinding lights

stage bushes, trees of light, artificial suns

shining grass stages for the lonely doubting rabbit

naive morning gardens sprayed by sprinklers

where a black man practices trumpet

and mothers adjust the swing’s movement, the dizziness of whirl,

interpreting childhood to their children

and mazes of greenery between palace and lake,

love corners, marble icons, ridiculed mythologies

and the tired gardeners in the shuddering shadows,

and arid gardens for spirit trees –

sand and stone gardens made by scalp-shaved monks –

bowers of sand around patterns of rock.

Q: And where from here?

A: A step garden with a thousand fountains

mazes of spouts and slivers of light

from mouths of demons, animals, heroes and goddesses –

a garden where the strollers converse in Italian.

Q: Are you hinting of the Tivoli Gardens?

A: No. Of the gardens within the Tivoli Gardens.

Q: And now?

A: Now I am fading.

A curtain rises before gilded balconies

and on stage lovers are dying

becoming a song for a final voice;

The soprano drowns in her heights

The tenor drowns in the balconies, the ceilings.

A woman as a perfect voice

A man as a symmetrical jet in the hall’s space.

Q: We’re back in Italy!

A: We’ll sail from Italy to Greece.

Marble statues in blinding brilliance

Apollo bathes in the light of mountains

lizards in shards of shining shrines

and the muses his only true love

conceive his children in the shade of groves.

Q: And some thing Israeli?

A: The Pieta Palestrina is coming.

Q: Nevertheless – some thing Israeli?

A: A spreading tree in white-hot Jerusalem

and in its shade a stone pallid and cool.

It is the stone for the wanderer of light,

It is the stone for summer rest.

Q: That’s it?

A: The valley of Beit Netufa in a blue haze

and the distant Kinneret among violet mountains

Q: Anything else?

A: The Essenes’ Caves near the Dead Sea.i

october 16, 2021 – mordechai geldmann z”l Read Post »

israeli politics

I’ve been living in the same place for well over forty years. Most of the pictures on the wall are the same. And most of my neighbors have been around as well. But in the past two years, many of my friends and their kids have moved. Families have moved out of the city to get away from the concentration of people and give their kids some space, and other people have moved into the city to alleviate loneliness. Not that it works – sometimes you feel worse with all those people around you who are too busy with themselves to pay attention to you.

Actually, my friends are moving because they need less room… or more room.

But if I had my choice in all times and places – I would have liked my neighbors from when I moved to Israel. From all places, all tastes, all ages, but with warmth and respect for everyone. I know people now who turn their faces away when we pass, even though we live in the same building. For no reason. Back then, we were so dependent on one another we all had each others’ keys, and we could rely on each other for any favor needed. And we never thought about moving. We thought about adjusting.

In any case

october 16, 2021 – moving friends Read Post »

israeli politics

A few months ago Ezi decided to order a Tesla. It is not a question of transportation. Our little street is almost impossible to exit at certain times of the day, and has recently undergone a “renovation” which has left us with much less parking, wider sidewalks that no one walks on, and narrow streets that can easily result in head-on collisions. Traffic jams are all over the country, not only where I am waiting now wasting my morning. But for Ezi it’s the mechanics of the electric car that fills his mind and the idea that electricity is the future. We have installed electricity in our parking space, inspected every extra piece that can improve the velocity and safety of the vehicle, etc. etc. We even have a sunguard with the proper dimensions for tesla.

And we’re hoping the automobile will actually arrive next month.

Me I’m tooling around in my yellow Suzuki Swift, trying to be unobserved and as innocuous as possible.

october 16, 2021 – a tesla moment Read Post »

israeli politics

Moti and I were born in the spring. He was a year younger than me, but both of us had an obsession about being an example of renewal. He was an only child and gay so the “renewal” was in his poetry, his art, his writing.

I didn’t know about his passing – I’ve been out of touch with most of my friends for the past couple of years – even Moti. I didn’t even know he’d been struggling with cancer while I myself had been testing positive for something similar that has largely disappeared in the past month.

And I kept thinking that sometime soon I would speak to him about it, now that it was over – both of us being hypochondriacs. A shelf of his books, at least 30 poems of his I translated, a vase he gave me a few years ago. So here’s the first poem of his I translated. I can’t remember where it was published but it was.

SPRING

I was conceived in the summer

when my parents fell in love between their quarrels,

and born in a spring of butterflies and rats

while clear rivers were melting

though Earth had digested innumerable dead.

In the windows the city was ruins:

Horrible sights crowded the streets

refusing to sink into memory sewers.

Satan has performed here, they said.

His barking voice echoed in empty stadiums,

his blood stained the sidewalks with hieroglyphics.

White‑toothed American soldiers were messengers of purity.

Hungry and yellow, German women coupled with muscular blacks.

The Jews of the Camps returned to business and regained flesh.

I was a newborn to the crucified race,

a race whose interpretations of its books

concealed the secret of its essence,

a race whose weaknesses implored its death

at the hands of the mad masters of power.

I was a newborn in a city of ruins

and my mother loved me like hope, like an omen, like blue skies,

and my father embraced me like a man embracing his new sword

and the wool and silk and milk did not suffice

to subdue my feverish cry.

Butterflies and angels in leaves and flowers

floated, carousing and leaping,

and the bees buzzed, busy for hours,

among pollen rods and cones of nectar.

We sat at night by a shallow sea—

holding hands in silence.

And our hands sweltered, melted, welded

and in our breasts a heart was raving

and our heart pleaded to leap distances—

propelled on by vast craving—

we thought we longed for each other.

The sea smelled of iodine and weeds

the wind carried gentle seeds,

the wind circled in dreams.

Love dictated surrender and conquest,

brave gestures and soft accord.

On beams burning like rainbow

tiny girls curled the air

golden dust in their hair

holding lilies and moths

Blue dolphins sported in the heights

with balls of cloud, large and light.

On earth they served creamy ice

to modish lips of strawberry and rose.

Craving ships sailed out to sea, to the heavens.

There invaded a glowing light,

yellow clusters, clusters of fire,

intoxicating odor of flowers’ desire,

blood period feverish like a childhood disease,

the white of her body, body of white.

An old man licked the vision of boys and girls

at the number 5 stop, pierced

with his tongue through their blue uniforms,

through their sneakers and socks.

Guilt was arrested and executed.

Ladies and gentlemen,

said the old man at the trial of Guilt,

to live is to lick visions.

Joseph and Zuki, the lovers, the addicts of their love,

took with them for a trip along the shores of Sinai—

me—guessing the severity of my verdict:

to search for love for many years

perplexed between pilgrims’ paths

to the cities of love’s spoils

the cities of grand parks, cafes, river‑bridges,

the baths with wet mosaics, the opera foyer

or to the crystal‑built cities of spirit,

at the gate of the great being

that seems as nothingness to the private and lustful human.

Joseph and Zuki the lovers

took with them for a trip along the shores of Sinai

in the beginning of Spring, 1977,

a perplexed and grim pilgrim

inventing himself as if walking on himself

like a circus bear walking on a ball,

and before my eyes they planned their house

a grey concrete villa, paved with pink marble,

with a bed for a lemon tree in the patio,

spotted dogs wandering around.

Now when I ponder Spring

I remember again the journeys’ evenings:

the evening they disappeared to fulfill their passion

and left a bitter and dreamy pilgrim

in an empty cafe, in the last cafe before the desert

listening to taped American troubadours,

watching the bluing desert,

And the evening smuggled in, tender and blind.

And a black evening spraying stars

when we crouched in the sand by a greasy sea

(they held hands)

and we saw the light net streams

that the moon spread out on the moving water

reaching Arabia, land of the rock,

and I pronounced quite relevant thoughts

on the influence of desert‑scape on the birth of monotheism

and on the influence of the sun on the consciousness of Abraham.

Spring attacked, we became as loonies

our strength to die was dying

bush‑hunters turned blue for love

and monkeys and parrots screeched.

Spring attacked, we became as loonies

running out of strength to die

Spring attacked, we became as loonies

In the morning the sheets ain’t hiding

the light vomits the awakened onto the streets

time seduces, warns

october 15, 2021 – MORDECHAI GELDMANN Z”L Read Post »

israeli politics

olives trees are sacred

If there is anything in nature that is sacred to this land it is the olive tree. Here Danny Caravan put it into the center of a sculpture and Nihad Dabit makes trees out of wire and pieces of copper.

The Tree

When the olives were ripe

and the branches hung over

the walls of the closed-in yards

onto the sidewalk of my street

an old woman would appear

and spread out her spacious skirts

to the tree. A child

would stand near the wall,

shake a stick, and the branches

would release

the wondrous fruit.

She has not appeared in years,

and no child ensures

the olives will not fall

overripe to the pavement.

Yet whenever I look out on the street

I envision her,

her arms opening wide

to the tree, inviting it

to share its bounty

with her welcoming lap.

So the destruction of olive trees by settlers is an act so despicable I cannot keep quiet. and i don’t know what to say.

october 14, 2021 – olive trees Read Post »

israeli politics

David Grossman, Sally Rooney, et. al.

While I watched an interview with David Grossman and marvelled in his openness to others, to the world, I couldn’t help but wonder about Sally Rooney, the Irish writer who announced today that she would not allow her book to be translated into Hebrew. Not that she has anything against the language she said, but she has to boycott Israel. I don’t believe she is not as open to the world as David Grossman is, even though I haven’t read anything she has written. But I find it hard to conceive of a writer being against a country – not its policies (which I too find impossible), but its existence. And an Irish writer at that. From the very country James Joyce represented in Ulysses! The longing of Leopold Bloom for a homeland for the Jews was meant to be a model for the Irish in that book!

All right, so Linda and I mentioned this boycott to our book club, and the immediate response was: Let’s read her book and invite her to speak on zoom! And I thought – that’s the openness I admire in David Grossman. The hunger to understand the other.

october 13, 2021 – authors Read Post »