We went early this morning to the polls. If you go late the get-out-the-vote folks call you every hour and offer to drive you - and who needs the hassle? Especially as the shortest way from here to there is along a pedestrian path.
Long before we arrived there were worrying signs: police fences, police forces, security-types with microphones hidden in full sight in their mustaches and ears... We'd forgotten that Olmert is a neighbor. Getting in to the voting station (a school) required more security levels than going thru an airport with explosives in your shoes. Once inside, we were still surrounded by more security types, beeping contraptions, the press and their gear.
And there, in the eye of the storm, one of the doors in the school hallway was locked. The security fellows had apparently demanded that it be opened so they could inspect the brooms behind it, but alas, no-one in living memory had ever seen it opened nor knew where the key might be. So they brought in the janitor, who had also never seen that door open, and he brought a box with about 340 different keys in it, and a top-notch security goon trained to shoot a wing off a fly in the middle of the night from a range of 400 meters with one hand tied behind his back, stood there and tried key after key after key after key... I expect he'll have that door open well before the next municipal elections, in 2013.
FROM CAROL HERMAN
ReplyDeleteA city with such an ancient reputation; and in the end? So few voters!
Let alone, what represents the outcome. The taxpayer pot isn't big enough to fix all the "pot holes." To fix what went bad. To fix the school system, where now the yeshivot are finally in a pickle.
What sort of pickle? Donations are down. Survival, when you teach men NOT to work; has a tsunami force all its own.
Plus, I did see a story by Ben Caleb, in the Jerusalem Post. About how the school he took his children to (secular), was beset with road blocks. ANd, other inconveniences. This school just got turned over, however, to the Haredi. And, guess what? The road blocks were carted off.
Much too late.
Back in Roman times Jerusalen suffered such a terrible fate. Due to extremists.
All that's left (after the fires, and the deaths to so many inhabitants; given how angry the Romans became) ... is that Western piece of a wall. Too bad not enough people read Josephus.
Too bad, given that destruction comes from a lack of maintenance; how this city has really suffered.
Ahead, for Judaism, I wish for Spinoza. And, Martin Buber. And, Einstein. Europe couldn't keep the Great minds of Judaism down.
Now? Where are the great minds?
It's not going to matter who "wins" today's election.
You're looking for a door key, the way an ancient king was looking for a nail for his horse's horse-shoe.