Being English

This afternoon I visited a friend sitting Shiva on the death of his 90-something mother. She lived her entire life in London. Her son, reflecting on her passing, summed it up as a life lived well:

"She had a long life, suffered no great personal tragedy, enjoyed her many descendants, was clear-headed until the end, and met the Queen".

Ah, the English.

Sanctimonious Irish

Cliona Campbell has an unlikely story. She's a student in Ireland who loves Israel (rare), and showed it by coming to work for two months on an IDF volunteer program, Sar El (Very rare for the Irish). After she went home she wrote a fine article about the experience.

So far so nice. Lots of her peers come on Anti-Israeli junkets, and are then lauded and celebrated when they get home, so it's nice to hear the opposite story. Opposite, also post-factum. As Ben Cohen tells, ever since she'd written about her experience she has been harassed by sanctimonious Irishmen who's hatred for Israel is greater than the the civility they were taught at home.

I once wrote that anti-Zionism in our time is more bistro than bierkeller - it is a phenomenon which manifests primarily among intellectual elites who see themselves as progressive thought leaders. I think that remains true; what is also true is that the boundaries between these two worlds overlap more and more, at the same time that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is endowed with an almost metaphysical power. That is why, when all is said and done, you are left with the spectacle of a young woman who visited just one of the hundreds of conflicts across the world returning home to a villain's welcome.

I am certain that many of Israel's forthright opponents would disavow the treatment meted out to Cliona Campbell. Good enough, yet not enough. This sorry affair illustrates that the western debate over Israel has gone way beyond concern with Palestinian rights into the realm of the irrational. The thugs picking on Cliona may be responsible for acting out the script, but they didn't write it.

(H/t Goeffrey)

Elinor Joseph's Nice Story

Lots of important things to think and write about today, no time to do the thinking and writing, however. So instead, here's a very nice story to warm some cockles. It's propaganda, yes, and a puff story, most very definitely, but it's also true - not something one can say with confidence about much of what gets published in the media these days.

Arye Lova Eliav, RIP

In all the excitement about the Turkish thugs and our inept attempt to thwart them, let's not forget the passing of Lova Eliav, who died two days ago at the age of 88 or 89.

Lova was an active member of the generation of young men and women who actually did the business of fighting for Israel at its beginning, then struggling for its success and its soul for the rest of their lives. By the time he died the country had long since ceased to be the socialist Jewish paradise he thought he was working towards; most of us had belatedly accepted his position on the need for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and then understood that it can't happen. Through all of this, however, even when his positions were far from the mainstream, Lova was always respected for his integrity, loved for his idealism, celebrated for his sincerity. He was an unusual politician even at his prime; today he wouldn't stand a chance of political survival for more than five minutes - more's our loss.

I can't think of a single politician, from any party, who remotely approaches his moral stature.

Eli Cohen on Radio Damascus

Eli Cohen has iconic status in Israel, in spite of being dead 45 years already.

Cohen was an Israeli spy planted in Damascus in 1961, purportedly as a returning emigre from South America. He successfully penetrated government circles, eventually being mooted for a position as deputy secretary of defense. In 1965 he was identified, arrested, tortured and tried, before being publicly hanged in the center of Damascus.

His activity apparently contributed significantly to Israel's ability to beat the Syrian defenses on the Golan in 1967.

His remains have never been returned, in spite of Israeli attempts to include them in exchanges of prisoners following the three wars we've had with Syria since his hanging.

Someone has now dug up a recording of an interview he gave Radio Damascus not long before his arrest. You can't be an Israeli and not listen to this voice from the past with fascination.

Another Complicated Jew

Here's a story about an Orthodox Jew who used to be a neo-Nazi: actually two of them, if you can believe it. (It's in the newspaper, so it's got to be true, right?)

Beyond the individual oddity is a story about Poland, which my own anecdotal experience indicates is about right: the antisemitism is down, the support for Israel is palpable, and history takes strange twists and turns sometimes, doesn't it.

Chaim K. RIP

Chaim K. passed away late Saturday afternoon. He was 87 - not that you'd know it by watching the callers making condolence calls at his Shiva this week, some of whom are quite some years younger than his older grandchildren. "You don't know us", they tell his children, "but we were friends of your father. Such a luminous man!"

Chaim was born in a small Polish town no-one has ever heard of. He was 17 when the Nazis invaded, and his entire immediate family fled East, eventually washing up in what is today Kazakhstan. They spent the war years in what were combination refugee-and-labor camps. His father starved to death, but the rest of them survived. In later years his sister (who died a few years ago at 91) reminisced that Chaim would combat his hunger by reading whatever he could get his hands on until he fell asleep from exhaustion, thereby managing to do without a meal.

Also in the camps he met his future wife, "she didn't even own a pair of shoes". Chaim was good at cobbling things together, and managed to help her survive the hardships.

After the war they went back to Poland. None of her family had survived; there was no point in trying to rebuild lives in Poland, and by 1948 they were in Israel.

Arriving in war-torn Jerusalem in 1948 they found accommodations with a cousin who lived in Batei Ungarn, near Mea Shearim. The cousin had seven children in two rooms, but since it was crowded anyway, why not take in the newcomers? No long afterward Chaim found an abandoned two-room house on the wrong side of the barbed-wire fences which marked the new border that ran through the city. A block or two from Sheikh Jarrah, if you insist on details. The building was functionally in No-Man's Land between Israel and Jordan, but there was an IDF position on its roof; the troops reached the second floor through a trapdoor from one of the rooms. Still, it was better than the place in Batei Ungarn, so Chaim, his sister and their spouses moved in. No-one ever came to visit them at their house beyond the border, and the troops on the roof occasionally had fire-fights with Jordanian troops, but worse things can happen. Chaim and Gittl had three children there.

In 1960 they moved. Chaim was making a good living as an accountant, and they were able to afford a brand new 2-1/2 room apartment in the Katamon area. When they first moved in the 70-square meter place looked so impossibly spacious that they considered renting one room, or perhaps simply sealing it off for visitors. They remained for the rest of their lives (Gittl died two years ago this week). They had three children, 11 grandchildren, and right now there are 16 great grandchildren, with the 17th expected in two months. The youngest two grandsons, at 19, are hardly older than the oldest of the great grandchildren (17).

20-some years ago, as Chaim should have been about to retire, he was offered the challenge of setting up the financial department in one of the large settlements. He thought about it for a day or two, and took the job, which he held until he was in his late 70s. Even then he retained his position as one of the stalwarts of his synagogue, and as the accountant of a local charity; two days before he died he transferred all the details of the charity to his son. In recent weeks he has no longer been able to participate in his daf yomi study group (9:30 am, the "old codgers' group") so one of the others came to him each day to learn, all the way until the end.

Have I mentioned he was a nice man? Always smiling, often with a Yiddish joke, relating to people as equals. His son is the boss of one of our public utilities. A few weeks ago I met the two of them, the son supporting his father on the way to the synagogue; the father dressed, as usual, in his suit, tie and fedora even though he could walk only with the greatest effort. I pointed to the street we were standing on, where the son's company has been digging these past two months: "Chaim, can you please tell the boss of the company they really ought to fix this street already?!" He beamed and said he'd try.

Yesterday they paved the street and it looks spanking new. "He did it", I told his son. "He got it fixed".

Fifty years in a single neighborhood is quite a while, and alongside the unexpected mourners I told of above, the surviving old-timers are coming to pay their respects. The neighborhood was originally built by rich (mostly Christian) Arabs in the 1920s, when Chaim was a boy in that forgotten Polish town; it was sparsely populated, with large detached houses. In the 40s, as he fought his hunger, lots of important British officers and officials moved in. Once the Arabs and British were gone, it was filled with the Jews who had been deported from the Old City, two miles to the north, after the Jordanians took it over. Then in the 1950s, the mostly empty hillsides were built up with apartment buildings for the large numbers of refugees and immigrants pouring into Israel and living mostly in tents. Only in the 1990s did it begin to change again, so that today there's a large population of wealthy British and French Jews moving away from the rising antisemitism in their countries, and rich Americans not fleeing from anyone - and upper middle class Israelis, too.

Sit in the tiny apartment Chaim died in the other day, however, and you'll be reminded of the people who dominated the area for 40 years. The Lithuanian Holocaust survivor; the Polish one; the two Moroccans, the Iraqi; the man from the Old City whose father and brother-in-law fell in its battle; the 68-year-old Yekke (German Jew) who's father disagreed with Chaim about what sort of synagogue they needed, 50 years ago, so each built his own, and each sometime came to the other's.

You can see a lot of history in 87 years.

Seen in Jerusalem

Three scenes:

I've pointed out repeatedly in the past that Israeli hospitals disprove all the stereotypes about ethnic relations in this country. Well, yesterday I spent a few hours at one of our local colleges (not the university). A three-building campus chock full of young people busy learning so as to do better in life. I saw religious Jews, including many head-covered married young women; secular Arabs (in jeans), secular Jews (in jeans), and religious Arabs (more severe head-cover than the married Jews); I heard Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, French, and American; and the halls were even more crowded than necessary because small roving teams of art or photography students seemed to be engaged in some project which called for them to be filming life between classes. The teams seemed to be as multi-ethnic as everyone else in the halls.

This morning I sat for a bit in a hallway at one of our medical centers (not a hospital) waiting for some document. Behind a counter were two young women, one secular (jeans...) and the other haredi, head cover and all (a wig. Young married haredi women, unlike young married mdern orthodox women, eschew hats, scarfs, kerchiefs and so on, and stick with the appearance of natural hair. See if you can figure out that one). By and by a 40-ish doctor came out of his office and started chatting with the Haredi woman:
Dr: I hear they're sending you to some course?
Haredi woman, grinning: Yes! I'm going to study administration!
Dr: And what will you do with it once you've studied?
She: Maybe I'll run this department.
Dr: Or another department, elsewhere. Lily took that course, and now she runs the branch in French Hill.
She: And then, who knows, maybe I'll run this entire organization [which is large. What the Americans would call an HMO].
Dr. Well, I don't think they'll let you run it, that's a slot that a physician will always fill, but you could be the top administrator, would that be good enough?
She: Yes, that's a goal I'd aim at.

Third story: Earlier today in one of the warrens of 19-century vintage small apartments and narrow alleys, south of Jaffa street. No cars can get in here, and very few pedestrians pass through. Two very old men are sitting in the perfect winter sun that Jerusalem sometime has in January, one talking animatedly and his friend leaning towards him and listening earnestly. As I pass -
I've never raised my hand at her. But if you listen to her, I've ruined the family, I'm the cause of all evil, everything's my fault. So I said to her, You know what? I'm a bad man, my intentions were always to ....
That's all I can tell you about him.

Yet Another Tenth of Tevet

Yesterday was the Tenth of Tevet, an ancient day of mourning which is still unbearably contemporary. Since the Jewish and Gregorian calenders are not fully aligned, last year this day fell on January 6th, two weeks into the Gaza Operation. It was a grim day, as I described then.

As last year so also this year, our synagogue had one of the old-timers tell how he survived the Holocaust. Concurrently, however, in a different room, there was a commemoration event for Nitai Stern - the same Nitai whose funeral I wrote about last year. His grandfather is a member of our congregation. Before going to the main event I chatted briefly with Reuven, Nitai's father. "Let next year be better for you than the last one".

The Holocaust survivor telling his tale this year was Baruch. Baruch, a simple 85-year-old man, has been the chief gabai at this synagogue for decades. The direct translation of gabai is deacon, but my minimal familiarity with church matters doesn't let me say if the translation works. A gabai such as Baruch, at any rate, is the person who makes the synagogue run, the all-purpose-fellow without whom the congregation would grind to a halt. Not only has he been at it for decades, Baruch manages also never to fight with anyone, a feat which is theoretically impossible. So the hall he was speaking in was packed, with hundreds of people from 8-year-olds to sages in their mid-90s.

Baruch has never told his story in public. As the rabbi explained: "Everyone knows Baruch. Whenever I'd ask him to tell, he'd say 'what for. Everything's alright, and we need to keep on going'". What made this year different was that one of Baruch's granddaughters, a woman in her 20s, refused to accept his stubbornness, sat him down in front of a camera and forced him to talk. People in the field will tell you it's often so: Holocaust survivors who refused to talk for generations open up when their grandchildren demand it. So the evening was based on the film, and Baruch himself sat in the front row, surrounded by his children and grandchildren (the great-grandchildren stayed at home).

It started out a simple tale, in simple language. Baruch really isn't a talker. Much of the tale was punctuated by ever-repeated comments that "well, we had to keep on going". Yet it grew ever more riveting, eventually centering on two events. The first, a death march in April 1945, when 2,000 people left Buchenwald, and two (two) were liberated in May by the Russians. Baruch was half of the one tenth of one percent who survived.

The second event was the battle for Gush Etzion in April-May 1948. Baruch had made his way to Mandatory Palestine, found his way to the Gush, and participated in the bloody battles which resulted in the destruction of the Gush on May 14th 1948, at which point he fell into Jordanian captivity and remained there for 10 months. "When we returned to Jerusalem in March 1949 we were received by Ben Gurion who told us our battle had saved Jerusalem by holding off the Arab Legion for those two weeks. Well, and then it was time to keep on going". So he did. And still does.

We all do, as we have been for millennia, pausing each Tenth of Tevet but then continuing. According to Haaretz, in 2009 the number of new immigrants to Israel was 16,244. It's not a very big number, but it's up from 13,859 last year. Sasa, a left-wing kibbutz a few miles south of the Lebanese border, has inched into first place worldwide in supplying armoured vehicles that can withstand anything the Islamists throw at American troops. I recommend the item behind that link: it has some interesting observations in it.

War as Tool or Goal

Yitshak (Ike) Aharonovitch, captain of the Exodus, has died. He was 86. Yossi Harel, Haganah commander of the operation and Aharonovitch's superior, died last year. He was also in his 80s (89, I think). May they rest in peace; we owe them both.

Apparently the two never ceased arguing about the outcome of their glorious moment, not when they were in their 20s, and not when they were in their 80s. Harel was willing to kill or be killed for the national goal, but in a pragmatic sort of way. Aharonovitch wanted to die with glory and justice, and was peeved for the next 60-some years that he was destined to die in bed. Yoram Kaniuk, another old-timer writes about their arguments that ended only in death (the translation is awful, you've got to pretend you're reading it in Hebrew).

All of Zionism is the story of the struggle between Yossi and Ike. Ike wanted Yossi to continue the war to show that we were heroes and in order to beat the British and Yossi said he didn't bring the ship so that 4,500 Holocaust survivors would be killed, and if Ike's Palmach wanted war he should bring the young people from the kibbutzim. Ike didn't forgive him. No logic would get through to him. He accepted the battle that was almost Masada in the sea. Yossi wanted life. Ike wanted struggle and victory.

Historians can't know "what if" - so how can we know Harel was right, and Aharonovitch was wrong? Unfortunately, because while in the Zionist camp the Harel's mostly win, with the Palestinians the Aharonovitchs always win.

Olive Trees

Metula, earlier this week: view of the main street taken from the center of the village. The white structure at the bottom of the block is a packing house; the fence behind it is the Lebanese border. The fields beyond it and the mountains beyond them are Hezbullah territory. Yet it wasn't always so. Here's my report.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Olive Trees

One compelling justification for democratic nationalism is that it requires the nation to organize its affairs according to its values and priorities. Witness the American discussion about healthcare this summer; a national conversation about society, responsibility, life and death and how best to balance them. Each nation has its own set of laws that reflect its own discussion; were there a single, right way of organizing human affairs, it might long since have been adopted everywhere. (Or not. People aren't always sensible).

It was ever thus. Take the 3rd century as an example. Still reeling from the double calamities of defeat and destruction at the hand of Roman legions in the two previous centuries, there was yet a vibrant Jewish presence in the Galilee doing its best to hang on, and its laws reflected its conditions. Here's a small example. A second-century Mishna moots the ownership of olive trees swept downstream by a flood from one man's grove to another's field, where they took root. Third-century Rabbi Yochanan ruled that they were not to be repatriated, forbidding the uprooting of olive trees "mishum yishuv Eretz Yisrael", because of the need to settle the land of Israel. Rabbi Yirmiya added that this ruling was so compelling it overrode all other considerations. (Baba Metzia 100b and 101a).

Their efforts were only mildly successful. A few pages on the discussion is of standards of fertility to be expected from a field of wheat. Rabbi Yochanan says four se'ah of grain is needed to reap one kor; Rabbi Ammi says it takes eight se'ah. An old man explained to the scholars that in Rabbi Yochanan's day the land was still fertile, but by Rabbi Ammi's, conditions were worsening and good harvests were rare. (Baba Metzia 105b). Over the next few centuries the land degraded and the Jewish population dwindled.

*****
Sometime in the early 19th century a Jew from Russia named Bronstein arrived in Safed, largest of four significant Jewish communities (the others were Tiberius, Jerusalem and Hebron). I can't tell much about Bronstein, since no-one remembers, but we can safely say he didn't see any political significance to his move. He lived in a large multinational empire dominated by Russians, and was moving to another large multinational empire, dominated by Muslims. He was a Jew who saw an opportunity to move to Erez Yisroel and that was enough.

A great grandchild of his, we'll call him Levy, was an enterprising artisan. Yet Safed in the 1890s didn't offer much, so when he heard that the Baron Edmond de Rothschild was recruiting settlers for a new agricultural settlement, he signed up. No-one intended to launch a new chapter in Jewish history. The program was meant merely to create economic viability for Jewish existence. That it would be part of something greater became obvious only later.
In 1896 Levy, his wife and children, and a few dozen other families settled on a plot of land purchased by the Baron northeast of Safed on a low hill above a broad valley; to the east a gurgling creek ran through a canyon and tumbled over a high waterfall before flowing south into the swamps of the Hula valley. They called their settlement Metula.

Though they had no experience and very little guidance, the settlers of Metula planted apple and olive trees on the rocky plots behind their huts, and grain on the broad fields in the valley to the north. They worked hard; some gave up while others persisted. Levy's sons brought brides from Safed and set up their own families. The agricultural environment hadn't improved since the days of Rabbi Ammi. If anything, it was worse. Yet the trajectory had changed and these peasants were clawing back, not slipping.

They continued not to see themselves as national harbingers. When one daughter had a tumor her mother took her to the hospital in the big city: Beirut. When the doctors couldn't save her she was buried there. If there's still a Jewish cemetery in Beirut, she lies in it. Another time there were skirmishes between warring local factions, and one of Levy's sons sent his wife and newborn twin sons across the mountains to shelter in the Jewish community of Tyre. One of them died on the road, and is buried in the Jewish cemetery of Tyre – which almost certainly no longer exists.

After World War I the French and British carved up the defeated Turkish Empire. The area around Metula was so remote it took two extra years to finalize the border, which was drawn so that the village was the northernmost tip of the British Mandate. So northernmost that the border ran a literal stone's throw from the last house; the fields in the valley were all in the French Mandate. It took another few years to agree that the Jewish farmers in Mandatory Palestine would be permitted to work their fields in Mandatory Lebanon; an international checkpoint was set at the bottom of the hill between the homes and fields, and the farmers crossed it every day. This arrangement was respected until the State of Israel replaced Mandatory Palestine and the Lebanese blocked access to the fields. Even then, the eldest of Levy's grandsons, a towering giant of a man, used to break through the border each spring, drive his tractor to the family's fields, and plow one furrow. These fields, he was saying, had been his grandfather's, his father's, and he wasn't relinquishing title merely because of some international border that someone had drawn.

A grandson of Levy's was killed in Israel's War of Independence. A great grandson was killed as a paratrooper in the early 1960s, and another in the Yom Kippur War. Yet they're a hardy stock, are Levy's descendents. Almost 200 years since the first Bronstein left Russia for Safed, and 115 years since he and his wife set off for a barren hill above the Hula, some descendants are still there. They've long since accepted the loss of the fields in Lebanon, but they still farm the orchards and press olive oil. Levy's surviving grandsons are in their eighties and nineties, and you can still find them in Metula, living on the original short street. Where once a checkpoint was today stands a fruit packing factory, and the fence behind it is a sealed border. The great grandchildren and their children are spread far and wide: there is at least one great great great grandchild in New York, but most are Israelis. They span the political spectrum from settlers to far-left activists; there are lawyers and doctors and metal workers and hoteliers and dreamers; one is a property magnate with global reach, another works on a dairy farm on the West Bank. When I visited last week one descendant was drawing up plans for a new commercial initiative better adapted to the 21st century – but still in Metula.

*****
Jews used words and ideas to preserve their bond to their land. The essential bond itself, however, not the idea, is expressed in deeds. Harvesting olives is a reality and a metaphor. Seventeen centuries ago the harvesting couldn't stave off the general deterioration. A hundred years ago it was essential in launching the revival.

The other day one of the men told me of a chore he had, and asked if I'd join him: the extra two hands would make it easier. It was late afternoon, when the fierce sunlight of an August midday eases into gentle golden rays. Together we mended a fence, pulling, tugging, reinforcing, as the men have been doing for more than a century. Half a mile from the Lebanese border; it was comforting and peaceful.

On the Passage of Time

Frankfurt airport. Three or four elderly Israeli women and one well-dressed elderly man reached the checkpoint (I think it was the fourth so far) by electric golf-cart: a service offered by the airport for elderly passengers who might have problems walking the distances. The driver of the golf cart was a courteous young woman who seemed heartened by the fact that these particular charges spoke German; and if it was German with a not fully recognizable accent, it made no difference. They were nice old people.

At the checkpoint she unloaded them and assisted them up to the barrier, where she handed them over to the young Israeli security person; this was a dark skinned young woman with whom the elderly man briefly flirted, in a grandfatherly way. “And from where in Czechoslovakia do you come?” she asked him, referring to a country that exists still in his memory but no-where else. Behind the young woman stood a uniformed young German policeman wearing body armor and a sub-machine gun. As the elderly folks passed through he smiled at them, and gave a ghost of a salute.

Do Holocaust survivors think through all the ironies of such moments? Probably not, I expect. This won’t have been their first trip through a German airport, and the novelty will probably have worn off. They seemed mostly interested in getting through the process so as to find a seat in the lounge beyond. But the ironies are there, even if no-one dwells upon them.

Postscript: Someday Israeli air passengers won’t have to be screened through four layers of security more than anyone else. When that happens you’ll know that peace may be a reality. No speech by any politician of any nationality at any venue will do the trick, unless it manages to carry off that one. Putative peace arrangements that leave the need for those special airport precautions are perhaps better than nothing, but they won’t be peace arrangements.

Life Goes On

I was at the central cemetery of Jerusalem this afternoon for the first time in a while. Near the entrance a fellow named Dayan has set up a small kiosk with the optimistic name of Dayan's Refreshments. How do we know? Because as you drive in you can't miss the big white sign he's put up with the name of his establishment. Underneath he has helpfully added the services he offers to mourners:

Commemorative Candles, sandwiches, hot & cold drinks, icicles

Driving Lessons

The other day just as I was about to cross a street a bus came careening by and tried to take the corner from a two-lane street into a one-lane one. And took down a traffic sign that had been standing innocently on the corner. So now the bus was stuck, impaled on the traffic sign in its flank. The driver tried to back up, into the two-lane road, where the next vehicles were already piling up. At this point I noticed that the bus belonged to a driving school. As the driver tried, as gently as possible, to disengage from the traffic sign while not blocking traffic in all directions for longer than necessary, and also while not losing his composure in the face of the aggravation of all and sundry, I saw that it wasn't a he, the driver, it was a she. A middle-aged Arab woman with her hair covered by a kerchief. Learning to drive a bus.

Olmert's Scandals for Dummies

Remember the conundrum of the two crooks who have been arrested and are being interrogated separately? If they both keep mum, they'll both walk free. If one squeals he'll sit for 5 years, which is unpleasant, but the other one will sit for 20, which is really tough luck for him. However, if one keeps mum but the second squeals, one sit for 20 years - uggghhh. Especially as if he'd known his buddy was such a bastard he himself would have spilled the beans first and sat only five years. But then, the entire five years he'd have been able to kick himself for not shutting up, in which case he'd now be free, and sipping herbal tea or something in this place.

It's a tough life, being a crook.

Anyway, until recently the Olmert saga has been rather like that story except there have been three crooks, not two: Olmert himself, his former law partner Uri Messer, and his extremely loyal assistant, Shula Zaken. (By the way, according to all sources, the three of them are all highly capable people. Crooks, perhaps, but intelligent ones). The trio were rock-solid in their loyalty to each other, and the poor police never had a chance.

What has now changed is that the police have caught this Talanski fellow. He's not part of the Band of Brothers and Sister. Whether he's a crook or not I can't say, but if he is, he's not a card bearing and trusted member of our gang who can be relied upon. I can't say how they did it, but the police apparently have manged to plant uncertainty in the mind of Uri Messer, who has been doing all sorts of calculations about 5-years vs. 20 and that sort of thing.

Shula, by the way, still seems rock solid.

Disclaimer: Ruminations has no information beyond what has been splashed all over the media these past 15 years. All of the above is pure speculation and bears no relation to any real characters or actual people.

The Funniest Picture Ever

Miriam Zur at 16, posing for the camera on the beach of Tel Aviv, June 22, 1948.

Her grandaughter found the snapshot in a shoe box a few years ago, and sent it to Haaretz recently in response to their call for pictures of ordinary Israelis in the national epic. (I can't find the link on www.haaretz.com, which says something about their website and its user-unfriendliness).

The commotion in the background, distracting us from how pretty Miriam is? Oh, that's the Altalena burning. One of the most dramatic events in Israel's endless series of dramas. One of the most formative events in more than a century of Zionism. A day on which Israeli soldiers fought Israeli irregulars with casualties on both sides, with the five-week-old state of Israel as the undisputed victor. A day such as the lack of which has damned the Palestinians to generations of suffering, and the Lebanese too.

It was also the day Miriam managed to get her picture taken on the beach.

People in Jerusalem

Three old codgers playing cards just off Mahane Yehuda, earlier this afternoon. If I had to decide, I'd say two of them are North African, while the taller one facing the camera is Iraqi: something about their accents and body language. But I could easily be wrong.

Condescending fool

Walking down the block earlier this evening, it was impossible not to notice a young woman coming towards me, talking loudly on her cell phone:
"... so what if most people think that way!? Does that mean I have to, also? I mean, most people in this country vote Likud, and look what it's done to us...."

Likud currently has 12 MKs from 120. The highest the party ever rose was 45 MKs, if I remember correctly, in 1981, when she would have been too young to notice, if she was even born.

Mandarin Bus

The other day I was on a bus to Tel Aviv (buses are interesting places). Sitting next to me was an earnest young man with a fancy beard reading one of our least serious newspapers, that is handed out for free at places like bus stations. He was reading his rag sheet, I was deciphering my daf yomi, until suddenly his cellphone rang, and he launched into an animated conversation in... Mandarin Chinese (Believe me, that's what it was. I wasn't certain, so I asked him, after the conversation was over. "Funny", I told him, you don't look Chinese").

The Market of Learning

I really need to start toting around a digital camera as part of my standard everyday gear, otherwise how will I convince you all of the veracity of scenes such as this:

Jerusalem's open air market, Mahane Yehuda, is a colorful, fascinating, bustling, noisy, and mobbed place. This morning, as I passed through the southwestern security gate on Agripas street, I noticed an elderly beggar in a wheelchair, and a 30-something haredi man squating in front of him. Both had open books in their laps, and they were poring over them, deep in discussion. From the briefest of glances that I managed to sneak I'd say they were studying Torah, perhaps the weekly portion; the page seemed not to have the format of a Gemarah page.

They were quite oblivious of the rest of us.