Spooky
I googled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda yesterday, looking for the English version of a lovely poem Eldest got in Hebrew with her end of semester report card. Today I went into amazon.com looking for something completely different and was immediately offered a variety of books by and about Pablo Neruda.

Some of the Google results I got for Neruda were on amazon.com but I don’t remember clicking through to any of them.

I love the Internet but I wish it weren’t so intrusive.

Update: Alisa reminds me that one can make the Internet less intrusive. She's so nice to me. I do know this. Bish has been over it with me. But it's all so fuzzy-brain. It requires thinking.


posted by Imshin 19:03

I rode along the Yarkon River to Tel Aviv Port in the rain just now. I shouldn’t have done it because I haven’t been feeling very well all day, but I couldn’t resist. I rode right up along the pier and stood looking at the waves. There was an amazing ‘Jesus sunset’, Dad, Mum’s favorite - afternoon rays of sun coming down through the clouds into the stormy grey sea. I was sorry I didn’t have a camera.

Now I have to go collapse into bed.

posted by Imshin 17:29

And here's the second part of Lisa's story. Good stuff.

posted by Imshin 17:22

Look what I just found. I took it in Ramon Crater in the Negev desert in March 2003.


posted by Imshin 17:13

Who Knew? The UN Knew! (but chose to ignore it)
Dore Gold explains how the UN knowingly funds terrorism.

posted by Imshin 13:42

An Iraqi gets free life-saving medical treatment in Israel. There’s at least one Iraqi who isn’t furious about this. Isn’t that nice?

Hat tip: Gene at Harry’s Place.

posted by Imshin 10:42

Pregnancy second thoughts
I’m thinking about what I wrote yesterday that it was maybe upsetting for women who are having difficulties getting pregnant or staying pregnant, or who would really like kids but haven’t found the right partner and don’t want to go it alone.

I ask myself guiltily if maybe I should not be writing about good experiences that I have had, because they might be upsetting to some who haven’t been so lucky. It’s like I’m waving about that I belong to this cool club of biological mothers. But that wasn’t it at all, and these thoughts didn’t cross my mind when I wrote it yesterday.

I am reminded of how alienated I used to feel sitting with a bunch of men talking about their army experiences. They had this camaraderie I could never belong to. It annoyed me, but now I see that this is much the same thing. They were just talking nostalgically about their army experiences, it wasn’t against me, or excluding me. That was all in my head.

So I don’t think I should feel bad about writing about pregnancy and childbirth just because many women (and all men) sadly cannot experience it. Still I do feel bad a bit. It’s my inherited Polish Jewish guilty complex about having to please everyone all of the time or else I’m a horrible person.

Afterthought: You will note that the last of my ancestors left Poland round about the beginning of the nineteeth century, so you can imagine how powerful this complex really is.

posted by Imshin 10:12

Lisa is telling how she got here. I'm always fascinated by these stories. Can't wait for the next installment.

posted by Imshin 08:24

And the good news is that sex is good for you, and women can’t get too much of it. Men can though (Isn’t that just too bad?).

Hat tip – Karen Alkalay-Gut

posted by Imshin 18:43

Pregnant (not right now)
Shortly after I began blogging, I was informed by a fellow blogger that imshin meant ‘pregnant’ in Korean. I thought ‘nice’.

Korea and Korean meant very little to me, although all that has changed since we bought a Korean car, but imshin meaning pregnant suited me down to the ground. It was, well, pregnant with meaning (Sorry about that. I couldn’t resist it).

Imshin is a nickname made up by Eldest years ago, and long discarded, derived from Ima, the Hebrew for Mom. So pregnant was fine by me. I’m a mother and in order to reach this state I was pregnant. Twice. For nine months each time. And it was nice being pregnant.

You can imagine my surprise when, a few months later, I got an e-mail from someone expressing their amazement (horror?) at my use of the word. I think what he (it had to be a ‘he’, didn’t it?) wrote was something on the lines of “I can’t understand why anyone could possibly want to call themselves that.” As if it were a dirty word, as if pregnancy was something obscene, some terrible malignant disease suffered by those poor unfortunate women, but not, thank God, by us men, heaven forbid!

Not wishing to be impolite to a reader – I didn’t have many of them back then – I think I just answered something nice and ordinary, not letting on how clueless I thought he was. But I’ve had it tickling the back of my mind ever since, giving me the occasional giggle.

I think it’s time to set the record straight, seeing as we women are doing such a pathetic job of stating the case for womanhood, and for the really great things we can do that the men folk can’t.

Lying in bed after Youngest was born, I was overwhelmed by an intense feeling of love for this tiny creature that had just come out of me. It had swept over me almost immediately like a big wave.

This hadn’t happened when Eldest was born. Perhaps it was because I had epidural with Eldest, or perhaps it was because I hadn’t been a mother when Eldest was born. Motherhood is something you have to grow into. But this wave of love on the second time around really bowled me over. I hadn’t expected it at all. In fact, when I was pregnant with Youngest I had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to love her as much as I loved Eldest. I couldn’t believe that there would be room in my heart for both of them. God knows I’m not the warmest, most giving person in the universe.

What I discovered when Youngest was born was that I didn’t have to share the same amount of love between them both. It was like a miracle had happened. My capacity for love had swelled to twice the size it had been before, if not far more.

So there I was lying in the maternity ward just a few hours after Youngest popped out (She did pop out, we almost didn’t get to the hospital in time, but that’s another story), and I was feeling all this love and completeness and contentedness and compassion, all the usual mushy stuff. Bish had said that I looked like a Buddha, before they chucked him out so I could get some rest.

And then I started feeling really really sad. It was because of Bish, you see. In my overflow of compassion, I was feeling so very sorry for him, that he didn’t get to experience for himself the amazing wonderful intensity of what had just happened to me – childbirth. It seemed so unfair.

Get a bunch of mothers together and ask them about the births of their children. Be prepared that this can take hours. I find that all mothers love talking about it, even if it was a difficult experience for them (but maybe not if it was really traumatic). And it doesn’t matter how long ago it was, or how old their kids are - they can be grandmothers.

For a feeling of empowerment, of being really in contact with life in the most uplifting way, for sheer intensity - there is no experience that can come near it.

Breastfeeding is good too.

Update: Maybe not everone sees motherhood the same way. Brrrr.

posted by Imshin 17:48

A lovely Brian Blum this week.
posted by Imshin 13:10

Eric the Davka Read says

when I think of recent users of the Swastika who have trivialised and diminished the suffering of those who suffered under National Socialism, it isn't upper class toffs who immediately spring to mind...

posted by Imshin 21:34

Sixty three years ago today: Participants in the Wannsee conference decided on the Final Solution of the Jewish problem.

And here is something interesting - survivors of the Lodz Ghetto get a chance to see previously unpublished photos of life in that ghetto taken by Henryk Ross. Some recognize themselves or people they knew.

What I soon realized was that this collection had the potential to revolutionize the way we understand life in the Holocaust: To date it had been formed by a rather selective use of Holocaust photography and of oral and textual evidence of survivors. Survivors such as Mr. Ross had made photos available to the public that were wholly in keeping with the interpretation that Jews in the ghetto were at the mercy not only of the barbarism of the Germans but also of the Jewish ghetto administration itself. As a result, the traditional iconography depicted the members of the Jewish Council and of the Jewish police in the most unfavorable way imaginable, while depicting all other ghetto residents as passive victims.

Now, with the complete set of photos we could compare them with the photos that had been used before in publications and exhibitions and see how our image of the Holocaust has been dominated by survivor memories. What emerges from the complete set of Mr. Ross's photographs, unlike from previous oral and textual survivor testimonies and Mr. Ross's previously disseminated pictures, supports the view that all ghetto residents had to face the same kinds of dilemmas and that the contrast between the Jewish Council and "ordinary Jews" in the ghetto was not one of black and white. It is a chronicle of the breaking down and reconfiguration of competing bonds of human solidarity in the face of violence. A chronicle that makes the Nazi Holocaust even more diabolically cruel for its victims than survivors could express.

And here is the book with a selection of the photos for us all to see.

posted by Imshin 20:56

Look what I've found - The famous lost post!

The specter of civil war.
You’ll laugh, but one of the reasons Bish and I decided to get married when we did was the fear that if we waited too long, we wouldn’t be able to afford to buy an apartment because the prices would go up. The reason that this would happen, we reckoned, was that a Palestinian state would be established before too long, and tens of thousands of evacuated settlers would descend on Tel Aviv. This was 1988 (although we only actually tied the knot in 1989). Weren’t we the optimistic ones?

Prices did go up, and we were right in investing in real estate when we did (with the kind help of our parents), but not for the reason we thought. Prices went up mainly because of the influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union countries that came pouring into Israel following the fall of Soviet communism.

* * * *

Is it any wonder I’m acting the ostrich these days? How can I write about the public debate going on about the discussed disengagement from Gaza and a few settlements in the north of the West Bank and about what we probably have in store, when it’s all so horrible?

In the heat of the argument (not recently, I haven’t been in the mood for any good political arguments recently, but in the past, when I was more clearly identified as a Lefty), people have asked me what I would do if it were my home that had to be evacuated, if it was me that would have to move?

I’m maybe the wrong person to ask such a question. I’m not very house proud. These days, I live in a rented flat out of choice. I’m easy.

On the other hand I love Tel Aviv. I don’t want to live anywhere else, besides perhaps Mitzpe Ramon, if I could make a living there. So if I had to leave Tel Aviv for peace, would I?

Say I was living in disputed territory, and that by moving to an area that was also kind of disputed but more internationally accepted I would, in the short run, save lives and get the international community off our backs, and, in the long run, solve a demographic problem and perhaps even increase the feasibility of real peace between my people and our main current enemy, without completely compromising chances for future survival and hopefully even considerably improving them, would I leave? (you can breath now…)

You betcha. With tears in my eyes and sadness in my heart. But then again, maybe I wouldn’t be living in such an ultra-‘disputed area’ in the first place.

The thing is that people we’re being exposed to on the TV a lot lately don’t believe that this disengagement will bring peace. And they have a point. I too am worried that it might turn out to be a miscalculation. I too am worried that it will be rewarding terrorism and give the Palestinians the feeling that just a few more years of pressure, just a little more blood and sacrifice, and they’ll be rid of us; and that it isn’t time yet, although I have a feeling that it is time, what with Arafat gone.

So leave Tel Aviv, never to come back, to see it in strangers’ hands, maybe destroyed, for something I don’t believe in, for something I am skeptical about happening, for something I fear will make things far worse? That’s a much harder question.

And we have to remember that that is the dilemma that is facing settlers.

But if my democratically elected government had made a decision, would I fight or would I leave quietly, even if I didn’t believe in it?

I would like to think that I would go quietly. I believe that once a decision has been made, like it or not, we should all pull together to make it work. Of course, it is quite understandable that people opposed to it would want it not to work, so that everyone would know that they were right all along. Sadly this approach could kill us all.

What I find very troubling and very frustrating are the people who are talking about our irrevocable historic God-given right to this land, all of it, even the parts inhabited by the Philistines in the olden days. It is as if two thousand years of exile caused by infighting, fanaticism, and lack of flexibility never happened. It’s like the Palestinians are air. No compassion. Worse - peace appears not to be a concept that interests them in the least. Living by the sword, on the other hand, seems to hold some romantic biblical meaning.

Scares the hell out of me.

And everyone pussyfoots around them, as if they are misunderstood children and must be treated gently. Mind you, some of them are, literally.

I know I’m falling into the trap the mass media have prepared for me. I know it, because I have become aware of the manipulations they do, and because religious people I know personally who live in the territories do have compassion, and are not frothing at the mouth with religious fervor. They show us the fruitcases and we get the impression they are all fruitcases.

I hate getting all worked up over this, especially as I personally know some of the people who will have the unenviable job of dragging these people -- men, women and children; kicking, spitting and clawing -- from their homes and from the vacant homes of those who have left quietly, should the disengagement go ahead. It’s all very worrying.

So much easier to pretend it isn’t there, and curl up in bed with a nice book.

Update: Our Sis wishes to point out that as far as she knows a fruitcase is just a case for fruit. She thinks I should have written 'nutcase'.

Well, I'm very sorry, I'm sure. Is it my fault I'm a bloody foreigner? No, it isn't! It's Mum and Dad's. I had absolutely no say in the matter.

On the other hand, I did choose to ignore that little squiggly red line underneath the word 'fruitcase' in MS Word when I was writing this post, so I can't really blame previous generations with a clean conscience.
posted by Imshin 16:20

Now I know I’m going to forget all about this tomorrow so I will say it today:

I wish a happy Id Al-Adha to all Moslems, Druze, and Circassians.

Update: Hang on. Circassians are Moslems. What am I talking about?

posted by Imshin 21:39

Funny how once you’ve got into the habit of thinking via your fingers tap tap tapping at the keyboard, it’s hard to stop.

I have completely shut down to current affairs recently. I’m not sure why, although I could get into dime psychology if I were so inclined (I’m not). Even losing that post I wrote about disengagement is fishy. I was iffy about publishing it anyway.

I dislike watching the news. The newspapers don’t interest me. And come to think about it, some interesting things have been happening round here. But I just don’t want to know, let alone write about it.

This blog being sort of current affairs orientated for so long, I was at a loose end until the offer from cafeDiverso arrived. That sort of woke me up, gave me a new direction, some much needed discipline. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to pack in the blog. Bish was dead against. He said I was getting cobwebs between my fingers. And he was right as usual.

Seeing as my stats are dropping anyway, I might as well keep it up and just write whatever comes into my head. I’ll crack the riddle of my aversion to current affairs in the end, or not, and in the meantime you’ll get to read my cognitive wheels creaking round. Or not. You don’t have to. There’s no quiz at the end and no report card. Don’t you just love being all grown up?
posted by Imshin 21:29

I thought the FlyLady thing would be just another gimmick, but it really is good. I have had no dirty dishes in my sink for days now. And I’ve been flinging. Just a little at a time. It’s a mindset change. And it’s really nice not having any dirt dishes in the sink.

I told them about it in my art class, and we talked about priorities. I have a friend there who is the exact opposite of me in that respect. Her home is the most uncluttered, tidiest, best functioning home I know (yes, even more than yours, Our Sis). And it’s dead cool too, in this understated way. I usually walk around it with my mouth open in wonder when I’m visiting. But she says she never gets any of her own stuff done, and she is incredibly talented so this is a shame.

My problem is that I say to hell with the dishes. I want to get that little thought in my head down before I forget it, or before I don’t feel like it anymore. Or, more often than not, and this is the worst, I say I’ll just have a little shloff before I get started, and before I know it, it’s the next morning.

posted by Imshin 20:54

Alisa taught me how to do the bilingual blog thing. It’s nice to know, just in case. I sometimes have the urge to play that game. But actually it gave me an idea for a new blog. Working on it. Will tell you if anything materializes.



posted by Imshin 16:32

I am waiting to hear from cafeDiverso if they mean to use the two sample stories I sent. Curiosity is slowly killing this particular cat here. I’ve already written more stories for next month, due to be sent in on 1st February.

I’m so used to the immediacy of blogging. You don’t appreciate something until you experience something else. On the other hand it will be interesting to read stories two months after I submitted them. The time delay will make it like reading something someone else wrote.

Of course, there is this niggling insecure feeling (What?! Me insecure? Never!) that they will never actually use anything I send. It will all be found to be inappropriate or something. But fear not. Whatever is turned down by cafeDiverso will appear on Not a Fish straight away.

Talking about cats (as in ‘curiosity killed the…’), Shoosha is being very derelict of her duty lately. The pigeons are back. I told her I would have to sack her if she didn’t pull her (little cotton) socks up. But she just glared at me, meowed, and then walked off in disdain. That showed me!

It’s a very stormy day today. Whoever said that ‘it never rains it pours’ obviously lived in Israel. Just my luck, today is the day I’ve volunteered to chaperone a group of students from Eldest’s school on their weekly visit to a school for autistic children. I think it’s lovely that these kids are doing this, and I am very happy to do my bit to help, but I would have preferred if it wasn’t on such a stormy day.

Update: Well, the chaperone thing is off, someone sprained an ankle or something. I can't say I'm devastated. I've got a new date for April, which is unlikely to be stormy.

posted by Imshin 13:08

Yesterday I wrote this big long post about disengagement and settlers, and now I can't find it anywhere! Infuriating!

If you think I have any intention of rewriting it THINK AGAIN!
posted by Imshin 18:11

Listen, doo da dooo,
Do you want to hear a secret? doo da dooo...
I had neglected to read Alisa’s Hebrew bits, assuming they were the same as the English. Well they’re not! Not word by word, anyway, according to Alisa. Eat your hearts out all you non- Hebrew speakers out there!

And how did I learn this important piece of information? Because I skivved off work today lunchtime and went out with Alisa to Tel Aviv Port, lucky me!

Ooh and I saw Pashosh and Mr. Alisa too.
posted by Imshin 18:06

The Star and the Sword by Pamela Melnikoff
When I left England for Israel at the ripe old age of nine, my school presented me a book as a school leaving prize. It was a local Jewish school. The headmaster was a friend of the family. He called me into his office one day and asked me to choose a book from the pile on his desk.

This is what I chose.

It was later presented to me in front of the whole school, during a ceremony bidding farewell to all the school leavers, mainly eleven year olds leaving for high school. They had added a dedication on the inside of the front cover with my name in print. I couldn't have been prouder.

I read this book over and over again for years afterwards. I think it was one of my most beloved childhood friends. I still have it. It has survived many many of Bish’s book throw-out fests.

And even though I haven’t read it for a while, I can safely say that it is still one of my most favoritest of books ever. I am so happy to see that it is still available.
posted by Imshin 22:51

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