israeli politics

scheherazade - 7.20.25

A kid in Gaza died of malnourishment today and I spent the afternoon discussing the situation of the individual soldier in Gaza and the alternatives available to him/her.  That they shouldn’t be Gaza in the first place was a given to all of us – but we haven’t figured out a way to change the government.  But what is a soldier supposed to do?

I’m sitting in a concert hall entranced by a wonderful surprise – the concert we were meant to hear was a little stiff and maybe a bit pretentious but the conductor got sick at the last moment and since he was the only one prepared for these obscure pieces we got an amazing violinist Etamar Zorman instead.  So I was happy and in the mood to listen to Scheherazade carefully in the second part.  And there I imagined my political dream come true.  There is the tyrannical sultan and the woman who convinces him through stories that dialogue that they can make harmony together.  I know this is a crazy interpretation of Rimsky-Korsokov – but it made sense at the moment…

scheherazade – 7.20.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

graduation - 7.18.25

No where in the world could there be as messy a doctoral ceremony as this one at Tel Aviv.  Even the BA ceremony at Barnard where the sense of anarchy and revolution dominated every aspect of the ceremony,  Here it was a forced sense of joy – Clearly the occasion demands celebration, but how can one celebrate when one’s colleagues are – hostages, dead, in the army, crazy….

I wanted to leave when the drums took over – even though they were great girls – I don’t thin the rector of the university should be preceeded by a drum.   Or the other deans and rectors.  The doctorants – maybe.  But there were so many of them!

Okay I had nothing to complain about.  Maybe if I had eaten of the elegant spread I’d be less crochety.  And the address was wonderful.  Even though I’m embarassed I don’t know the name of the researcher who concluded her technical brain research lecture with the idea that antithetical science experiments should work together to find the answers that combine the antitheses.  

In a crowd of people who are so different they could not sing the anthem with any unity, this was an important talk.


graduation – 7.18.26 Read Post »

israeli politics

My Mother - for Lorraine - 7.16.25

CLOCKS

 

I look for more than time in my digital watch –

the connection of the dots, direction

of the moments.  Always I remember Mother,

who slipped Father’s timepiece on her wrist

when his swelled up with final infections,

how she wore that watch for two years to the day

after he died.  And as she was going in

for the operation she would not survive,

she answered the nurse who asked,

“Why do you wear two?”

with “So one can watch the other.”

My mother – for Lorraine – 7.16.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Druze october 7 - 7.16.25

The reports from the Druze in Syria are terrifying.  Decapitation, rape, murder of Druze there have incited Israeli Druze to cross the border to save their relatives, and the reports are of total chaos.  This is an event that can only end badly.

 

druze october 7 – 7.16.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Different Strokes - 7.15.25

I’ve always thought that the more variety in the way people think the better the chance for solving problems.  I’m not talking about the Druze and the Syrians, or even the politicians (a plague on all their houses).  

We are working on a 1000 piece puzzle.  One person begins on the frame, another on the more visible parts that might connect, a third on any pieces that might pair up.  It’s the way we think.  I like to think in pieces after I have a frame.

now let’s apply this to my politics.  My frame is mutual benefit in the middle east and maybe everywhere else.  Two pieces at a time.

 

different strokes – 7.15.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Riefenstahl (2024) 7.13.25

The film about Leni Riefenstahl is something that everyone should be encouraged to see.  Not because it is a good film, or that she is a good woman, but that she is the key to the next generation – the dangerous people who believe in themselves and their race to the point where others are not human beings, should even be destroyed.  And that belief is a basic factor in their art – the creation of a perfect film even at the expense of the lives around them.  Our values today are so confused, we don’t know what to think.  It’s exactly at this moment that someone will arise to lead us the way Hitler led – feeding on our broken egos, making us believe we are not to blame for anything.

Reifenstahl – 7.13.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Why i published "Survivors" on my Own - 7.12.25

 

“Why?” a friend asked, when I mentioned that she can only get the book on Amazon.  And I heard myself giving the answer I didn’t know I had.  

When we were at home with Covid, I thought it was important to get out the pieces of history that I had collected over the years, that history has to be composed of individual stories as well as statistics.  So I started sending it out to Jewish presses.  One at a time.  

I received no responses.  

Each time I waited a few months before following up, assuming there was a panel and these things had to be decided.  but no answered were received.  One – that I had given up on – came back after a year with a form letter, even though their website had invited poetry submissions, and almost all of the individual poems had been published in various journals so they couldn’t be all that bad.

I decided to give up the project.  There were so many other things to do, and this one physically pained me that it had not been given any attention.  Not even an email response.

But then the war broke out, and when the Iranians started bombing us with the same bombs into which I was born, I began to realize that I may not make it through and there would be no chance that someone would read the stories of my family and the refugees that I grew up owing.   

So I put it on Kindle.

The cover was also home-made.  I had used the photograph of this group of refugees often to remind myself – of the elderly twin sisters who did not speak to each other and who had no children, of the little Rumanian girls I was sent to introduce to American culture, of the German family who lived in our attic for months but would not speak with us – and were not in the photo.

I remembered when the photo was taken, at one of the “Griner” picnics when my mother shoved my brother and me into the group at the last minute, even though I protested I was not a refugee.    There we are in the corner.

And in the corner this book remains.  I have no idea how to publicize it, and no sense of who would want it.  

But perhaps it will let me go.

why i published “Survivors” on my Own – 7.12.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

The Waitress - 7.11.25

I had my eye on her from the first moment we sat down.  Efficient, good-natured, pretty, witty – where will I find the flaw?

I was in the mood to find flaws.

But she was so perfect .  So I started talking to her, about the weather, the view, the usual.  And then we hit on something – and she said she wasn’t allowed to talk about these things in public.  Public?  We said.  We’re friends!  And she said – remember 1995.  And she left.

I remembered – it was the year our hope died.

The Hope

 

Karen Alkalay-Gut

 

On the night Rabin died I dreamt I wandered the streets

homeless and lonely in a crowd of confusion, ricocheting

off relatives and friends barely regarded, while dogs of peace

ran with panthers and tigers all loose and all free. 

 

No one was working — everyone

out on the streets or in groups

sleeping in different houses, using

 interchangeably each others’ phones —

connecting  with wrong numbers

saying a few impotent words,

disconnecting indifferently

 

Unseasonable cold penetrated my clothes,

and uncoated  I sought shelter

in cloaks of the dead,

but found myself in other byways

before I could wrap myself in them

 

The river was solid and the earth

liquid under our feet — the worst

walked on water while the best

fell in the treacherous sands.

 

Nothing held  the dream together

and everything could fall apart

at any random moment

 

 

The Waitress – 7.11.25 Read Post »