israeli politics

600 days – 5.28.25

600 days - 5.28.25

Who would believe this mess would continue 600 days.  If the hostages were returned today, wouldn’t it be difficult to rationalize this war in any way?  

Tonight while normal people were marching in the street we were in a concert.  Now this may seem like escapism, but when you hear Benjamin Britten’s music against war, and then Beethoven’s Eroica, you know that every aspect of every day is influenced by our situation.

Beethoven’s Eroica, that  was written to welcome the dawn of a new age with Napoleon, was last performed in the symphony hall here on October 23, 2023.  The home front wouldn’t allow an audience to gather because of the plethora of rockets so it played to a full audience of pictures of victims and hostages.  This symphony of hope tonight, while we are still hungering for the remaining hostages to be brought home, has special meaning.

 

600 days – 5.28.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

loyalty - 5.27.25

We’re have a big discussion about loyalty in the government.  It seems our present government defines loyalty as a personal committment, while most of the people I know define it as loyalty to the ideals of the declaration of independence, which stresses equality and freedom.  It’s clear that the same discussion is going on in the US.  

A copy of the Declaration of Independence has been pasted on my refrigerator for almost 3 years.  Every once in a while I read a piece of it to reassure me what a country the leaders of the country anticipated, to remember where we began.

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israeli politics

jewellery - 5.26.25

When Ezi first started buying me jewelry, about 45 years ago, we had no money at all, and he took me to a second hand jewelry shop in Yafo, Yacoby.  Sometimes there were gold necklaces, bracelets, and earrings with dirt on them.  Ezi explained that Beduin women sometimes only had their fortunes in their jewels, and they wore everything they owned.  But if there was too much to wear, or a danger to the wearer, they hid the jewels in the earth and dug them up to sell them in their hour of need. 

Jewelry means much more than decoration, much more than beauty and I see it on myself.  I love fun baubles, but since October 7, I haven’t been able to wear any jewelry except for my stark earrings and a protest necklace with a yellow ribbon.  The only exception was my 80th birthday party.  I haven’t buried my jewelry, but my heart.

 

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israeli politics

driving along - 5.25.25

A poem by Shai Aran 

88FM

 

I too, like you, Martyrius,  am made of Eros and of dust along the long and
winding road….

 

Leaving
Al Quds.

I
drive. First rain. I notice

gray
poodle-cloud, lonely.

above,
behind, beyond:  Holy Sites:

well
you know them all:

Golded
Mosque, Sepulchred Church, Wall wailing,

 

Via
dolorosa! downward, Dead Sea bound, desert road, down, down

Like
Alice’s rabbit hole “down and down she went”.

And
I the fuck am Alice.

88fm   plays

Bowie,
ERM –I’m loosing my religion

Philadelphia
Freedom

 

88
plays U2, me: one

On
88fm  as I

(down,
down desert road

raped,
gutted into primordial rock) 

drive,

88
jumps, crackles,  melds into Palestine

Ya  albi, ya nafsi min eli shuftni

And
oud, tuneful, subsumes rock

and
rolls

over
Kol Yisrael,

Joining
Jerico. Huna Aricha

 

88
fm resonates no more

Kevesh
Milut says the sign,

Escape
Road it explains,

guiding
the perplexed.

Sounds
of crying  camels, tethered. Burning
dung.

Along
the road, led loaded donkeys defeated in diminished desert.

 

 

 

First rains bounce parched
dust, beige rocks

The last of the thistles.

I turn on wipers, Eini
Aleik , eini eini alek chortles  Huna
Aricha

Keeping my eyes on the road,
(99 miles from LA..I see you, I hold you)
The windshield is covered with rain

I turn right sharp, past El
Azaria

Norrowly avoiding  Abu Dis

Ma kore I ask the machsom guys.

They wave me into Maale
Adumim.

Coffee before Yeshivat
tsevet, in Mamlachti Gimel.

 

 

  

The Monastery of  St. George  overlooking Wadi Qelt carved into the rock.

Built in the 5th Century. The monastery is located in the Judean Desert, between Jerusalem and Jericho. 

 

 

driving along – 5.25.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

mystery part 2 - 5.25.25

in August, 1939, my parents were provided with visas to Palestine.  They sent a lift to Haifa and wore their summer clothes.  But when they  arrived in Haifa, they were refused entry.  Someone from their home town had informed the authorities that my father had been jailed for communist activities.  My father had been in the Bund. 

They were sent back to Danzig in despair.  By then, the Pevzners had themselves escaped to Switzerland, but somehow managed to work with my aunt Malcah, who was then beginning to engage in underground activities, to provide temporary agricultural visas to England.  Malcah also arranged warmer clothing for them to survive the journey from Danzig to Vleisingen.  

This last part I know from my mother’s stories, but I didn’t have the connections until I spoke with Avi.

i can now fit in the papers i have about what they had when they left Danzig and how they arrived in England.

But now i have to find out how exactly they were provided with papers, how the long trip was arranged, and how  and when my parents renewed their connection with the Pevsners in the ’60s when they went to Israel.  

mystery part 2 – 5.25. Read Post »

israeli politics

mystery of History solved - 5.24.25

there are moments when I remember everything about my family’s past.  other times I can’t remember what i ate for lunch.  

Here is the story:

We sit down to a dinner at Etti and Gadis, and we know no one at the table.  The man next to us introduces holds out his hand and introduces himself, “Avi Pevsner.”  I find myself responding “Pevsner…your father saved my parents’ lives.”  He doesn’t know what to say, but I feel he is worried about spending an entire evening with this mad woman.  “Danzig, August, 1939.  He got them out just before the Nazi’s invaded.” 

“Yes,” he says, “I was born in Danzig.  My father was in charge of the Jewish Agency there.” 

Every detail he told me about his family’s escape sparked a memory in me, not only that moment, but the whole night long – especially when the alarms of rockets from Gaza and Yemen broke up my sleep.

  

mystery of history solved – 5.24.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

The Shelter - 5.23.25

(side note – some of you have been complaining that I don’t write enough about politics.  Sorry – but until I can put my money where my mouth is, I’m not going to say more.  I think it’s pretty clear where I stand, and that’s enough.) We talk about politics all the time since every detail of our lives is influenced by even the tiniest decisions in politics – but that’s not what i want to talk about all the time here.)

At a birthday party in Metula today, a woman rendered her sympathies that I am living in a city being bombed daily.  After all the sympathy I had extended to my Metula friends for a year and a half.

And I couldn’t even remember if I’d raced to the shelter the night before (I had).  Why?  Because so much is going on all the time, and we get so little sleep, it’s hard to think straight.  We don’t get back to sleep easily after we’ve been bombed so we’re missing a few hours every day.  But we fill up every waking hour well, thank you.

 

 

 

the shelter – 5.23.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

sleep - 5.22.25

I fell asleep while writing this last night.  The alarms in the middle of the night have ruined what’s left of my normal bedtime.  And then we were awakened around 2, but I decided to stay in the hallway and not go down to the shelter because I was so sleepy it was clear I’d trip.  

It was amazing to me that I slept at all, after I had a long conversation with some people from the Gaza envelope, people who had been born there and have always felt their lives were in danger every day.  I’ve always been far away from this, usually feeling I had some control over my safety, some choice about where to hide.  But the murder in Washington, the stories of the kibbutznikim, the constant bombing of civilians in Israel, is beginning to make it look impossible.

Hope I can take a nap today.

sleep – 5.22.25 Read Post »