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 »
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 »
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 »
“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 »
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 »
The day started at 5 a.m. with a siren and a race to the shelter.
We probably should have gone back to sleep for the day, but because we needed a piece of leather to fix the Vassily chair Orit returned to us after years of service, and the upholsterers are all overwhelmed with work, we decided to venture to old Tel Aviv for a search. The problem was getting there – traffic, parking, heat. And maybe the banality of driving.
So we decided to park at the train station, walk through to the light rail and take that to Allenby.
This was my first time in the city light rail system and I must admit it was overwhelming – Everything above ground was dusty worn, and blinding in the sun, and everything below ground was spotless, roomy, automatic and clean.
I must have been so impressed that, although I wore my hat in the heat from the parking lot to the train station, I must have dropped it at Arlozorov as we entered the train, so when we walked from the light rail to the shop I was dazzled by the sun.
And when we finally got to Begin St., the shopowner hadn’t opened the leather scrap store, even though it was almost ten, but when we called the number on the door he promised to open within the hour.
So we went to Barzellai Street for breakfast and I began with a jar of water.
We headed home – in the sun – with the perfect piece of leather and three new belts, (just so the owner wouldn’t have wasted his day opening the shop – but they are impressive).
And feeling a little drunk with the stifling air in the dusty shop and the heat, we then began our return.
Again I was overwhelmed by the size, the sterility and modernity of the train station. “It’s like being abroad,” I said. But as soon as we entered the train we knew we were back home. Although there were few people traveling in the heat of the day, a group of ten came in the train together. The loudspeaker announced: “We have so many doors in this train and everyone has to come in on the same one door?” All the passengers broke out laughing. And when the group left at the next stop, they all called out together, “So many doors in the train and everyone has to use the same one door?” I knew then no amount of modern architecture and engineering could cover up the basic Tel Aviv nature.
As we left the station in Arlozoroff it occurred to me to ask the security guard about lost-and-found. “Oh, the hat!” she said, and directed me to the office. At the office I was given my hat, and the security guard suggested I take a pair of sunglasses as well.
And thus we returned to our car, wondering whether we needed to go abroad to have adventures.
touring Tel Aviv – 7.10.25 Read Post »
When I had to use the bathroom at the accountant’s office, the Ladies’ Room was busy, so I went elsewhere. But when I left the Men’s Room, I was met with questioning looks, so I said, “It’s all right, I’m trans.” The accountant smiled.
I would not be surprised if his reaction and mine was first conceived with the rise of the trans singer Dana International. She is probably the one who ‘normalized’ transgender behavior by treating her own gender independence with bravery and defiance. And she won the Eurovision contest with a song about great women.
She is also one of the first who pointed out to LGBTQ communities around the world that Israel is a more positive environment for them than a radical religious country.
And she won my heart again when after hearing a religious woman describe her son’t pride in being in the army she expressed her thoughts about how soldiers really feel. “Not everyone is happy on the front, and not everyone feels like a lion. There’s no such thing as ‘a nation of lions.’ War is terrifying,”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-09/ty-article/.premium/not-everyone-feels-like-a-lion-famous-israeli-singer-shatters-the-wars-illusions-on-tv/00000197-ef6e-d963-addf-ef6f7dd60000
Dana International – 7.9.25 Read Post »
p.s. Talking about Lolita – it took me a few hours to realize that in all the conversations we had after the film, no one compared Iran’s bombing of Israel to the wretched rules for women that forms the body of the plot.
The strangest thing – Read Post »
