israeli politics

Amsterdam 1944, 2024 -8.11.24

I am just at the point in my research on Kurt Gerron where I’m chronicling how he was at first lauded when he escaped from the Nazis to Holland, and he created at least one film basic to Dutch culture but then was ostracized and given up together with all the Dutch Jews to the camps, t0 Westerbrook, to Thereisenstadt and finally to Auschwitz.  And last night was no different.  The jovial local population felt unable to defend the visitors to their land as they were chased and beaten. Even the police stood by as the the soccers fans from Israel were thrown into the canals.  

Amsterdam 1944, 2024 -8.11.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

shopping at Night - 7.11.24

I never go shopping – it’s always on line.  Who cares if they skip half of the list?  I can always make something out of what they bring me and blame the delivery boy for when it turns out bad.  

But this week I was too exhausted even to order properly, so I wound up with no vegetables to make for Friday night and appointments all morning and lunch time so no time to get to the supermarket.  

That’s how we found ourselves shopping on a thursday night.  The worst time to shop – because everyone is exhausted and anxious – because the sabbath is coming and all the stores in the neighborhood will be closed and maybe we’ll be bombed. 

Notice that the bomb is the least of our worried.  The stocking up for the sabbath is more complicated…

 

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israeli politics

Drone Season - 11.6.24

We had a real barrage of rockets this morning.  Down in the shelter, Ezi hung up a new emergency light, and Lyn said, can I help?  Yes, come here, I said, and when she did I made her cheer him on with me.  I wonder whether the tenants and visitors from the street think I’m mad, but I really am determined not to let the Hizballah think we’re suffering from their rockets.  This afternoon there was another batch.  It’s a real bummer to stop everything just because someone is trying to kill you, but I guess we can’t ignore rockets the size of my car.

 

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israeli politics

When you Walk Through a Storm - 11.6.24

When I was in sixth grade I was in a choir, and incredibly absorbed in the songs.  Until one day the choirmaster stopped next to me and listened – and decided that I was the one who was throwing the whole choir off.   I remember every song by heart, especially the last song I got to sing before I was thrown out.  And today I kept singing it to myself:

When you walk through a storm

hold your head up high

and don’t be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm is a golden sky

and the sweet silver song of a lark.

walk on through the wind walk on through the rain

though your dreams be tossed and blown

walk on walk on with hope in your heart

and you’ll never walk alone

And here’s Elvis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=7NurYDwKZ9g

I AM NOT GOING TO LET A COUPLE OF AUTOCRATS RUN MY LIFE

The song, in Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, came out near the end of WWII, the month I was born, and must have been a great comfort to many people.  I never thought of it as religious, but social.  At the end of the play the whole cast comes out and sings it, and it always reminds me of how so many people in despair were comforted after the war by the company of others.  And today too I feel comfort in the sharing of hope with others.

But I’ll never get over not being able to sing.

 

 

 

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israeli politics

Tar and Feather - 5.11.24

We were on our way to the theater when we realized we were too sick to sit in an audience and went home to bed.  That was when Bibi announced his firing of Gallant.  

An amazing move – to take away the attention from the news this morning that Bibi hired people to steal military secrets to doctor and release to foreign presses.  It must have been a long time in the planning.  The wild card to pull out for when Gallant sent induction notices to Haredim.  The purpose – to keep the Haredim in the government so that his coalition doesn’t fall.       

The kids called while we were in bed to ask us to join the protest – we were already in bed and ready to sleep.  No way we could go out.  Trying to sleep all I could picture was a man tarred and feathered and driven out of town.  

Gallant has been the connection of Israel to the U.S., the only one that could tell the truth, and it can well cause Iran to rethink the milder form of revenge they had planned.

And now I’m going to try to go back to sleep. As soon as I erase that tar and feather image from my mind.

 

tar and feather – 5.11.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

election Day and Mendelson - 5.11.24

Are we getting bombed tonight? Orit and I discussed this as just another consideration about whether to go to the concert last night.  An amazing program, a wonderful escape, but then there are the threats.  

But we all went, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.  

And to hear amazing antithetical music.  I hadn’t thought of the fact that Mendelson and Mahler were two Jewish composers – both of whom had to convert in order to be accepted in their profession. 

What a concert and what contrasts

https://www.ipo.co.il/en/program/lahav-shani-bouchkov/?event_id=51322

The Jewishness of it came to me at the beginning when we stood up with entrance of the conductor to sing HaTivka, an anthem I often regret.  So outdated, so exclusive against the Christian and Moslem population – about how long we have longed to return to Jerusalem to be a free nation.  I’m often embarassed  – but last night I wept – because we’re still fighting for it.  Maybe I’d change a few words and take out the Zionism and bring in freedom for all people in a jewish state…

Anyway I started the concert in tears.  Even though I remembered the question we always ask, “where are we going to draw the line?  What other country lets everyone in?” 

And then there was Mendelson and the conductor Lahav Shani and the violinist Marc Bouchkov played the violin concert without notes  – so beautifully I cried,  And I know Mendelson had to change his religion to get a career in music.   But I tried not to put Jewishness into the concert.  But then Marc Bouchkov came out for an encore and played a melody he remembered from his great grandmother Dina Weiss, and we all melted.  Even though I know that what he was playing couldn’t have been a Yiddish melody – Yiddish words wouldn’t fit into the melody…

At the break our friends told us they had come for the Mahler, and I was expectant – I didn’t remember the 6th symphony.  But as soon as it began I turned off.  It wasn’t a voluntary action – I couldn’t hear it.  

So I spent the time reading about Mahler  and his conversion and his antisemitic wife who almost always married Jews.  The music with its antithetical emotions and their lack of fusion seemed to me again – a sign of  his Jewishness.  

It was probably me and my fears.  We seemed to be all in the same basket in that concert hall and I kept remembering Mark Twain:

Behold the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket”–which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention;” but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and–WATCH THAT BASKET.”
– “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar”

 

election Day and Mendelson – 5.11.24 Read Post »