Not because
I woke up in the middle of the night, the night before last, and wrote two words on a piece of paper, in large, hardly-intelligible handwriting.

Hannah Senesh.

I don’t know why her name came to me in my sleep, or why it was so urgent for me to get the words down so I wouldn’t forget them till morning.

* * * *

About ten years ago, a fictional play was to be aired on Israeli television based on the story of the famous Kasztner trial. The play twisted historic facts by saying that Hannah Senesh (Szenes) had broken under SS interrogation and had turned in her friends, thus bringing about their capture by the Nazis and their eventual execution, and, of course, the failure of their mission. The whole country was up in arms.

If I remember correctly, Hannah Senesh’s family appealed to the High Court of Justice to try and prevent the play from being broadcast, claiming, if I am not mistaken, that it was libelous. They were turned down for reasons of freedom of speech or artistic license or something. The play was broadcast.

I have a guilty little confession. I couldn’t care less if Hannah Senesh ‘talked’ or not. And another: I could never understand what that parachuting mission in Europe was all about.

I should have had a blog back then, because all the time that the stormy public debate about this issue was going on, I wanted to shout out, I wanted to tell Hannah Senesh’s family how I felt. I wanted to say to them:

Don’t worry. It’s okay. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make her anything less.

(We know she didn’t talk, but even if she did, who could blame her? How could we expect her to withstand the sort of treatment the SS interrogators would have had no qualms at meting out to those with secrets. Just look at what they did to those guilty only of belonging to the wrong race. And she was both.)

Even if she did talk she was still a heroine. But she didn’t talk. And now we have this opportunity to look at just what that really means.

But don't you see that she was, and is, far more than how she died?

At least to me.

* * * *

Hannah Senesh was my most important role model when I was growing up. I felt, and still feel, very strongly about her.

She was my role model not because she didn’t break under the SS torture she went through before her execution; and not because she volunteered to parachute into Nazi-occupied Hungary, against all odds, in order to try and save Jews; and not because I loved the poems she wrote; and not because of her diary, in which she shared, with such youthful enthusiasm, her Zionism and her story of leaving her Hungarian home for a new life in Palestine; and not even because of that one particular little poem she wrote, so simple and lovely, expressing in just a few words her wonder at the precious beauty of the world and man's place in it, as she walked on the beach near Caesarea.

She wrote it just two years before she was shipped off to Europe never to return, never to know that it would become one of the best loved Israeli songs of all times, its wistful innocence an everlasting symbol of the devastation of the Holocaust.

These would have been reasons enough for my admiration of her, more than enough. Probably they should have been the reasons for my admiration of her. But I was a child. I had my own agenda. I didn't see her as the perfect heroine adorning the walls of the hall of fame of Zionism. All that stuff didn’t interest me in the least. Perhaps that is why the question of whether she talked or not hardly mattered to me.

In my eyes, she was a real person, an ordinary person, someone I could touch, and identify with. And that was her magic for me.

You’ll probably think I completely missed the point, and maybe I did. But I’m hoping you will be able to understand, for I was only a child - a little immigrant child who feared that she had lost one language without gaining another to take its place, and who felt as if she had become mute, no longer able to express herself in any language.

The thing that gave Hannah Senesh a special place in my heart, the thing that made me identify with her so much, was a seemingly insignificant biographical detail - insignificant perhaps when considering who she was and what she did, but not insignificant for me - that she started writing in Hebrew just six months after she came to live in Palestine, and in such beautiful Hebrew. This was an important lesson for me.

More than anyone or anything else at the time, she gave me hope. Now isn’t that ironic?

Hannah Senesh showed me, showed us all, in the way she lived her life, and, yes, in the way she went to her death, that if we care enough, if we have enough determination and dedication, we can do anything.

(I think Rinat reminds me of her a bit.)

אלי, שלא יגמר לעולם החול והים רשרוש של המים ברק השמיים תפלת האדם חנה סנש

Afterthought: Aren't these fine words from this underachiever? Well, there's hope yet.

John sent me these words of Hannah Senesh:

There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth
though they have long been extinct.
There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world
though they are no longer among the living.
These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark.
They light the way for mankind.

Little did she know.

Update: I have just one more thing to say about this subject.

Oh dear (again)



While I was hibernating the Jewish and Israeli Bloggies were taking form. I was sort of vaguely aware of this, but I was far too sleepy to participate in the festivities and assumed that no one had nominated me for anything anyway. This only seemed fair, seeing as I hadn't been writing anything.

Anyway, voting for the preliminary round, whatever that means, has commenced and it appears someone nice did nominate me and I’m up for two categories: Best Overall Blog (Group A), and Best Life in Israel Blog (Group B).

Competition is fierce and it’s a difficult choice because I really like most of the nominees, and I’m sure you do too. I’m not even sure if I will vote for me myself (just kidding, I already did – couldn’t help myself, isn’t that awful of me?). Anyway, head on over and vote for whoever.

And may the best Jews (or non-Jewish Israel supporters) win!

Thank you Dave, for all your hard work. The logo is great.

Important update: Dave tells me Zahava Bogner (AKA Mrs. Treppenwitz)designed the logo.

Sever Plotzker in this morning’s Yediot Aharonot (Hebrew link):

It was the soldiers of the 107th reconnaissance division of Red Army’s 60th Army, under the command of General Konayev, that at lunchtime of the 27th January 1945 passed through the gates of the complex of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps.

They found only about 7000 shells of human beings, the last survivors of what, for four years, had been the biggest wholesale death factory in history.

One million and two hundred thousand Jews were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau intersection, where they went through a selection which sent the great majority of them straight to the gas chambers – the contribution of German technology to mass extermination. Their bodies were cremated. The few who were found suitable for hard labor died of starvation, frost, torture and, eventually, in death marches.

* * * *

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.

Primo Levi

* * * *

Only the sovereign state of the Jewish people,

continues Plotzker,

can insure us that ‘Auschwitz’ will not happen again. Only the existence of a strong State of Israel allows Jews to be masters of their destiny, of their future and the future of their children.

[...]

The State of Israel, and nothing else, is the answer to Auschwitz.

We shall not forget it.

(My translation)

I suggest you read the entire piece, if you can read Hebrew.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

A lovely Brian Blum this week.

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...

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

We are Seven

William Wordsworth

--------A SIMPLE Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.

"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."

"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be."

Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."

"You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little Maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.

"My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.

"And often after sunset, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

"The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.

"So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.

"And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."

"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply,
"O Master! we are seven."

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

1798.

Maybe it's time to change my blog description (top of left sidebar). It no longer fits my ramblings. How can I be 'trying to make sense of current insanity' if I am doing my best to ignore it?

Rainy Shabbat morning nostalgic musings.
For a short while when I was young I thought everything had to be beautifully designed, cold, tidy. This was before I realized that my own personal untidiness was not something I was ever going to outgrow, and that I was destined to live my life amid uncontrollable clutter. No beautifully designed modern apartment for me. I'm far too lazy to be bothered to do what has to be done to have such a home. And if I ever find myself with one, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Now I'm an ugliness groupie. The little makolet (grocery store) on the corner (sadly there are not many of them left); trees along the sidewalks decorated with homemade notices for apartments to rent, lost dogs, cosmeticians (these days, municipal workers take them down minutes after they’ve been pinned up); a little river of rain water flowing into a drain at the edge of the road, blocked with leaves, plastic bags, the remains of a discarded red umbrella (as long as there’s rain, we’ll always have that).

Life - unplanned, un-designed, just comfortable ugly.

Israel has become more ‘designed’ in recent years than ever before. I find it hard to connect. It seems false.

Some of it is nice. This ‘retro’ trend is nice, even though it tends to be too precise. Hip Sixties/Seventies style restaurants with wooden window frames and aluminum chairs and tables never quite manage to capture the wonderful yuckiness of the real thing.

Do you know what I really miss? I miss real honest-to-God kitsch. I miss Shimi Tavori.

Update: Oh dear. Dad's trying to fix me. Look what he just sent me. I'm feeling panicky. Didn't I just say I liked clutter, or something like that? I joined though. I'm a pushover. Apparently I am now a FlyBaby. Here goes nothing.

Remember the summer of ’77?
Of course you do. It was the summer we had that magical date 7/7/77. At the age of twelve it seemed meaningful for some reason.

What else? Virginia Wade won Wimbledon. And Elvis died.

It was also the summer my parents dumped R.T. and me with our grandparents in England and went off by themselves to sunny California.

Now it wasn't as if I didn't appreciate being able to spend time with my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, and it wasn't as if they weren't all very kind to me, doing their best to entertain me. It was just that after a while I wanted to go home already.

R.T. was fine. He still had loads of friends in England and was busy most of the time. I had lost touch with mine. I was bored.

Boredom is probably why I remember those momentous events listed above. Instead of spending the summer at the beach and/or investigating leaves and dissecting ants (unlike my poor deprived children, my parents did not make me live in the middle of a concrete and asphalt jungle), I watched most of Wimbledon’s Ladies Tournament, a novelty because it wasn’t shown on Israeli television (not surprising, seeing as there was only one channel and even that was run by the state and was still in black and white for years to come).

If I had been in Israel, I doubt I would have heard of Elvis’s untimely overdose of barbiturates, or whatever it was. I’d have been too busy wandering around the apartment building inhabited by that boy I had a crush on, in the hopes of bumping into him (Not! I was far too shy).

And if I had been in Israel, I certainly wouldn’t have got into Grandma’s bad books for my shameful exhibition of lack of respect for the Royal Family.

I wasn’t English anymore, see? I was Israeli now. But, unfortunately for me, 1977 also saw the celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee and royal fever was at its pre-Diana peak. So when Grandma called me to come quickly into the morning room, because the Queen was on the telly, I just stayed in the kitchenette (I don’t know why it was called that, it was far bigger than most Israeli kitchens) and kept on munching my chocolate biscuit.

Grandma was not amused. She was even less amused when I announced that she wasn’t my queen. I was in the bad books all summer.

* * * *

I thought about Grandma (Aleiyha Hashalom) this week while reading about young Prince Harry’s latest antics. Good thing she wasn’t around to witness it.

Karni Crossing, border with Gaza: Six murdered.
I don’t want to talk about it.

The best time to be out on your bike in Hayarkon Park is RIGHT NOW! There's a great winter sun and the air is fresh.

What are you waiting for? Oh, you're working? Too bad.

Insight
I've been hibernating, that's what it was.

The Supermarket
As a child I highly appreciated the express line in the supermarket checkout. Instead of standing in line for half an hour, holding my painstakingly chosen bar of chocolate, in between two old ladies who would bump into me repeatedly with their with enormous trolleys and shout at me, hoping I would go away, I could now stand in line for only fifteen minutes in between two old ladies, who would still shout at me, but without the threat of trolley violence.

The three item maximum meant that all they usually had to pay for was a loaf of un-sliced bread (they didn’t have self-service bread slicing machines in the supermarkets back then) and a dripping plastic bag of milk (cartons were yet to be heard of; glass bottles had not long been discarded).

And then one day, years later, I was standing in line at the express with my maximum three items, when I suddenly noticed that the lady in front of me had (gasp!) five items. I managed to make a complete fool of myself, before she smirked and pointed at the sign: Five items maximum. Oysh.

That was the beginning of the end. There should have been a law passed right there and then in the Knesset about the three item maximum, they should have stopped it before it got out of hand. Because if one thing is certain, and not a lot is certain in this life, it’s that it’s been all down hill since then. The five item maximum was soon six, and then eight. Now it’s ten.

These days it’s quicker to stand behind a woman with three trolleys holding the week’s groceries for a family of TEN than trying for the (no longer) express line.

But I haven’t given up on special counters yet. I have a foolproof idea to solve all aggravation in the supermarket: The Suckers’ Line (in Hebrew = frayerim, a word guaranteed to deter undesirables).

This is the line for people like me, who would rather wait in line for two hours with two items, behind that woman with the three trolleys, I mentioned before, only in triplicate, than to have to contend with the following (who will, of course, be strictly banned from the Suckers’ Line):

People who park their trolleys in line with two items in it, then proceed to gradually fill it up with the rest of their shopping, going off and coming back with more and more items, as their place in the queue moves nearer to its destiny.

People who hide baskets with groceries underneath those stands they always put by the counters with things you really don’t need but your kids can’t resist (those will be banned from the Suckers’ Line as well), and then come back after half an hour, produce their baskets as from thin air and demand to be let in before everyone in the line because they were there first.

People who park their trolley in one queue and then go and stand in another, because how are they to know which queue will be faster.

People who go through the so-called express line with fifteen to twenty items, and the checkout workers who allow them to.

People who think the express line is a place you go to get rid of the very smallest of your change, for which they have to dig to the very bottom of their very full purses (‘I’m sure I had another five agorot piece down there somewhere’).

And last but certainly not least:

People who ram their trolleys into particularly small nine-year-old girls.

I know, I’m dreaming.

I have this recurring discussion with Sigal about life in the country versus life in the city. Not that Sigal actually lives in the country, mind you. What she lives in is a little satellite town, in a dinky little house with a dinky little garden around it and with a big nasty SUV parked outside to take Dor to the kindergarten.

I’m sure her life is wonderful in her dinky little house, with Dor having all that freedom to run in and out of the dinky little garden. I’m sure it’s worth every minute of every hour of sitting in the big nasty SUV in the traffic on the way to and from work.

It’s just not my cup of Turkish coffee.

I am one of those rare exotic birds – the ideological inner city dweller. It’s not that I don’t fantasize sometimes about my own little dinky house with its dinky little garden, although knowing me it would just be a weed garden. And it’s not that I never had guilty panic attacks, when the girls were little, that they weren’t wild nature children wandering freely, investigating leaves and dissecting ants.

But I do so love being in walking/cycling/short bus ride distance from everything I could possibly ever need (although I do own a car and I even use it occasionally). And I love the bustle and the people in the cafes, and yes, even the roads full of cars and buses, especially when I can whiz past on my bike. It’s all so alive.

And if all that is not enough, I really do think this country is far too small and far too populated, for us to allow ourselves the luxury of suburban sprawl.

What else has been happening, seeing as I have no inclination to discuss new governments, right-wing refuseniks, the threat of wide-spread civil disobedience, or even Palestinian elections?

Well, for one thing, it's winter and my family never fails to succumb to winter illnesses. We haven't had anything really bad this year so far (tfu tfu tfu), but we've been coughing and spluttering our fair share.

Today is a lovely sunny day. I thought I'd get up early and go out for a spin on my bike before anyone else woke up, but just limbering up a bit at home first tired me out, so I decided maybe it was not such a good idea.

I've come to the conclusion that much of my dissatisfaction at work is a result of my sitting alone in a room. I have been playing with the idea of going back to what I did before, which involves far more interaction with other people. It's in the same department, and is therefore not such a big move and I will probably be welcomed, if they have a position for me, because I am experienced and pretty knowledgeable, although things have changed a bit since I stopped doing it. One of the smaller managers has actually been trying to persuade me to make the move, but I'm not sure how much say he really has in the matter.

On the other hand, I like my little kingdom (queendom?), even if it is sometimes a bit lonely. I have a lot of independence and am able to promote things that interest me, or that I think are important. I will miss all that. So I am undecided.

The nicest news is that I have been invited to join cafeDiverso as Storyteller for Israel. I'll tell you when anything of mine is published there. Until that happens, you might like to read some of the lovely stories there written by other people. This is one of my favorites.

So much to learn about Israel
Bish, R.T., and I started a course with the Open University today. One Friday a month we will go on a bus trip to learn about "Man and the Desert". Our teacher is archeologist Avner Goren, who you will probably know all about if you have read Walking with the Bible. I haven't, but definitely mean to. I dare you to try to read that link without it making you want to order the book. This too. They're making a film of it, by the way.

Today was a sort of introduction to the course, and took place in the Land of Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, and in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. We learnt so much, and it was so very interesting, that I can't tell you about it, I wouldn't know where to begin.

I can just say one thing, and that is that we saw tangible evidence that we really are living in what was the cradle of civilization. And I feel privileged to be able to learn about it all straight from the horse's mouth. (Would that be a very rude thing to say about a world-famous archeologist?)

Next month we're in the Beer Sheva area. If I remember to, I could take the camera and take some photos to show you.

The truth is we really don't know what to do with the Gregorian New Year in this country. It is widely regarded with suspicion as a Christian religious holiday and is often confused with Christmas. It is called Sylvester here, apparently after the saint of the day, which is a bit off-putting seeing as rumor has it that he was even nastier to Jews than other people back then.

I have pointed out to friends on a number of occasions that no one calls it Sylvester in English speaking countries that I know of, well maybe very religous people do, and that although admittedly it isn't our calendar, most of us live by it, and not by the Jewish calendar. I've never celebrated it myself though.

Seeing as any religious meaning of this date is lost on us, besides symbolizing the start of some really bad times, it's difficult to get all worked up and excited about the change of a number, which for us is, at best, completely meaningless, and, if we think about it a little, can make us feel a bit squeamish.

All that is not to say that a lot of Israelis do not get swept up by celebrations, and that dealers in so-called recreational drugs don't have a field day in and around the Tel Aviv clubs, or so I've heard, but as far as most of the party-goers are concerned it’s just another 'Seeba le-Meseeba' (reason to party) with some hazy notion of trying to be like 'a normal country' (whatever that is).

So anyway, don't mind me. Now that I've finished putting my foot in it, I'll just say what I had been meaning to say from the start -

I hope you all have a great time in your New Year celebrations and may 2005 be a really good one.

It looks so beautiful, doesn't it? Who would know that it left so much death and destruction in its wake?

Thank you, Our Sis.

#5 bus, lunchtime, a bus full of acne-challenged school-kids and crotchety pensioners.

Meryl, when you finally get here, I beseech you (Beseech?! Where do I get these words from?), do not, whatever you do, I repeat (and I cannot stress this enough), do not take the #5 bus in Tel Aviv at lunchtime. You’ll be out of here like a shot. I suggest you carry out your very welcome and much appreciated ceremonious bus-ride-in-Israel-for-peace-and-solidarity-with-the-Israeli-people, should you be planning to do so, at some other time of the day and on another other bus line.

Surrounded by three strapping seventeen-year-old boys (or should I say men?) talking endlessly about which examinations they had failed for which elite army units and why, it was I, thirty-nine-year-old mother of one teenager and one pre-teen, who was singled out for a severe prodding in the back from one of the crotchety pensioners for not vacating my hard-fought-for-seat to another crotchety pensioner standing in the aisle.

Not that it was right of me to have not shot out of my seat at the first sighting, from the corner of my eye, of the said standing crotchety pensioner, although I confess I was daydreaming and truly didn’t notice her, but ever since I spent two pregnancies riding Tel Aviv buses, right up till a very fat, heavy, tired, and, yes, crotchety stage of both pregnancies, without once having anyone get up and offer me their seat, I have sadly lost my manners.

On second thoughts: I have suddenly realized that the prodder was paying me a compliment. He obviously couldn’t tell me apart from the kids. How nice. I take it all back. Meryl, ride the bus!

Much of my life has been a continuing struggle to try to grasp the Holocaust. Particular moments in time and certain events have been turning points in the gradual development of my understanding of the horror. I'm not sure why, but one of these events was back when I first heard that Serbs in Croatia were being given ten minutes to pack up and get out.

Colours in Black&White is a moving story about being both Serb and Croat.

And then, every so often, lest we forget, Nature, God, call it what you will, sends us a reminder.

An earthquake guy on Israeli radio station Reshet Bet commented that yesterday's earthquake created the energy of a hundred thousand Hiroshimas.

Makes you think.

Afterthought: The death toll rises and rises. So horrifying.

Some of the places hit worst are high on the list of both Israeli backpackers' and regular tourists' favorites. Around a hundred Israelis haven't checked in yet to say they are okay. At this point, we can only pray that it's just that communications are down, and not worse.

A very Merry Christmas to all Christians, everywhere.

Today we had lunch in a little restaurant in Yaffo. There was a christmas tree there, all decorated with balls and things, and colorful fairy lights going on and off. It was nice. There was an ice cream and Sahlab store next door, and they had a tree too.

So much to say and so little inclination to say it.
I am not a very sociable person at the best of times, and at the moment, it appears, even less than usual. Blogging, a sort of sociable endeavor, even without a comment option, seems daunting, when the preferred pastime is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Alisa sent me this intriguing essay a week or so ago. I read it in the Dead Sea. You should read it also. It brings up some very interesting points about the media. I have quite a lot to say about it, but I can't be bothered. I'll just say that: a. It's far too early, in my view, to write off the nation state. b. I think ordinary people are finally on to the mass media and their power over us could possibly actually be beginning to decline, otherwise how can you explain George W. Bush winning the elections in the US, and, even more inexplicable, Arik Sharon's continuing popularity in Israel?

In an attempt to blog while lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, I've availed myself of Bish's old laptop, and I'm actually lying in bed as I write this. I'm also listening to a very nice children's program on Galei Tzahal radio station. I bet you didn't know that Galei Tzahal had a children's program on Shabbat mornings. Neither did I. Between 8 and 9.

It is not to be confused with the popular 'Makhela Aleeza' ('Merry Choir') of childhood memories (if you are very old, like me). That was on Kol Yisrael, of course, also on Shabbat mornings. I only discovered this program because someone I know was interviewed on it.

Yesterday I made chicken soup for the girls. I haven't done that since Bish and I became vegetarian about eight years ago. So I haven't forgotten how to do it, which is nice to know. Youngest said it was very tasty. Eldest had to rush out to meet friends. "Just a little bowl of chicken soup, before you go," I tried, but she was gone.

Putting Hannuka to good use (?)
Both my daughters have spent a large part of the Hannuka vacation studying!

Eldest has an exam on Thursday in which her knowledge on various 'Heritage' subjects will be checked. Heritage (Moreshet) is a silly name for Zionism, Judaism and Democracy studies, introduced in recent years because of apparent student ignorance on these subjects. Eldest has to learn 43 concepts for this exam. Not that there was any chance of her thinking Herzl was ever prime minister of Israel, but she's so conscientious, she's been in her room cramming away all week.

If she didn't have Mum's exact smile, I'd be sure they'd swapped her in the maternity ward. Neither Bish nor I were ever so studious - Bish because he was far too clever to ever need to cram, and me because I was far too lazy.

Youngest finally finished an overdue project on asteroids, only to move on to building a model of Jericho just before the walls came tumbling down.

[I know you don't believe a word of this. I wouldn't either if I were you, but it's true.]

Once upon a time, Friday and Saturdays after lunch in the summer were spent in the 'Closed Beach' in Haifa. 'Closed' because you had to pay to get in. We were lucky enough to have a season ticket, and a cabin. After a few years on the waiting list we even managed to get a cabin with a shower.

They were a bit tatty, the cabins, crumbling green plaster, definitely no frills, but not cheap I seem to remember, although I've no idea how much it cost my parents.

The cabin was extremely useful for storing chairs, sunshade, and a bottle of neft and a hard bush for scrubbing your feet to get the tar off. (Whatever happened to all that tar?)

My parents used to meet all their gang. I used to wander off by myself and only come back when it started to get dark.

I used to spend the whole afternoon, bopping up and down on the waves, or climbing over the rocks looking for crabs and other little creatures. Occasionally I would go over to the big swimming pool over on the other side of the beach. I would go on my own, but I wouldn't be on my own for long.

I was always wooed by a little girl of around my age who would decide we were friends. She always had long dark hair, a dark thin body, and the same faded check swimsuit, blue or green or pink. All the little girls had the same swimsuit.

What made me so exotic, so desirable as swimming pool friend of the moment, was the inescapable fact that I had a different swimsuit.

So here I am this Hannuka weekend, sitting with my family at breakfast in a very nice hotel in the Dead Sea, surrounded by other Israeli middle class families. My stay at the hotel is heavily subsidized by my workplace, otherwise we wouldn't be there. I believe this is the case for many of the families around me. And I am thinking that this is lovely, and that thirty years ago things were so very different. Gone are those awful uniform swimsuits. The standard of living of ordinary Israelis has come a long way since those days.

Well, we came home and I had lots to say. But then I discovered they were showing the first three episodes of the Beeb's excellent Pride and Prejudice (which I must have seen at least five times) on TV, and that was that.

So I will have to share my pleasure at watching other Israeli families eating breakfast in an Israeli hotel, some other time.

Oh, and I have more observations on the Zombified issue. This will also have to wait. You see, the thing that happens when I start watching P & P yet again, is that I always have to dig up my very tattered copy of the book (I bought it second hand about twenty years ago and it has had plenty of use since) and read it all over again.

And that's what I'm going to do right now.

Vote Meryl
So I tend to be with Laurence Simon on the Blog Awards thing (although I don't feel as fiercely about it), and not just because I don't stand a chance (you can go and vote for Allison or Dave or me here, and by the way, thank you so much for nominating me, Segacs, even though I've been so lazy lately), but because blogging is one big popularity test from beginning to end anyway, so what do we need blog awards for?

That said the person I would most like to get a blog award is Meryl Yourish. And not just because she's one of my very very favorites, my first stop every day, and not just because I may get a much coveted right-side-bar-link, but mainly because I break out in a cold sweat every time I think that she could finally visit Israel AND HATE IT!

I reckon that maybe if I shmooz her up enough before she gets around to coming, she won't notice the people cutting her in the queue, or the cab driver ripping her off, or people talking to her in Hebrew all the time (just kidding, I know she'll get a kick out of that one), or whatever particularly offensive unpleasantness she may happen to encounter here.

Go vote for her.

We're off to the Dead Sea as promised. Back Saturday night. Don't come for Spaghetti tomorrow, R.T.

I think this morning's latkes were the best ever.
Here is Mum's basic recipe:
Grate four big potatoes. Let drain.
Mix two eggs, four tablespoons self-raising flour or four tablespoons plain flour and one teaspoon baking powder, salt and pepper.
Heat oil. Get Youngest to make the latkes. Fry till golden.

Here's what I added this morning, all grated:
One onion
One zucchini
One Jerusalem artichoke
A bunch of parsley
Two more eggs
More flour.

As I said, the best ever.

Loving the wrinkles
A reader comments:

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the word "zombified." And I do appreciate the fact that you had not one but two afterthoughts. Nevertheless I think that the word expressed something you really feel. And I'm sorry but I just have to disagree.

Don't judge the Jews by the Holocaust. The Jews of pre-war Europe were a pretty vibrant group. Didn't they think up Zionism? As well as anti-Zionism, and a bunch of other movements.

I totally agree.

He said something about drying the swamps causing ecological problems, as well. I agree with that too. Drying the swamps is this crazy Zionist symbol that people say with half a wink these days. Still it did help in combatting malaria and making the country inhabitable. The big big mistake was drying the Hula Lake. Anyway

Law number one for reading Not a Fish: Always remember that tomorrow I will probably say the direct opposite of what I have said today with much the same conviction.

Law number two for reading Not a Fish: Don't take me too seriously. I don't.

I don't think we should get stuck in ideas. In an argument, fr'instance, most people could (and should) probably argue vehemently for both sides. On this blog I usually make the case for Israel, but in other places, where it is called for, where it is lacking, or in different points in time, I could just as easily be making the case for the Palestinians (They kind of lost me, at some point, when I realized that their leadership was still out to get me in a big way, contrary to public declarations, but I'm still extremely sad that the ordinary people are paying such a high price as a result).

* * * *

I have always tried to steer clear from the subject of Hebrew because it is a divisive one: Israeli Jews speak Hebrew; Disapora Jews, on the whole, do not. But Hebrew is there, it plays a big part in Israeli culture, and ignoring that fact or belittling it won't change it. Actually, this even stresses my point. Israel is not just a place where a large number of Jews live together (That's New York).

Although Israel is very Jewish in spirit, its Jewishness is only part of the picture. Israel is home to a people called The Israelis, a large percentage of whom are Jews.

* * * *

When I started writing yesterday's post about Hebrew, I was thinking about a non-Zionist Jewish friend, who, last time I met him a few years ago, was embarking on a journey to reconnect with his roots. His roots were not Judaism, he said, but, as a Polish-born Jew who fled the Nazis to near-starvation in Siberia, and from there proceeded to Canada, he talked of something elusive that he called Yiddishkeit. This struck a nostalgic chord deep inside me and sent me running, along with a lot of other Israelis, I found, to study Yiddish and immerse myself in Yiddishkeit, and books about Polish Jewry. It was lovely, and warm, and sad, in a way - a path full of insights.

Yesterday's post was a rebellion, as was Zionism itself in its early days, against Yiddishkeit. It's lovely to bathe in the rich waters of nostalgia, and it has its place, but life is here and now. (Even my writing in English is a form of escapism).

Happy second candle of Hannuka

Baruch boa'cha habayta, Azzam Azzam. Hikeenoo lecha*.

The bit I liked best about that Julie Burchill article was her reaction to the fact that they spoke to her in Hebrew on the plane.

Some people just have to be negative and so, of course, she was presented with the explanation that no one expects non-Israeli tourists to come to Israel anymore. Well, yes, but I can think of more reasons. One is that Israeli society is so diverse these days that even if you are a blonde Slavic beauty with high cheekbones, or a black African goddess with long plaits, colorful beads all the way down your back, and ethnic tattoos on you neck, you could still be just as likely to be fluent in Hebrew.

People will speak to you in Hebrew on an Israeli plane, on an Israeli street, in an Israeli queue to buy Israeli tickets in an Israeli cinema (to see an American film), because Hebrew is the language Israelis speak. This is what Burchill was experiencing on that El Al plane.

None of my friends read anything I write because all my friends are Hebrew speakers. I have a good friend who I would really like to share this story with. I think she would be highly amused by it. She knows all the characters. But I can't share it with her because her English isn't good enough, dammit. And Our Sis sends me all these great jokes by e-mail all the time, but I have to translate them all into Hebrew in order to forward them. This is very time consuming. Is it any wonder I've stopped blogging regularly?

People who think Israel is some temporary colonial experiment are missing a powerful point. There are about five and a half million of us Hebrew speaking Israelis round here. For the large majority of us (present company excluded), Hebrew is our mother tongue, and a large percentage of us can't communicate very well in ANY OTHER LANGUAGE! Hebrew is our whole world.

Why should Julie Burchill find that so surprising (even in a good way)?

Maybe people who speak widely spoken languages, like English, French, Russian, think languages spoken by just a few million people are superfluous. They could be right, but what they think doesn't really interest most Israelis. Hebrew is the language they dream in. And it doesn't interest them either that Hebrew was a dead language for thousands of years, used only for prayer and study, up till about a hundred or so years ago. It's alive and kicking now. And how.

And guess what? We get to be the favored few who can read THE biggest bestseller of all times as it originally appeared.

You may have read the Bible. You may have been reading it all your life. You may know large parts of it by heart. But, hey, it's like Shakespeare - you've never really read it until you've read the original (I've read Shakespeare in Hebrew. Believe me, it's not the same). The Bible is rich and witty and wise and many faceted in ways you cannot even begin to grasp, if all you're getting is a translation of a translation. And I say that without being such a Bible scholar, just from a taste here and there. What must the real experts be experiencing? The mind boggles.

And that's because Hebrew is this great language. Hey, I'd be learning Hebrew just to read Yehuda Amichai's poems if I were you.

The resuscitation of the Hebrew language IS the essence of Zionism, one of its greatest achievements, if not the very greatest. We brought a dead language to life. We rejuvenated a zombified group of people. We dried the swamps. We won the wars. And here we are. Not a colonial experiment. Not a foreign element in someone else's land.

Us. Here. Now. Speaking Hebrew.

___________________________

* = Welcome home, Azzam Azzam. We've been waiting for you.

Afterthought: By zombified I didn't mean to knock the present day Jewish Diaspora. I believe the present day Jewish Diaspora doesn't resemble the Jewish Diaspora of the days before the State of Israel existed. I believe the State of Israel rejuvenated the Jewish Diaspora as well as its own inhabitants, Jewish and non-Jewish (and vice versa), in more ways than one.

Afterthought afterthought: So maybe zombified wasn't a very successful description even of pre-State of Israel Jewish Diaspora.

Okay, I confess. I liked the word and I wanted to use it. So launch a Kassam Rocket at me.

Afterthought afterthought afterthought:I was going to say 'So blow me up on a bus', but I thought that would be even more tasteless than 'zombified'.

This is the point where I know it's way past my bedtime.

Happy first candle of Hannuka!

New hope. Definitely. It is in the air. Now that the locusts have gone.

By the way, I notice the scaremongering newspapers have had nothing nice to say about the Ministry of Agriculture's apparent success in combatting the locust. And if that's not the case, where ARE they? They should be chewing up our humble city garden in Tel Aviv by now.

Yahrzeit
Hannuka used to be just Hannuka. Not that there is anything wrong with Hannuka, it's only my favorite festival, me being a closet pyromaniac and all. But now Hannuka is also Mum's festival, and always will be.

I'd decided not to write anything about Mum this year, to give her memory the silent treatment, as it were, but in a good way, like a meditative thing. I've written enough, I reckoned.

Still, words written or not, our relationship continues to evolve, Mum's and mine. During the year, I put all her photos away. I decided we both needed a rest. Or have I been hiding? The fact remains that often I miss her just as much, maybe more, and the memory of her passing is just as sharp and painful as right after it happened.

So I don't think about it. Only I see her when I look in the mirror. I hear her in my voice when I speak. And most of all, I see her in Eldest. I see the very best of her in Eldest. And then I know how fortunate I am.

There, I've written, and I didn't mean to.

Oh dear. Weblog Awards time again. I don't think I can take it. Well, luckily some Iraqi is winning so I won't have to get all stressed out this year. I'll just sum up that none of us Israelis will win because The Whole World is against us, and because of anti-Semitism, and Global Warming, and swarms of locust, yada yada yada.

(It's either the meditation or the orange-y liquid on the rocks in the nightclub, something hasn't worn off)

Talking about locust, I saw about five. They flew at the car windscreen on the Arava road. Very disappointing.

Well, you can't imagine two more different holidays just three days apart!

On Saturday I was on my knees in the meditation hall in a kibbutz up north, contemplating my breath, the rain, anger, and seeing things positively. The teacher was wonderful - an Israeli Buddhist monk, fresh out of the monastery in the South of France. I'll tell you more about him some other time.

I was completely silent for two and a half days, so much so that when my room mates rebelled and proceeded to hold a happy-go-lucky pajama party, complete with Tarot cards and stories about trips to India, I said not a word. I didn't even get annoyed. I just rolled up my duvet cover and slipped out. I bravely forged my way in the rain and the wind, to sleep in the nice warm, and, mainly, silent meditation hall. Nothing could disturb my peace.

And then, on Tuesday night I was I was hopping up and down, stomach full of bad beer, on a cruise on the Red Sea, along with similarly intoxicated coworkers, to the latest Mizrahi pop songs.

We were celebrating a big important project that had come to a successful conclusion just a few days before. It was as rowdy and out of control as the previous holiday had been quiet and calm (well, except for the rebels in my room).

The next night we all went to a local nightclub. I'd never been to a nightclub before. Well, besides once, in the late eighties, when a friend organized an African evening in a club in Tel Aviv, long before it was fashionable, and invited us. I think there were about three people there besides us.

The Eilat nightclub could have been quite the anthropological event had I not been completely sloshed. I could have written a thesis on the toilets alone. For one thing, the cubicles were big enough to have orgies in them, but there was a guard on the entrance. There have been a few rape cases lately, so club owners aren't taking any chances, apparently. The cubicles didn't lock and they soon became absolutely filthy, not very inviting for any hanky panky. Oh and the lights in there were so bright you could hardly see, especially coming from the darkened dance floor.

I'm not sure what it was I was drinking but it was much smoother than the beer on the boat, and far more lethal. At three in the morning, my faithful designated driver decided I was getting far too pally with two guys young enough to be… well never mind, grabbed me off the dance floor, hauled me out, stuffed me in a car, and took me safely back to my room. Oh well. No one lets me have any fun (I may have imagined all this. I'll know for sure when I see the photos).

I came home with a terrible cold. I think my body couldn't take the shock of three days of meditation followed by three days of partying in one week.

Next weekend I'm off to the Dead Sea with Bish and the girls for Hannuka.

I do work sometimes. Honest.

Update: I can't really believe I wrote the above, or that I actually published it. What must you be thinking? (I know what Bish is thinking, because he told me. But then, Bish knows me a bit better than you lot do)

It has happened!
Azzam Azzam is free at last!

I'm so happy and relieved. Azzam Azzam is an Israeli who was convicted in Egypt of spying for Israel. Israel has been adamant that he is innocent. Today, after eight years in an Egyptian prison, he was swapped for those six nutty Egyptian students arrested a few months ago for crossiing the border, planning to rob a bank and steal a tank.

(I knew it would take a momentous event to get me back to blogging. I've been completely stuck. Well, I'm so glad it is this event that has finally jumpstarted me)

Update: More about this.

I have a new computer!
Well, actually it's Eldest's old one. She's the one with a new one. I'm lowest on the food chain round here. But at least I've finally got XP, oh and MSN Messenger. Up till now the whole family has been talking about me behind my back all the time. At last I can really feel part of the family.

Oh, by the way, we had another flood while I was away being peaceful in the cold and rain of the Galilee, a serious one this time. I'm so pleased I missed it. Even Bish was relieved I wasn't around. I tend to get hysterical when I see my extensive shoe collection under water. I can't believe our landlady came to help him bail out water. So she finally got to see how we really live. I usually tidy up a bit before she comes. Embarrassing.

I’m off to a meditation retreat this weekend, in the north of the country. It will be very cold, it will be very rainy. Hopefully it will also be spiritually uplifting ;-)

Blog Break

Locust
When I was a child I used to be terrified of locust. Not that I’d ever seen any, but I had this horror that they’d come and eat everything and there would be nothing left and we’d all starve to death. The idea of them all swarming everywhere and there being no escape was pretty scary as well. I had a very clear vision in my mind of The Ten Plagues in Egypt, when Pharaoh wouldn't let the People of Israel go.



Well now they’re here. But now I know we can handle them and that, unlike the countries they came from, we’ll be able to get rid of them before they do too much damage.

I’m going to Eilat next week, a trip with work. I do hope they’re gone by then. If not, it will be an interesting experience. We could have a barbeque. I hear they’re kosher. They certainly look meaty. Oops, I forgot I was vegetarian!

Update:
I hope I didn't speak too soon. There are reports that some of the locust are as far north as the Dead Sea and there have even been sightings of one or two in Tel Aviv! The people from the Agriculture Ministry are still quite confident that they can handle this, so I'll just take their word for it. They know what they're talking about, unlike the reporters, who have been known to froth up a storm in a teacup over nothing :-P

I must apologize for ignoring my blog for so long. I am completely and utterly uninterested in current affairs right now. This happens.

I have finally caved in to my daughters’ nagging and have started reading The Princess Diaries.

There is nothing quite as uplifting as reading children’s books. Anyway these are great fun. I’m on the second book right now.

What I can’t understand is how they managed to make such mediocre movies out of them. The first wasn’t bad, but not a patch on the books. The second movie was exceptionally atrocious. Really, it took the word atrocious to new heights. And now I’m reading the books I really can’t understand why she agreed to it, Meg Cabot, that is - the writer. Maybe she had gambling debts she had to pay off in a hurry.

A particularly good thing has come out of the Princess Diaries as far as Eldest is concerned. You see, we had the first three in Hebrew, but Bish bought the fourth in English, by mistake. Seeing as it hasn’t come out in Hebrew yet, Eldest deigned to read it! In English!! This is breaking new ground, you see. Her English is excellent, although she refuses to admit it and refuses to utter a word in English, or READ ANY BOOKS in English. (I know her English is excellent because she understands everything).

It’s slow going, but she’s actually enjoying reading it. She says she doesn’t understand all the words (Duh! Like I understand all the words), but she is reading fluently, and the fact that she’s reading it slowly is nice, because it’s lasting longer.

YIPPEE!

Happy Birthday, Meryl.

Lern yerself Yiddish
So a Goyisher Scouser sends me this. I ask you, what's the world coming to?

Allison has it right. No glee. Relief.

Relief and hope. There is a lot of talk of Egyptian presidents Nasser and Sadat. We are continually reminded that it took Sadat only four months after Nasser died to start making changes. He eventually went on to make peace with Israel. And he meant it, unlike Arafat.

But there’s something else that Uzi Benziman doesn’t mention in that article quoted by Allison. Something you must have noticed. A lot of the posters of Arafat being hoisted up and pasted up in the streets of Ramallah are not images of Arafat the so-called politician, but earlier photographs, of Arafat the terrorist. The Palestinians are giving a message.

Rabin’s heritage was one of peace.

Arafat’s heritage is one of death and destruction.

Israel has not forgotten Munich, or Ma’alot, or Misgav Am. Israel has not forgotten Arafat the brutal baby killer, from the days before he started pretending to be anything else.

And neither, it seems, have the Palestinians. But still we’re hopeful.

Sail with Life
Once upon a time a group of Jews decided they were fed up of waiting for the ruling Turks to improve conditions in the ancient city of Yaffo,

and that the over-population, the bad hygiene, and the squalor were too much for them. They decided to move out.

They set about building the world’s first Hebrew city for two thousand years or so, Tel Aviv. This morning’s bike ride took us through the narrow alleyways of that first neighborhood, built on the outskirts of Yaffo.










These days it’s a trendy neigborhood right in the center of the business part of Tel Aviv.


We came back via the beach and the Yarkon River.


This is my all time favorite, a sign advertising boat hire on the Yarkon River.

‘Shootoo etzel Hayim, hahana’a kiflayim’ or in other words – ‘Sail with Hayim (a Hebrew name meaning life), twice the enjoyment’. In Hebrew it rhymes.

And that’s all I have to say right now about the passing of Arafat.

Afterthought: Thank you Mark.

Ooh ooh ooh, guess who I just saw on channel 1 news – Rinat! Our Rinat! She was in some room with a load of politicians, probably some Knesset committee or other (We were just in the middle of a minor family crisis so I wasn’t really listening).

Okay, I know she works for the Knesset Channel so I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’ve never watched the Knesset channel.

Rinat certainly stood out among all those balding inflated egos. You can’t mistake her fresh, bubbling personality.

I know how you feel. I’ve been down that path
When I was young, I was often excited and intrigued by the strangeness of having experienced Israel both as a foreign visitor, a tourist, and then, by contrast, as an Israeli, as a local.

I visited Israel twice as a small child, before we made Aliya. The country left a deep impression on me. I had sensed something fresh and vibrant that I loved.

There was an apartment building that was being built as we drove up Sea Road in Haifa in the taxi. The sound of the workers hammering; the bright summer sun; the wind in my face through the open windows of the taxi, still with no air-conditioning back then; the strong smell of the natural Mount Carmel vegetation. I was intoxicated.

When we came to live in Haifa a few years later, I was already filled with love for the place. For years I tried to relive that first drive up the mountain, and identify the exact apartment building that I had witnessed being constructed.

What I was really trying to recapture was a moment filled with excitement and freshness and happiness. It was one of those rare magical moments, a moment of love and awareness.

* * * * * *

I recognize the sentiments expressed by those opposed to Bush, crushed by his success at the polls. I recognize the frustration, anger, and sadness they feel, faced as they are with the stupidity and ignorance of people for not voting for the right candidate. I’ve been there myself.

In our case, not only had they elected the wrong guy, they had done it just a few months after someone from their side had murdered our prime minister.

We couldn’t help thinking, like the prophet Elijah who said to King Ahab, all those years ago in this very same land, “Hast thou killed and also taken possession?” (Kings I, 21, 19)

They had murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, they had murdered peace, and now they were electing into office the very man who had stood up on that balcony above Zion Square in Jerusalem, as the crowds below him held up banners of PM Rabin in an SS uniform.

Can you imagine the bitterness and bewilderment, not to mention the fear for the future?

It is a privilege to have been in the position to see things from more than one angle.

I have been a tourist in Israel, experiencing the country as a foreigner; and I have been as a native Israeli, the smells and sights so familiar, so ordinary, my previous life as a non-Israeli fading into a hazy memory.

I confess to having harbored a secret frustration that democracy gives the same vote to me as to ignoramuses and imbeciles who cannot be made to see sense; who are not controlled by the same moral values as I am.

And I have come to see how arrogant and foolish and narrow-minded I can be, thinking that I know better, thinking that I have the mandate on common sense and on knowing what's right.

“Are you sure”, Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh urges us to ask ourselves at all times.

I know that if I answer yes, I am lying to myself. It’s just that, far too often, I forget to ask.

FYI
I've been having some problems with my e-mail yesterday and today, so I may not have received your e-mails, if you sent any.

It’s not over till the fat lady sings



Word on the street in Israel is that Suha is keeping him alive till she can get her fleshy paws on every last cent.

According to that most excellent of Israeli daily publications, Yediot Aharonot, Suha and Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's financial advisor, are the only ones who know the numbers of the bank accounts where the dying ra'is keeps his fortune, at least three hundred million dollars, according to Forbes, much of it purloined from the Palestinian people.

That's why Suha rushed over to Ramallah, like a bat out of hell, to take over the handling of the dying husband she hasn't bothered visiting for three years, and swiftly had him moved to her territory, Paris. She wasn't taking any chances of him mumbling the account numbers to anyone else.

According to Yediot, Rashid and Suha each know about different bank accounts. Suha and Rashid don't like each other very much.

It's like American daytime TV, without the good-looking actors.

By the way, Ehud Ya'ari, top Israeli commentator on Arab affairs, said on Israeli TV channel 2 evening news tonight that Yassir Arafat died yesterday lunchtime, and that since then everything we've been hearing has been politics.

Update: Ah, a commenter on Silent Running enlightens us:

Accessing those swiss numbered accounts is a new ball game since the swiss had to change the rules a year or so ago. Even if you are co signatory you can no longer access without swiss inheritance documents. However whilst the holder is alive you can transfer pretty easily. So I guess the "coma" situation will assist the transfers. Otherwise the swiss banks will get another windfall like they did 60 years ago.

Kindly brought to my attention by Alisa.

Anti-Israel bias on BBC? Unheard of! Unthinkable!
A few days ago, John Williams wrote:

I have just watched the most anti Israeli programme I have ever seen on British television. It was on the BBC at prime time and goes by the title of 'Spooks'. The plot concerned the attempts of a right wing Israeli group who murdered a peace negotiator in order to stop any two state agreement. Although there were passing references to the idea that the right wing group, the November committee who advocated a greater Israel, were hated by the more liberal Israelis the whole script was an excuse to attack all Israelis who,

Deliberately murder peace activists who stand in the way of bulldozers

Cease to be human when they don IDF uniform, all except the refuseniks that is

The November committee employed a code when dealing with perceived enemies - Nablus stood for surveillance - Bethlehem stood for threats and intimidation - Jenin stood for assassination. I might have the order for the first two mixed up but Jenin = targeted murder.

I could barely believe the level of bias.

John suggested we check who was behind this episode and where they stood politically. He’ll make a serious writer of me yet. Didn't come up with much though.

Bish is much better than me at doing that. He would have found their whole life story down to what they wrote on the door of the loo (john) in high school.

So the writer was Ben Richards. I can only suppose it is the same person who wrote these books and who, according to this, was obsessed with Salvador Allende as a child. Okey dokey.

Creator of the series was one David Wolstencroft
Director Cilla Ware
Producer Andrew Woodhead

Executive Producer Jane Featherstone commented about the series: "We felt it was important to look at the use of intelligence as a political tool, at how politicians attempt to influence the security services.” Okey dokey.

How about the use of entertainment program(me)s on British state funded TV as a political tool?

Naaaah.

How do I, as one of those nasty Israelis, feel about this?

Tired mainly.

Later:
Mind you, what can you expect? I mean, just look at this (not that one has anything to do with the other)



These people are raving lunatics. It's just incredible, isn't it?

Via Harry's Place and Eric the Unread.

Still later:
An answer:

Why is it so hard to imagine that not everyone thinks like you? Are these people so arrogant, so self-smug that they truly believe their way is the only way?

US presidential elections
Well, it’s over. That’s a relief. Can we all be friends again now?

Obviously not.

BBC and Sky News reporters were so somber yesterday. I swear one Sky News reporter was near to tears.

The obligatory don’t-worry-I’m-still-here post
Three murdered in Shuk HaCarmel; about thirty wounded, that’s if you don’t include the sixteen year-old perpetrator. As I see it, his PFLP operators murdered him.

When Eldest was little we used to take her to Shuk HaCarmel (Carmel Market) quite a lot. She used to love it. When Bish took her, she would ride high above everyone on his shoulders, looking at the stalls, at the busy shoppers rushing this way and that, at the people selling stuff, shouting and singing about their merchandise to attract buyers.

When she came with me, we used to finish the grocery part as quickly as possible and make our way through to the Nahlat Binyamin pedestrian whatsitcalled, where we would watch the vendors setting up their stalls for the popular Friday creative fair. We used to buy fresh pita with labane from the Bedouin women and find a nice spot on a bench, preferably near the Russian string quartet.

One time, Eldest was tired. She put her head on my lap and stretched out on the bench, not noticing that her legs were pushing at the scooter that was parked at the end of the bench. There was a great crash as the scooter toppled over. Thankfully, the rather rough-looking owner of the scooter, who was working in a nearby store and who rushed over, was nice about it.

Then there was a pigua (terror attack) in Shuk Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem, sometime in the mid-nineties, one of those ‘Victims of Peace’ piguim. We still believed in that back then. After that we never took Eldest to the shuk any more.

Now she’s older, she wants to go. She reckons she can get more clothes there for less. I have had bad experience with clothes from the shuk. You pay less, but the clothes don’t last long enough to be handed down to the next child, so not so cheap in the long run. But my daughter has a businesswoman streak in her (she didn’t get that from her parents, must have come down sideways from her Aunt Our Sis), and impressive organizational abilities (she is the only one who can get me off my behind to DO anything) so I suppose we’ll be going there some time soon.

We weren’t there this morning though, thank God.